The day Sibilla said her first word Rosa had been feeding her puréed vegetables in the Montagnanis’ kitchen while Carlo played peekaboo with her behind Rosa’s back. Sibilla squealed with delight and dribbled food over her face.
‘Carlo, I know you are there,’ said Rosa, turning around. ‘You’re distracting Sibilla from eating.’
‘I’m not distracting her from eating,’ Carlo replied, pulling his lip down and waving at Sibilla. ‘No one in their right mind would eat puréed broccoli.’
‘She’s a baby!’
‘Even a baby,’ said Carlo, dancing around Sibilla’s high chair.
Rosa did her best to maintain a stern expression with him but it wasn’t easy. Carlo was the family clown, and because of his angelic face frequently got away with it.
‘Mamma!’
Rosa and Carlo looked at each other, startled. They turned to Sibilla who was watching them and wriggling her feet. She had been babbling and saying pseudo words for a few months but it was the first time she had pronounced anything clearly.
‘Mamma!’ she repeated, waving her arms.
Rosa pressed her lips to her daughter’s hands. Of all the things in life that brought her pleasure—playing her flute, discovering a beautiful antique at a market, window shopping on Via Tornabuoni—nothing compared to the joy her daughter brought her.
‘I’m back,’ said Luciano, coming into the kitchen with a loaf of bread and a bag of potatoes. He sniffed the cannellini bean soup that was simmering on the stove, filling the kitchen with the aroma of sage leaves and garlic. His hair was clinging to his cheeks from the rain that had been falling that afternoon. Rosa handed him a towel.
‘Sibilla said her first word,’ Carlo told him.
‘Brava bambina!’ cried Luciano. ‘What did she say?’
‘Mamma,’ replied Carlo.
Luciano laughed. ‘Not Babbo?’
‘Not yet,’ said Rosa.
She and Luciano exchanged a glance. Although they had no plans to marry yet, they had spent many nights talking about the future. Luciano intended to adopt Sibilla and give his name to her once the fascists were out of power.
Luciano squeezed Rosa’s shoulder. ‘She will,’ he said, kissing her cheek. ‘When the time is right.’
With the warmer months approaching, Luciano began to re-form The Montagnani Company. Donatella was returning with Dante, but Benedetto was working on a film and wouldn’t be able to perform with them over summer. Luciano had to find another actor.
‘Come and meet Roberto Pecoraro,’ Luciano said to Rosa and Orietta one day when they were painting a backdrop of a street scene in Marseilles. The new play was The Count of Monte Cristo.
Rosa turned around to see Luciano standing with a plump young man with a stubby nose and thinning hair. The women greeted Roberto but he returned their warmth with only the slightest hint of a smile.
‘Roberto will be playing several parts,’ Luciano said.
Rosa had read the play in order to plan the music. She started off trying to distance herself from the story of wrongful imprisonment as the friendship between Edmond and his doomed companion stirred up memories of her friend Sibilla. But then Edmond’s escape and rise to high society were too miraculous to believe and Rosa was swept up in the fantasy of the story. Life is nothing like that, she’d thought at the end. The bad are not punished. The Marchesa Scarfiotti had got away with having Rosa sent to prison under false pretences. She was a rich and powerful woman and a friend of Mussolini’s. She could get away with anything.
Luciano asked Roberto to show the women his interpretation of Abbé Faria and Baron Danglars. Roberto shrugged his agreement. Rosa and Orietta sat on upturned fruit crates to watch him. All actors with the troupe needed to be able to play several roles, but the way Roberto switched from one character to the other with effortless ease and played the intellectual priest and the greedy, evil baron with equal conviction was outstanding.
‘Bravo! Bravo!’ Rosa and Orietta shouted when he had finished.
They were sincere in their praise but Roberto barely acknowledged them. It was strange that he was extroverted when acting but so standoffish in person. Rosa studied the young man’s face: those haughty eyes, that superior manner. Why did she sense Roberto spelled trouble?
