“We live here!” Marco told them in German. “Our house!” he added, pointing up at the villa.
For a long second the two men watched them. And then, when another shell blew apart three of the cypress trees that columned the exterior stairwell, one of the soldiers ordered them inside, prodding them at gunpoint through the loggia and the living room and into the kitchen. Inside, the second private switched on a flashlight and waved it across the room.
And there, huddled on the floor, Marco saw his family. His wife. His children. His parents. And, leaning against one of the counters, he saw also a Lee-Enfield rifle. A British sniper rifle. He wondered what in the world it was doing here, but then lost track of it when Massimo and Alessia threw themselves upon him, the children oblivious to the German soldier who was pointing a gun at their father and their aunt.
Francesca thought about when she was happiest. She sat with her head against Marco’s shoulder, the side of her face buried against his skin where his neck met his chest. She had unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt because she needed to touch him and hear his heart beat. Alessia was curled up on his legs and Massimo on hers. The children weren’t sleeping, but in the intervals when the shelling ceased—the air still charged and the stench of gunpowder a fog that wouldn’t lift—she thought they might be dozing. They were so tired. They all were. Her ears were ringing from the cannonade. Her thighs were sore; her knees were weak.
But Marco was home and she sighed against him, recalling the litany of firsts she had shared with this man and how happy he made her. First kiss. First embrace. First time they made love. First baby. Second. Nothing, she decided, made her really happy but Marco and Massimo and Alessia. That was it. That was all in the world that she really needed, and that was what this war had taught her. Let the walls come tumbling down around them, let the estate become a lifeless moonscape—a massive necropolis filled with the Fascist artifacts of a cruel and stupid regime. Let the vineyards and the olive grove burn. Let the Medici mirrors crack. So long as she had this man and these children, all would be well. The war would end, the fires would burn themselves out.
She kissed his sternum. She felt his arm around her pull her even closer against him. Through the window she watched the flares and the phosphorous white chrysanthemums, and she told herself they were only fireworks and no one was going to die. At least no Rosatis. At least not Marco and Massimo and Alessia.
In the morning the shelling stopped, and Antonio stood before the kitchen window and gazed out at the ruined grounds of his estate and assessed the damage. He heard, among other things, the raspy kowk of a tern, and he glanced at the sky to see if he could spot the bird. He watched the soldiers emerging from their firing pits, squinting like old men at the sky; others sat, exhausted, their heads in their hands, beside the howitzers. There did not seem to be many wounded, but he really had no idea what was occurring on the other side of the house. The villa itself, however, seemed to have been spared. But he couldn’t be sure: neither he nor his family had been allowed to leave the kitchen.
By the light of the morning, he honestly couldn’t decide whether he was angrier at the damage to his property or at the degradations his family was enduring. His wife, a marchesa, peeing into a pot in front of her grandchildren, as if they were all peasants. It was appalling. The children were hungry and, worse, thirsty. Without electricity, they had no water at the villa, and they weren’t allowed to retrieve some from the well, even though the fighting had, for the moment, subsided. He overheard a German sergeant telling two privates that if the British didn’t attack that morning—and the sergeant said he didn’t believe that they would—Captain Muller might abandon the big guns and allow them to try to fight their way north to Arezzo, where they could rejoin Colonel Decher and the rest of the division. Antonio recalled all the wine that Decher had drunk here. On the terrace outside this very window. Down the marble steps and beside the swimming pool. Now, it seemed, Decher actually had combat responsibilities. The man’s dangerous and stupid little prayers had been answered. What an architect was doing in combat was beyond Antonio. It made as much sense as his son Marco mining beaches and then repairing roads.
He felt Marco beside him, and his son’s presence cheered him. It reminded him of what was really important. Even this nightmare would soon be over. He put his arm around his son’s shoulders.
“Tell me something,” Marco whispered.
You made it. You’re here, was all he wanted to say. And soon they’ll be gone. The Germans. This time forever. Either they’ll surrender or they’ll leave. But we, the Rosatis, will have endured. Instead, however, he said simply, “Anything.” In the corner, Francesca and the grandchildren were dozing. His wife and Cristina were awake but dazed.
“How could you allow the partisans to hide here?” Marco asked him, his voice an urgent whisper. In the night Antonio had told his son about Enrico and his men and the dying girl, but it had been difficult to share many details amid the shelling and the riot of emotions the family was experiencing. There was the terror as the Germans and the British dueled with mortar fire and artillery, and it sometimes felt as if the stone walls of the villa were going to collapse upon them, and yet there was also the children’s—and Francesca’s—undeniable delight that Marco was home.
“I had no choice,” he told his son. “They just … appeared. And then suddenly the Germans were here, too. We never thought they’d be coming back.”
“You know they’ll kill us all, even my children, if they find them.”
“How will they find them? Why would they go to the tombs?”
