12

Opening Up

Venice, late March 1944

Cristian isn’t at his desk when I arrive for work the morning after our short encounter in Santo Stefano. For some inexplicable reason I’m put out, but then I see that his desk looks occupied, with his pen and notebook laid out. I feel slightly calmer at the sight, and I tell myself it’s simply because the office runs noticeably more smoothly when he’s present.

He comes in as I’m translating a report on shipping supplies in and out of Venice. I’m tucking details into corners of my brain for later use; the ports have become vital to Nazi movements of weapons and troops since many of the railways in Northern Italy have been blown up by my fellow partisans. This is essential information for our fight, although we are mindful that translations of German messages intended to inform the Nazis’ fascist counterparts are not always the complete truth. On paper they are bedfellows – Hitler and Mussolini holding the same beliefs – but Italian fascists are still treated with some disdain by the Germans, considered unreliable.

I don’t pay much attention to Cristian for a good half an hour, only seeing him out of the corner of my eye casting the odd glance in my direction. It never fails to make me nervous – I feel of all the people in this office he has the measure of me. Maybe I let my guard down too much at the reception? Perhaps he’s simply biding his time before he exposes me in some grand – and deadly – fashion? The fact that I can’t gauge him at all both irritates and drives me to discover more about him. What, aside from his love for Mussolini, motivates him in this chaos of a world?

‘Signorina Jilani, might I enquire when this report is likely to be ready?’ He ghosts up beside me – something of a habit he has – and I have to dampen my surprise.

‘Not too long, Signor, I’m on the last section,’ I say brightly. Clearly, there will be no chance to make a typewritten copy of this dispatch, and I’ll need to cram my brain to capacity before I can get to the toilet and scribble any memorised details. Cristian is not helping, as he’s hovering beside my desk – another habit he’s developing. I look up briefly.

‘Is there something else you need, Signor?’

‘No, I was just wondering if you enjoyed your reading last night? I always think you’re never alone with a book when you’re waiting for someone.’

‘Oh, I wasn’t waiting for anyone,’ I say casually. Easy enough since it’s true. Inside though, my mind is reeling – he’s clearly fishing, but for what? Does he suspect that I’m a Staffetta and spend half my life waiting for other message-bearers in cafés and bars?

He looks at me, this time squarely through the lenses of his glasses, his eyes made slightly smaller by his short-sightedness but still large and enquiring. ‘And do you prefer that, Signorina – your own company?’

‘At times,’ I say. ‘Sometimes it’s much easier to be with a book – there’s no two-way exchange to have to worry about.’

It’s too late – it’s out of my mouth before I have time to think and I check myself for opening up another part of me to him. I’m still in disguise: Stella the loyalist. Nothing of my own self should come through. But he only nods, as if he understands, and turns back towards his desk.

‘And did you enjoy your evening, Signor?’ I say as a parting comment. ‘With your company?’ Again, my mouth is moving faster than my brain, although the noise of the office masks our exchange.

He stops, wheels back round. ‘It was a pleasant enough evening,’ he says without enthusiasm. ‘A work engagement – I was escorting the niece of an army officer.’ He smiles weakly, and I’m left wondering why Cristian De Luca feels the need to explain himself so fully to me, a mere typist. And, unbeknown to him, a traitor to his world. And more so, why I care at all.

Jack has improved again by the time I see him on Giudecca later that week after work. I call in before I go to the newspaper office, and he’s out of bed, dressed. Even in the gloom of his glorified cell, I can make out that he has some colour in his cheeks. Without asking, he brews us some tea and we talk while he prepares the penultimate package. Part of me wants to suggest he split the last two into three, as I’ll have no real excuse to visit once the task is done. Do I need an excuse, I wonder, other than friendship?

I leave with a neat package in my handbag, although I know the next one will be the size of a shopping bag – the equipment can’t be broken down into smaller pieces – and will demand the most nerve.

