HE WAS WOKEN by the voices of children running in the square outside, oblivious to the city’s tragedies. Vitantonio wanted to get up, but his side was hurting badly. He was dizzy. He stayed still for a little while, waiting for everything to stop spinning. Closing his eyes, he focused on his breathing. When it seemed the world was no longer spinning, he opened them and saw two red and white candles. He took a deep breath, looked around him and found that he was in the crypt of the church of San Nicola. He had no idea how he had got there.
When he heard the distant voices from the square he recognized the strange feeling he knew from his childhood – when he lay in bed ill, and heard children playing in the Piazza Sant’Anna, while he read or looked through the window at the shadows the afternoon sun drew on the grain lofts that topped the homes in Bellorotondo. It had always made him feel that there were two worlds: the real world was the one those children in the square inhabited, but his imaginary universe began and ended in his room. They were worlds that almost touched but were actually so distant that they never overlapped. This often made him feel that he was on the other side, far from the others: that sensation was sometimes comforting and made him feel special, but other times it was unnerving. Like now.
He wanted to stand up but again he felt light-headed and he decided to take it in stages: first he sat on the nearest pew, then he leaned against the wall and finally he walked from pew to pew until he reached the wall of the crypt that gave on to the square. He got up on a pew and watched the children playing from one of the windows at ground level. He was surprised at the amount of rubble on the Largo Urbano II, as if the Germans and the Allies had moved the trenches right into town.
It had been three and a half years since he’d seen children running and playing beside San Nicola in Bari. After an afternoon of exams he had left the law college happy because he was feeling sure he was well on his way to becoming a lawyer. He recalled that on that June day, almost evening, it was incredibly hot and everyone in Bari had brought chairs out on to the street to wait for the wind to come in off the sea. He could have written an essay on the art of catching a breeze in the Borgo Antico. He never tired of watching them: some people took their chairs right out into the middle of the street; others stayed in their doorways; and there were even those who preferred to remain discreetly in their halls, with the door wide open. But if you looked closely you’d find that they had all positioned themselves precisely in the airiest spot, and they all maintained eye contact with their neighbours to keep up a lively conversation. They were like actors on a stage, but actually those cooling off were the audience, enjoying the spectacle of the passersby walking through the city.
When Vitantonio gingerly got down from the pew and moved away from the window, he lost his balance, just as a man entered the crypt. He recognized Father Cataldo, Father Felice’s favourite student. His appearance was quite a surprise because Vitantonio didn’t know that he’d been named prior of San Nicola. The priest rushed over to catch him just as he was falling to the ground.
‘You shouldn’t move. You’ve lost a lot of blood.’
‘What am I doing here, Father? How did I get here?’
‘You were brought here by a giant with a kind face. When I saw that you were wounded, I wanted to take you to a hospital, but he asked me to hide you in the crypt. Then he went to find a doctor and some transport. I couldn’t refuse to help you when you needed it, so I didn’t ask any questions.’
Vitantonio wondered how in the world Primo Carnera had known that he was in Franco’s apartment in the Piazza Garibaldi, wounded, and needed help urgently. And he also wondered how Primo must have looked, a gentle giant lugging a dying man on his back through the streets of Bari to San Nicola. The image made him laugh and he thought that the city must be hard to shock these days. They had seen much worse things.
He dropped down, exhausted, on the pew, unable to stop himself sinking back into sleep. He dreamt that he was being chased by the Black Knight and the man with the rotten teeth, and when he stood up to them and defeated them, they reappeared somewhere else and attacked him all over again. He woke up and heard voices he couldn’t identify; they spoke very slowly and seemed very far away. When he woke up for the second time it was pitch black and someone had bandaged his wound. Primo Carnera was once again lugging him over his shoulder like a big sack. It didn’t seem to be an effort for him.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Vitantonio.
‘I have to take you to Bellorotondo. Giovanna will know what to do. You’ve lost a lot of blood.’
‘How did you know I was in Franco’s apartment?’
‘I followed you. Giovanna asked me to keep an eye on you.’
Outside, the north wind began to blow again and Vitantonio was grateful for the freezing December air on his face. Primo Carnera left the Piazza San Nicola and took the narrower streets, all the while carrying Vitantonio. Father Cataldo walked a few paces ahead to warn him of any checkpoints. Nearly all of the commotion was still at the port and on the Lungomare, and they were able to reach the door of the seminary without incident. Primo laid him down in the back seat of a British army jeep and started the engine, gesturing his thanks to the priest, who was already slipping discreetly back into the courtyard of the seminary. The car left the Borgo Antigo along the Via Corridoni, found the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele and got lost among the city’s traffic.
Lying in the back, Vitantonio saw the tops of the buildings stream past him in the near dark. He remembered that the day of the air raid, when the Germans had already dropped half of their bombs, the city looked like a lantern lit expressly to attract the firemen’s attention. The pain in his stomach was getting sharper and sharper. He almost screamed when he saw giant flames devouring an apartment building somewhere he couldn’t quite identify.
Primo had also seen it. ‘Hide under the blanket!’ he ordered. He saw a boy come running from the direction of the fire and he called out to him, ‘What’s going on?’
‘Number seventeen in the Piazza Garibaldi just went up like a tinderbox!’
Primo Carnera recognized the address. It was Franco’s apartment that was on fire.
‘It must have been set alight by some of your cousin’s accomplices, who wanted to destroy any evidence, keep the police off the scent,’ shouted Primo Carnera towards the back of the jeep. ‘Or maybe the American went back and decided he didn’t want to be linked to that nest of vipers! It’s a stroke of luck for us – they won’t turn you in to the police,’ he added, trying to reassure him as he sped up and drove towards the station.
Vitantonio didn’t hear him. He had lost consciousness again.
The Englishman was waiting for them at the station. The jeep Primo was driving was his, and his British lieutenant’s stripes helped get them past all the controls. They put Vitantonio in the last carriage; he was still unconscious.
‘I wish I’d had a chance to say goodbye to him,’ said Lieutenant Donovan. ‘I’ll see you in three days, in Foggia,’ he shouted to Primo Carnera when the train started off.
There were people hanging off a freight car and they had even taken over the engine footplate, which was making the driver’s manoeuvres difficult. Three days after the bombing, rumours of chemical weapons at the port had spread throughout Bari and people were still fleeing the city.
When they had passed Putignano, Vitantonio woke up shouting, ‘Salvatore’s body was in the burning apartment in the Piazza Garibaldi!’
‘While you were in the crypt I took him out on to the street and left him among the ruins of a house on the Via Abate Gimma. When they find him they’ll think he died the day of the raid,’ Primo reassured him.
Vitantonio relaxed and again lost consciousness.
When they got off at Bellorotondo station the cold had lessened, as if it were about to snow but, to Vitantonio, it still seemed to be the bitterest night of the year.
‘Take me home, to the Piazza Sant’Anna. I’m freezing.’
‘You can’t go home. That’s the first place they’ll look for you.’
Primo Carnera saw Vitantonio’s face and was alarmed. He couldn’t take him anywhere in that state. He took a risk and knocked on the first door he found. It was the Raguseos’ house: the woman recognized Lady Angela’s grandson and ushered them in. They lay Vitantonio in Pasquale’s bed; their son had just been shot by the Germans in Cephalonia. While Primo Carnera went out to look for Giovanna, the women of the house took care of Vitantonio as if he were their own Pasquale.