TWO
Francesca
Rome, July 1943
The all clear had sounded hours ago, but Giacomo hadn’t come home.
Francesca knelt by the window, her face pressed against a gap in the shutters. Outside, the familiar view of rooftops and bell towers, jumbled like a mountain range, spread before her. But beyond them, Dio santo, the world burned. She wiped tears from her eyes but kept staring, fixated. Smoke and dust rose in plumes from the San Lorenzo district.
“Madonna mia,” she said, and her voice cracked. She sounded overloud in the tiny apartment, and something about her voice, so alone in the darkening room, pulled her from the window.
She placed her palms on a stool and used it to push herself up to her feet. It was Giacomo’s stool, the one he pulled over to the window when he was studying. A sob rose like a gasp, and Francesca folded both hands over her heart, as if she could somehow contain the fear that gusted through her like a strong wind, chilling the blood in her veins. What would she do if Giacomo didn’t come home?
When the planes first appeared, she’d been at work in the bookshop. She and the other clerks had hurried into an air-raid shelter, listening to bombs falling across the city, too stunned to talk. Then she’d ridden her bicycle the few blocks home, pumping with such panic she nearly skidded over twice. When she’d reached their apartment, she hustled past her neighbors, who crowded the street and the foyer, to the flight of stairs. Francesca went up as fast as she could, but with each step her heart sank deeper.
Because, somehow, she knew even before she pushed open the door that Giacomo wouldn’t be in the apartment. Even before she stared out the window and saw where the bombs had fallen, she sensed that he was out there and still in the middle of it.
Now she wrapped her long hair into a bun, pinning it in place. Perhaps, when you’d known someone forever, you could sense when they were in trouble. And they’d known each other longer than forever. They’d sat side by side in school. They’d run barefoot through the Tuscan hills, stepping in each other’s shadows. They’d perched at each other’s bedsides, read each other stories, and defied each other’s parents until, finally, she followed Giacomo from their village to Rome.
Francesca walked with her uneven gait across the apartment. She sensed that he was in danger now, the same way her grandmother could smell rain on the edge of a cold wind.
Well, then. She nodded to herself as she found the key and her handbag, pulling in shaky breaths. She glanced in the chipped mirror by the door, smoothing her skirt over her angular hips. She hesitated, caught by the reflection of her own haunted green eyes.
She blinked and shook her head, dislodging fear. Giacomo was somewhere, and she would find him. She smoothed a tendril of loose hair behind her ear and locked the apartment.
On the stairs, her hand shook as she moved it along the railing, gripping each time her weak leg swung down a step, careful not to fall. She pursed her lips, her pulse rebounded in her ears, and she thumped down the last flight just as Signora Russo’s door swept open. The older woman, tall and even thinner than Francesca, came out with a baby clutched to her chest. Signora Russo always looked tired and startled, on edge as the mamma in a family bursting with children. Her eyes widened when they found Francesca.
“No, cara.” She said it like an order.
“I have to go find him,” Francesca managed. It was difficult to speak around the tightening in her throat, her thudding pulse.
“No. I forbid you to go out there. Your young man is as strong as he is smart, Francesca. He’ll come home.”
“I have to know he’s all right.” Tears heated her eyes. “The bombs hit San Lorenzo, Signora Russo. Near the university—I can see it from upstairs.”
The older woman drew in a breath and pursed her lips as if she was mustering willpower. She took her hand off the baby’s back to swipe at the hair falling from her kerchiefed head. Behind her, a small girl stepped around the doorjamb, wide-eyed.
“What could you possibly do anyway, cara? If he’s hurt? More planes could be on their way right now. What good will come from putting yourself in harm’s way?”
Both women glanced at the girl in the doorjamb. Neither would say what they meant with their small audience, but Francesca knew what Signora Russo was thinking. What good could a crippled girl do out in those streets? How could she possibly help Giacomo?
The women stared at each other for a long moment. And if little Gabriella hadn’t been within earshot, Francesca would have retorted that they weren’t any safer inside anyway. This building could be bombed as easily as the next. Nobody was safe, not anywhere.
Francesca looked to the door, breaking their stare, and Signora Russo sighed.
“You’re a good wife. Go, then. And get back as quickly as you can.”