Rosa had told Antonio before she accepted the job at his shop that she would be travelling with the troupe in summer. He appeared to have forgotten and she wondered how he would react when she reminded him. She arrived at the shop one morning ready to tell him that she would be leaving soon, and found him on his hands and knees under his desk. Ambrosio was watching him with a bemused expression in his canine eyes. At first Rosa thought Antonio must be tightening a screw until she saw Allegra’s white paw stretch out and grab for the roll of paper he held in his fingers.
‘Missed it, kitty!’ he said, poking the roll of paper around the legs of the desk again. Allegra swiped for it and this time caught the paper and chewed on it. Antonio laughed.
Rosa stared in disbelief. He’s playing with Allegra!
‘Antonio?’
He whipped his head out from under the desk. When he saw that Rosa realised what he was doing, he blushed. ‘Stupid cat!’ he said unconvincingly. ‘She knocked my pen under there and now I can’t find it.’
He sat back in his chair. Allegra jumped into his lap and snuggled there.
‘It looks like she’s done that a few times before,’ Rosa said, laughing.
‘Well,’ replied Antonio with a sheepish grin, ‘she has grown on me.’
When Rosa told him that she was leaving for the tour, he sighed and lifted his hands. ‘Ah, so you are going? I thought maybe I had lured you away from your thespian friends. Never mind. I can’t replace you, Rosa. Can you come back in the autumn?’
‘Yes, and I can work in the mornings for another month. The rehearsals are in the late afternoon.’
Antonio’s face brightened. ‘So all is not lost,’ he said, lifting Allegra off his lap and placing her on the floor before standing. ‘I have a favour to request of you. The week after next, I am going to Venice to see a glass blower there. My elderly father lives with me. He has a nurse but he tires of her company quickly. I wondered if you would mind reading to him for an hour or so after you finish here?’
Antonio had been so generous to her and Sibilla that Rosa was pleased to have an opportunity to return the kindness. ‘I could play my flute for him as well,’ she told Antonio. ‘Do think he would like that?’
Antonio looked dubious. ‘Rosa, I must be frank. My father is not exactly…cultured. You won’t be reading him anything highbrow. He likes adventure and mystery stories. I’ve just obtained a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles.’
‘Sherlock Holmes? In English?’ asked Rosa.
‘Oh, no,’ Antonio laughed. ‘The translation. He also likes Jules Verne and Jack London. He swears and blasphemes quite a bit too. You mustn’t be offended.’
Rosa found the insight into Antonio’s life intriguing: he was a closet cat lover and the debonair son of a blaspheming father. She could not have imagined it.
‘My father was a plasterer,’ Antonio explained, as if he had read Rosa’s thoughts. ‘But he did very well. He made sure I received a good education.’
Antonio’s apartment was near the Piazza della Repubblica. The maid opened the door and invited Rosa inside. It was no surprise that the apartment was exquisitely decorated. The furniture was mahogany, Antonio’s favourite wood, and the rooms were spacious with high ceilings. It was not grand, but there was an elegance in the way the light filtered from the tall windows onto the terracotta-tiled floors. The apartment was not overcrowded with furniture and she could see that each piece had been chosen with care. From the foyer, where the maid took Rosa’s coat, she glimpsed a sitting room with a Louis XV settee and a Renaissance-style cabinet. But they were the only decorative pieces. The other furniture was unadorned. On the hall table was a framed photograph of an elderly woman with a lily in her hand who Rosa recognised from her vision with the torcheres as Antonio’s late mother.
The maid led Rosa past the dining room and she noticed a pedestal dining table with six chairs and Dresden china on the sideboard. Antonio obviously didn’t host large parties, but when he did have guests he entertained in good taste. Apart from an empire-style clock and a bronze horse statue, there were no vases or figurines anywhere; nothing to distract from the furniture. And yet, despite the lack of effects, Antonio’s personality was present in the apartment. It had a private and serene air. There was a sense of simplicity about it that reminded Rosa of the convent.
