Tuscan Rose (14 page)

After the geography lesson, Clementina and Rosa revised some mathematics problems and then practised French. It was the longest time they had spent together since the ball and Rosa half-expected the Marchese to burst in at any moment and call Clementina away. But he didn’t appear. He must have gone to Florence; perhaps to find solace with Signora Corvetto instead. Rosa would have been delighted for the extended time if she wasn’t so anxious to speak with Ada.

Six o’clock came and Maria didn’t appear to take over as nursemaid and organise Clementina’s dinner.

‘Do you know where Maria is?’ Rosa asked.

‘No,’ said Clementina. ‘I didn’t see her last night either. I put myself to bed.’

Rosa was shocked. ‘What? Why didn’t you come and tell me?’

Clementina shrugged.

Rosa was growing impatient with life at the villa. She could see that Clementina was becoming used to the lack of routine. The
Marchese took off with her whenever he felt like it and now Maria was growing careless. She had no right to ignore her responsibilities to her young charge.

‘Wait here,’ she told Clementina.

She walked down the hall to Maria’s room and knocked on the door. There was no answer. Rosa was turning to go when she noticed a glimmer of light under the door. She knocked again. ‘Maria?’ She pushed open the door. The light was coming from a lamp on a writing desk. Next to it was Maria’s armoire with her nursemaid’s uniform dangling from a hanger on the door. If she wasn’t wearing her uniform, where had she gone? Clementina said that she hadn’t seen Maria the previous evening.

The room was neat with buttercup yellow walls and a Chinese rug on the floorboards. There was a strange smell: a sour stink like flowers that had been left in the vase too long. The room needed airing. The bed was in an alcove behind a drawn curtain. Rosa didn’t think Maria was there and was about to leave when she heard a moan.

‘Maria?’

She hesitated then moved towards the curtain. Her eye caught something in the washbasin: a bloodied towel. She pulled aside the curtain and reeled back. Maria was curled up on the bed with her knees to her chest. She was covered in sweat and shaking. Rosa reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on. Her stomach heaved. The bedding was soaked in blood.

‘Maria!’ she cried. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I’ve committed a sin,’ the girl wept. ‘God is punishing me.’

Rosa took Maria’s hand and was shocked to feel her pulse pounding like a hammer under her skin. She could see it too in the raised veins on Maria’s neck. Her own hands started to tremble and she had to struggle to think clearly. Then her eye caught something on the floor. It was a bloodied piece of metal that resembled an umbrella rib. Rosa remembered many years before when a young girl had come to the convent for help in the middle of the night. She had died in agony, her screams reaching the
dormitory where Rosa and the other girls lay shivering in their beds. Rosa later overheard the Badessa telling Suor Maddalena that the girl had haemorrhaged after using a knitting needle to abort the child she was carrying.

‘Oh, Maria,’ cried Rosa. ‘Who did this to you?’

Maria’s lips were blue. ‘It’s not his fault,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘I love him. I’d have left if I thought it was better, but there is no work out there for pregnant maids. I thought if I got rid of the…it…I could stay and he wouldn’t get into trouble.’

Rosa’s head was pounding. Did Maria mean the Marchese? Surely if he had any decency he would have sent Maria to a convent until she’d had the baby.

A spasm shook Maria. She clutched her stomach and tried to sit up. A clot the size of an egg passed between her legs. The horror of it shocked Rosa into action. She raced to the schoolroom where Clementina was still waiting.

‘Get Signor Bonizzoni! Quickly!’ she said to the girl. ‘Tell him Maria needs a doctor. Urgently!’

Rosa returned to Maria’s side and fell to her knees, praying for the nursemaid. Maria was gasping for air. Despite her agony, a strange smile came to her face. ‘Vittorio,’ she whispered. ‘Vittorio.’

The name hit Rosa like a slap. Vittorio? Her mind raced to make sense of things. Pictures of the Marchesa’s brother at Clementina’s birthday party and the ball flashed into her mind. Yes, he was always at the villa while the Marchese was often not.
He
was the one Maria had been seeing.

