Jack is not his chirpy self on my next visit two days later, after my newspaper shift. He’s back in bed, with a sheen of sweat on his brow. Still, he makes the effort to smile as Sister Cara shows me in.
‘Stella, so lovely to see you.’ He tries to make more of an effort to appreciate the new books I’ve brought – a mixture of English and Italian novels – but it’s clear he’s not well. The wound on his leg has become infected, Sister Cara whispers to me; they are cleaning and dressing it as best they can, but it’s clearly spreading. Jack tries not to show it, but he is worried. Mostly alone, and without proper treatment, he is clearly aware this may be the battlefield that he succumbs to.
‘Surely, they can get a doctor out to you?’ I say. ‘Someone sympathetic.’
‘Apparently, no one can be spared at the moment – too many men being shipped in from outside the Veneto. A couple more days in bed, and I’ll be fine.’
His face, though, and his pallor suggest rest isn’t enough. I’m no medic, but I can see he needs a doctor – and soon. I make a decision, potentially a foolish one, but it’s born of true concern rather than any rational thought.
All next day I can’t shift the image of Jack’s pale and sweat-stained face from my mind, and I have to concentrate at work just to appear focused. I leave the Reich office a little early, feigning a headache, but with a firm purpose. Instead of walking towards home, I divert the few streets from my apartment towards the main hospital that sits behind the choppy water’s edge of the Fondamenta Nuove. I know my brother Vito has a partisan friend whose own brother is a doctor – I can only hope and guess this doctor shares the family’s politics, but it’s a chance I have to take.
It’s strangely quiet as I enter through the large doors, flashing a smile and my Reich department ID at the guard and pretending I’m there to visit the sick. I find Doctor Livia on the medical ward, slumped in a chair against the wall of the sluice room, eyes closed and his head almost lolling with exhaustion. He seems unaware of the low-level stench of bedpans hovering around his nostrils.
He opens his eyes smartly when I say his name – ‘What? Oh, sorry!’ – but calms when it’s clear I’m not one of the senior staff or a Nazi commander on an impromptu visit. Despite his clear fatigue – his eyes sit in deep, grey circles of skin – he listens carefully when I explain about Jack.
‘And he can’t be moved to a house on the main island?’ he quizzes. ‘I could go to him there.’
‘I don’t think so. He seems to have a low fever, and his leg – if anything – is more immobile with the pain.’
‘Hold on a minute, wait here,’ Doctor Livia says, and exits the sluice. He comes back a minute later with a small bag, and ushers me out.
‘If we go now, I can be back before I’m missed,’ he says. But it’s already six o’clock, and I’m concerned about beating the curfew if the boats are delayed.
‘Don’t worry – we have a boat set aside for emergencies,’ the doctor reassures me. ‘We won’t advertise it, but if we get stopped, the driver has papers.’
‘And is he trustworthy, the boatman?’
‘He’s one of us. I would trust him with my life – I have done.’
It’s good enough for me. It has to be – I’ve asked for help and Doctor Livia has responded without hesitation. I have to return the trust. My one concession is that I swiftly don a nurse’s spare uniform in the event of spot checks on the boat, pulling the cape tight against me to disguise the poor fit. I’ve given up guessing at how many guises I will have adopted by the time this war of theatrics and deceit finally ends.
The journey on the water from the Fondamenta Nuove and around the curve of the Arsenale – the navy barracks under total Nazi control – is strangely uneventful, which makes me more nervous. The boatman, however, is experienced, slowing the engine if any craft nears us, and only pushing its raspy growl to a certain noise level so that our trip appears routine and not urgent. Doctor Livia dozes in his seat, not even the wind spray interrupting the precious minutes of sleep he grabs, a world away from the anguish I’m feeling and the vision of Jack’s face draining of life. I have to gently nudge the doctor awake as we moor up in the small canal beside Santa Eufemia.