‘If it was warmer you could have sat out on the terrace,’ said the maid. ‘But Signor Parigi’s lungs are weak and the nurse decided it’s better if he stays in bed.’
The maid knocked on a door at the end of the corridor. A female voice told her to enter. The maid ushered Rosa into a dim room lit only by two bedside lamps. A nurse in a white uniform sat next to a four-poster bed where an elderly man lay with his head back on the pillow, sleeping. He was pale and breathing heavily. At first the room seemed different from the rest of the apartment only in that the curtains were dark and the furniture was ornate and carved. Then Rosa noticed a horseshoe-shaped wall mirror with a cowboy hat perched on it. A bull’s skull hung from the opposite wall and on a side table sat a chessboard topped by cowboy-and-Indian pieces.
‘Should I leave?’ Rosa whispered to the nurse. ‘Maybe Signor Parigi is too tired today?’
‘It’s all right,’ whispered the nurse, who introduced herself as Giuseppina. ‘He’s drifted off. And you’d better call him Nonno. He prefers it.’
She looked furtively over her shoulder, like someone who has lulled a difficult baby to sleep and is enjoying the temporary peace. Rosa’s impression was right because the next moment Nonno’s eyes flew open and he sat up.
‘Che cazzo fai?’ he shouted. ‘What the fuck are you doing? Your loud talking woke me up!’
Rosa blushed. She hadn’t heard such language since she had been in prison.
‘Non capisci un cazzo,’ Nonno said, waving his arms at Giuseppina. ‘You’re as dumb as a fucking plank.’ Then, looking at Rosa, he asked: ‘Who’s this?’
‘This is Signora Bellocchi, your son’s assistant.’ Giuseppina explained to him. ‘She has come to read to you.’
‘Porca, puttana, troia, lurida, maiala!’ shouted Nonno, a run of swearwords such as Rosa had never heard before. ‘I don’t need some tart to read to me. Where’s my son?’
Giuseppina and the maid were calm in the face of Nonno’s outburst and Rosa could only assume it was because they were used to his colourful language. But she was struck dumb. ‘Nonno’ meant ‘grandfather’, but Antonio’s father was not like any grandfather Rosa had ever imagined.
Giuseppina opened the curtains and offered a seat to Rosa. ‘You mustn’t let his language put you off,’ she whispered, squeezing Rosa’s arm. ‘Once you get to know him, he’s charming.’
‘Don’t open the curtains and don’t whisper!’ Nonno snapped.
‘Signora Bellocchi needs some more light. It’s too dark in this room,’ Giuseppina told him.
Nonno sat up with his arms folded, mumbling while Giuseppina and the maid left the room. Rosa took the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo out of her bag. She’d decided that she would leave the Sherlock Holmes for Antonio to read to his father.
Nonno glanced at her. ‘What have you got there, heh?’
Rosa showed him the copy of the book. He took it from her. His hands were swollen around the knuckles and his nails were gnarled and yellow as if they still had pieces of plaster under them. They were not at all like his son’s manicured hands. Nonno’s eyes were the same faraway blue as Antonio’s but that was where the similarity ended. His face was hard and wrinkled. He resembled a gargoyle.
‘What are you staring at?’ he asked, handing the book back.
‘I was trying to see in what ways your son resembles you—or differs,’ Rosa replied.
‘He’s an idiot and I’m not,’ said Nonno. ‘That’s the difference! Now stop meddling in other people’s business and read if that’s what you came to do.’
Antonio had warned Rosa that his father was rough, but she had not anticipated that he would be so confronting. She thought of the days when she used to read to Clementina. It occurred to her that she was about to read bedtime stories to a foul-tempered old man. Despite herself, she started to laugh.
Nonno frowned at her. ‘Cazzo!’ he said. ‘My son has sent me a crazy woman.’
His comment only made Rosa laugh more.
‘All right, I’ll read,’ she said. ‘But only if you are polite.’
