Authors: Belinda Alexandra
Signora Corvetto and Clementina turned to go. Rosa walked with them to the car. Clementina opened the passenger door, and then ran back to Rosa.
‘Can you forgive me?’ she asked, tears in her eyes. ‘Can you forget that I stayed here and didn’t join the partisans? I’m so ashamed.’
There was nothing to forgive as far as Rosa was concerned. In her eyes, Clementina was once again the charming girl she had known. They all had to put the war behind them now.
‘You were a confused young girl,’ she said, stroking Clementina’s hair. ‘But you have emerged from the terrible experience as a beautiful and wise woman. What more could a governess ask?’
Clementina covered her mouth and burst into sobs. ‘Signorina Bellocchi…I mean, Signora Parigi…’ Clementina was too choked up to say what she wanted. Instead, she smiled and shrugged. ‘You will always be Signorina Bellocchi to me.’
Rosa embraced her. ‘And you will always be lovely Clementina to me,’ she said.
When Signora Corvetto and Clementina had left, Rosa walked through the woods towards the villa’s cemetery. After the execution, the partisans had decided to place the Marchesa’s body in the grave with the surround. When they had opened it, they found it empty except for some paintings of Nerezza.
‘Should we donate them to the city of Florence?’ Partridge had asked Rosa. ‘Some of these are by famous artists.’
‘No,’ Rosa had replied. ‘Leave them where they are.’
After Partridge and Starling had removed the cover of the tomb, Rosa had been able to see the statue front on for the first time. It was the image of Nerezza as she had been when she was young and uncorrupted. Rosa looked at the beautiful woman before her and then at the bloody corpse of the Marchesa, which Starling and Partridge were lowering into the tomb. What an incredible waste.
Now, Rosa sat by the grave and studied the statue of the childangel fervently praying to the image of its mother. Signora Corvetto had been right when she said that Clementina was better off not bearing the burden of having had a monster for a mother. But she had been wrong when she said that no-one would mourn the death of the Marchesa. Rosa wept her heart out for all that could never be.
Rosa had registered Karl, Alfon, Erhard and Hannah with the Red Cross to find out if they had any living relatives, but so far had not heard anything. She’d already decided that if no-one claimed them, she would take them into her home. She’d always wanted a large family.
She was playing with them inside the villa one day when she became aware of a commotion outside. She looked out of the window and saw the two German prisoners of war, Hartmut and
Klaas, in the orchard. They were cowering but she couldn’t see beyond the trees to tell what was threatening them. Not Dono: he was still in his cage. Rosa had been able to persuade the local chief of police to let the German prisoners stay at the villa where they were needed, rather than be transferred to a camp where Rosa had heard the conditions were terrible. Had the chief of police changed his mind? Then, through the trees, Rosa glimpsed Woodpecker brandishing a gun at the Germans. Starling and Ada were there too, trying to appease him.
‘Stay here!’ Rosa told the children.
She ran to the orchard. What was Woodpecker doing back at the villa? She had sent him away after the execution of the Marchesa to return to his family.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Rosa, arriving at the scene. Woodpecker’s face was deathly white.
‘Dirty German scum!’ he screamed, his gun swinging between Hartmut and Klaas. ‘Filthy murderers!’
Starling and Ada looked at Rosa with frightened eyes. Without thinking, Rosa rushed to stand in front of the two Germans, directly in Woodpecker’s gun sights.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked, looking from Woodpecker to Starling and Ada.
Ada sucked in a painful breath. ‘The German army carried out a massacre in Sant’ Anna di Stazzema. Woodpecker’s family are all dead.’
Rosa’s hands dropped to her sides. ‘But I thought the hilltop town was safe?’ was all she could manage. She knew Woodpecker had moved his family there after the Germans had attacked his village.
Starling clenched his fists. ‘They killed them all—villagers and refugees. The victims were women, children and old people. The men had already left to avoid reprisals. Some of the victims were shot in their homes but many were killed outside the church, where they had gone for protection. The Germans even killed the priest who begged them to take mercy on the children.’
‘They cut open a woman in childbirth and shot the baby!’ screamed Woodpecker. ‘My wife and children were locked in a barn. The Germans threw grenades inside.’
‘Oh God!’ cried Rosa, holding her hands to her face. Was there no end to this?
