Tuscan Rose (41 page)

‘You’re doing very well,’ Fiamma said, fixing her intense eyes on Rosa. ‘I don’t know how you manage to study on top of it all.’

‘Without my family I have a lot of time on my hands,’ Rosa told her.

‘It’s good of you to have volunteered,’ said Gina. ‘And then to have ended up in our ward after just a few weeks…’

‘Many experienced nurses can’t take it,’ agreed Fiamma. ‘They can’t stand the smell or the sight of the injuries, let alone changing the dressings…It’s like we are torturing our patients rather than helping them.’

‘I remember when I came to the ward,’ said Gina, lighting one of her oak-leaf cigarettes, ‘I thought I’d seen it all. Then one day Dottor Greco was unravelling the bandages from a burn patient’s head and the man’s ears came off. I fainted.’

The women shook their heads and chuckled. There was nothing humorous about a man losing his ears, but the thought of Gina fainting in front of Dottor Greco amused them. They needed something to laugh at to stop them losing their sanity. The three women talked about the patients and staff. They didn’t speak about the war. It was obvious things were getting worse. In some of the wards, rationing was so severe that the nurses handed out hot-water bottles to relieve the patients’ hunger pains. The nurses were supposed to be given a free lunch each day. Lately Rosa, Gina and Fiamma had been sharing their food with their patients, unable to bear seeing the sick and suffering going without.

‘You know, the worst thing I ever encountered,’ said Fiamma, her eyes growing dark, ‘was a young woman from Milan. Her arms and legs had been blown off in an Allied bomb attack. She’d lost the sight in one eye and all her teeth from the impact. I was on the night shift and every time I went to check on her, she begged me to end her life. “I’ll never marry, I’ll never have children. They’ll put me in an institution.” We had to drain her wounds every day and she was in agony. The woman was suffering so
much that…well, one night when she was sleeping I nearly did put a pillow over her face. But that would be a sin, wouldn’t it? Mercifully she died a few days later.’

Rosa shuddered. She still believed in God, but the war and working as a nurse had made her question some of the Church’s teachings. Could it really be a sin to show mercy to another human being who was suffering that much?

In the visiting room at the prison, Rosa put on her brightest smile for Antonio. ‘Ylenia made some gnocchi for you,’ she told him. ‘And I’ve brought Gorky for you to read.’

‘I’ll be fat and Russian by the time they let me out,’ Antonio said, grinning at her. ‘How are things at the hospital? Are you still enjoying what you are learning?’

Rosa told him about her training lectures. She did not tell him about Niccolò or the other patients who had died that week. She didn’t tell him there was barely enough food to feed everyone and that she had heard from one nurse that in the mental asylums the inmates were being left to starve. Rosa kept her feelings to herself; she did not want to burden her husband. Then it occurred to her that maybe Antonio wasn’t telling her everything either. He was cheerful when she came to visit him and cleanshaven. He assured her that he was being treated well and given sufficient to eat, but she could see that, despite the extra food she brought him, he was growing thin. Yet from his outward demeanour one could be fooled into thinking that his prison term was nothing more than an opportunity to catch up on his reading. Rosa knew it wasn’t like that. We are both acting, she thought. Doing our best to paint a bright picture so as not to upset the other one.

When Rosa climbed into bed that night, she longed more than ever for her family. If she had Antonio near and could hug her children and pat Ambrosio and stroke Allegra, then somehow, she thought, she might even forget that there was a war on and embrace everything that was good about life again.

In December 1941, Japan, the third point of the axis with Italy and Germany, attacked Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into the war.

‘That attack only served as a diversion,’ Antonio told Rosa while they shivered one day in the prison visiting room at the beginning of 1942. ‘Everyone knows the Germans are losing in the Soviet Union. After the initial successes the bitter Russian winter is slaughtering them.’

‘There’s a train of injured people from Genoa arriving today,’ the matron told Rosa when she reported for duty. ‘You are going to the station with Dottor Greco and some nurses from the casualty ward.’