Francesca nodded, and then she pushed open the heavy door and slipped into the night, choking on another sob. Because of course Signora Russo didn’t know she wasn’t Giacomo’s wife, not yet. They’d pretended to be married when she came from the village, for decorum’s sake. But it sounded so nice, suddenly. She walked down the empty, darkening street and saw the future she’d always imagined. She and Giacomo would be married, they would live a respectable, cultivated life, and the world would be at peace.
The neighborhood of San Lorenzo was unrecognizable. Francesca clutched her handbag and picked her way through a street littered with rubble. She pressed a hand over her mouth, but her throat stung with dust. Ahead, the innards of a tall building spilled into the road like a deer with a slit belly. On its edges, a huddle of children whimpered in the twilight. A spectacled nonno, bent with age, helped a woman dig through stones with bare hands. A boy in a red jersey watched and wept. “Papà, Papà,” he sobbed, over and over again.
Francesca hesitated, staring at the boy while he wiped his nose on his collar. He’d lost his father. She swallowed, hard, and turned away, picking a path through the rubble. The weight of his loss, all too familiar, sank into her chest.
It wasn’t far to the hospital, but several streets were so choked with craters, rescuers, and survivors that they were impassable. Francesca quickened her pace, and as she neared the hospital, both the destruction and the survivors thickened. People, iced in plaster and dust, gestured and swore and wept. She made her way over a mountain of stone and cracked beams, passing a dozen people digging through the rock with chalky hands. Behind them, a little girl screamed under the waking stars.
Francesca rounded another corner, and there it was: the hospital. She quickened again. The road, newly uneven, made hurrying dangerous. She should have brought her cane. The buildings loomed, a proud complex of medical centers, yet even in the twilight she saw that they had swallowed several bombs. A chunk of the Policlinico was gone, exposing the shells of rooms. Nonetheless, people streamed in, many carrying bloodied bodies between them.
Inside, the shadowy corridor was lamplit and lined with people. Some screamed, some comforted the injured, and others jogged the halls, heading back out. Medical staff crowded the corridor, performing triage right where the patients were dropped. Someone had swept broken glass into hasty piles, and Francesca threaded around them, staring at the cots and stretchers hemming the walls.
She stumbled next to a stretcher bearing a young girl, not quite a teenager, whose chest was bloody and lips blue. Francesca froze. There was so much blood she could smell it. She turned, a palm pressed over her mouth, and nearly bumped into a woman clutching a lifeless toddler. The woman wailed, unseeing, her face white with plaster. Her baby’s legs bounced against her belly, loose as a doll’s.
Someone put a hand on Francesca’s shoulder from behind. She turned, and Tommaso, one of Giacomo’s classmates, leaned in to talk over the noise.
“Francesca,” he stammered. “What are you doing here?”
She opened her mouth to answer, and the foolishness of it all poured over her like cold water. She’d walked into a war zone for no good reason. “Giacomo,” she managed. “He was here for his practicum. I was worried—”
“He’s upstairs. But you can’t go looking for him. He’s performing surgeries, one after another. Are you all right?”
She nodded, stunned. Giacomo was performing surgeries? He was only a medical student. Would he know what to do? She found her voice.
“He’s not hurt, then, Tommaso?”
Tommaso shook his head. “Listen. Go outside and wait—it’s far too crowded in here. I’ll send Giacomo down between patients. He’ll only have a second, but I’m sure seeing you will give him strength.” Tommaso glanced around the corridor, murmuring, “And he needs it.”
A half hour later, the sky had fully darkened, and Francesca stood under it, hugging her arms around her waist. She’d been irrational to come here. Now she wanted to go home almost as much as she wanted to see Giacomo. The quiet apartment, with its shuttered window and hard bed, had never seemed more like home. She watched an old mother and father carry their middle-aged son through the open hospital doors. People were still digging in the craters, searching for loved ones under an expanse of stars.
She leaned against a wedge of crumbled wall, closing her eyes and seeing other stars, from years before. She shivered. Her mind swept her back, offering respite from this night with the memory of another.
Giacomo’s face at eight years old appeared in her mind. He’d climbed through her window and sat on the sill, his limbs hanging over the floor, starlight framing his head. She was in bed, as she’d been for a long time.
“I lost my tooth, Mino,” she said.
He hopped down and took his place on her quilt, transforming from a silhouette in the window into a boy with wild hair and bright eyes.