She looked to Hartmut and Klaas, who were frozen on the spot, before turning back to Woodpecker. ‘Listen,’ she said, her heart in her throat, ‘these two men weren’t there. They deserted the army at the risk of being shot. They didn’t want to do what their army has been doing.’
Woodpecker didn’t hear her. Tears were streaming down his face. ‘And do you know what the Germans did after four hours of killing?’ he said. ‘They sat down and ate lunch and sang songs. One of them played the harmonica.’ He raised his gun again. ‘You’d better move, Raven,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me shoot you too.’
‘Woodpecker!’ Rosa screamed. ‘Listen to me! These men were not there! You’d be killing innocent men!’
Woodpecker gritted his teeth and cocked his head in Hartmut’s and Klaas’s direction. ‘They surrendered because they knew the Germans were going to lose the fucking war! They didn’t give themselves up in 1943, did they? For the last time, get out of the way, Raven!’
The pain in Woodpecker’s eyes was palpable. Rosa felt crushed by it. If he shot her, she didn’t care. She moved towards him, blinded by her own tears. To her surprise, Woodpecker put down his gun. Starling grabbed it. Rosa threw her arms around Woodpecker, embracing him as she would a terrified child. His body was racked by sobs. They both collapsed to their knees.
When Woodpecker’s breathing calmed he looked at Rosa and said, ‘My youngest child was a baby.’
Ada crouched down next to Woodpecker and put her arm around him. Starling knelt too. Hartmut and Klaas kept a respectful distance. Woodpecker was a brave soldier but a crushed and broken man. Rosa could see what the war did: it destroyed
people. How could things ever be the same? ‘Stay with us, Woodpecker,’ she said. ‘There are children here who need your love. We’ll be your family now.’
By mid-autumn, Rosa knew it was time for her to return to Florence. Signora Corvetto had made enquiries about Antonio, but so far no information had turned up. It didn’t appear as if he had ever made it to Germany. But Rosa had to face her city and find out what had happened to the shop and the apartment. When the war was finally over, she would bring her children back. No correspondence was coming through from Switzerland, but she had to trust that they were safe.
The Jewish women wanted to stay at the villa with their children until Germany had been defeated; a cautionary measure Rosa could understand. Signora Corvetto and Clementina agreed without reservation that the women could remain as long as they wished. Rosa told them that she would leave the running of the villa to Starling and Fiamma along with Madre Maddalena until she had completed what she had to do in Florence and could return to help them.
The morning Rosa was leaving for Florence, she went to see Hartmut and Klaas, who were repairing a retaining wall in the kitchen garden. Nobody bothered guarding them any more. One day they would return to Germany, but they were such a part of the villa now that Rosa was only willing to let them go when she knew they could return home safely. She had heard that many German prisoners of war had been killed in acts of revenge.
‘I have one final thing for you to do,’ she said, showing the men a diagram of a deep ditch she wanted them to dig near the summerhouse.
Hartmut trembled when Rosa explained the width and depth she wanted the ditch to be. ‘A mass grave?’ he asked, his eyes wide with terror. ‘You want us to dig our grave?’
Rosa was astonished for a moment before she understood. ‘No,’ she said, pointing in the direction of Dono’s cage. ‘You see
our poor bear there? He has been in that cramped cage for years. I want you to dig him a proper bear pit with a cave for him to shelter inside. Can you do that?’
It was Hartmut’s turn to be dumbfounded but Klaas understood and smiled. ‘Yes, we can do that,’ he said. ‘We’ll do an excellent job. We are Germans. We’ll figure it out.’
Rosa explained to the men that she was going away for a while and that they would probably be gone by the time she returned. Hartmut and Klaas each shook her hand. It occurred to Rosa that it was an odd thing to be doing: two German soldiers and an Italian patriot parting on such amicable terms. But she had come to the conclusion that while most Italians—and probably many Germans—had not wanted war, they had chosen a path of greed and pride and the result had been war. For where else did violence begin but within each individual human heart? It started with violence of thought and action, jealousy of others and loathing of oneself. It had its beginnings in the daily choices one made, including the indifference towards the suffering of animals in what one selected to eat and wear, and towards the poor and oppressed. From there it escalated into a collective consciousness of competitiveness, selfishness, pettiness, spite and greed. Violence of even the most seemingly innocuous kind begat more violence. That was the origin of war. Rosa could no longer tell where food, clothes or items of furniture had come from, but she saw clearly the source of conflict. What the Germans had done was an extreme form of what any human being was capable of, if they
chose
to do so. Hartmut and Klaas had chosen differently.