It was the second trainload of new patients in the last week. Rosa wasn’t sure how they were going to cope. The matron told her that some buildings in Florence had been selected to house patients who couldn’t be treated in the main hospital, and that she was recruiting more volunteers.

When the train arrived, Dottor Greco instructed Rosa to attend to the last carriage. ‘They have some Allied soldiers to be transported to the prisoner-of-war hospital. They’ll need someone who can speak English to check them over.’

Rosa rushed past the stretchers and people on crutches to the last carriage, which was guarded by soldiers and police. Two other nurses who could speak some English came with her to help. Rosa heard a man moaning.

‘Nurse?’ a soldier in a blue uniform called out to her. His leg was bandaged and he stood on crutches near another man laid out on a stretcher. The prostrate man had an amputated arm and was writhing in agony.

‘When was his surgery?’ Rosa asked, kneeling down beside the man.

‘Yesterday,’ the soldier on crutches told her.

Rosa hesitated, not sure that she had heard him correctly. The hospital in Genoa couldn’t possibly have sent out a patient so soon after major surgery! She didn’t want to remove the man’s bandage in these unhygienic conditions but from the shape of the cut it was a guillotine amputation, the kind that was performed in a hurry.

‘I’m going to give your friend something for the pain,’ she told the soldier on crutches.

She opened her kitbag and took out a syringe to draw the morphine. After a few minutes, the man with the amputation stopped writhing. The morphine wouldn’t get rid of the pain completely but she could tell he was feeling relief. He was going to need further surgery. Rosa knew he had a slim chance of surviving.

‘You’re a good woman,’ said the soldier on crutches. ‘The nurses on the train wouldn’t even give him a sip of water.’

Rosa wasn’t supposed to engage in conversation with the prisoners beyond assessing their medical needs. But she looked up and noticed the soldier had a disarming smile. All the men in that uniform seemed to share the same square-jawed faces and tanned skin. They were about the same age as Rosa, perhaps younger. She looked over her shoulder. The police and Italian soldiers were occupied getting the patients on stretchers into the waiting ambulances.

‘Which part of England are you from?’ she asked the soldier. ‘I don’t quite understand your accent.’

The soldier laughed and his periwinkle-blue eyes seemed to turn even bluer. ‘I’m from the very southern part of England,’ he said. ‘It’s called Australia.’

Rosa understood the joke and smiled. ‘Ah, Australia,’ she said. ‘Yes, I know it.’ She remembered the woman with the Schiaparelli belt. ‘You have kangaroos. When you go home, tell the people not to shoot them any more. They are beautiful. They should be taking care of them, not slaughtering them.’

The soldier’s face turned serious. ‘When I return home, I won’t be shooting anything,’ he said. ‘I’ll put my uniform and gun away forever. You can be sure of that. I’ve had a gutful of killing.’

An Italian policeman called out an order and Rosa and the Allied prisoner stopped talking. Two army orderlies picked up the man on the stretcher and the other prisoners who could walk were marched to the trucks. Rosa watched the soldier depart and wondered what kind of treatment he would get in the prisoner-ofwar camps if the nurses on the train wouldn’t even give his dying friend water.

She turned to signal to the other nurses to rejoin Dottor Greco who was still busy assessing the civilian patients. She was shocked when one of the nurses glared at her before spitting at her feet.

‘English-lover!’ the nurse growled. ‘Whore!’

Rosa recoiled at the words. Had the woman lost her mind?

‘You wasted morphine on that sheep farmer,’ the nurse said, her eyes blazing, ‘when there is a shortage of it for our own people!’

Rosa answered with genuine surprise: ‘May I remind you that as nurses we have pledged to give aid to
all
who need it. That man was in agony.’