‘Good, get on with it,’ said Nonno, rolling his eyes. ‘Dio buono! Women can talk!’
Rosa read for about ten minutes with no outbursts from Nonno. She had to glance at him every few pages because he was so quiet she thought that he had fallen asleep.
‘Stop staring at me and keep reading!’ he said.
Rosa read on without further outbursts for another hour. She only stopped because she had to leave for rehearsals, not because Nonno wanted her to go.
‘It’s a good story,’ he said, pursing his mouth and lifting his chin. ‘Better than most of the rubbish my son reads me.’
‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ said Rosa, gathering her things. ‘Do you want me to tell Giuseppina to come back in?’
Nonno waved his hand dismissively. ‘Silly fusspot, why would I want her to come in again?’
‘Well, then,’ said Rosa, trying to keep a straight face. ‘I’ll see you the same time tomorrow.’
Rosa returned to read to Antonio’s father every day while Antonio was away, as she had promised she would. On her last visit, when she finished reading, Nonno turned to her. ‘Signora Bellocchi?’ he said, staring at her hand. ‘But you have no ring. Are you a widow?’
Rosa nodded.
‘But you’re so young. Still a girl.’
‘I was unlucky.’
Nonno was quiet for a moment, thinking something over. He wrapped his misshapen fingers around Rosa’s wrist. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You’re a pretty girl. Why don’t you marry my son? Antonio’s nice-looking and he works hard. He’d make a good husband.’
‘I don’t think your son is interested in me,’ Rosa said diplomatically.
‘Bah!’ scoffed Nonno, shaking his head. ‘He’s still in love with that stupid puttana?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘You know, I worked like a brute so that my son wouldn’t have to; worked until my back broke so he could be educated. Those Tamaris—do you know what they are? Cheesemakers who have gone up in the world! “Signor Parigi,” that puttana’s father told me, “I’ve got ambitions for my daughter.” Testa di cazzo! Does he think she shits gold and pisses silver? My son is better than her! Better than all of them! That Visconti he married her off to has money but he has no sense!’
The more Nonno recalled Signor Tamari’s rejection of his son, the more heated he became. Rosa tried to placate him. After about a quarter of an hour of listening to his woes about Antonio’s lack of marital status, Rosa managed to extricate herself by promising she would do something to woo him—which, of course, she had no intention of doing.
Out in the foyer, the maid, Ylenia, helped Rosa on with her coat. ‘I hope you managed today,’ she said. ‘He can be a handful. I’ve worked for him for nearly fifteen years. He turned my hair grey when I was still a young woman.’
Rosa smiled politely but her curiosity got the better of her. ‘Why does Nonno have all those cowboy items in his room?’
‘Oh, Nonno loves his cowboy films,’ said Ylenia, with a smile. ‘Before he became sick, he and Signor Parigi used to go the cinema to watch them.’
Rosa walked back to her apartment feeling worn out. Antonio obviously trusted her: his father was not somebody anyone could handle. She laughed out loud when she thought of Antonio and his father sitting in the cinema and watching westerns together. It was almost as funny as him secretly playing with Allegra. Antonio was full of surprises.
Roberto, the new member of the troupe, exasperated Rosa. For the first few rehearsals, she tried to engage him in conversation but grew tired of him looking over her head and answering her in monosyllables. She didn’t like the way he bossed Carlo about, correcting his pronunciation in the middle of a scene or criticising his costume, or that he never helped with the menial tasks that needed to be done. One day Piero was rolling a cigarette when Roberto snatched it out of his hand and threw it away. ‘Don’t you know the tax they put on tobacco goes into building Mussolini’s army?’ he said. Piero clenched his jaw and looked as if he was about to punch Roberto, but thought better of it. Luciano smoothed things over when he saw them happen, but otherwise was oblivious to the tension Roberto created. Rosa wished Benedetto was coming on tour with them instead. Six weeks with Roberto was going to be unbearable.