“Let’s see,” he whispered, reaching toward her mouth. She bared her teeth, and he fingered the gap in the darkness, nodding his approval.
“I’ll tell you everything that happened in school today.” His voice edged out of a whisper. “And then you can tell me the next dragon story. Sì?”
“Sì.” She gave him a stern look. “But be quieter, Mino.”
Her parents murmured in the next room. It was winter, and they sat at the fire long after bedtime, sipping wine or grappa through hushed conversations. If they heard voices and investigated, they’d discover Giacomo had snuck through the window again. And if they made him leave, she didn’t know what she’d do. She might simply dissolve into her quilt, her useless limbs melting away. Because Giacomo’s visits, and their whispered stories, were all she had to look forward to.
“Francesca,” he said, scooting closer. “Today Maestra Pisano asked what we want to be when we grow up, and I know. I know what I want to be.”
She stared into his large eyes.
“A doctor. I’m going to be a doctor someday. So I can cure you.”
They glanced at her polio-stricken legs, like two sticks under the patchwork quilt, and she bit her lower lip. Giacomo could be a doctor when he grew up. But what would she be?
“Francesca. I’m here.”
His voice broke into her memories, and she opened her eyes. Her back was numb against the wall, her legs stiff. The night assembled before her, with its stars and rubble and misery.
She turned, and there was Giacomo. Even in the dark, she saw that he was covered in dust and the blood of other people. His smudged glasses sat low on his nose. Behind them, his eyes found hers. She collapsed into his chest, and he curled over her, wrapping her in his arms.
“I was worried about you,” she murmured.
He nodded, and she pressed her head against his collarbone, listening to the rebound of his heart, and breathed him in. Her own heart steadied, like a boat with a sail. She was home.
Six days later, Francesca glanced at Giacomo where he sat by the window, bent over a textbook, reading in the evening’s copper light. It was time to pull the curtains. But she paused, one hand on the knife she’d been using to chop garlic, studying him. Hair fell to his eyes like a black brushstroke, always just a little too long, and his thumb tapped out a rhythm on the book cover as he read. She smiled. All his life he’d been that way: energetic, restless, forever tapping out a beat while his mind moved like the melody.
“Mino,” she ventured, reeling him in from his thoughts. He looked up, adjusting his glasses, and grinned as if he’d been elsewhere and was glad to see her. She tipped her head toward the window, and he understood, pivoting on his stool to pull the curtains. The memory of bombers darkening the sky was so fresh, Francesca had barely slept since. She wasn’t taking any chances with light.
“I’m not ready for the next exams,” he sighed, clapping the book closed and standing.
She scraped the garlic into a pan. “You never think you’re ready, and then you get the top score. Come on and eat something.”
He strode over to stand behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist and kissing her ear. “I forgot to tell you.”
“What?” She giggled. “You realize I’m holding a knife.”
He pivoted, leaning against the counter where she worked. “I ran into Lino Moretti today. Remember him? From home?”
She cocked her head. An image of a boy, years older than them, rose in her memory. “The handsome one?”
“Not as handsome as me.” Giacomo grinned, and his glasses flashed. “He went off to Rome when we were kids.”
Francesca nodded. She hadn’t known Lino Moretti, not really, but he and Giacomo had something in common: they were both the smartest boys in their year. But Giacomo, who pivoted to pour two glasses of table wine, was the smartest boy ever to come out of Pienza. And soon, he’d be a doctor.
“Not as smart as you,” he said whenever she praised him. She’d roll her eyes, but deep down she knew they were equally bright. She’d always understood things, from schoolwork to the way people navigated their lives, more quickly and thoroughly than most. She hunched her shoulders and chopped the head off a carrot. It didn’t matter if she was smart. To take advantage of intelligence, a person had to be brave. Able to step out into the world, without wobbling.
Giacomo handed her a glass of wine. “It was strange seeing Lino,” he continued. “He gave me an address and asked if I wanted to come to a meeting. Said I was the right kind of person.”
“What kind of person is that?”
He shrugged and reached for two plates on a shelf. “Who knows? I’m not going to get wrapped up in it, whatever it is.”