Maria sat up again and struggled for another breath. It was her last. She fell back on the pillow and her eyes glazed over. Rosa stood up and crossed herself. She heard footsteps in the hall and covered Maria’s lower half with a sheet and tried to arrange her into a more dignified position. But when she straightened Maria’s legs more blood flowed out of her and onto the floor.

‘Good God!’

Rosa looked up to see Signor Bonizzoni standing in the doorway. Signora Guerrini was with him. The housekeeper was
the last person Rosa would have called for assistance but, as the maids were her responsibility, Signor Bonizzoni must have asked her to come along too.

Signora Guerrini glared at the umbrella rib on the floor then looked at Rosa. ‘What have you done?’ she demanded.

Rosa glanced down and saw the front of her dress and shoes were covered in blood. Her hands too. It seemed that she could even taste blood in her mouth. ‘I’ve done nothing,’ she said. ‘I found her like this when I came to look for her after Clementina’s lesson. The poor girl is dead.’

‘We’d best go see the Marchesa,’ said Signor Bonizzoni. ‘She’ll have to call the police.’

The Marchesa was sitting with Vittorio in the parlour. They were smoking and playing cards.

‘What is it?’ she asked when the butler ushered Rosa and Signora Guerrini into the room. She caught sight of the blood on Rosa’s dress. Disgust pinched the corners of her mouth. ‘What’s happened?’

‘A most terrible incident,’ said Signor Bonizzoni. ‘The young maid Maria is dead.’

Rosa’s brain had clamped up and she couldn’t think at all. Not even to defend herself when Signora Guerrini insinuated that she had helped in Maria’s botched abortion. Signor Bonizzoni, who did not seem to think Rosa was the culprit, suggested the police should be called to investigate the matter.

The Marchesa jumped from her seat. ‘Police?’ she repeated, her voice turning shrill. ‘Another scandal! After what we have just been through!’

‘The girl is dead, Signora Marchesa,’ said Signor Bonizzoni. ‘We can’t hush such a thing up. The girl will have relatives and the younger servants will talk.’

Rosa’s stomach turned. Maria was being reduced to a pile of dirt to be swept under the carpet. ‘Little people’ the Marchesa had called her staff on the first day Rosa had laid eyes on her.

Vittorio was tapping his fingers and singing under his breath. He had heard the discussion but seemed indifferent to the fact that a young woman he had defiled was dead. Rosa was filled with disgust. Vittorio had used Maria like an old rag and she had been starry-eyed enough to believe she was in love with him.

The Marchesa launched herself at Rosa.

‘Who is the father?’ she demanded. ‘Who made the girl pregnant?’

Rosa had no time to think. She involuntarily turned in Vittorio’s direction. Signora Guerrini let out a gasp. Vittorio leaped out of his seat and backed away towards the fireplace.

‘A spoil of war! Little slut!’ he said, jerking his head nervously.

Oh, Maria, Rosa thought.

The Marchesa glared at Rosa. A sharp pain jabbed inside Rosa’s skull. It was as if the Marchesa had pierced her mind and was able to see what she was thinking. Understanding dawned on the Marchesa’s face. Rosa was no longer inconsequential to her: she was the enemy.

‘Abortion is a crime,’ the Marchesa said, turning to Signor Bonizzoni. ‘Mussolini says it is a crime against the integrity and health of the race. It must come with the severest penalties.’ She caught her breath as an idea crossed her mind. ‘I will call Il Duce myself,’ she said. ‘He will send someone here to deal with the matter.’

Signor Bonizzoni cleared his throat. ‘Very well, Signora Marchesa,’ he said. ‘But I don’t believe Signorina Bellocchi had anything to do with what’s happened.’

The Marchesa threw her head back. Rosa had a vision of her as a dragon sending out an explosion of fire; she felt it burn her feet, singe her clothes and melt her insides. The peculiar dizziness that had struck her with both Signor Taviani and Ada that afternoon gripped her again. The triangle was complete: Signor Taviani; Ada; and the Marchesa. But what did it mean? Rosa sensed that she had faced the Marchesa as her adversary some time in the past. And then, just as now, she had been helpless in her grasp.

‘Of course she helped,’ the Marchesa spat. ‘Those servant girls are all the same. They stick together. Take her downstairs and keep a watch on her.’