Doctor Livia – Ignazio, as he tells me to call him – needs almost no light to make a diagnosis. Sister Cara is with Jack, sponging water around his flushed face, and he’s clearly deteriorated in the twenty-four hours since I left. Ignazio gets to work with the equipment he’s brought, pushing a needle line into Jack’s arm and hoisting a rubber tube attached to a bottle containing precious antibiotics, which I work to prop up on whatever wooden shafts I can find. Finally, he unwinds the bandages; even the good doctor almost recoils at the putrid odour that floods the room. I think it’s almost better that Jack is now slipping in and out of consciousness, as the sister fetches more boiled water, and the doctor does what he can to scrape away the decay of Jack’s leg. It’s safe to say that if he makes it out of Venice, Jack’s war is over, or his active part at least.
The smell I can tolerate, but the obvious cries of pain that break through Jack’s semi-conscious state are harder to bear. The antibiotics are rare enough, but the little anaesthetic they possess at the hospital is needed for more serious wounds. I want to push my fingers in my ears at his agony, but I’m needed to fetch and carry, and even hold some of the dressing as Ignazio works his medical magic.
Finally, the doctor refixes Jack’s leg in the brace, avoiding contact with the wound and leaving it accessible to the sisters for further dressing. Jack is asleep, and I’m grateful to see his chest rise and fall noticeably. He is alive at least.
Ignazio gives instructions to Sister Cara and packs up his equipment. The treatment has taken longer than expected and he may not make curfew.
‘We’d better go. The late-night water patrols will start soon, especially around the Arsenale,’ he says.
‘I’ll stay,’ I say. ‘At least tonight. I’m sure the sisters are busy, and he shouldn’t be left.’ Although it’s a work night, I feel sure I can use my earlier headache again as an excuse to turn up to the Reich office later in the morning.
Ignazio looks at me quizzically, but he’s either too tired or too busy to query my motives, or my relationship with Jack. ‘All right, just make sure you wake him every two or three hours to drink. Sister Cara will take down the drip tomorrow. If he improves slightly overnight, we’ll know we caught the infection in time, but if he deteriorates …’ He doesn’t elaborate, but there’s little need. Jack will either improve, or we’ll require a different service, one which the church can perform very well.
I clutch at his hands. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘For coming. For doing something.’ He looks at me, as if to say: why wouldn’t I help a human being? And then he’s gone.
Sister Cara returns with a blanket and a cushion for me to make up a bed of sorts. But I’m too wired for sleep. I want to hear Jack snuffle and snore occasionally. I want to be here when he wakes and feed him the water he needs. Despite the fakery of my dress, I am no nurse, but I feel strongly he should not die in this dank, lonely room, thousands of miles from his family. Not when he’s given so much of himself to the Allied cause, to Italy and Venice.
I sit at Jack’s desk, underneath his lamplight, and I do what I do each time I feel unsure, scared, overwhelmed or just not myself. I write. I write what comes into my head, scribbling in the notebook I keep constantly in my handbag, pages to scratch partisan codes or messages, but which are firmly torn and then passed on or burned. Only what’s in my imagination is fixed on the remaining pages, nothing to incriminate me if I’m caught except my own silly ramblings.
For the first time in an age, my thoughts turn to love. How it’s been thwarted by this war, destroyed in some cases, but also how it can survive, like the timeworn bricks of Venice, or the ancient wooden piles on which we’re all suspended in this city. Love can endure.
It’s a love story pulled from my head in the stillness and the rhythms of Jack’s deep sleep. Where it springs from I don’t know, and I try not to connect it with the company I’m keeping, either here in this room, or across the water in my ‘other life’. The characters simply form, and I’ve learned not to shun the gift of words when they come. Much like the tide of the ocean, you roll with the words and not against them. And this is how the tale of Gaia and Raffiano is born – he from a good Italian family, she from a long line of Jewish Venetians. Such a union of cultures has been frowned upon throughout history, but in this cruel war it could also prove to be a death sentence – handed down by those who recognise only the stark lines between religions. Gaia and Raffiano, they see beyond those boundaries; they are simply people. In love.