‘Roberto snubs everyone except Luciano,’ Orietta told Rosa one evening when they were making pasta dough together. ‘He thinks the rest of us aren’t good enough for him.’
Rosa rolled her eyes. ‘What does he want?’ she asked, making a well in the flour and breaking the eggs into it. ‘I speak three foreign languages and you read more books than anybody else I know.’
‘Yes,’ said Orietta, passing a fork to Rosa to mix the dough, ‘but I don’t read in Greek.’
Rosa laughed. ‘Isn’t he the son of a tram driver? I heard him boasting of his working-class origins to Luciano the other day.’
‘Well, he sees himself and Luciano as Renaissance men and the rest of us as peasants.’
Rosa shrugged. ‘He hasn’t even spoken to the rest of us to tell what we are.’
Orietta took over the kneading of the dough to give Rosa a rest. ‘Roberto has given me some violin pieces to play in the monologue he is doing tomorrow,’ she said. ‘But he won’t let me rehearse with him.’
‘What monologue?’ asked Rosa. She brushed the flour from her apron.
‘Some piece he’s insisted on doing before the play,’ Orietta told her. ‘Luciano had to agree because we can’t replace him this late in the season.’
To begin the tour, The Montagnani Company opened again at the theatre on Via del Parlascio. Before the play, Carlo, Donatella and Roberto were scheduled to perform a variety act each to warm up the crowd. Carlo’s juggling and Donatella’s routine with Dante were crowd-pleasers. Rosa was intrigued to know what Roberto had planned for his monologue. The audience of workers and shopkeepers would not stand for anything highbrow; they might even throw fruit. The idea of Roberto covered in rotten melons made Rosa smile. She was annoyed at him for having done nothing to help set up the theatre before the performance. Luciano was in the ticket office and didn’t see Roberto sitting on the stage steps, reading a book on Florentine art, while everyone else hurried about around him. When Donatella suggested that Roberto could help her set up the chairs, he gave her such a disdainful look that she burst into tears.
‘I don’t like him,’ she whispered to Rosa in the wings.
‘Neither does Dante,’ Rosa replied, pointing at the dog and trying not to laugh. He was piddling on one of Roberto’s costumes.
When it was time for Roberto to perform, he didn’t appear straightaway. The evening was warm and the audience was restless, clapping their hands and stamping their feet. Rosa glanced at Luciano who was standing with the lighting assistant. His shoulders were tensed. Rosa caught his eye and pointed to the piano, asking with her gestures if he wanted her to perform a piece to keep the audience entertained. But then there was a ripple of the curtains. The assistant turned on the spotlight. The curtain opened and Roberto was revealed, standing on the stage with his foot on a chair. He wore black pants and a black shirt with a sash across his chest. The audience fell silent. From the whimsical look on his face, Rosa anticipated Roberto was about to perform a comedy act and hoped he could pull it off. She glanced at Luciano. Was he thinking the same thing? Was that why he was looking so anxious?
Roberto turned and faced the audience. He spread his legs apart, thrust out his chest and tensed his jaw.
‘Ho sempre ragione!’ he roared, waving his right hand as if he were holding a gun. ‘Credere! Obbedire! Combattere!’
Rosa couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The bulldog chin, the flashing eyes, the dramatic pauses were all Il Duce’s. Roberto had transformed himself into Mussolini.
‘I flew my plane, swam the Mediterranean, duelled with a villain, raced my Alfa Romeo and rode my stallion to be here,’ said Roberto.
He paused a moment to mime playing the violin. The music was filled in by Orietta who, on cue from Roberto, played a few bars of Paganini’s Caprice No 24, a notoriously difficult piece.
Most of the audience laughed but some of them shifted in their seats. It was standard propaganda for Mussolini to be photographed undertaking some activity: fencing, horseback riding, playing the violin, painting, skiing. He was always portrayed as valiant, fearless, heroic, cultured and masculine.