Signor Bonizzoni and Rosa stood motionless. Even Signora Guerrini hadn’t expected such a reaction. They waited to see if the Marchesa would continue, but she simply turned away from them and said, ‘That will be all.’

Rosa was taken to the laundry room where she waited with Signora Guerrini. The housekeeper wrung her hands and her eyes flickered to the window every few minutes. Rosa could tell she was worried that her insinuations would result in more grievous consequences than she had anticipated and that she might be implicated too. Half an hour later Rosa heard Signor Bonizzoni and Signor Collodi speaking as they came down the stairs. The men walked past the laundry window, carrying Maria’s body on a stretcher towards the garage. They had wrapped the corpse in a blanket but a pool of blood was seeping through it. The body looked diminutive, like a child’s. The sight gave Rosa the strength to speak finally.

‘I was with Clementina all afternoon. You can ask her yourself,’ she told Signora Guerrini. ‘And before that I was playing my flute near the bear. Ada saw me.’

‘Yes, yes, I’m sure it will be sorted out,’ said Signora Guerrini, twisting her apron in her hands. ‘That stupid, stupid girl. She’s brought trouble on all of us.’

Rosa tried to recall anyone who might be able to help her. She remembered the maid who had spoken with Maria at the garden party. The girl had obviously known that Vittorio was Maria’s lover. But what would be the point of involving her? She would become another innocent person caught up in the mess. Rosa realised that the only hope for her to keep her position at the Villa Scarfiotti would be if the Marchese arrived before whoever Mussolini was sending and intervened on her behalf. Otherwise she was sure she was going to be sent back to the convent and would never see Clementina again.

When Rosa heard a car coming down the driveway just after nine o’clock, she prayed it was the Marchese. Her heart fell to her feet when Signor Bonizzoni walked into the room followed by two men in fascist uniforms. The shorter of the two was in his thirties and seemed agitated. He kept taking a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping it across his sweaty brow and cheeks. The taller man was older with piercing eyes and pockmarks on his cheeks. Signora Guerrini gave a cry, stood up and rushed towards the other side of the room, as if Rosa had a contagious disease.

‘Is this her?’ the man with the pockmarks asked, pointing to Rosa.

Signor Bonizzoni gave a cautious glance in Rosa’s direction, then averted his eyes and nodded.

‘I had nothing to do with the matter,’ Rosa said.

‘Well, a tribunal will decide that,’ the short fascist said.

He grabbed Rosa by the arm and handcuffed her. There was no use struggling so she let herself be jostled out of the exterior door and around the side of the house. Parked in front of the villa was a van with mesh on the windows. Her legs gave beneath her when she realised she wasn’t being sent back to the convent; she was being taken to prison.

Ada was out the front of the house, running up and down the steps like a crazed animal. The Marchesa was also there with Vittorio.

‘Rosa, Rosa. What’s happened?’ Ada called. She tried to reach Rosa but the pockmarked fascist pushed her back.

‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ Rosa told her. ‘I didn’t do what Signora Guerrini said. I found Maria dying when I went to search for her after she didn’t show up to look after Clementina.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Ada. Her eyes met Rosa’s. She had to be careful because the Marchesa was watching. ‘Remember the key,’ she said under her breath. ‘It will keep you safe as it did for so many years.’

The short fascist opened the door to the van and pushed Rosa inside. Although she didn’t resist him he punched her in the breast
for good measure. She collapsed backwards in pain. The motor started up, the van pulled away and Rosa felt her freedom vanishing from her. She thought of Dono the bear; now she was caged and humiliated too. She looked back at the villa and caught a glimpse of someone at the schoolroom window. Clementina! The girl was rubbing her face and crying.

The van picked up speed. Flashes of light illuminated the interior as it passed each lamppost. Rosa shivered when a purple flash flickered over her. She understood then that she was being sacrificed to save Vittorio and avoid another scandal. The Marchesa saw her as expendable; just like the man with the cowlick.

T
he prison where Rosa was taken was a former convent. It retained the medieval look of a religious institution although it housed another kind of cloistered community now. The van stopped and the pockmarked fascist opened the doors. He bundled Rosa into the admissions room while his accomplice waited outside.

