The Italian Wife (5 page)

Their pace slowed. The child’s feet in scuffed sandals dragged across the paving stones. She stared up, eyes bright with curiosity. ‘Who did it?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know. No one was ever caught.’

Rosa’s face turned away. ‘Oh,’ was all she said.

‘Your mother said something to me, Rosa. Something about my husband.’

Isabella looked for a reaction in the girl’s face, but there was none.

‘Do you have any idea how your mother knew about my husband?’ She asked the question gently, aware that she shouldn’t be asking. Not now. But she needed to know, so still she asked it. ‘How did she know who I am?’

The girl abruptly stopped walking, her thin blue dress clinging to her legs in the breeze, and stared directly into Isabella’s eyes. ‘I never know what thoughts are in Mamma’s head. She tells me nothing.’ She gave a sharp single shake of her head to underline the word. ‘Nothing,’ she repeated. ‘So I don’t know.’

A rush of guilt brought a flush to Isabella’s cheeks. How could she be having this conversation with the girl just before she told her that her mother was dead?

‘Rosa.’ She wrapped an arm around the small bony shoulders. The girl stiffened but didn’t pull away. ‘Take no notice of me, Rosa. I’m not used to talking with children, so I’m no good at it. I say the wrong things.’

Rosa dipped her chin to her chest. The slender pale triangle of the nape of her neck looked vulnerable in the glare of the sun.

‘Yes,’ she said solemnly. ‘You do.’

‘We’re going to the police station now.’ Isabella took Rosa’s hand and started pushing herself along faster. ‘It’s about your mother.’

Rosa’s small fingers tightened. ‘Don’t say it,’ she whispered in a voice so soft it was whisked away immediately on the wind. She tipped her head back and gazed up at the carved triangular pediment above the meeting hall that they were passing. ‘Tell me more about the architecture instead.’

Isabella understood. The desire to stave off the bad news that was rolling like thunderclouds towards them. She felt the same herself.

‘See those,’ she said, pointing at the façade of the building. ‘They are fluted pilasters copied from the designs of Ancient Rome. But see how Frezzotti has combined them cleverly with soaring straight lines in the verticals and abrupt angles to create a building that is modern and exciting. We are creating a city that all Italy can be proud of.’

Rosa smiled and looked up, eager for more.

Isabella was not used to policemen. Or nuns. Or even priests, for that matter. In the airless interview room in the police station, she could see that the blackness of their robes and dark uniforms was crushing Rosa.

Isabella refused to give up her seat next to the girl at the table, despite the fact that Colonnello Sepe clearly wanted her out of the room. The nun was Sister Consolata and she took Rosa’s face between her two large hands and beamed God-given comfort into her young soul with a warmth and conviction that Isabella envied. Rosa didn’t cry when she was told the truth about her mother. She sat there with lips white as bone, her hands gripping the edge of the table and her shoulders hunched forward as if she’d been punched in the middle of her chest. She said nothing. Not a word. Just a faint rush of air escaped from her lips. Isabella wished the girl would cry.

They had entered the police station and found a waiting-committee of priest, nun and policemen ready. The priest informed Isabella in a low rumble that her father had telephoned them all before hurrying to the suicide scene himself. She thanked him and held tight to Rosa’s hand, overtaken by an urge to turn around and drag the girl out of there, to flee from the accusations and complications that she could sense hovered in the air, thick as the cigarette smoke.

They were marched down a polished corridor flanked by dark office doors. Isabella could hear the chatter of typewriters behind them and she glanced to her left when she saw that one of the doors stood open, revealing the figures of two men inside. Part of her hoped that one might be her father, though what he could do to help, she had no idea, but she knew his presence would steady her.

‘Did you find out anything? Was she pushed?’

The words came to Isabella clearly from inside the room, though they were not spoken loudly, and she recognised the voice of Signor Grassi, the Party chairman.

‘No.’ The answer was firm. ‘There was no sign of anyone else up there with her.’

The tall figure who replied had his back to her and as she passed she caught the impression that he was a younger man with a pair of strong shoulders and a restlessness that made her think he did not want to be in that room.

Was she pushed
?