They ate by candlelight, laughing over their plates while the moon rose somewhere outside the blackout curtains. Then they sat on the floor of the dark apartment, hip to hip, and flipped on the radio. The state-controlled broadcast was about to start, and they listened every night, analyzing what was said, and what was omitted, and trying to guess what would happen next. So far, people seemed to blame Mussolini for the bombing. In the streets, they grumbled about Il Duce and the Fascisti, and Francesca remained expressionless, shifting between sore feet in queues and hoisting her grocery bag, but inside she burned with satisfaction. Finally, the rest of Italy hated Mussolini like she always had. Finally, something could change. Didn’t it have to change, now that the Allies were in Sicily? Now that the Allies had shown that they would even bomb Rome, the Eternal City, if it would nudge Italy away from Fascism?
Francesca twisted her hair into a rope and pulled it over her shoulder, letting her neck breathe. The apartment was muggy, full of heat trapped during the day. The broadcast still hadn’t started. Had they turned the radio on too early? She glanced at Giacomo, who sat cross-legged, one of his knees resting on hers. She bumped him with her elbow, and he glanced up. It was often like this: they didn’t need to talk. They could simply look at each other, and whole conversations passed through the silence between them. Giacomo closed his hand over hers, and his thumb tapped the floor. They waited.
The radio crackled, then dipped back into silence. What was going on? The broadcast was never late. Francesca cocked her head, listening hard, as if there would be something to hear if she put forth the effort. A full minute clicked by, and Giacomo released her hand to check his watch, squinting in the flickering light.
“It’s 10:47. Maybe my watch is off?”
She shook her head, and her stomach hollowed. Something was wrong.
Another minute ticked by. Still, silence.
Giacomo was reaching to fiddle with the dial when the quiet broke. He froze, his hand suspended, and Francesca held her breath to listen.
The announcer spoke slowly. “His Majesty the King and Emperor has accepted the resignation from the post of Head of Government, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini . . .” She inhaled sharply, her hand flying to her mouth. “. . . His Excellency has appointed the Marshal of Italy, Pietro Badoglio, as Prime Minister.”
Francesca’s pulse gathered strength with each word, quickening and rising to a whoosh between her ears. Had she heard right? She couldn’t possibly have heard right. Could it be true? Had Mussolini resigned?
Then Badoglio’s voice was on air, affirming that he was head of a new military government. Francesca and Giacomo stared at each other, wide-eyed, while Badoglio declared, “Italy will be true to her word. The war continues.”
The broadcast dissolved into the Italian national anthem, rather than the Fascist hymn that had closed all broadcasts in Francesca’s memory.
Giacomo scrambled to his feet, pushing his hair from his forehead and glancing around the apartment as if looking for signs. She reached up, and he automatically held a hand down to lift her, taking the burden off her weak leg so she could rise.
Together, they listened to the final words of the anthem, tinny over the radio. “. . . the sons of the Fatherland will cover themselves with glory, shouting ‘Freedom!’”
“It’s over,” he breathed.
“Over?” She said the word as if she didn’t know its meaning.
“Dio santo. It’s over, Francesca. They’ve removed Il Duce.”
He said the words as though they were foreign, as though neither of them could quite grasp the meaning. Mussolini was gone? Could peace be on the horizon? But Badoglio had said that the war was to continue. What did it all mean? A wind seemed to blow through Francesca, engulfing her heart and lifting everything in her, everything in the room.
Then Giacomo’s arms were around her, wrapping her sapling waist in his own slender muscles. Her feet kicked up as they twirled, her laughter building and whirling with them. The end of Fascism! Il Duce, gone! Could it be true?
Outside, noise hummed in the streets as the news sank in, saturating Rome. Doors creaked and slammed shut, punctuating the shouts and laughter bouncing between neighbors. Francesca, tugging Giacomo’s hand, walked to the window. She pulled the curtain back, peering through the shutter slats. The dark city blinked, one house at a time, to life. Nearby windows flickered, lit by candles. In the distance, where the neighborhood climbed a hill, electric lights burned. One by one, window curtains slid back and shutters flung open. Human shapes appeared on balconies in the night air. They all knew there would be no planes tonight.
“Il Duce’s . . . gone,” she whispered, trying to make the words feel true. “Dio mio.”