Marco gently pulled Antonio’s hand off him and took a step back. He pointed at the gun that was still leaning against the wall. “You know what that is?”
“A rifle, obviously.”
“It’s a British sniper rifle.”
“No.”
“What did you think it was? A rake? A fencing foil?”
“I thought it was German. I assumed one of the soldiers left it here.”
“No. One of the partisans left it here.”
“God,” Antonio said, shaking his head. “We have to hide it. The Germans must not have noticed it last night in the dark. They will today.”
“Yes,” Marco said. “They will. Even I spotted it when I got here, in just a flashlight beam.” He retrieved the rifle and began to survey the kitchen.
“Under the stove, maybe,” Antonio suggested. “Maybe if you angle it, it will fit.”
Marco nodded. He was about to crouch and slide it under the oven when they both heard footsteps. Marco glanced at the doorway and registered the presence of a German officer, his arm raised and a pistol in his hands, but that was all: instantly, the quiet in the kitchen was destroyed by a single gunshot. Marco dropped the rifle and collapsed onto the tile floor, a marionette whose strings had been cut. Suddenly Francesca was awake and screaming No, no, no! and she fell upon her husband, oblivious to the children, who were standing over their parents, the two of them shrieking as well. Antonio saw in the entrance the German lieutenant who had shot Cristina’s horse. He thought the bastard’s name was Bayer, but he really didn’t give a damn what the fellow was called. He threw himself at the soldier, fully expecting either to kill him or die trying. Bayer, however, swatted the marchese with the back of his hand—his right hand, the one holding the pistol—sending him spinning against the wall. Then the lieutenant grabbed a handful of his shirt and lifted him up onto his toes.
“Are you crazy?” he asked the marchese. Then he took his gun by the barrel and slammed the grip into Antonio’s cheek so hard that even over the weeping and howls of Francesca and the children, the family could hear the bone break.
By the time Vittore got to the radio station where Giulia was a secretary, the three Fascists who worked there with her were outside in the street tossing papers into a metal barrel and burning them. He nodded and started toward the building to find Giulia, but one of them, an announcer and writer named Carlo,
stopped him and asked, “Have you heard anything? How close are the Allies?”
“I’d think you’d know a hell of a lot more than I do,” he told Carlo. The fellow was really nothing more than a toady propagandist, but one would have thought the puppet government would have kept him apprised of the party lines and half-truths (and complete fabrications) he was supposed to broadcast.
“They don’t tell us anything anymore. The last transcript we got was yesterday morning.”
“God, aren’t you a reporter? Ask some questions!”
“I was a reporter before the war,” Carlo said, shrugging. “Now I just rewrite what they send me. I correct grammar and tone down the more obvious lies.”
Vittore shook his head and opened the door, but he saw Giulia coming down the stairs from the station, a crate in her arms. He took it from her. Inside it was a plant, her purse, and a pair of shoes.
“I thought it would be more papers you needed to burn,” he said, and he kissed her on the cheek, a reflexive gesture that struck him as unexpectedly normal under the circumstances. She was wearing a green dress and a pink scarf around her neck. She looked strangely festive.
“There’s almost nothing left upstairs,” she said.
“Why the dress?” he asked. “It’s one of my favorites.”
“I didn’t know if I’d get to go home.”
“So you wanted to be well dressed if you wound up a refugee?”
She paid no attention to his question and instead asked him the same thing Carlo had: how close were the Allies?
“Why does everyone think I would know when the Allies are going to get here?” he muttered, more bemused than annoyed, as they paused beside the men and the bonfire in the barrel.
“Because you’re wearing a uniform,” said Carlo.
“I spent the morning putting tinfoil and wool around frescoes. I just finished sandbagging a statue of Perseus. I’m not exactly commanding the Hermann Göring Division.”
“My mother is terrified,” Giulia said to him. “I want to go to her home, not mine. Is that okay?”
“Of course it is. It’s fine.”
“Is it true we’re going to blow up the bridges over the Arno?” Carlo asked.
Vittore nodded grimly. “Yes,” he answered. “I think it is.”
“See?” the radio announcer said. “You do know things.”
Vittore put the crate under his left arm and wrapped his right arm around Giulia. “Your mother will be fine. This is a liberation, not an occupation.”
“That’s awfully treasonous talk, Vittore,” Carlo warned him, but it was clear that he wasn’t serious. He knew which way the wind was blowing.
The bullet had pulverized Marco’s left scapula and shoulder, and he was sweating profusely from the pain. He was trying to shield his family from the agony he was experiencing. But as he lay on his side, he didn’t think he was going to die. At least not yet. Already Francesca was slowing the bleeding with a tablecloth she was pressing hard against the wound. Clearly the bullet had missed the major artery there. Marco was in fact more worried about his father, who had been knocked out for perhaps a full minute after the blow to his face. Now Antonio was awake and woozy, his left cheek and eye turning whorls of purple and black. He had spat two of his teeth into his hand and folded them into his handkerchief.