Isabella looked quickly down at Rosa. Had she heard? Had her fingers tightened? The small face gave no sign but stared straight ahead with eyes that were flat and dull. The policeman opened a door at the end of the corridor. The interview room was painted a soulless beige and contained nothing but a metal table in the centre and a row of chairs. It felt crowded with all five of them in it and smelled of bad drains – a problem that the new drainage pumps were fighting hard to rectify. A raw young police officer marched them into it, and it was plain to see that despite his crisp uniform and the gun holstered on his hip, he was ill at ease when confronted by an orphaned child and the might of God in a cassock and a wimple. Like the coward he was, he went for the easiest target.

‘You,’ he snapped at Isabella. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

‘My name is Isabella Berotti. I am a friend of Rosa’s.’

That silenced him. Even he realised that the child needed every friend she could get right now. It was Sister Consolata who did most of the talking at this stage and Isabella hoped that her sweet musical voice was bringing comfort to Rosa. The middle-aged nun, her grey eyes cradled in soft folds of freckled flesh, spoke to the girl with a gentle kindness from within the tight jaws of her white linen wimple and her stiff white headdress.

‘Sorrow,’ she crooned to Rosa, ‘is a heavy burden for one so young to carry, but our dear Lord is with you, He is our refuge and our strength at all times, my dear. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. He gives us that promise, Rosa.’

But Rosa said nothing. Her small figure sat silent on the hard chair, her head bowed, her eyes down, cutting them all out of her world. Only her shoulders twitched now and again, a ghost walking cold fingers over her skin. Isabella longed to wrap an arm around her but knew instinctively that the girl wouldn’t welcome it, not here, not in front of these people. The priest stood in matching silence, a tall imposing silhouette in flowing robes in front of the window where the light seemed to stream through him. The abrupt arrival of the carabinieri chief of police, Colonnello Sepe, in the interview room altered the atmosphere. It became suddenly more threatening. He took the seat opposite her.

‘What’s your full name, Rosa?’ he demanded. ‘What are you doing here in Bellina? Why did your mother go up our tower?’

The child’s lips didn’t move.

‘She’s badly shocked, Colonnello. It’s too soon to be questioning her like this.’

‘That decision is not yours to make, Signora Berotti.’

The police colonel was a man whose voice was as sharp as his features and whose dark hair, glistening with brilliantine, was cropped into a Julius Caesar style as though to remind people where the power lay. To Isabella’s surprise it was the priest who stepped forward in her support and she noticed that an odour hung around his cassock, the smell of mothballs and incense. His eyes were the exact colour of the ancient Bible clutched in his hand. His high forehead was deeply lined although he wasn’t old, as if the battle for souls had left its mark on his face.

‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘Let the girl go with Sister Consolata. You can speak to her tomorrow.’

‘I brought her to you, Colonnello,’ Isabella added, ‘because she needs help, not for her to be treated like a —’

‘Silence!’ Sepe snapped. ‘We have to ascertain whether this is the child of the dead woman. I need names. Rosa,’ he leaned across the table, his hand slicing through the air between them as if to cut through to the truth, ‘what is your full name and what is your mother’s name?’

Even Isabella, who knew nothing at all about children, could have told him he wasn’t going to get far with a child using that tone of voice. All it did was make Rosa curl tighter into herself. Her head dropped further down on her chest, her dark hair hiding her face from his inspection and thwarting his intent to intimidate her.

‘We need the truth, girl,’ he told her. ‘Your mother has committed a crime against God. As well as a crime against our town and a crime against Fascism itself. Her blood has tainted us. It defiles the steps of a glorious building that stands as an example to other towns and cities throughout the world. Italy is proud of this town. How dare your mother come here to —’

‘Maybe, Colonnello,’ Isabella interrupted, ‘if you tried being kind to young Rosa you would learn more. Offer her something that she needs right now, instead of insults.’

The police colonel’s glance slid across to Isabella. A tense silence spread itself through the room.

‘Such as?’ he asked coldly.

Rosa’s head jerked up and her eyes fixed on Colonnello Sepe with an unblinking stare. ‘I want to see Mamma.’

‘
Madonna
mia! 
’ The words burst from Sister Consolata. ‘But she’s dead.’