The fascist pushed Rosa towards a wooden bench. ‘Sit!’ he told her.

The prison warden appeared at the reception desk, tucking his shirt into his pants and smoothing his hair over his pate, as if he’d just woken from a nap. The fascist and the warden spoke in undertones. When they were finished, the warden picked up the telephone and barked some instructions. A guard and a nun, who was dressed entirely in white, appeared a few minutes later. The nun was stout with alabaster skin and thick eyebrows. Rosa’s eyes darted from the nun to the damp-stained walls of the room. This isn’t happening, she thought. The fascist seized her arm and forced her to stand in front of the reception desk. Then he left. Rosa heard the van’s motor start up and the vehicle sped away.

The warden lit a cigarette and let it dangle from his lips when he spoke. ‘Name?’ he asked Rosa. ‘Date of birth?’

He spoke with the same rhythm as the typewriter he was using to complete Rosa’s form. She could almost hear the ‘ding’ at the end of each of his questions; then a slight pause before he rattled off the next one.

The warden turned to the guard. ‘Section A,’ he said. ‘She’s not been sentenced yet.’

‘Sentenced?’ asked Rosa, struggling to think clearly. ‘What’s the charge?’

The warden shuffled through the paperwork on his desk and exchanged a look with the guard. ‘You’ll be informed when you appear before the tribunal,’ he told her.

‘When will that be?’ Rosa could barely get the words out, she was breathing so hard. Her stomach was a tight knot. Sentenced? Tribunal?
She hadn’t done anything wrong.

The warden shrugged, taking the cigarette from his lips and holding it in his fingertips. The nun cleared her throat and raised her caterpillar eyebrows. The warden took the hint and noticed that Rosa’s dress was covered in blood.

‘Fetch her a uniform, please, Suor Gabriella,’ he said.

The nun took a prison tunic from a cupboard and led Rosa to a screen in the corner. ‘You wouldn’t normally have to wear this until you have been sentenced but I have nothing else to give you,’ she said, biting her lip. She was diminutive, barely reaching Rosa’s waist. The compassion in her voice made Rosa want to cry.

The guard undid Rosa’s handcuffs so she could change her clothes. He noticed the chain with the cross and key around her neck and nodded to Suor Gabriella.

‘I’m sorry,’ the nun said to Rosa. ‘You’ll have to give that to me.’

‘No, please!’ cried Rosa. She felt as if she was being stripped of everything. The key was meant to keep her safe.

‘Enough!’ shouted the warden. ‘This isn’t a hotel! You do what you’re told!’

‘I’ll put it in a safety box for you until you are released,’ Suor Gabriella assured her. Their eyes met and Rosa realised that the
nun understood that several steps in the justice procedure were being overlooked.

Rosa stood behind the screen to change her clothes. The encrusted blood on her dress pulled her skin when she tugged it off, but the prison tunic was even rougher. It smelled like mouldy bread.

Rosa wasn’t fingerprinted, photographed or searched. The guard threw her dress into a sack of rubbish when it should have been kept as evidence. It was clear that instead of recording her existence at the prison, the warden was doing his best to erase it.

‘Take her,’ the warden told the guard.

Rosa nearly swooned. The guard grabbed her arm to stop her falling. His sweaty fingertips squeezed her skin. ‘Come on,’ he said, flicking his tongue across his lips. ‘It’s not that bad. You’ll be all right. The nuns are good here.’

With each set of gates they passed through, Rosa felt the walls closing further in on her. The blood pounded in her ears. This is a nightmare, she thought. This can’t be real. They passed a dormitory where several women were asleep on wooden bunks with infants tucked up with them. Rosa wasn’t put in there. She was taken to a row of single cells with steel doors. The cell she was allocated was fifteen feet long, seven feet wide, eight feet high. It was the same size as her room at the convent had been but there were bars on the window. Above the bed was a faded outline of a crucifix and some bent screws in the wall. It looked as though somebody had ripped the crucifix off with their fingers.

Rosa collapsed on the bunk and listened to the guard snap the lock shut. The finality of the situation hit her. She dropped her head into her hands and wept.