‘Really?’ the nurse retorted, her lips curling into a snarl. She pointed at the civilian patients. Most of them were women and children. One infant was wailing and the sound of its distress was sickening. The nurse turned back to Rosa. ‘Do you know who those men are? They are the downed pilots who bombed Genoa. They’ve killed and inflicted unspeakable injuries on innocent women and children and you want to give them morphine to ease their pain! Why didn’t you slit their throats!’

What happened at the station affected Rosa more than all the other horrible events that had occurred since the war broke out. Finally her veneer of cheerfulness in front of Antonio broke. She couldn’t hide her tears. She had no idea how to reconcile her feelings of compassion for the Allied prisoners with her anger at what had happened to the children blown apart by their bombs. She had since learnt that downed Allied pilots were transferred to German prisoner-of-war camps where the conditions were harsher. The Australian pilot she had seen probably wouldn’t survive the war.

‘Rosa, what else could you have done?’ Antonio said when she told him about it. ‘It’s your duty as a nurse to care.’

‘I feel like I’m going crazy,’ she said. ‘They didn’t look like cold-hearted killers. They looked like decent young men.’

‘They probably are decent young men,’ he answered. ‘You’ve got to understand that we are doing the same to them. Their nurses are trying to put together innocent English children who have been blown to bits by
our
bombs—and we still expect the British to treat our pilots well!’

‘The whole thing is a mess,’ Rosa said.

Antonio reached out and touched her wrist. The guard didn’t stop him. ‘You know, once war breaks out there are no decent men and no morals any more,’ he said. ‘If people start thinking that way they will be defeated. What all the decent people need to do before war even breaks out is say “No!”. That is the time to be decent. That’s the only time it will do any good. But that’s not what we Italians did. We either cheered Mussolini on for our material gain or tried to ignore him. Now we pay the price.’

Rosa sat back and thought of the things Luciano had said against Mussolini and the fascists all those years ago. He had been right. But the memory of it made her cry even harder.

In May the following year, Rosa arrived at the hospital to find the doctors and nurses milling around in shock. The Allies had just bombed Rome.

‘I never believed that could happen,’ said Fiamma. ‘I thought all the Catholics around the world would object because of the Vatican. What next?’

Rosa realised that she and Fiamma were thinking the same thing: if the Allies could bomb Rome, then there was nothing to stop them bombing Florence. The tension amongst the hospital staff intensified when they realised that what had happened to the patients from Genoa and Milan could happen to them. The junior nurses changed the light bulbs to blue ones and checked the
blackout curtains. When Rosa left that day, she saw volunteers sandbagging the hospital’s ground-floor windows.

When she got home, she, Ylenia and the remaining neighbours in their apartment building stocked up the cellar with supplies and blankets, although Rosa knew from the patients she had been treating that a cellar wasn’t much protection if a building was hit. When she climbed into bed that night she couldn’t stop thinking of Antonio in Le Murate prison. He had assured her that the guards would move the prisoners to the cellars and bomb shelters if Florence was attacked, but Rosa didn’t believe it. She was sure that if there was an air raid, the guards wouldn’t release the prisoners. They’d be left in their cells like sitting ducks.

I
n July 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily, and Rome was bombed again despite the Pope’s appeal to Roosevelt to spare the city. With the crushing defeats in Africa and the union strikes that were breaking out in the factories, it was clear Italy was crumbling. At the hospital, the staff and volunteers could no longer cope with the influx of patients from the other cities as well as the growing number of repatriated soldiers. While the shortages of everything were difficult, Rosa was horrified to discover that the only treatment many of the transferred patients had received before arriving was a dose of bismuth.

At the commencement of the war, the nurses’ training course had been reduced from four to three years. With Italy’s impending defeat, Rosa found herself performing the duties of a senior nurse well before her time, including training the auxiliary volunteers. There wasn’t much scope for ‘training’ as such. The chaos in the hospital meant that Rosa had to show the volunteers once what she needed them to do and then leave them to it. Still, she felt herself in a better position than Fiamma, who had been transferred to triage, where incoming patients were coded with green, yellow or red cards depending on the severity of their condition.