Once the first paragraph is set, I am lost in the narrative, conversations and images flooding my mind, tic-tacking back and forth – it’s the task of my granite pencil to translate the colour I see onto the page. I write for so long that I almost forget to wake Jack. He is drunk with exhaustion, and it’s hard work pulling up his head and cajoling him to drink. But he does, opening his eyes only briefly and muttering something in English, then sinking into sleep again. As my watch inches towards three a.m., I surprise myself with how awake I feel; I’m forced to use Jack’s penknife to whittle more of my pencil, and it’s only as it becomes a stub that I wake Jack one more time and then give in to eventual tiredness myself, covered with Sister Cara’s blankets in the chair.
It’s her gentle fingers that wake me – though I come to with a start – a few hours later. Only when I see Jack’s eyes open does my heart pull itself back to earth. The early morning light pushes in through the top windows and rouses me further.
‘He seems to be through the worst,’ the sister reassures, and Jack’s weak smile tells me she’s right.
‘I thought I was imagining things when I saw a nurse’s uniform hovering above me,’ he says, as we help him sit up a little. I’d all but forgotten I’m still in the badly fitting uniform lent by Doctor Livia.
The tea the sister brews stirs me just enough to make it home, and I send a hasty message to the Reich office that I’m still sick. With the reassurance that Jack is improving, I sink into a deep and satisfying slumber – oblivious to the drone of heavy aircraft pulsing overhead, like queen bees in a grand formation, homeward bound to their hives.
I’m disorientated when I wake at midday. With little food in the house, I make the few steps to Paolo’s café, where he rustles up some soup and works his magic with the coffee beans again.
‘I’m not going to ask if you were up for business or something else,’ he says. ‘But you, Stella Jilani, are burning the candle at both ends. Your fingers are in danger of being singed.’
‘Yes, Papa,’ I say, with a wrinkle to my nose. I know the gentle jibe is because he cares – where Vito is my younger brother, Paolo acts like an older sibling – but I also know he’s right.
It doesn’t stop me making the trip back over to Giudecca in the early afternoon, careful to skirt around San Marco and the Reich office so I’m not seen out of my sickbed. The spring sun follows me over the canal’s expanse and a wind ripples across the water, helping to clear the cobwebs filling my head.
I’m soon satisfied Jack really is improving, without any sign of a relapse. He’s eating a little and, with help, he can put a half weight on his leg. His face doesn’t have that deathly pallor and, although he’s weak, he seems back to being the Jack that I’ve come to know, if only for a short time.
‘You saved my life – does that mean I am beholden to you to the end of my days?’ He says it with a grin, but his eyes are red and intent.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I reply. ‘I’m not about to make you the genie of my lamp. Anyway, it was Doctor Livia who saved you.’
‘But you called him. Without you, I would be fish fodder for your lovely lagoon.’
‘Well, that’s a nice image, I must say!’ We’re both aware of trying to keep it light, but I can tell there’s genuine gratitude in what he says. ‘Perhaps you will parachute in one day and save a damsel like me from certain death, like in all the best films.’
‘Hmm …’ He gestures at his leg again. ‘Can I hobble instead? I’ll do it very gallantly, I promise.’
‘Well, OK, but only if you are very swarthy.’
I depart from the church, promising to visit in two days when I’m next due at the newspaper office. Unusually, I’m at a loose end as I’ve had no instructions that my services as a Staffetta are needed; Mimi is at work and I can’t face the third degree from Mama, telling myself guiltily that I will do my duty and visit at the weekend. She’ll only wonder why I’m not at work and I haven’t the energy to fabricate another story amid the layers that seem to make up my life. On Sunday, I’ll go with her to church and make her smile.
Still, there’s an unsettled air inside me. It’s not Jack, since I know he’s no longer at risk, and I’m so used to the general feeling of life on a knife edge in this war that danger barely registers as anything unusual nowadays. No, this is something different. Tiny bubbles of unease are captive inside me.