Rosa didn’t sleep that night. She jumped at every sound in the corridor. She longed to have her flute with her; playing it would have given voice to her anxiety and bitterness. Why did Maria have to get involved with Vittorio? She was a pretty girl. Any of the male servants would have loved to have married her. Now she
was dead and Rosa was in prison. Rosa lifted her hands and imagined her beloved instrument in them. It was at the villa and lost to her. She prayed that Clementina might find it and play it. It would be the only link between them now.

The following day Rosa had contact with no-one except a bad-tempered nun whose rotund body resembled a water-logged sponge. She lumbered into the cell with a bowl of thin broth, stale bread and wine diluted with water. The wine tasted sour but Rosa drank it anyway because she was thirsty.

‘When will I be sentenced?’ she asked the nun.

The nun’s face pinched. ‘I don’t know! Don’t speak to me! I know nothing!’

The nun left and Rosa’s mood plummeted further. She remembered Ada’s instruction to hold onto the key:
It will keep you safe as it did for so many years.
In the light of what had happened, Rosa could not see any significance in the key or what Ada had wished to tell her. All she could think about was surviving this terrible dream.

When she still had not been charged three days later, a stark fear churned in her belly. The Marchesa was personal friends with Mussolini. Maybe there was never going to be any charge or hearing. Maybe she had simply been locked away.

‘Can I write a letter?’ she asked the obese nun when she brought her supper. She wanted to contact Don Marzoli. Surely he would be able to help her.

‘No!’ the nun said, turning away. ‘Stop asking me. You plotted against the state. You’re not allowed any contact.’

Rosa stared at the nun in disbelief. Plotting against the state was a serious crime committed by intellectuals and revolutionaries—people like the activists Antonio Gramsci and Camilla Ravera—not humble governesses like herself. Even if abortion was against the law, Maria had not been thinking of the state when she tried to get rid of her child.

The nun left and Rosa felt ill, not with a physical disorder but with an attack of nerves. She paced the cell like Dono paced his
cage, and swung from feeling sorry for Maria to berating the dead girl for her stupidity.

Rosa was kept in the cell on her own for the next three weeks. She did none of the things she had read about prisoners in novels doing: scratching out the days on the wall of her cell or tapping messages to other prisoners. She had no idea who occupied the other cells. She only heard movements behind the steel doors when one of the nuns led her down the corridor to empty her chamber pot. There was no hollering of desperate captives, no drifting of broken voices. If she hadn’t seen her own excrement mix with that of other human beings when she emptied her pot into the pit, she might have thought she was the only prisoner there. She passed her days as if in a trance, trying not to think of anything: not the future, nor the present nor the past.

Then one morning a guard woke her early. ‘Hurry up!’ he said. ‘Someone is here to see you!’

Rosa was groggy with sleep but slipped on her prison clogs and followed the guard to a room that contained a table and two chairs. One of the chairs was occupied by a man in a fascist uniform. He had sunken cheeks and lifeless eyes. His mouth narrowed to a slit when he saw Rosa. The spite in his gaze chilled her blood.

‘You are accused of a crime of the most serious nature,’ he said. ‘You have set yourself up as an enemy of the state.’

The second time Rosa heard that accusation was almost as much of a shock as the first. ‘When is the trial?’ she asked, her voice barely audible.

A look of distaste filled the official’s face. ‘Trial? There is no trial. You stay here until you are reformed.’

Rosa found the courage to speak up. ‘There are witnesses at the Villa Scarfiotti who know that I had nothing to do with the death of Maria Melossi,’ she said.

The official pursed his lips. ‘If I were you,’ he said coldly, ‘I wouldn’t mention the Scarfiotti family. You have never heard of
them. Never worked for them. Say nothing of your time there. Until we are sure of your silence, you stay here.’

When the guard was taking Rosa back to her cell, they passed a nun leading an elderly prisoner towards the infirmary. The prisoner walked with tiny, pigeon-toed steps and she leaned heavily on the nun. She glanced at Rosa with world-weary eyes and Rosa wondered what kind of judge would send such a frail old woman to prison. Then it occurred to her that the prisoner might have been sentenced when she was a young woman and had been in prison all her life. I’m finished, Rosa thought.
I’ve been buried alive.