‘Consider yourself lucky!’ the matron screamed at Fiamma one day when the nurse broke down at the announcement of another influx of patients. ‘A military nurse in your position has it much tougher than you. She has to pass over critically injured men and attend to the ones most likely to be able to be sent out to fight again!’

The matron was showing signs of strain herself. In the past few months her hair had turned from salt-and-pepper grey to stark white. She wasn’t the most even-tempered woman at the best of times and the war had pushed her beyond her limits. Still, she tried to help her nurses wherever possible.

‘I’ve found some extra hands for you,’ she told Rosa one morning. ‘Nuns.’

Rosa wasn’t surprised to have nuns as auxiliary nurses. Nuns had been attached to the hospital since its foundation and had been the original carers. They worked everywhere from the laundry room to the kitchen and Rosa found them resourceful and indefatigable. What surprised her was that the matron had found
more
nuns somewhere. Rosa had been convinced that any nun belonging to a charitable order must be fully employed in some sort of civil work. She had even seen nuns sandbagging buildings.

The matron told Rosa that the new recruits were waiting for her in the foyer. Rosa straightened her uniform and apron and donned her nurse’s cape, which she thought gave her a look of authority despite the inexperience she felt inside. She flew down the stairs, past stretchers and nurses, and stopped in her tracks when she reached the foyer. She was stunned by the sight of the coifs, the black veils, the crosses and rosaries. The nuns waiting for her were not the usual sisters of charity who had professed vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and to serve humankind. These were religious nuns, those who had taken the solemn vows of enclosure from the world. Rosa found herself facing the nuns from the Convent of Santo Spirito where she had been brought up.

She approached the group as if in a dream. Most of the nuns were young and would have entered the convent after she had left. But there were some familiar faces too.

‘Rosa!’ an excited voice called out. It was Suor Dorotea who had helped Suor Maddalena in the kitchen.

Rosa felt short of breath. The appearance of the nuns had caused her to lose her bearings. She knew that some members of the order could voluntarily come out of enclosure under exceptional circumstances, and the demise of Italy must have been considered such a circumstance. She caught sight of Suor Valeria, the oldest of the group. The nun looked bewildered but determined. Florence must have changed since she had last seen it, when she had come out of enclosure during the Great War.

‘Rosa! You are a nurse!’ said Suor Dorotea, her eyes twinkling. ‘We have come to serve the hospital. We have devoted all these years to prayer and now we are ready to help!’

‘Suor Maddalena?’ Rosa asked. ‘Is she coming too?’

‘
Madre
Maddalena,’ Suor Dorotea corrected her. ‘She is the Badessa now and will stay at the convent with the remaining nuns.’

The desperate situation at the hospital snapped Rosa out of her shock and back into action. She demonstrated the basics of patient care to the nuns. They took to their tasks in the convalescent ward without hesitation. Before the morning was out, they had the fundamentals of hygiene in hand. They were natural nurses in that they went about their work with an efficient calmness and had a positive effect on the patients.

That evening, Rosa sat up in bed and tried to take in what had occurred at the hospital. She was seized by a longing to see Suor…no,
Madre
Maddalena again. Rosa thought it strange that despite her conviction that Nerezza was her natural mother, she was more impatient to see Madre Maddalena than she was to discover what had happened at the villa and why she had been sent to a convent. That, she had told herself, could wait. She took out some stationery and wrote Madre Maddalena a letter. She started by telling her that she was grateful that she had allowed some of the convent’s nuns out of enclosure, and praised each one of them individually before adding:

With Florence in grave danger and the Allies rapidly approaching, you and I may never see each other again in this earthly life. I want you to know that I have not forgotten the love and faith with which you filled my childhood. Although my trust in God has taken many beatings, I have never lost it. It has brought me comfort in even my darkest hours.

