THEY REACHED THE palazzo after midnight and entered under cover of night, but as soon as they opened up the office they could see that the house had been ransacked. Nonna’s files were scattered everywhere, and the desk drawers lay on the floor. The paintings of red and white flowers had disappeared from the sitting room and the little inlaid boxes and terracotta pieces were gone from the library.
When they went into the playroom they found that the window was broken, because a gust of wind put out the candle they were using to see the way. They assumed that was how the intruders had got into the house. Giovanna lit the candle again, this time protecting the flame with one hand. The light projected shadows on the walls and around the room, revealing books and toys strewn all over the floor. The electric train itself had disappeared, but there were pieces of the track and the mountains everywhere. Vitantonio pushed a few aside with his foot; they were the little houses with snow-dusted roofs.
In the sitting room the looters had opened up the china cabinet and emptied all the shelves.
‘Will you manage to get upstairs?’ Giovanna asked him.
‘I’ll be fine here.’
Vitantonio gripped an armchair and slowly lowered himself on to the carpet. Giovanna looked for a cushion and placed it under his head.
‘Wait, I’ll bring down a mattress for you.’
‘No!’ He held her back. ‘I wouldn’t know how to sleep on one any more. I’m better on the floor.’
He was burning up with fever. Sweat drenched his face and dripped down his neck. Giovanna went to the kitchen and came back with a damp cloth to clean his face. She was exhausted and when he fell asleep in her arms she closed her eyes too.
She was woken up by thin streams of light entering through the sliding doors to the conservatory. He was gazing at her and gave her a smile.
‘Open the curtains. I’d like to see the garden.’
Giovanna stood up and pulled back the velvet drapes. Then she undid the shutters and noticed that the servants’ entrance had been left open and they could see through to the town square, which was deserted at that time of day. She went over to the sliding doors, which had come out of their track. She pushed them with all her weight, until they moved.
‘Help me over to the conservatory,’ Vitantonio requested.
Sunlight flooded the room and she was alarmed to see that his wound was bleeding again and his face was paler than ever. She helped him get up and led him over to the conservatory. Vitantonio leaned against the leaded glass, his gaze fixed on some indeterminate point in the garden. It had been some time since anyone had worked on it. There was an abandoned bucket and basin on the tiles of Nonna’s arcaded terrace. Half-rotten leaves carpeted the flowerbeds and paths. The leafless trees looked like corpses left on a battlefield, like the partisans fallen in the mountains of the Maiella. Like the sailors gassed in the Bari port. But the trees would have green shoots again, come spring.
His wound had reopened from the walking. Giovanna didn’t have anything to stop the haemorrhaging and she was starting to panic. If Skinny or Concetta didn’t send help soon, this was the end. She looked at his face, which grew whiter by the moment. He was having trouble breathing.
Vitantonio closed his eyes and in a thin, barely audible voice said, ‘It’s not fair.’ Then he was silent.
She thought she had lost him and she burst into tears. Then he surprised her by speaking again, this time in a stronger voice. ‘Soon the whole garden will start budding, but I won’t be here to see the cherry tree bloom. Isn’t it strange?’
‘Can you see it?’ she said, encouraging him to keep fighting for his life. She pointed to a flowering geranium she’d just spotted amid all the plants withered by the cold. Nonna’s azaleas looked half-dead, but their giant pots must have protected that geranium from the wind, as if it were in a greenhouse. Its flowers were of a vivid blood red and hung like a cardinal’s cape.
He made a last effort and managed to open his eyes. He saw the crimson geranium that Giovanna was pointing to. Then he looked at her belly and asked, ‘What will you name him?’
‘Vitantonio … Vitantonio Palmisano. He will bear your name openly, so everyone in town can see.’
He replied with a sad smile and said, ‘Destiny is not set in stone. The curse is killing me, but the little boy you are carrying is proof that we have once again won the battle … All my life I’ve made my own choices. There is only one thing I was unable to choose freely: who I was born. I was born a Palmisano. I couldn’t pick a different side. That’s why I’ve loved the Convertinis like mad and I’m proud to be a part of the family, but I’ve always stayed true to my own: I will die like a Palmisano. Just like in the war, where I tried to switch sides and I devoted myself to the Allied cause, but they never really considered me one of them. In the end, it’s an American bullet that’s killing me …’
‘Don’t speak. Rest.’ Giovanna wiped the sweat from his face and put a clean cloth on his wound. Without realizing it, he had begun singing something in French.
‘What are you singing?’ she asked him.
‘“The Time Of The Cherries”. The French Resistance fighters sing it:
“Mais il est bien court, le temps des cerises
Où l’on s’en va deux, cueillir en rêvant
Des pendants d’oreilles …
Cerises d’amour aux roses pareilles,
Tombant sous la feuille en gouttes de sang …”’
Seeing that he was barely breathing now, she began to despair again. She was about to lose him. How many men will have died altogether when, in just a few months’ time, those trees begin to bloom? Vitantonio was right: the cherry tree will flower and bear sweet, juicy fruit. The time of the cherries would return, oblivious to the drama the blighted people of Puglia were living through. They tried to remain loyal to the cause of freedom, but they had to fight against both the loathsome betrayal of their own leaders and the contemptible distrust of the Allies. They deserved better.
Vitantonio must have read her thoughts because he smiled one last time. He imagined the garden in bloom and the cherry tree loaded down with red, ripe fruit. In his mind’s eye, Giovanna led a boy by the hand and they both laughed and smiled. Then, from some very distant place, he found the strength to make one last plea.
‘When our boy starts to walk, make him some cherry earrings, for me.’
Just then, a jeep with a big red cross painted on the canvas roof parked in front of the side door that opened on to the square. Standing in the window, Giovanna saw Dr Ricciardi step from it.