‘When I visited Sicily,’ Roberto continued in Mussolini’s character, ‘my presence stopped the flow of Mount Etna and saved hundreds of lives. Once I brought rain to a drought-ridden region. On another occasion I underwent an operation without chloroform, having trained my body to be above pain.’
Those in the audience who found Roberto’s satire amusing laughed louder.
‘Pressmen, if you want a photograph, then you must catch me on my daily walk, daily horse ride, daily car ride or daily swim. I read Dante every morning before playing my violin like a maestro.’
Orietta came in with the first movement of Brahms’s Violin Concerto.
‘In my spare time I write novels, translate books, bed women and answer the letters of the thousands of citizens who write to me each year begging me to intervene in their personal problems. All this as well as being Italy’s leader and overseeing the ministries of Foreign Affairs, War and Navy and Aviation. I never sleep, and the light is always left on in my office to prove it.’
More hoots of laughter from the audience. Of course, twenty-four hours were too few for all of Mussolini’s purported daily activities. But it was dangerous to publicly make fun of the dictator. What had possessed Luciano to allow Roberto to do it? His act put the troupe at risk of being arrested, Rosa thought angrily.
Piero played the accordion while Roberto sang a list of Mussolini’s aphorisms from the ridiculous to the threatening. ‘If you are fat, I have no pity for you: you are stealing from Italy with your greediness’; ‘It is my intention to transform Italians from a race of spaghetti-munching romantics into soldiers’; and ‘No-one has stopped us. No-one will stop us.’
The last statement was chilling because it was true. Roberto could laugh at Mussolini all he liked, Rosa thought, but the other politicians either sided with Mussolini or crumbled under the fascist violence.
Roberto ended his act by placing his foot on the chair again and leaning on his knee. ‘I am Alexander the Great and Caesar rolled into one. I am Socrates and Plato. Machiavelli, Napoleon and Garibaldi. I am Italy’s greatest hero. But…oh, how my jaw aches at night.’
The curtain dropped and the audience cheered. Rosa cast her eyes down, too frightened to look. Were they all cheering? She was barely able to perform the music for The Count of Monte Cristo. After the performance, she helped the others clean the theatre but the more she thought about Roberto’s act, the more her blood boiled. What was he doing? There were fascist spies everywhere looking for subversive activity. Rosa held in her anger despite Luciano’s constant glances at her. Had he known Roberto was going to satirise Mussolini?
The troupe walked back to the Montagnani family’s apartment. Carlo was tired and went to bed. Rosa tucked Sibilla in her cot by the stove before joining the others at the kitchen table. Orietta sliced some bread for supper. When Roberto congratulated himself on the success of his act, Rosa could not contain herself any longer.
‘How could you do that act,’ she asked, ‘knowing it could have us sent to prison?’
Roberto’s face pinched but he didn’t answer. Piero and Donatella sent Rosa looks of sympathy. Luciano shifted in his chair.
‘You don’t know who was in that audience,’ Rosa continued. ‘Just because they are workers doesn’t make them all anti-fascists. Some of them are fattori and estate managers. Some of them are working for the fascist elite.’
Roberto scoffed. ‘We need to do more than pass around little pamphlets in secret,’ he said. ‘Or spend our lives worrying about what sauce we put on our pasta.’
‘Enough!’ said Luciano, raising his hand to silence Roberto. ‘I won’t have you insulting Rosa. She understands what the fascists represent.’
Luciano turned to Rosa. ‘We can’t remain passive,’ he said. ‘Mussolini intends to march on Europe the same way he did on Rome. It will be a disaster for Italy. We are the artists of the city. We have to awaken public opinion. Make people aware of the propaganda they are being fed.’
An uneasy feeling stirred in Rosa’s stomach. So Luciano had known about Roberto’s monologue. She sensed a gulf opening up between herself and Luciano. She wanted to close it, but didn’t know how. She couldn’t remain silent when her child’s life was being put in danger. Roberto has done this, she thought. Luciano was satisfied with his small offensive against fascism until Roberto came along. Now he is taking more dangerous risks.