Back in her cell, she wept bitterly. She could be in prison for years without any way to present her case. The Marchesa had more influence with Mussolini than Rosa had anticipated. And Il Duce, it seemed, was not above circumventing the due processes of the law.

‘What’s wrong?’

Rosa looked up to see a guard peering at her through the window in the door.

‘I’m fifteen! I’m innocent!’ she cried. ‘I don’t belong in prison! I swear before God I’ve done nothing wrong!’

She heard the key turn in the lock and the door opened. The guard stepped inside her cell. He was the guard who had been in the admissions area the night she had arrived at the prison. She remembered him by his fastidiously combed hair and five-o’clock shadow. He had even features and could have been handsome but somehow wasn’t.

‘Only fifteen?’ he said, hitching up his pants a little higher. ‘That’s too bad. But in my opinion they are simply trying to scare you. They send the real anti-fascists to Trani or Ponza, which are much harsher places than this. The Madre Superiora here is sympathetic to political prisoners, although she has to be careful not to antagonise the Blackshirts.’

Rosa’s tears dried. These were the first words of encouragement she had heard in weeks. The guard smiled at her. His teeth were
straight but yellow. The guard’s uniform was neat but he had sweat stains under his arms. There was something incongruous about him that Rosa couldn’t put her finger on. Yet he seemed to mean well.

‘How do you know so much about the other prisons?’ she asked.

‘I’ve worked in most of them,’ he replied. ‘I move around.’ Then, scratching his head, the guard asked Rosa, ‘Don’t you have any family? Someone who can write to Mussolini for a pardon on your behalf?’

‘No,’ said Rosa, looking at her hands.

‘No family?’ said the guard, his voice rising a pitch. ‘No-one to look out for you?’

Rosa shook her head. ‘The priest for the convent where I was brought up would help, but I’m not allowed to write letters.’

The guard clucked his tongue. ‘There are ways around that. I’ll bring you some writing materials and I’ll give your letter to the Madre Superiora. As long as she approves, it will be sent out with the prison mail.’

The glimmer of hope the guard gave Rosa hit her heart like a sunbeam. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘See,’ he said, ‘you’re much prettier when you smile. I told you things are not so bad here.’

Rosa wrote a letter to Don Marzoli, begging him to come and see her at the prison. She gave it to the guard, whose name, she learned, was Osvaldo. Then she lay on her bunk with her hand over her eyes and imagined that she was back in the schoolroom with Clementina. She recalled the details of their lessons together: the sound of Clementina’s pen scratching out her sums; the smell of gorgonzola wafting from the tray of food Ada had prepared for lunch; Clementina’s small hands over the piano keyboard when she practised her scales. Rosa decided that when she was released she would return to the convent and take holy vows. Somehow she would convince the Badessa that she was meant for the life of a nun. I’m not made for the outside world, that’s for sure, she
thought, recalling the fleeting pleasures she had experienced on her first day on Via Tornabuoni. She remembered the strange fashions, the joy of new shoes and the dashing Signor Parigi. None of those things meant anything now.

As well as having to remain in her cell at mealtimes, Rosa was sent by herself to the exercise yard. She heard other prisoners moving along the corridor to spend time in the yard for several minutes each day but she was allowed into the yard only twice a week and was often left there for hours at a time, sometimes under the watch of a guard and sometimes under the supervision of Suor Gabriella. Rosa sensed there was something different about Suor Gabriella: she was not hard like the other nuns. She would have liked to turn to her for solace, but contact beyond basic communication was forbidden for political prisoners. It was as if Rosa wasn’t a person any more. Not even a prisoner. She had become a ghost.

She did not hear back from Don Marzoli.

‘Ah, the Madre Superiora has contacted him herself,’ Osvaldo reassured her when she asked if there had been a reply. ‘Together they are working to get you released. But you have to be patient. These things take time.’

Rosa agreed to be patient but asked if Osvaldo would deliver another letter for her. This time she wrote to Suor Maddalena, pouring out her sorrows to her former guardian and asking for her prayers.

Tears trickled down Rosa’s face when she handed the letter to Osvaldo. ‘The letter will be sent soon, won’t it?’ she asked.