Back in the newspaper office below the bar, I feel energised and finish the week’s articles quickly, just as Arlo and Tommaso arrive, reporting that they’ve been held up by Nazi patrols searching all young men on the streets of the main island. It’s fortunate all the material for the paper stays on Giudecca until its publication.

They begin by sifting through my written copy and the other notices that need to be included in the week’s paper.

‘Hey, switch on Benito,’ Arlo says as they get to work, and I reach over to our well-worn radio set, brazenly named after Italy’s beloved leader. Instead of Radio Londra, though, we tune into some music and the atmosphere is almost party-like. I’ve noticed in recent weeks that Tommaso has grown out of his shell, bantering back and forth with Arlo and it’s good to hear. He tells us of the classroom talk at the Liceo and how the students are planning minor acts of sabotage, as if they are in training to be Resistance through and through for the rest of this seemingly endless war.

‘We’re arranging a leaflet drop around all the schools and some of the streets,’ he says, and his face glows with pride. Like him, some of the students have parents who are noted partisans and want to follow proudly in their footsteps.

‘Just be careful they can’t link you to it in any way,’ Arlo warns him, like an older brother. As he squints at the copy, I know he’s thinking of his own brothers courting danger in the war arena.

Then, in the next minute, Tommaso produces the cartoon strip he’s been working on and they are both giggling like schoolboys again at the subversive sarcasm.

I stay on a while to help fold and bind the sheets as the first pages of the weekly edition roll off the press like Mama’s pasta, fresh with news. It’s the best part of the week for me, to see something tangible in our fight in this war of bullies. The pages are not filled with award-winning journalism, I know, but I am a firm believer in the old cliché that the pen is mightier than the sword. It’s a shame that we have to engage the sword as well.

As I wait to see if there are any loose ends to pick up with the paper, I tinker with my own story of Gaia and Raffiano, weeding out some of the passages that suddenly appear too ‘flowery’ and paring down the words to speak of emotion instead of bleeding it. I’m happier when it’s more succinct – no matter that it’s just for me. Doesn’t every writer create for themselves, first and foremost?

To ensure that I catch the last vaporetto, I leave before the others, just as Matteo closes the bar and joins them in the basement to help string up the bundles. As with every Monday, his brother-in-law is waiting in the canal off the main expanse with his small, flat-bottomed motorboat. He is a fisherman by trade and knows the best routes to avoid the water patrols and the shallows of the lagoon; he and his cargo will skirt the deeper channels with the piles of papers, zigzagging towards the main island, where groups of distributors are ready to receive and begin handing out the link to the outside world – under the counter of shops and cafés, sometimes in churches, left in recognised places in the campos.

It’s on my own journey home each Monday evening that I feel the most … is it satisfaction? On the other days, when we’re simply preparing the pages, I do have a sense of achievement, but it’s when I feel the newsprint under my fingers that I’m truly aglow. It’s my own form of fulfilment, and one that I’m sure Popsa would have been proud of too. Certainly, it’s the nearest I feel to being a partisan soldier.

Tonight, my journey back to my apartment is uneventful – I weave a route to sidestep all the checkpoints and I slump into bed exhausted. Three journeys done and still nine lives intact. Or is that a dangerous way to think? The radio parts I deliver safely the next morning; the patrols are focusing mainly on younger men and wave me on in my work suit. My heart still races as I walk through the barrier, and I try not to feel smug in my duplicity. But, inside, I’m smiling.

It’s not until a few days later, when the paper has been out a full twenty-four hours, that I notice anything at all. I’m on Staffetta duty, outside a bar on Castello waiting to pass on a message to an unknown contact and sipping at a very poor excuse for coffee. My eyes are peeled for any suggestion of a fellow messenger, but my ears can’t help but tune into the table alongside, where two middle-aged women are gossiping over drinks.

‘Good luck to them, I say,’ the one in a striking blue hat says. ‘Everyone loves a bit of romance.’

‘It’s nice to indulge in a bit of fantasy, especially in these times,’ the one opposite in a bright green scarf agrees.