‘Do you know what the fascists are doing?’ Roberto asked Rosa, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Thousands of innocent Italians have been imprisoned without trial.’
Rosa’s skin prickled. The condescending expression on Roberto’s face infuriated her. ‘And do you have any idea what it is like to be sent to prison by the fascists?’ she retorted. ‘Well, I do! It’s not some marvellously heroic gesture, believe me!’
Roberto opened his mouth and then shut it again.
‘I have Sibilla’s welfare to consider,’ she told him. ‘If something happens to me she’ll be left an orphan. As petty and self-centred as that might sound to you, she’s my first responsibility. I’m not risking going back to prison.’
Sibilla started crying. The argument had woken her up. Rosa picked her daughter up and fled to Orietta’s bedroom. ‘Shh, don’t cry,’ she told Sibilla, sitting on the bed and cuddling her. Tears poured down Rosa’s own cheeks. Her heart ached. What was happening? She loved Luciano but this would drive them apart. Was fighting Mussolini more important to him than her and Sibilla?
‘Rosa?’
She looked up to see Luciano standing in the doorway. His face was drawn.
‘I’ve told Roberto he’ll have to drop his act,’ he said. ‘You’re right. It’s not fair to put you and the others in danger.’
Rosa pulled Sibilla closer to her. ‘What did he say?’
‘He’s not happy.’
‘What if he leaves? Who will play all those roles?’
Luciano shrugged. ‘We’ll work something out.’ He sat down next to Rosa and nestled his chin into her neck. ‘We’ll be more careful in the future, all right?’
‘All right,’ said Rosa.
Her heart was full of conflicting emotions: tenderness, sorrow, fear. She couldn’t help feeling that she was making Luciano sacrifice something that was important to him. Luciano drew her to his side and kissed her. But even as they embraced, Rosa felt something had changed between them.
When The Count of Monte Cristo finished its run in Florence, the troupe revisited the towns they had the previous season and also expanded their tour to Prato. They returned to the spa town of Montecatini Terme. One day when she was walking by the town hall, Rosa imagined how nice it would be to get married there and have a picnic with the troupe in the park afterwards. It saddened her to think that there were no wedding plans in the near future; the fascists were more entrenched in power than ever. No matter what Luciano said about being committed to her, she was not a woman married before God and that hurt her. She sometimes fantasised about turning up at the Convent of Santo Spirito with a wedding ring on her finger and redeeming herself in Suor Maddalena’s eyes. Now it seemed her desire for a name and a family had been thwarted. But she had no choice: she loved Luciano and the fight against fascism was everything to him. He’d cease to be Luciano if he was any other way.
Roberto remained with the troupe but his attitude towards Rosa was cool. She no longer bothered talking to him. Once she overheard him saying to Luciano, ‘Are you sure Rosa is the right woman for you? I could introduce you to my sister. Now, she’s a fighter.’ A split lip from Luciano meant that Roberto never made the mistake of making a comment like that again.
While Rosa was organising the music for the first performance in Montecatini Terme, she caught a glimpse of the program. Roberto was back on in the variety acts. Her mind spun. Had Luciano put Roberto back on the program to appease him? If so, it would be a betrayal of Rosa’s trust in him. She felt she was in a tug of war with Roberto over Luciano’s loyalty.
Rosa did her best to play well for Carlo’s and Donatella’s acts but she had difficulty concentrating. When Roberto appeared on stage, she glanced at Luciano but he did not look in her direction. Roberto was wearing a white shirt instead of a black one. This time he didn’t swagger like Mussolini. He stretched his hands out to the audience beseechingly.
‘An Appointment with Pegasus,’ he said.
Rosa held her breath. It didn’t sound like something Mussolini would say, but she couldn’t be sure with Roberto. To her amazement, what followed was a lyrical poem about the winged horse from Greek mythology—wherever his hoof struck the earth, a spring burst forth. The audience was moved by the beauty of the imagery and the idea of a majestic creature bringing freedom to the people of the earth.