She pushed open the windows, and a gust of air cooled her. Stars brightened over the tile rooftops. She leaned out, just a little. Below, doors opened, like a chain reaction, and people poured into the streets. Mussolini had ruled Italy for Francesca’s entire life. Her father’s face appeared in her mind, and she held him there for a moment, with his kind eyes and broad grin. Surely, he, too, was rejoicing somewhere.
Giacomo’s arm tightened around her waist as he stood behind her, his body molding to hers while he stared over her shoulder. His heartbeat tapped her back. In the street, someone whooped, and it caught on, contagious, until everyone was cheering and laughing, dazed with joy. Giacomo kissed the tender space under her ear.
When he spoke, his breath was warm. “Our life will be so different now. We’ll get married for real, and the war will end, and we can live in Rome and I’ll give you everything. Whatever you want. Francesca, it’s over.”
“But, Mino,” she said, her eyes on the street. Her joy faded a little, because it couldn’t be that good. She couldn’t believe it. “Badoglio said the war continues. You heard him.”
She felt him shrug. “That’s just talk. He had to say it, because the Germans are listening, too.” His voice strengthened in her ear. “Dismantling allegiances takes time, but this is the first step toward neutrality. They’ll negotiate, and we’ll make peace with the Allies. It’s the beginning of the end of the war, the beginning of a new life.”
She stared at the boiling crowd, dual sparks of hope and fear igniting in her chest. How could he be so sure? If there was one thing life had taught her, it was to doubt. She put her hand on his and watched the revelry gain momentum in the street. Signora Russo wavered below, wrapped in a robe, and her three oldest, pajamaed children orbited around her. An elderly woman sobbed and laughed at the same time in the arms of a younger woman. A man, with a limp like Francesca’s, screamed, “Abbasso Mussolini!”
Another man, short and whiskered, grinned and yelled as if in reply, “Out with the foreigners!” People around them held the words up like a torch, chanting both, “Abbasso Mussolini!” and “Out with the foreigners,” a discordant anthem. The crowd began to flow, dislodging from the neighborhood and moving like a slow river through Rome.
“They mean the Germans,” she murmured, half to herself. “Out with the Germans.”
Giacomo pulled her in, squeezing her waist. “They’ll leave. Their chapter’s closing here.”
She was about to disagree with his optimism, but he pulled her away from the window to face him. Their chests pressed together, and she looked up into his hopeful gaze.
“Francesca.” Giacomo said her name like a decision. “Marry me. Marry me tomorrow.”
Her breath stopped. He smiled, hesitant, hair in his eyes. She’d always wanted to marry him. She would absolutely marry him. But now? “Tomorrow?” she managed.
“Why wait? Italy’s headed for peace, and we can move on with our lives. Let’s make our charade real. I want it to be real, Francesca. When I look into the future, I only see you.”
“I only see you, too.” She held her breath, waiting for the words to come. Yes, Giacomo. It was all she needed to say. She yearned to say it.
But her mother whispered from the corner of her thoughts, like a woman waiting in the hall. Francesca had left her months ago, storming out amid a shouting match. They’d spoken only once since, when her mother managed to call the bookshop after the bombing, her voice thin with fear. Could she get married without her mother there to witness it?
Francesca dropped her eyes from Giacomo’s stare. Because one layer deeper, another question whispered. He was a university student, nearly a doctor, but she hadn’t become anything. Somehow, she’d always thought she would eventually rise from the shambles of her childhood and, alongside Giacomo, find a calling. But she hadn’t. She scoffed at her own silliness. Wasn’t being a doctor’s wife enough? What else was there for a girl like Francesca?
Still, she met his gaze and shook her head. “Mino. We can’t get married tomorrow.” She reached up to brush the hair from his eyes, ignoring the glint of hurt in them. “You know I’m yours. But I want the war to end first. When all this is over”—she gestured toward the chaos—“we can have a real wedding.” She cleared her throat. “I want my mamma to be there.”
He nodded and mustered a lopsided smile, squeezing her hands. “All right. I’d have married you yesterday, but I understand. When the war ends, when the bells ring, we’ll marry.”
She turned around and leaned her back into his chest. “When the bells ring.”
“It won’t be long now.”
Francesca watched the people below, streaming past in their pajamas, faces wet with joy. She wouldn’t contradict him again, but her own hope hardened. Peace wouldn’t come so easily.
If life had taught her anything, it was that.