AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘At dawn, like two lovers. The journey was… well, you can imagine. I kept repeating to myself silently:My name is Maria Furlan. It was the blandest, most inoffensive name, which I suppose is why they picked it. I believe Furlan is the commonest surname in Trieste. We travelled from Romituzzo to Florence, from Florence across to Bologna, and from there northwards to Ferrara, and all around us was devastation. I’d never seen anything like it. The fighting, the bombings, the atrocities and the deportations… you could see it in the wrecked cities, in the faces of the people. That’s when I really understood how sheltered my life had been until that point. I began to feel very small, very small indeed. It was overwhelming.’ Diego’s coiled up asleep now and she’s running one of his ears through her fingers, over and over.
‘When we got to Ferrara,’ she continues, ‘a comrade of a comrade of Davide’s cousin picked us up in his car and drove us out of the city and into the countryside. Have you ever been to the Po Valley?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it’s flat. Perfectly, horribly, absolutely flat. I had never been outside Tuscany, and so I never knew that anywhere could be so flat. We were taken to a safe house on a farm in the middle of nowhere. The farm belonged to yet another comrade, and there was nobody around for miles except for the family who looked after the house. A couple and their daughter and son. We were shown to an upstairs room with a view of… well, nothing, just flat green fields and the horizon. And then Davide’s cousin’s comrade’s comrade told us to wait there and speak to nobody. Someone would come for us in the morning and take us on to the next stage, to Trieste, where we’d be given our instructions. Then he drove off and left us.’ She makes a wry face. ‘That was when I started to get nervous.’
‘I can imagine,’ I say.
‘I spent a dreadful night in that room,’ Stella says. ‘Lying next to Davide, daring myself to ask him to hold me because I was really scared for the first time in years. It was as if all the fear I hadn’t allowed myself to feel, that I’d had to suppress just to keep on doing my courier work, had burst in on me all at once. But I didn’t ask in the end, because he didn’t seem worried at all and I knew he would think I was a coward or, worse, a traitor. When morning came, we were brought breakfast – there were eggs and fresh bread, beautiful stuff – but I couldn’t eat. All I could do was stare out of the window. Davide kept talking about the work we’d do in Yugoslavia, how we’d keep building that revolution even if we had to fight a whole new war to do it. I listened and tried to feel the enthusiasm I’d felt when we were at home in Romituzzo, but it just wouldn’t come. I hated myself for that. I told myself over and over again that I would be fine once we were underway, that my urge to survive could not and must not overcome the promise I had made. And then at some point Davide went to the washroom, and while he was out of the room I saw it. A car coming along the road to the farm. It was like something gave way inside me.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I ran,’ Stella says. ‘I ran downstairs without any real idea of what I was doing, only that I could not get in that car. And as I was racing into the hallway I collided with the son of the caretaker family. His name was Giuseppe.’ When she says his name, her face lights up. ‘He asked if something was wrong, and I said something like:They’re coming to fetch me, they’re coming to take me over the border to Yugoslavia and I can’t go. I don’t want to go.Giuseppe didn’t think twice. He bundled me out of the back door and there, propped up in the yard, was a battered old motorcycle. He got on and I got up behind him, and we were off. He took me a long way away, to this little inn where he persuaded me to eat a big bowl of polenta and drink some wine, and he didn’t ask me any questions at all but just let me talk. We stayed there until the sun started to go down, and then we rode back to the house. I was so worried about what was going to happen next – what his family would say, where I would go, what would be done about me. But I already trusted Giuseppe. He was so warm, so kind. And he had listened to me, really listened. I thought that was wonderful.’
Stella’s smiling now. Diego slides off her lap and toddles to the edge of the terrace, where he flops down on his side with a huff.
‘I expect there was a bit of a scene in your absence,’ I say, rather fatuously.
‘I expect there was. But the car had gone and the place was silent. We crept up to the back door and put our ears to it, but nobody stirred. Giuseppe offered to go in first. He said: “Look, I might have to explain a few things to my mother and father. Can I tell them something of what you told me?” And I said that of course he could, he could tell them whatever he wanted, and off he went. The wait was agonising, but eventually he returned and told me to come in. It turned out that his parents and his sister were all very relieved and thought he’d done well to get me to safety. They were good comrades, of course, like so many country people – they’d helped the Resistance in every way they could – but they thought I was far, far too young to be running off to a foreign country. I was afraid that they’d send me back to my parents, but there was no question of that, either. I don’t know what Giuseppe had told them, but they said that I could stay with them for as long as I wanted. Perhaps they saw that he and I were already falling in love.’
Now I’m smiling, too. ‘And that was it.’