As the poem continued, Rosa began to read the underlying meaning. It was the disguised story of Lauro de Bosis, a young intellectual from Rome who had flown over the city and dropped leaflets urging the Italian people to throw off the rule of the fascists. Afterwards, he and his plane, Pegasus, were lost at sea.
‘You live in a prison and pity those who are free,’ said Roberto.
Roberto was treading a fine line. As well as tourists, the audience contained schoolteachers, notaries, pharmacists and doctors—people who may or may not be enthusiastic fascists. And yet this time Rosa could not be angry. Her conscience was pricked. If she had suffered, how many more thousands of innocent people were continuing to suffer?
Rosa was unable to sleep after the performance. She tucked Sibilla under Orietta’s arm and went outside the tent for some fresh air. She was surprised when she saw Luciano standing a few yards away looking at the sky.
‘You had the same idea?’ he said, turning to face her. ‘It’s too hot to sleep.’
‘Let’s walk for a bit,’ suggested Rosa.
Luciano took her hand and they strolled down a path and into a grove of trees.
‘The poem Roberto recited was beautiful,’ Rosa said.
‘So you are not angry at me for letting him perform it?’
Rosa shook her head. ‘Not everyone will understand the double meaning, although it is still treading on dangerous ground.’
They walked on in silence.
‘Luciano,’ Rosa said, touching his arm, ‘I wouldn’t object to Roberto’s anti-fascist messages if I didn’t have Sibilla to think about.’
‘I know,’ said Luciano. ‘I think of her too.’
Rosa stopped and turned to him. ‘I’m also concerned about you.’
Luciano shook his head. ‘I’ve never been able to live only for myself,’ he said. ‘It’s never been in me. I’m not like your Antonio Parigi, able to keep a Fascist Party card in my drawer and even wear a black shirt on occasion so I can keep my business.’
‘He’s part Jewish,’ Rosa tried to explain. ‘He has an elderly father to support.’
‘It’s everyone thinking about themselves that has brought about the downfall of Italy,’ Luciano replied. ‘To be a great nation, we need to have visionaries and great thinkers. Not to be focused on what clothes we wear or how finely we furnish our houses.’
A shiver passed over Rosa. She thought of de Bosis flying over the dark ocean and realised that he had thought the same thing. His death had been noble. But Rosa didn’t want to be mourning a noble man; she wanted to be caressing a living one.
‘Luciano,’ she said, seized by a sudden panic, ‘promise me you won’t do anything reckless. I don’t know what I would do without you.’
Luciano turned his gaze to the stars and didn’t reply. Rosa could feel him slipping away from her.
‘Make love to me,’ she said.
He stared at her. ‘Are you sure? Here?’
Rosa nodded. She undid the buttons of her dress, slipped it over her shoulders and down her hips. She removed her chemise and underwear and stood naked before Luciano in the night air. He drank her in with his eyes before removing his shirt and pants. He picked up Rosa’s dress and put their clothes together on the ground, making a cover for them to lie on. Rosa did not think of Osvaldo this time. She only thought how beautiful Luciano looked in the moonlight.
Luciano took Rosa in his arms and pressed his lips to her neck. His hand lingered over her breasts. ‘Touch me,’ she whispered, lying back on the clothes. She sighed when he caressed her breasts, then brushed his tongue over her nipples. His hand swept down her stomach to her thighs. She shuddered with pleasure as he pressed his lips to her sex and gripped his shoulders when a sensation like dozens of electric shocks burst over her body. She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to catch her breath.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw Luciano lingering over her. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’ She saw the stars twinkling in the sky behind him. There was no pain, only a tingling pleasure that made her moan and dig her fingers into his back. She wrapped her legs around his waist wanting to cling to him like that forever. Luciano’s breathing quickened.
After a few moments, they lay side by side and nestled into each other. Luciano fell asleep with his hand resting on Rosa’s thigh. She told herself that she would forever associate the stars with this night and with Luciano.