Tuscan Rose (15 page)

‘Of course,’ he said, taking the envelope and slipping it into his pocket. ‘I told you that I would help you. I’ll keep my promise.’

At the beginning of autumn, Rosa was taken to the exercise yard and was surprised to see another prisoner standing at the far end.

‘You are not to speak to her,’ Osvaldo warned Rosa. ‘We have to put you in together to save watch time.’

The yard was a narrow enclosure with a bench at either end. The only exercise that could be performed in it was to walk up and
down its short length. When Rosa and the other prisoner passed each other, they exchanged glances but then quickly looked away. The woman was about forty years old. Rosa could tell from the noble line of her neck that she’d once been handsome, but time had ravaged her beauty. The woman’s skin was covered in fine wrinkles and age-spotted by the sun. Rosa assumed that because she and the woman were not allowed to speak with each other, and because they were alone in the yard, that she was a political prisoner too.

The next time they were in the exercise yard, the women held each other’s gaze for longer. Rosa thought the other woman seemed gentle. The impression surprised her because there was nothing gentle about being in prison.

One day, when Suor Gabriella was on duty, the woman spoke to Rosa when they passed each other.

‘Are you a political prisoner too?’ she asked.

Rosa’s heart beat like thunder in her chest. Having had no-one to talk to for so long, her voice had dried up. She simply nodded. For weeks now, she had lived in her head, but the woman had taken a risk in communicating with her and Rosa wanted to share it.

The next time they passed each other, Rosa asked, ‘Why are you here?’

‘I protested against female teachers being paid less than men, and not being able to teach science and maths,’ the woman replied. ‘I’ve been in prison for two years.’

Rosa walked on and the other prisoner did the same. So the woman was a teacher. Rosa was thrilled by the idea that they had something in common.

When they passed each other again, Rosa hurriedly whispered, ‘I was a governess. My name is Rosa.’

‘Sibilla,’ answered the woman, coughing into her hand to avoid being seen talking. ‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.’

The conversation ended when another guard arrived with a group of prisoners to take the women’s place in the yard. But when they were called to return to their cells, Rosa and Sibilla exchanged secret smiles.

The next time Rosa was taken to the exercise yard, her heart leaped with joy when she saw Sibilla was there again. ‘My husband was a university professor,’ Sibilla explained to Rosa in successive passes. ‘He wouldn’t join the fascists and spoke against them. They were going to arrest him but he fled to Paris and has been living there in exile for four years. I’ve been under watch ever since. Then they finally found a reason to imprison me.’

‘They don’t always need a reason,’ said Rosa.

Sibilla frowned. Rosa looked up and saw that Suor Gabriella had seen them talking. Her stomach lurched. Her fear wasn’t so much that her sentence would be extended for talking to Sibilla but that the brief exchange of words she shared with another human being would be terminated. The fascists were achieving their aim of turning her into a ghost. Talking with Sibilla was the only way she had of resisting them. Suor Gabriella turned her back on the women.

Sibilla sighed with relief. ‘She’s all right, that one. Sometimes I think she feels sorry for those of us imprisoned for our ideals.’

‘I can’t imagine how you’ve lasted two years,’ Rosa said. ‘I’ve only been here a few months and I think I’m going mad. They don’t allow me to speak to anyone. I’m only referred to as a number.’

Sibilla nodded grimly. ‘You have to fight the battle for your mind. You must think constantly about what you will do when you get out of here. That will pull you through.’

‘Is that what you do?’ asked Rosa, feeling grateful for Sibilla’s encouragement.

A troubled expression clouded Sibilla’s eyes, but then she smiled. ‘I think of Pythagoras when things get to me. He’s my hero.’

‘Pythagoras!’ Rosa exclaimed, then checked herself for speaking too loudly. ‘The nun who raised me loved to study Pythagoras from the books in the convent library,’ she whispered, feeling a warmth as she remembered Suor Maddalena’s regard for the Greek philosopher.

‘Isn’t that unusual for a nun?’ Sibilla asked, raising her eyebrows. ‘Pythagoras believed in reincarnation.’

‘He taught the immortality of the soul and asceticism,’ Rosa said, remembering her own reading. ‘But the nuns studied him because of his theories of music, astronomy and mathematics rather than his philosophies.’

