‘I SUPPOSE YOU THINK it is like one of those Hollywood movies. I Married a Fascist,’ said Francesca.
I didn’t answer. It was the day after her revelation about Conti, and I hadn’t slept well since Francesca told me of her marriage to the former Repubblicano. At least, that was my excuse. I had a feeling it would have been a night of tossing and turning regardless. After all, I’d come face to face with one of the biggest regrets of my life.
Francesca had arrived at nine that morning, dressed in black ski-pants and cream blouse, and she had no objection to riding up the mountain to the old safe house on the back of the MV. As we zig-zagged up over the gorges, past waterfalls and dense stands of moist ferns, it was good to feel her arms round me, no matter how misguided her matrimonial choices were. The roads were perfect for a powerful bike like the MV which gave the steeper gradients short shrift, and I could lean into the bends, confident there was little other traffic, and feel her grip tighten and her body press harder against me.
I had parked on the edge of the cluster of grey houses that was San Marco, and now we were walking past the gora, a stone pergola that formed the communal washing area for the village, towards the house, a big, flat-fronted piece of granite built against the mountainside, with a garden to its left that looked down over the lake. It was in that garden I had found an old neglected 1920s Laverda and spent days stripping it down and cleaning it, while Ragno helped, and eventually got hooked on motorcycles. He was a good kid back then, fearless and eager to fight Germans. I was glad it worked out for him.
As we walked over the crude cobbles, I waited for Francesca to tell me that her husband was really a first-rate chap, to give me all the Mussolini apologia I’d heard over the years—how he’d never wanted to persecute the Jews, how he’d issued orders against reprisals, how he’d tried to make peace with the Allies but Anthony Eden made sure that his overtures were scuppered. About how il Duce kept copies of Socrates and Plato to hand, his own notes scribbled in the margins, his love of family, fencing and football, his concern for the environment and education.
I knew all that. I was prepared to accept that Benito Mussolini was not quite the ‘complete gangster’ and buffoon Eden always portrayed him as, and the rest of the world readily accepted. But then I wanted to remind her that after the partisans had taken the small town of Montefiore in 1944, and then been defeated, the fascist Black Brigades had laid the Garibaldi units, the Communists, in the road, and let the Germans drive their armoured cars over them. True, Mussolini and his Repubblicani weren’t actually in the vehicles, but their bloodstained paw-prints were all over that scene.
Then there was il Monco, the Austrian SS Major Walter Reder, alias The Stump, so called because he was missing part of his left arm, who killed 500 civilians in Sant’Anna, near Lucca, for aiding the partisans. Fascist officials had stood by and watched the massacre of their countrymen, approving the action in the name of il Duce.
Perhaps, I surmised, she would talk about the need to heal the divisions, to make Italy whole again by burying the past. ‘So why come to this commemoration, then?’ I would retort. It was bound to open old wounds. But Francesca said nothing else to me except: ‘We have to go around the side.’
She let us into the kitchen through the buckled door. Inside, it smelled heavily of damp and mould, but as I stepped into the half-light, I could make out the main features, once so familiar. There was a large fireplace opposite, still stacked with logs, and to the right three fornelli, the large charcoal-burners built into the top of a brick oven. This was where Francesca would make her speciality dishes—mule stew and mondine—roasted chestnuts—and talk longingly of the tordelli or ballociori her mother would cook, and of the banquets they would have after the war. Her family had been contadini—farmers, but relatively rich ones, owning land on the Lombardy and Piedmonte borders.
The crude wooden table was still there; in the spluttering light of poor-quality candles—the Allies had destroyed all the power plants—Rosario, Ennio, Pavel and Fausto would play briscola or bazzica, the air thick with the smoke from their tiny but pungent Toscanelli cigars.
I had tried to join in, but it takes a while to get used to the Italian forty-card deck: not having an eight, nine or ten was, for someone brought up on gin rummy, disconcerting. It was even harder to stomach the cigars. The home-made grappa though, distilled from the vinaccia, the pulp left from pressing the grapes, and running at 70–80 per cent proof, was a revelation. The taste for it had never left me. Ask my liver.
Fausto would only allow everyone to play cards with washers. He told tales about farmers who would gamble for days after the harvest until their little stack of gold Napoleons, their land—even their wives—had gone, and then they would hang themselves the next morning. He said these were stories he had heard, but there was an anger in his voice that suggested it was closer to home.
‘It smells the same,’ I said.
‘I think that’s why I don’t like to come here very often. Suddenly, I am starving again. Happens every time. I have to smoke a cigarette to kill the hunger pangs.’
She threw back the shutters, letting light flood into the kitchen. I stroked the table-top. I could almost trace the pattern of our evenings from its patina of scratches, wine stains and cigar burns. I asked: ‘Who owns the place now?’
‘We do—Riccardo and I. We bought it after the war, but never used it. I suppose for a while I couldn’t bear to think of anyone else living here, but that passed. I would remember it every six months, and sometimes would come up just to let daylight in. A German is interested in buying it as a holiday home now. For a good price.’ I must have made a disapproving noise because she turned to me and snapped: ‘What, you think that is sacrilege too?’
‘It’s just ironic,’ I said.
‘That I’m not only sleeping with the enemy, but trading with them? Does it make you want to shave my head or tar and feather me?’
Steady on, I thought, where did that one come from? I’d been long gone before such spiteful reprisals against collaborators had kicked in. I had no answer, at least none that wouldn’t make matters worse, so I went to the black wooden door that led into the rest of the house from the kitchen and lifted the ancient latch. I stepped into the sunless chill of the circular hallway, the steel crescents on my heels ringing on the terrazzo floor, and felt myself fall through into the past.