She was at the kitchen door when Klaas called after her. She stopped and he ran towards her.
‘I want to know why you didn’t let your fellow partisan shoot us,’ he asked. ‘If the Italian army had done to the Germans what we have done to you, I would want to kill every Italian I could lay my hands on.’
Rosa plucked a rose from the garden and placed it in Klaas’s buttonhole. ‘There’s been enough killing,’ she said. ‘I might have
let him shoot you if I had honestly thought that it would have done any good. But it wouldn’t have. If there is one thing I’ve learnt it is that revenge never brings the peace you hope it will.’
Klaas nodded. ‘Good luck,’ he said, shaking Rosa’s hand again. ‘I hope the future is good to you.’
‘And I wish the same for you,’ Rosa replied.
Madre Maddalena, Starling, Woodpecker, Fiamma, Ada and Paolina walked Rosa and Partridge to the end of the driveway when they were ready to depart. Partridge was accompanying Rosa to the outskirts of Florence before returning to his own home in Bagno a Ripoli.
‘Don’t eat my sheep,’ Rosa told Starling. ‘I want them to be here when I get back.’
Starling rolled his eyes. ‘Mankind has been eating animals for centuries.’
‘We have been murdering each other for centuries too. Do you think that’s something we should also continue out of habit?’
Starling’s face broke into a grin. ‘If there’s one thing about you, Raven,’ he said, ‘it’s that you always manage to get the final word.’
Rosa saw a look pass between him and Fiamma that made her smile. In the past few weeks she had noticed a growing intimacy between them. Wherever Fiamma was, Starling was never too far away. Rosa had a feeling that Starling didn’t intend to be a single man for much longer. The partisans embraced and Rosa and Partridge began their journey home.
It felt strange to be in Florence again; Rosa had been away for more than a year. The autumn weather was clear and sunny. Bands were playing in some of the piazzas. There were flags hanging in store windows—Italian, American, British, Canadian. There was a sort of carnival atmosphere about the city but it wasn’t sincere. The bands sounded tinny and empty. After hiding in the mountains for so long, after living the life of a soldier, Rosa felt like someone who had been away in a foreign country. She looked at the people’s
faces as she passed them on the street. Everyone was busy going about their lives. Some people were smiling, and some scurried along with their eyes averted. Everyone walked close to the buildings, a habit cultivated during the outbreaks of gunfire that had occurred between the Germans and the partisans during the last days of the occupation. Rosa had fought for her country, but many of the people around her hadn’t. She was no longer surrounded by comrades, but was moving amongst people who had cooperated with the fascists in some way and may even have collaborated with the Germans. There were still revenge killings happening on a daily basis and women with shaved heads being paraded in the streets. The wounds in Florence ran deep and who knew when they would heal.
The palazzo where Rosa’s apartment was located had suffered some shell damage but a plasterer and tiler were at work repairing the roof. She didn’t meet anyone on the stairs and wondered what had happened to her neighbours. Had they been sucked into a void like so many others from the city? The door to her apartment had been ripped off its hinges so her anxiety about no longer having the key had been unnecessary. She slipped through the doorway and into the foyer. The tiles were littered with her and Antonio’s personal letters and documents. The looters had found where they had stashed their artwork and most of the paintings were gone, except a work in oil of the Madonna, which had been urinated and defecated upon. The charger that Antonio had given Rosa for their anniversary was smashed to pieces on the drawing room floor. Rosa picked up the centrepiece with the peace doves still intact on it and slipped it into her pocket. She looked about her home with the same dazed fatigue that someone would look at their neighbourhood after an earthquake or other natural disaster. She remembered the furniture that had once pleased her eye and appealed to her senses. It was mostly gone now, and in its place obscenities had been scrawled on the walls. In the bedrooms, the sheets had been ripped to shreds and the children’s books were torn and strewn about the floor. Sibilla’s baby dress, the one Orietta had made for her, was
crammed behind a door. Rosa picked it up and discovered it was stiff with blood, as if someone had used it to staunch a wound.