Sibilla nodded approvingly. ‘It sounds like you were brought up by cultured nuns.’

‘I was,’ agreed Rosa. ‘They were cloistered but they weren’t ignorant. I was lucky.’

‘Well, then,’ said Sibilla, checking over Rosa’s shoulder to see if they were being watched, ‘Pythagoras believed one’s highest purpose was to pursue enlightenment and knowledge, to become the fullest person one can be. For some reason we’ve been given this experience to realise that.’

‘What have you learnt?’ Rosa asked, hungry to take in every piece of wisdom she could from Sibilla.

Her companion raised her eyes and smiled. ‘I’ve learnt that if the soul is immortal, then one never has to fear death.’

Rosa sensed Sibilla would like to say more but Suor Gabriella turned around and they quickly separated. The nun might be more lenient than the other guards but they still had to be careful.

The next time Rosa was in the exercise yard with Sibilla it was under the watch of Osvaldo and, as he was in the habit of staring at them, they couldn’t talk. But even though they couldn’t speak, they exchanged looks that were full of warmth and friendship. They would have to wait patiently for another chance to share their ideas.

A few days later, Rosa was lying on her bunk when Osvaldo arrived at her cell, grinning ear to ear. She’d been trying to follow Sibilla’s advice about fighting for her mind by recalling everything she knew about Pythagoras. She remembered that he’d been in prison too, in Babylon.

‘I have arranged something special for you,’ Osvaldo said.

‘What?’ asked Rosa, standing. Had Don Marzoli finally come to see her?

‘Come this way,’ he said, unlocking the door to let her out.

Osvaldo led her past the exercise yard to a workroom where rows of prisoners sat at knitting equipment and electrically powered sewing machines.

‘Usually political prisoners are not allowed out of their cells,’ he said. ‘But I have permission from the Madre Superiora for you to work here.’

The workroom supervisor set Rosa to the task of braiding straw for wine casks. The chore was a disappointment in comparison to the visit from Don Marzoli she had been hoping for, but Osvaldo was right: it was better than sitting in her cell and doing nothing.

‘The money you earn will be held for your release,’ Osvaldo told her.

Rosa’s task was a solitary one but at least she had the chance to
see
the other prisoners. They were a mix of ages. Some looked depressed, while others looked resigned to making the best of their lot. Rosa tried to match the crime to the woman: murder, theft, prostitution. But she would never know if her guesses were correct. She couldn’t have spoken with anyone even if she wasn’t in a corner on her own. The guards in the workroom were vigilant; they had to be with so many sharp objects in the prisoners’ hands. When Osvaldo was on duty he was forever sneaking glances and smiles in Rosa’s direction. Rosa returned his smiles because he had been kind to her, but she couldn’t help feeling obligated to him in a way that made her uncomfortable. She wondered why Sibilla was never in the workroom. Surely she should be allowed to earn money for her release too? Protesting unfair wages couldn’t be any worse a crime than the one Rosa had been accused of.

Winter arrived and the air through the cell window was cold. Whenever Osvaldo was on duty in solitary confinement, Rosa begged him for news from Don Marzoli. His answer was always the same: ‘He is waiting for an appointment to be fixed with the
Fascist Party officials in Florence. You must be patient. These things take time.’

Despite the cold, Rosa was still sent to the exercise yard twice a week. The contact with Sibilla was a lifeline. Usually when she returned to her cell after being with Sibilla, Rosa felt better than when she had left it, but sometimes she felt worse. She would have to harden herself again until the next time she met her friend. Rosa constantly feared that Sibilla might be swapped with another prisoner, but by some grace that hadn’t happened yet. Then, a few days before Christmas, Sibilla and Rosa experienced a miracle. They were walking in the yard, stamping their feet and beating their arms to keep warm, when the prison alarm sounded. They looked at each other.

‘Someone’s escaped,’ said Sibilla.

The guard who was watching them locked the gate to the exercise yard and fled to join the search. They were left alone and unsupervised. Such a thing had never happened before.

‘Come,’ Sibilla said to Rosa, taking her by the arm. ‘Let’s huddle in the corner. We can pretend we had to stay together to keep warm after we were abandoned.’

