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The torch was solid and heavy in my hands. I believe that’s why he gave it to me, so that I would feel that I was armed – although I was blissfully naïve in those days, quite unaware of the dangers of going into cellars with strange men. Don Anselmo stepped through the doorway and began to go carefully down the steps, one hand holding up the skirt of his cassock, the other on the flimsy iron rail set into the wall.
‘Mind yourself,’ he called back to me. ‘There’s a sharp bend up ahead. And shut the door after you.’
The steps were steep and slightly uneven, and I didn’t look up until I had reached the bottom. And then I did look up, and I gasped. Stretching out ahead of me was an arched stone tunnel, and in the light cast by the torch I could see that it was stacked along both sides with rifles and machine guns and boxes of ammunition.
Don Anselmo was already some way into the tunnel before I could even move my feet. ‘That’s the via Senese above us,’ he said, pointing upwards. ‘Do watch where you step, by the way. Some of this stuff is rather precariously stacked.’
I picked my way along the tunnel, almost holding my breath. Thankfully, the ceiling was just high enough that I didn’t need to crouch, although Achille would have found it cramped and I don’t think my father could have managed at all. After an agonising few minutes, we emerged into a cellar with another flight of steps and an open door at the top.
‘Ah, I see that Assunta has left it unlocked for us,’ don Anselmo said. ‘Perhaps she has started the coffee, too.’ And he bounded up the steps like a little fat gazelle.
Once I was sitting in the parlour by the fire, surrounded by holy pictures and faded old photographs of unsmiling people in formal clothes, the dark, weapon-lined tunnel began to feel like a dream. But I knew it couldn’t be a dream, because don Anselmo kept talking about it while I sat there in stunned silence. Perhaps because I was silent, he seemed intent on telling me the history of the tunnel, which had been dug out some time in the early sixteenth century.
‘Apparently the incumbent at the time was a devotee of Fra Girolamo Savonarola. You have heard of Savonarola?’
I nodded. Everyone had heard of him. Savonarola was the fanatical Dominican friar, the strange, wild prophet who had briefly ruled Florence and who burned books and paintings on his great fires. I didn’t see how he mattered now.
‘Well, he had quite a following around here,’ don Anselmo said. ‘I believe he even preached in this church once or twice. The story goes that, some years after Savonarola was executed, this don Bernardo – who wasn’t a Dominican, by the way, just an ordinary parish priest – used to hold secret meetings with his fellow true believers here in Romituzzo. Of course, they had to be careful. Savonarola had been a great threat to the tyrants in Florence and Rome, and so his followers were also held to be very dangerous. So they would all go to the church for Mass and then, when everyone else had left, they would go down into the tunnel and come here, to the house. That’s the story, anyway, and it’s entertaining whether it’s true or not. Don’t you think?’
I was saved from answering by the housekeeper Assunta, who came in carrying a tray with two cups of coffee and two plates of sliced apple. She put it down on the little table between us, and don Anselmo crossed himself and then popped one of the apple slices into his mouth. I’d forgotten how hungry I was, and I did the same. It was a wonderful apple, sweet and fresh and slightly tart.
‘From my garden,’ he said. ‘I like to pretend these apples are as good as a piece of cake, but I think we both know that’s a lie. I shall be glad when we can have cake every day.’
‘Me too,’ I managed to say, and don Anselmo beamed at me. He waited until I’d finished my coffee and devoured the apple slices – all of mine, and half of his too – and then he leaned forward with his pudgy little hands on his knees and said: ‘My dear, do you know how to fire a gun? A handgun, I mean.’
At that point, my brain abruptly caught up with the rest of me. ‘Why are you asking me this?’ I burst out – and I’m afraid my tone was far from polite. ‘Why are you keeping machine guns in the cellar? Are you with the partisans?’
‘Of course I am, my child,’ he said. ‘Had you not realised?’
‘But I thought you hated communism. You preach against it all the time.’
‘I do hate communism. I think it’s a terrible ideology, a false prophecy, a perversion of the teachings of Christ that takes that message of His, that wonderful message of justice and care for one’s neighbour, and strips it of all its redemptive power. A hollow secular cult that denies every prospect of an afterlife, the very existence of a personal God who loves us and is ready to forgive our every sin if we will only turn to Him. Of course I hate communism. But communists? I know some very fine communists who are doing great work. If I can help them, then I do so to the best of my rather feeble abilities. You still haven’t told me whether you know how to shoot, my child.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes. My brother taught me.’
‘Then I have something for you. Wait here.’
He rose and went out and left me sitting by the fire, feeling foolish. I suppose a few minutes went by before he returned, but it seemed longer. When he came back in, he shut the parlour door behind him.
‘Here you are. It took me a few moments to find the right ammunition.’ He drew a small gun from the pocket of his cassock and held it out to me.
It really was a silly-looking gun. A funny little snub-nosed thing – the sort of weapon a nineteenth-century lady might carry in her purse.
‘It’s ridiculous, I know,’ don Anselmo said. ‘But I’m reliably informed it’s better than nothing. And you should easily be able to hide it somewhere, ah, about your person. I believe I should feel easier if you had it.’
I almost laughed. I almost said that I didn’t see how I could possibly shoot anyone with such a sweet little toy, not unless he was almost under my nose, and then what kind of mess would I be in? And then it dawned on me exactly what kind of mess it would be, and I put out my hand and let him place the gun in my palm.
Don Anselmo reached into his pocket again and took out a leather pouch of ammunition, which he put into my other hand. The cartridges inside were tiny.
‘Thank you,’ I said, because I could find nothing better. ‘Thank you for this. And thank you for…’ For trusting me, I wanted to say. For treating me like an adult, like a comrade. ‘For your hospitality,’ I said at last.
‘In my father’s house there are many mansions,’ don Anselmo said. And I could swear that, at that moment, I heard footsteps just above us. Perhaps I’ve invented that detail in retrospect, because I found out later – much later – that this courageous old priest would open his home to anyone who needed it. Allied servicemen, wounded partisans, Jews fleeing deportation had all passed through Romituzzo, staying in one of those upper rooms until they could safely be moved on.
That night I sat on the edge of my bed and looked at that silly little gun. I believe to this day that don Anselmo meant me to have it for self-defence. He was a good man and a good priest, and in those days suicide was seen as an unforgivable sin. He would never have told me to do it. But I knew with an icy clarity that if the Germans captured me, or the Fascists, it would be pointless to try to fight my way out. I would have to use the gun on myself.
From that day until the Liberation, I carried it tucked into my bra. Obviously, I never needed to fire it. I’m here, aren’t I? But for years afterwards, even when my children were grown, I used to wonder what I would have done if I’d been caught. Would I have been quick enough to act before I could give anything away, before I could lead the Gestapo to don Anselmo’s door? I like to think I’d have done it. I like to think God would have understood.
7