‘That was it,’ Stella says. ‘I stayed with them and I helped with the pigs and chickens, and went to Mass with his mother and sister every Sunday. When Giuseppe and I married, I married him as Maria Furlan, not Stella Infuriati. I was Maria Furlan, after all – that’s what it said on my papers. We had a little boy, and then another. The silence and the flatness of the place grew on me and I came to love the Po Valley. How could I not, when it had given me all these gifts?
‘And then one day, I was in the kitchen with Giuseppe’s mother. She came from Ferrara and she wanted to teach me how to make that pumpkin-stuffed pasta the Ferrarese love so much. I was doing very badly at it, but we were having tremendous fun. The wireless was on, the sun was shining, and then all of a sudden we heard…’ She shivers, drawing the blanket up and around her. ‘There was a news report and it said – I can still hear it, that grave voice – it said that Achille had been in an accident. That he was dead and that Italy was in mourning. That was the exact phrase.’
‘You don’t have to talk about this,’ I say. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘No, I should talk about it. I need to talk about it. That wonderful, peaceful life I had… it was only ever leased to me. I should have known that Achille wouldn’t live long, and once he was gone then my parents would be alone. Alone and destroyed, because they loved him more than anything in the world, including themselves, including me.’ Her expression is grim. ‘I could have left them to it. That’s what Giuseppe said, anyway, but I couldn’t. I’d always be thinking about them otherwise, imagining their suffering. The newspapers said that Achille had been in partnership with Pierfrancesco Legni, so I wrote Pierfrancesco a letter and explained the situation as best I could, and asked if he could help. And he did, of course. Pierfrancesco loved Achille, but above all he would do anything to help a fellow partisan.’
‘So he set you up with the bar,’ I say.
‘Oh, he did more than that. He gave us quite a substantial loan – well, he said it was a loan, but we both knew perfectly well he’d never ask for it back – enough to bring my parents to Florence and Giuseppe’s too, if they ever needed it. And he set up the whole process with his own lawyer, his bank manager, his accountant and so on, so that nobody ever gave my poor little false papers a second look, or asked why I sounded Tuscan when I claimed to be born in Trieste. Pierfrancesco really took care of everything. He even gave us a housewarming gift – this silly photograph to hang up in the bar until we could start to make it our own.’
‘The Bugatti 251.’
Stella gives me a watery smile. ‘Then you remember. It became kind of a bittersweet joke between us, that picture. Because the Bugatti never raced, you see, and we both wished that Achille had never raced either.’
I want to go over and hug her but I don’t dare. She’s too dignified, too tense. ‘You didn’t want to go back to being Stella Infuriati?’ I ask. ‘Officially, I mean?’
She shakes her head. ‘I’d been Maria Furlan for years by then. I’d matured and changed, I’d had two babies – I didn’t look like my old self or even feel like her. Maybe I could have changed back and had Pierfrancesco smooth it all over for me somehow, but I liked my new life and I wanted to keep it. I thought my parents might object, might try to insist that I resume my old name or even move us all in with them, but they didn’t. After Achille died, they didn’t want to stay in Romituzzo or have anything to do with the people there. They couldn’t bear to see their son memorialised, couldn’t stand how everyone was forever talking about him. It was far too painful for them. They were content to live with us, play with their grandsons – whom they adored – and wait out the rest of their days until they could see Achille in heaven. And that’s what they did, more or less. My father lived another five years, my mother rather longer, and if they were never happy again, they were at least comfortable. I couldn’t replace Achille for them, but they were pleased to have me back and they didn’t care what I called myself. Our relationship was… fine.’
‘Only fine?’ I ask.
‘That was the best I could expect.’ The pain in her voice is palpable. ‘But I didn’t need more, not really. I had my own family and I had Pierfrancesco on my side. He was a great friend and the best of allies. And then I met your grandmother, and from that day on I had a sister. There’s a whole story attached to that,’ she says, giving me an assessing look, ‘but perhaps we should save that for another day? I’ve been talking for hours, and no doubt you want to get home to that nice young man of yours, the one with the red sports car. He is your young man, isn’t he?’
‘He is now,’ I say, feeling a blush spread up my neck. (The reunion with Marco wasverysatisfactory.)
Stella claps her hands. ‘I knew it! Well, I shall have to disappoint Niccolò. He noticed you that day, you know, but I told him he was too late.’ She grins at me, obviously not put out in the slightest. ‘If you want to run along I shall understand. I can tell you the story another day, if God spares me. Or I can make coffee and we can talk a little longer.’
I pull my phone towards me and check the time: not even five o’clock. Marco said he’d message after work to see whether I needed to be picked up, and he can’t be anywhere near finished yet. And I really, really want to know how Stella met Granny.
‘Coffee would be lovely,’ I say.
*
The sun’s already setting when I say goodbye to Stella. As I turn to go, she clutches at my wrist. ‘Wait,’ she says. ‘I want to give you something.’