It was freezing and the women only had their prison clogs on their feet and a padded jacket over their thin tunics. It wouldn’t take much to pretend they were cold. But Rosa was thankful for the precious time together; she couldn’t be happier even if she were sitting in the full rays of the sun. Sibilla and Rosa spoke of everything they had longed to share for the past months. They told each other about their favourite foods, music, paintings and even smells and times of the day—all the things that they had not spoken about for so long and which they had almost forgotten themselves. Rosa told Sibilla about her visions and how she saw the source of things.

Sibilla’s eyes grew wide. ‘Those visions are a sign,’ she said. ‘I believe you have them because you have a supernatural sympathy with animals. That’s why when you see leather or fur or meat you see it for what it really is: something murdered. Pythagoras did too.’

Rosa considered what Sibilla had said. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘That makes sense to me—that animals have souls. They have spirits.
Just like us.
I’m seeing the spirits of the animals that have been killed to satisfy people’s gluttony and vanity.’

It was a revelation to Rosa. The Church taught that animals didn’t have souls or personalities; which was why Christians didn’t have any qualms about killing them.

‘What you are saying is against everything I have been taught,’ Rosa said. ‘I believe in God yet I’m starting to question some of the Church’s teachings. But that’s a sin, isn’t it?’

Sibilla shook her head. ‘Questioning things makes you a complete human being. If God created you, wouldn’t He take delight in you being a full person? The Pythagorists believed that the earth’s soil provides everything we need to eat and there was no need to inflict suffering on animals by slaughtering them for food. They believed humans and animals were linked spiritually and the harm mankind did to animals was what brought all sorts of troubles onto humans—like wars, plagues and disease.’

The women went on to talk about their interests. Rosa was in awe to discover that Sibilla had read the Greek philosophers who had been influenced by Pythagoras too—Socrates, Aristotle, Plato.

‘And you speak French, English and German?’ exclaimed Sibilla. ‘How can you hold so many languages in your head?’

‘There weren’t a lot of distractions at the convent,’ Rosa explained. ‘For me, learning each new language was like exploring the world from my classroom. Once I’d mastered French, I couldn’t stop “travelling”.’

‘Not having learnt French is my greatest regret,’ said Sibilla. ‘After not having children with my husband before he went into exile. French is the language of romance.’

‘I can teach you,’ Rosa offered. ‘When we pass each other in the yard…I can give you a phrase at a time.’

Sibilla laughed and hugged Rosa. It was the first time anyone
had embraced her since she had been with Clementina. It warmed her.

‘Yes, that would be wonderful,’ said Sibilla. ‘Sometimes at night I imagine I am there with Alberto in Paris. I can speak to him in French in my dreams.’

The women fell silent for a moment. Their lips were turning blue and their feet were frozen. Yet neither of them wished for their time together outside to end.

‘How did you meet your husband?’ Rosa asked through chattering teeth.

Sibilla pulled her tunic over her legs as far as it would go. ‘We were in an astronomy class together at university. We fell in love gazing at Venus.’

Rosa’s toes tingled. She thought of the couple she had seen kissing in the Boboli Gardens and then, to her surprise, she thought of Signor Parigi. ‘It must be nice to be in love,’ she said.

‘Stand up!’ a voice shouted.

The women jumped apart at the command. The guard had returned. He was about to shout something else but one look at their pale faces and blue lips and he decided against it. He’d been negligent in his duties. Any longer in the cold and they might both have come down with pneumonia.

‘Move this way,’ he said, ordering them out of the yard.

July, the month of her incarceration, came around again and Rosa remained in prison. She tried to take consolation in Osvaldo’s assurances that Don Marzoli and the Madre Superiora were making progress on her case, but she was frustrated.

‘Why doesn’t Don Marzoli come to see me?’ Rosa asked Osvaldo one day.

‘Perhaps he feels it would compromise your case. Perhaps he wants to appear impartial.’

Osvaldo’s reasoning made no sense to Rosa. ‘I’m not allowed to go to chapel,’ she said. ‘I can’t take communion. I’m not only being cut off from life and other human beings but from God.’

‘You are full of complaints today,’ said Osvaldo, looking at Rosa disapprovingly. ‘Don’t you appreciate what I’m doing for you? I’m taking risks to help you.’

‘Of course I appreciate it,’ Rosa was quick to reassure him. She didn’t want to offend Osvaldo, he was her only hope of contact with the outside world.