‘I want to see her. Please. Let me see my mamma.’

‘Rosa,’ Isabella murmured, ‘are you sure? It will not be pleasant.’

But Colonnello Sepe had already pushed back his seat and was up on his feet. The faintest of smiles tugged at one corner of his mouth and Isabella wanted to knock it off his face.

‘Request granted,’ he announced and headed for the door.

Rosa jumped to her feet and was at his heels before he had crossed the room. Father Benedict strode forward and carved the sign of the cross into the air behind her.

It didn’t take long, but for Isabella every minute was a minute too long. She was not good at disguising her emotions. The hospital morgue lay in a windowless chamber in which harsh lights picked out the details of the female form stretched out on a metal slab. Fingers at strange angles, the gleam of black hair muted by dried blood, a broken body hidden beneath a coarse brown rubberised sheet. In the foul-smelling silence they approached it warily, alert for the slightest movement.

Isabella tried not to look at the face but it was impossible. It drew all eyes, a brutal mask of blood and bone. Someone had mercifully closed the dead woman’s eyes, so there was no doll’s empty gaze this time, but her forehead curved the wrong way like a saucer of blood and the raw ends of cheekbones and jawbone protruded through the blackened skin. Isabella took Rosa’s hand firmly in hers.

‘Enough,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen enough.’

Rosa didn’t speak. Didn’t cry. But she was shaking. Her whole body was shaking so hard that Isabella could hear her teeth rattling in her head. On the other side of her, Sister Consolata was intoning a prayer, but it would take far more than a prayer to repair the damage being done in this room.

‘So?’ Colonnello Sepe stood on the far side of the slab, his sharp eyes watching every breath Rosa took. ‘Is it her?’

It was her all right. Behind the mask of blood, even Isabella could see that it was the woman who had stood in the sunlit piazza earlier and said,
You
are a good person
. Why hadn’t she invited her to sit down? Why didn’t she have the sense to offer this troubled woman a sympathetic ear for her problems? All she had given was ice cream to her daughter.

‘So?’ Colonnello Sepe demanded again.

‘
Si
, she’s my mother.’ Rosa squeezed out the words between chattering teeth. ‘She is Allegra Bianchi. She brought me to Bellina to get rid of me.’

5

Isabella believed that was the end of it.

She honestly tried to put behind her the woman’s words –
They know who killed your bastard husband
– and to slot back into her old life, knowing that Rosa was beginning a new one in the care of the nuns. That was what was meant to happen, wasn’t it? You just had to get on with things – like learning to walk again and breathing and doing whatever it is you do to fill each day. She’d done it once before ten years ago, she could do it again.

But it wasn’t that simple. The day that was meant to be a day of sorrow for Luigi had cracked open and allowed the past to flood in. Isabella lay in bed that night, tossing and turning, her legs fighting the bedsheets and her head pounding. Allegra Bianchi’s suicide was a hard thing to live with in the dark. Her words had cut open old wounds.

All night Isabella listened to the wind whipping itself up into a fury and roaring across the flat floodplain from Cisterna to Terracina. It was rattling the shutters, scraping the dry bones of its knuckles over them, making her skin crawl until she could stand it no longer. She kicked off the sheet and gave up on the night.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Scrubbing.’ Isabella was on her hands and knees.

Her father looked down at the soapy brush in her hand and at the spotless kitchen flagstones and walls, and sighed with an exaggerated shudder.

‘Oh, Isabella.’

He removed her scrubbing brush and tossed it with disdain under the big enamel sink. ‘Come,
mia figlia
, sit and drink coffee with your father.’

They sat down at the table. Isabella had already laid it for breakfast with freshly baked rolls, prosciutto and moon-shaped wedges of melon. But her father reached for his favourite, the hard
fette biscottate
, which he proceeded to dip into his coffee. He regarded her over the top of his spectacles with disfavour.

‘Let it go, Isabella.’

‘Rosa is all alone. I’m worried about her.’

‘No, she’s not. Sister Consolata and the nuns are taking good care of her because that’s what they do. That’s why they have the school. They help children who have no parents. It’s not your job, it’s theirs.’