I have three children, Sibilla, Lorenzo and Giorgio, who have all been brought up in the Church. I am now a nurse helping those civilians and some soldiers who have been injured in this great tragedy. I rely on my faith daily to carry out my work.

I would like to see you Thursday afternoon. As you may or may not be aware, I tried to visit you after I married but I was turned away by the former Badessa, who believed she had your best interests at heart. If your portress nun does not permit me entrance on Thursday afternoon, I promise that I will finally accept that it is not your desire to see me and I will never trouble you again.

With love and fond memories,

Your Rosa

On the appointed Thursday afternoon, Rosa went to the convent after finishing her shift at the hospital. She stood before the weather-beaten door and braced herself. She was exhilarated and nervous at the same time. She touched the cross and key around her neck before ringing the bell. An image of Suor Maddalena placing a flute in her hands on her seventh birthday came to her. She remembered running to the kitchen after her lessons to find Suor Maddalena peeling potatoes and ready to hear all about her day. With such fond recollections, to think that the rich and beautiful Nerezza was her mother seemed like sacrilege.

When the portress nun answered the door, Rosa’s breath quickened. She recognised the nun as the novice who had packed
her bag for her on her last day at the convent. Though, of course, she was older now and no longer a novice.

‘Good afternoon,’ Rosa said in a hoarse voice. ‘I have come to see the Reverenda Madre.’

The nun’s face broke into a smile. ‘Come this way, Rosa,’ she said.

Rosa’s heart leapt with joy. If it had been appropriate, she would have embraced the nun in gratitude.

On entering the parlour, she was assailed with familiar smells and memories. The blue-and-white décor had not changed, nor the smell of beeswax, incense and dusty Bibles. She took a seat and then noticed the portress nun had disappeared. Wasn’t she supposed to stay to supervise the conversation?

Rosa squeezed her hands to control her emotions when she heard the familiar bell ring, signifying that the door to the outside world had been closed. The wooden shutter flew open and for a few seconds she and Madre Maddalena stared at each other. Rosa was so taken aback to see her childhood guardian’s much-longed-for face that at first she felt she was looking at an apparition. She expected that Madre Maddalena, given her new position, might be aloof so was touched to see that she was also smiling and weeping at the same time. Rosa found it surreal that she and Madre Maddalena faced each other in their respective uniforms: Madre Maddalena in her nun’s habit, and Rosa in her nurse’s outfit. Rosa Bellocchi was
Sister
Parigi now. It was a few minutes before either woman could speak.

‘How good of you to come,’ Madre Maddalena said finally, dabbing at her eyes. ‘How good of you to remember me.’

‘I wanted so much to see you,’ Rosa replied. ‘Many times.’

‘It took this dreadful event to bring us together again,’ Madre Maddalena said. ‘Too many years have passed. And now look at you…you are a wife and mother and you are serving God and your country.’

Rosa wanted to tell Madre Maddalena about Sibilla and the twins but tears choked her voice and she couldn’t speak.

‘I’m so proud of you,’ Madre Maddalena continued. ‘You’re every bit as magnificent as I knew you would turn out to be.’

Rosa took a deep breath before speaking. ‘But I thought…I thought you believed that I…’ Madre Maddalena has never been ashamed of me, Rosa realised, weeping again. She has always expected the best of me. ‘Your prayers were answered,’ she told Madre Maddalena. ‘Before this war I had a very good life.’

Madre Maddalena reached her hand towards the grille and Rosa rested hers against it. ‘You will again, dear Rosa,’ she assured her.

Rosa saw a picture of Madre Maddalena coming to her apartment once the war was over and having dinner with Antonio and the children.

‘Will you come out of enclosure too?’ she asked her.

Madre Maddalena shook her head. ‘No, my place is here, and when the crisis has passed, my little flock of nuns must return too. This is our community. This is what we have chosen.’