Walking along the blustery waterfront at Giudecca to the vaporetto stop, I finally realise what it is. I need my typewriter. I ache to feel the keys under my fingers, clatter and trip-trap my thoughts onto a blank page, see the type laid down. I imagine my notebook bristling in my handbag, crackling with a desire to work its way out. It might never be read but it’s a rush I need now in my veins – adrenalin of a different sort from the previous night. Still potent but more stable.
Matteo is surprised to see me on a day when the paper isn’t in production, but I make the excuse of wanting to catch up on some work, and I don my apron out of habit, disappearing into the basement. I must appear needy or grey or both, because – bless her – Matteo’s wife, Elena, follows me down with a steaming bowl of pasta, which I eat while I stare at the blank page and stroke the smoothed keys of my beloved machine. I like to muse that Popsa had it specially made for me, as my fingers fit perfectly into the well of each letter, although I know that’s my own fantasy.
As with every story I’ve ever written – fact or fiction – it’s the whiteness of the page causing a ripple in my stomach, now that Elena’s offering has seen to my hunger. It’s my turn to fill the white, yawning space. Every writer’s nightmare, I imagine; excitement and dread in equal measure. Luckily, my notebook lights the spark. I edit as I type, the noise muffled by our makeshift sound-proofing and the window closed on my world. I don’t notice, though; soon I’m within Gaia and Raffiano’s lives; their innocent meeting on the Lido before the rolls of Nazi barbed wire force people away from the beauty of its beaches. Swiftly, it develops into the hot, urgent love born of war, when there are so many boundaries that a forbidden passion is only one of many restrictions. Every day of their lives, it seems, carries a threat of some sort, so why not? Why not live instead of just lingering?
I’m unaware that it’s becoming dusky outside until Matteo comes down, peering into the gloom of my one desk light. He says business is slow and he’s shutting the bar early. The chilly evening air and the dense inner feeling that’s been purged make me forget my lingering fatigue; I feel lighter, less encumbered. I take the vaporetto back to the Zattere waterfront stop, neatly sidestepping the hotel on the front that’s become the base for the Military Police. It’s around eight but I don’t want to go home yet, feeling somehow restless and exhausted in unison, and so I walk towards the Accademia Bridge and over into the large Campo Santo Stefano. There I linger at a table outside one of my favourite cafés over an aperitif, reading my copy of Pride and Prejudice. For the second time in one day, I’m transported out of reality, to a different time and place, to somewhere hearts can be lifted and mended. I know I’m not the first to appreciate the way love transcends time, space and the ugliness of war, but it warms me all the same. Looking at the beauty of the square, however, with the yellowy café lights framing its ancient order, it is almost hard to believe there is so much conflict, with such suffering as we hear on Radio Londra.
On the page, Mr Darcy is making awkward entreaties to Miss Bennet when a voice cuts into the exchange.
‘Good evening, Signorina. You look engrossed.’
It’s Cristian, and I look up, clearly with an expression of real surprise – so much so that he almost seems to recoil. I worry that I’ve been caught out, having called in sick, though to judge by his expression he doesn’t seem irritated.
‘Oh! Evening, Signor,’ I say, bringing my tone up several notches. ‘Yes, just escaping for a few moments. To clear my head.’ I know that he of all people appreciates my meaning, and he nods in response when I hold up the book’s cover.
He’s wearing what I would describe as a non-work suit – something in a deep blue – and although he’s sporting a tie it seems slightly more casual. There is an extra adornment: a woman hanging onto his arm. She is anything but casual, dressed to impress in high heels and a fur stole, her pout marked in a deep crimson. She tries to smile weakly, but fails. I wonder where she thinks they are going dressed like that, with him so understated. I berate myself then for judging a book by its cover so harshly, then swiftly wonder why I am bothering at all. What do I care where Cristian goes outside of work, or with whom? And I push down a tiny, indistinct niggle inside that says otherwise. Once again, I hate myself for it.
‘I’m very glad your headache appears to be better,’ Cristian says, as the woman pulls, though tries not to tug too noticeably, on his arm. In this, she fails again. ‘We’ll leave you to your book. Goodnight, Signorina.’
And they are gone, and I’m left staring at the words on a page and musing over the strangeness of my day.