‘At our age, it is fantasy,’ number one laughs, and then drops her tone to serious. ‘I just hope there’s a happy ending, with Jews and non-Jews daring to … you know.’

‘Surely, it’s just a story?’ number two says, and their conversation tails off into the background as a woman approaches; I recognise the tic-tac of her eyes in pinpointing her contact while retaining an air of nonchalance that might mean she is simply looking for a free table. Fortunately, there are none and, as we lock pupils for less than a second, she asks casually if the chair beside me is free. I nod. There’s no guarantee she is on the same mission as me, and for now we regard each other with a healthy suspicion. There’s a process to follow and nothing can be assumed, other than that, if we make the wrong move, it might result in a group of fascist soldiers emerging out of the brickwork to haul us off to somewhere much less amenable. We have to assume that even the simplest of drops are a trap until proved otherwise.

‘Is the coffee decent here?’ she says, and takes out a pack of cigarettes from her handbag, leaving it on the table between us.

‘Passable, but nothing like before the war,’ I reply. It’s a lie because the weak brown liquid is quite foul, but it’s the answer she needs. She is my link, and I am hers. She smiles behind a plume of smoke and we begin the fake dance, idle chatter about the war and our boredom of rationing, food and make-up especially. One more coffee is brought over, and I’m forced to sip at it, gesturing towards her pack of cigarettes.

‘May I take one for later?’ I don’t smoke – never have done – but when she nods casually I pull the pack towards my lap and with a sleight of hand that Sergio Lombardi himself taught me, I rapidly pull a small piece of paper from the pack and slip it into my sleeve.

‘Thanks,’ I say, holding up the cigarette, and I bid this stranger a good evening, as if we’ve just had the most pleasant of impromptu chats.

As I do after every exchange, I wind a lengthy route towards home, to identify any possible tail. Once I’m certain of not being tracked, I call in to my nearest grocery store, hoping to pick up whatever I can to replenish my almost bare cupboards: pasta or polenta, or even a precious tin of meat. I’m usually so busy that I’m last in the queue for anything remotely appetising and end up with a mixture of random ingredients that even the paper’s frugal recipes can’t improve. I peer over the counter and note with pride the corner of a copy of Venezia Liberare.

‘I’ll have something extra,’ I say to the patriot shopkeeper in the accepted code and nod towards the counter. I may have typed almost every word, but I still like to roam over the details at home, not having eyed the final edition. Call it vanity, but it’s my own private indulgence.

Once home, I shut and bolt my door to the world, make tea, cut the precious seed bread and thinly slice the tiny block of cheese I’ve managed to secure. It’s my own portion of heaven, and I pull open the pages to peruse the week’s edition. As I leaf through, a loose sheet of paper falls out and floats to the floor. Bending to pick it up, I see immediately it’s not set with Arlo’s skill, double-sided and unfolded. I recognise it instead as my own typeface, not least because running through both sides of the paper is the familiar dropped e of my own machine.

I’d hastily titled my story The Barb of Love and almost laughed at my own syrupy nostalgia in referring to the rows of ugly wire lining the beaches of the Lido, coils of it set up by the Nazis to prevent enemy boats landing. It’s where Gaia and Raffiano first set eyes on each other, in those relatively carefree months before the invasion and the wire, and so it seemed the obvious title. But how on earth did my ramblings make their way into this week’s paper? I can only imagine it’s a mistake on Arlo’s part, as the sheet in my hand is not the one copy I typed. Perhaps it’s been left in the pages by mistake; it has the slightly blurred lines of the mimeograph machine we use to hastily copy whole pages of text, rolling out leaflets for immediate dispersal without having to set them on the larger press. The process is quick but the quality is poorer. It’s clearly been replicated. But why? It’s an error, surely? I’m shot through with embarrassment at the thought of wasting so much precious paper on my flippant endeavours. It will be tomorrow before I can ask Arlo about it, as we make little contact between our time at the newspaper office, for safety.