Rosa and Madre Maddalena told each other about some of the things that had happened since they had seen each other last. Rosa learned of the death of the old Badessa and the new priest, Don Franchini, who had replaced the ailing Don Marzoli. Time passed quickly and soon Madre Maddalena had to return to her work. When they stood up to part, Rosa felt compelled to ask about Nerezza.

‘She took music lessons here as a girl, didn’t she?’

Madre Maddalena paused before she answered. ‘It was before my time, although I do remember some of the others talking about her,’ she said. ‘I believe she was an exceptional musician. But, Rosa…don’t go anywhere near that family. I’ve never forgiven myself or Don Marzoli for allowing you to be sent there. And as for the Marchesa Scarfiotti, we’ve heard terrible stories.’

‘What?’ asked Rosa. ‘I know that she’s been entertaining fascists.’

Madre Maddalena turned pale. ‘Worse than that. She’s opened up her villa to some high-ranking German SS officers for “rest and recreation”. Don Franchini has instructed the convent to accept no further donations from the Scarfiotti family.’

Rosa wasn’t shocked. That sort of self-indulgent and arrogant behaviour was typical of the Marchesa. But, in the end, the Germans were Italy’s allies, so the Marchesa could hardly be accused of frolicking with the enemy. But then Rosa noticed Madre Maddalena’s hands were trembling.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Madre Maddalena glanced away and shook her head.

A chill niggled Rosa’s shoulders. Something terrible was going on at the villa. She could sense it.

‘Please tell me,’ she said. ‘I worry very much for the girl, Clementina.’

Madre Maddalena turned to face Rosa. ‘There were two servants at the Villa Scarfiotti who were investigated by the SS and found to have gypsy origins.’

The pulse in Rosa’s temple began to pound and her legs became unsteady. All her instincts were telling her that something too horrible to imagine had occurred. She wanted to sit down but she willed herself to remain standing and listen to Madre Maddalena.

‘A gardener who no longer works at the villa came to Don Franchini after a particularly debauched and drunken party had occurred there,’ Madre Maddalena said. ‘He told Don Franchini that the SS officers along with the Marchesa forced the two servants into the woods and…hunted them like wild animals. They shot them for sport.’

Rosa covered her hand with her mouth. She could have screamed. No! It’s not possible, she thought. That is cold-blooded murder! But then she remembered the things she had seen the Marchesa do: her cruel treatment of the man with the cowlick; sending away Nerezza’s piano while her husband wept; and her order to destroy the Weimaraner puppy. Rosa realised that she
could
believe it. Then a worse thought came to her.

‘Was it the cook and her assistant?’ she asked. Rosa knew Ada and Paolina were witches but not whether they had gypsy blood.

Madre Maddalena shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I had the impression that the servants were men.’

Rosa thought quickly. She did recall two of the footmen had swarthy complexions. Why did God not strike the Marchesa down, Rosa wondered. She thought about the legend Ada had told her about Orsola Canova. Was the witch still there, lurking in the woods and waiting for justice? If so, she was losing. Evil and murder still reigned at the Villa Scarfiotti.

The story of the shocking deaths at the Villa Scarfiotti disturbed Rosa more than the news that the Allies were about to seize Rome and might be in Florence before the end of the month. She was starting to think that an Allied victory may not be the worst thing that could happen to Italy; what she feared most was the death and destruction that would be necessary to secure it if Italy continued to fight.

On her next visit to Madre Maddalena, Rosa confessed her suspicions that she was Nerezza’s daughter.

‘It’s possible,’ agreed Madre Maddalena. ‘This convent has had a connection with the family for a long time. But the Wolf—who was he then?’ she asked.

Rosa looked at the date in the back of the notebook again: 13 March 1914. Then she read out aloud the letter from Baron Derveaux, which mentioned that Nerezza had written about a matter of ‘great importance’ to tell him. It was obvious that they were close. Rosa also read the letter Nerezza had written to her husband and looked at the date.