Chapter Twenty-Seven
The cell was clean. It was new and it was cold.
Isabella sat for three hours on the edge of the hard bed without moving, eyes straight ahead. Spine rigid. If she moved, she feared she would fall off a cliff into a chasm. Her thoughts were spiky. Jagged. She kept remembering her father’s colleague, Dr. Pavese, the one who vanished one day and was replaced without a word. She pictured a new architect walking up to her drawing board, using her drawing pens, sharpening her pencils. The others in the office would notice. They’d look. But would they ask, “Where’s Isabella?” Would Ferdinando demand an answer from Dottore Martino?
Of course not.
No questions. Not if you didn’t want Blackshirts’ boots in your bedroom at two o’clock in the morning.
Treachery.
The word burned, each letter branded into her brain. Treachery got you shot in front of a firing squad. Or hanged. Or beaten to death in your cell. Her eyes, the only part of her that still moved, scoured the cold tiles on the floor for bloodstains but found none. She breathed, but only just.
Treachery.
What had she done to deserve that word?
Did rejecting Il Duce’s greedy lips count as treachery? Or speaking to a rebel’s child? Or pointing out a crack in a house? Or binding up the wound of a farmer who wasn’t a farmer?
Dear God, where was the line between treachery and reality?
Roberto had once warned her that she must guard not only her words but also her thoughts from scrutiny.
Who had listened to her thoughts?
Anger came. It drove the chills from her veins and forced her to stride back and forth across the small space, her heart hammering to break loose. She wanted them to come for her, to start the questions. She wanted to see their faces and look directly into their lying eyes. These people had wrenched control of her life from her hands and she had to take it back.
Hours ticked past. The cell grew smaller. The silence hurt her ears and loneliness twisted itself into a tight knot in her stomach. There was nothing here except a narrow bed and a galvanized bucket and the stink of her own fear on her skin. Life stripped of its outer layers, the way she’d seen a rabbit carcass flayed of its skin, hanging red and raw from a hook.
But Roberto was here. With her. She had invited him in and he came willingly. The sublime sound of his laughter demolished the fear inside her head and she heard again the promise in his voice when he said, It’s a mistake. Don’t worry.
She stared at the blank wall and refused to blink.
“I want a lawyer.”
“All in good time, Signora Berotti.”
“Colonnello Sepe, I want a lawyer now.”
The policeman’s thin lips pulled into a sour line of displeasure. “We are not here to deal with what you want, signora.”
“Then why am I here?”
“To answer the charge of treachery to the State of Italy and to Il Duce as the representative of this country.”
Isabella kept her handcuffed hands entwined together on her lap, so that they would not shake.
“I am baffled, Colonnello. I have never done anything against my country. On the contrary, I—”
“Do not lie!” His hand slammed down on the desk, but his voice grew as soft as sand. “It will get you nowhere.”
Isabella could see in his eyes that in his mind she had already been tried and condemned. This was a formality, that was all. He was seated behind a metal desk in a chilly room, on the wall a poster of Il Duce on the famous balcony of the Venezia Palace as he addressed the crowds of Rome. It was the kind of gray-painted room where a person could lose her soul. Another officer sat silent in the corner, and the manila file in front of Colonnello Sepe looked alarmingly thick.
She sat upright on the hard chair and refused to drop her gaze. “What proof do you have, Colonnello, that I ever—”
“You are not here to ask questions,” he snapped. “You are here to answer them. You are charged with treason. You were running from the rally field long before anyone knew the airplane’s intention was to attack.” He placed one hand on top of the other on his desk, a small bony tower. “Why was that, Signora Berotti?”
Isabella’s mouth was dry. No words emerged. If she told the truth, she would be placing Roberto on this chair with these handcuffs biting into the strong bones of his wrists.
“It is clear,” the carabiniere continued, “that you knew what was about to happen and yet you warned no one. You were willing for Mussolini to die and that is treason.”
“No.”
“You have shown undue attention and care to the daughter of a known traitor.”
“That was because her mother—”
“You were present on a farm when the tenant was revealed to be an instrument of deception.”
“Instrument of deception?”
“Yes.”
Isabella’s mind was spinning. Something was clawing up her throat, trying to get out.
“And,” Sepe said, releasing his hands, palms up like a conjurer, “cracks have been appearing in a building in your charge. You are sabotaging the very construction of our town.”
He sat back in his chair, the skin on his forehead so tight it looked as though it might split. His eyes narrowed, observing her, and there was a gleam of satisfaction in them. Was this revenge for last time, when she had stood in the way of his questioning of Rosa?
“So, signora. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I am innocent.”
He snorted his disgust. “The cracks?”
Who had told him about the cracks? “I suspect they are the result of cost-cutting during the construction process,” she said. “Either the cement contains too much sand or the foundations were not dug deep enough. Neither of those is my responsibility.”
He jotted something down on a lined pad in front of him. “The farmer?”
“I was visiting him for the first time. I knew nothing about his farming skills.”
“So why were you there?”
She hesitated. A fatal error, she was aware. “To look at one of the homesteads from an architectural standpoint, now that they are occupied.”
Were her words too thin? Too weightless? Was her breathing too fast?
“And the girl called Rosa? I have seen for myself your attachment to that traitor’s child, so don’t deny it.”
“Her mother gave her to me to look after.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know.”
I don’t know. I don’t know.
This time the fleshless man in the dark uniform let a silence grow in the room, a silence that was as heavy as the mud in which her feet were trapped. They both knew what was coming next.
“Why did you run from the rally?”
This time she was ready for him.
“I was feeling ill. I wanted to get away before I was sick.”
“Liar!”
“No, it’s true. I was—”
“Liar!”
She shook her head.
“Signora, you left Il Duce and his loyal supporters to die on that field while you fled like the treacherous coward you are.” Scorn and disgust stabbed through his words. “Who told you about the plane?”
“No one.”
Colonnello Sepe stood up abruptly, knocking back his chair.
“Who are you working with against Il Duce?”
“No one. I am not—”
“The truth, signora. I will have the truth.”
“I am telling the truth.”
Why did he not mention Roberto? Or Davide Francolini? If he knew so much about her, he must know she was with them on the rally field. She was breathing too fast, but she was aware of Sepe’s every tiny expression, each flick of an eyelid, each tightening of a muscle, the way his pitch-black pupils contracted and expanded as he breathed. She saw it coming, his need to strip away another layer of her defenses, but there was nothing she could do to stop it.
He walked forward until he was standing right next to her in her chair at the front of the desk. She could smell his aftershave, something spicy and sharp, and the cloying scent of his hair oil. It took all her willpower not to flinch away from him. Without comment he seized her right wrist and laid it flat on the desk, dragging the other hand with it in the handcuffs. His grip was like steel.
“Now, signora, let us have the truth from you.”
From his holster he withdrew his gun but held it by its muzzle, raising it in the air above her fingers like a hammer.
“I imagine you need your hands to be very precise in your line of work, don’t you, signora?”
“Yes.”
“So you need full use of your fingers?”
“Yes.”
Her fingers spasmed on the desk.
“Who told you that the airplane was coming to crash into the platform?”
“No one.”
A sigh spilled out of him. A pretense. As if he didn’t enjoy his work.
“One last time. Who told you?”
“No one.”
The gun came down.