Marco looked back and forth between his parents and the lieutenant, who was standing just outside the doorway and waiting for someone or something. He had slung the British rifle over his shoulder.
“Maybe we still have some aspirin somewhere,” Francesca said, and she smiled down at him.
Marco tried to focus. Aspirin should be the least of his issues. They were going to have to explain that gun. “The rifle,” he whispered. “In a minute they’re going to ask you about it.”
“Shhhhhh,” she said. “You can’t worry about that.”
He tried to lift his hand and place it upon hers, but searing, white-hot needles instantly stung him, causing him to wince, cry out, and drop his clenched fingers back onto the tile floor.
“It’s okay,” Francesca told him. “Shhhhhh.”
But it wasn’t okay, it wasn’t okay at all. “You need to tell them it’s my gun,” he murmured softly. Over her shoulder he saw Alessia looking down at him, her face sad and scared and worried. He smiled at his little girl, at her big, wide eyes, and motioned with his chin so Francesca would note the child’s presence. His wife turned around and called for Cristina, who at the moment was helping her mother tend to Antonio. But Cristina took her niece by her shoulders and steered her to the long wooden prep table the cook had used, underneath which Massimo was curled in a ball, shivering and sucking on his pinkie.
“You will have to explain the gun,” Marco continued, his voice barely audible, but he had to be sure the lieutenant didn’t hear him. “Say I had it with me when I got here last night. The private who found me? For all we know, he’s dead. For all we know, he’s in a trench on the other side of the estate.”
“They’ll kill you. I will never say that.”
“They won’t kill me,” he lied. “But they will kill us all if they think we’re hiding partisans.”
Behind them he heard the sound of jackboots on the stone in the entry hall, and a moment later he saw a German captain, two privates trailing behind him. Bayer saluted, showed him the sniper rifle, and said, “He’s over there.”
The captain crossed the kitchen floor, and for a brief second his eyes and Marco’s met. Marco tried to read them, but they were expressionless.
“You speak German?” the captain asked him.
“I do. I was a captain in the Italian army.”
“Good for you,” he said, and then he kicked Marco hard in the stomach, the toe of the boot knocking the wind from him and causing the pain in his shoulder to move like a tsunami up his neck and down his spine. He hurt so much that his vision grew fuzzy, and for a long moment he was only vaguely aware of his wife and his daughter screaming. Slowly, however, once again he was able to focus, and he gritted his teeth.
“You showed up last night, I hear,” the captain said. “A deserter?”
He shook his head. The pain was making him tremble, and he tried to rein in his movements. He didn’t want this officer to think he was quivering with fear.
“Then what? A partisan?” He pointed at the rifle Bayer was holding. “Is that your weapon?”
Before he could answer, he heard his mother. “Captain Muller,” she began, her voice pleading, “you know us! Colonel Decher knows us! Some of the other landowners might be hiding partisans, but not us! Not us, you know that! You billeted your officers in this very house!”
Muller rubbed his eyes. Outside they heard the sounds of the soldiers talking almost casually and opening their ration kits in the lull; overhead they heard airplanes.
“This is my son!” his mother begged. “This is Marco!”
The captain regarded the marchesa. Then he motioned for Bayer to hand him the rifle. He inspected it briefly. “Your gun, yes or no?” he asked, looking down at Marco.
Marco nodded, but at the same time Francesca was telling Muller, “It’s not. It’s not!”
So Muller squatted beside Francesca. He glanced once at the rifle stock. Then he said to Marco, “Tell me what someone has cut into the gun. Two initials. If you can tell me, I’ll believe it’s yours.”
There was nothing to say. Nothing to say at all. He had no idea, and he was in too much pain even to manufacture a guess.
“That’s what I thought,” Muller said when Marco remained silent. He rose to his feet and ordered Bayer and the other two soldiers over to him. He told them to roll Marco onto his back, his shoulder be damned, and pull his arms out like wings. Marco yelled like a gored animal when they spread his arms. Then the captain grabbed Francesca behind her neck by the collar of her blouse and dragged her away from her husband.
“Watch your hands,” he said to his soldiers. “You, hold him closer to his elbow,
not his wrist.” He unlatched the safety and inspected the rifle once again. “A cheekpiece and a telescopic sight. Nice, very nice. But I won’t need either for this shot.” Then, at point-blank range, he shot a hole through the palm of Marco’s right hand.
Once Vittore had escorted Giulia to her mother’s apartment in Fiesole, he hitched a ride back into the center of Florence on a German army truck filled with empty crates. He asked the private driving the vehicle what was going to fill them, but the soldier was evasive. Still, Vittore imagined that within hours they would be packed with artwork and antique furniture some German general or SS officer was commandeering.