genuine. The next day, he was no more vital – at his meeting with Hitler, he rambled and mumbled that he wanted to retire and go home. To avoid the fear of civil war in Italy, he claimed.
Hitler was having none of it. ‘Utter rubbish,’ he replied. ‘Here is what you will do.’
Mussolini must either return as the leader of the Italians and continue the fight alongside Germany, or Hitler would take over Italy himself. If Mussolini agreed to return as leader, he must undertake to have all the traitors who had voted against him executed, including his son-in-law, Count Ciano. To Hitler, his old friend appeared smaller, shrunken and diminished, and though he found it hard to regain the old adulation, he loved him still and he needed him.
Two weeks later, with SS General Karl Wolff, ‘Supreme Leader of all SS Troops and Police in Italy’, Mussolini was flown to Gargnano on the shores of Lake Garda as head of the newly formed Italian Socialist Republic. The Republic of Salò.
Back in Novara, Clara was even more tired and almost as resigned – she was convinced by then that Ben was dead and that she soon would be. Her mother carped at her to take a little more trouble with her appearance, but it was not easy to maintain standards in the convent, and really, who cared? She would write a letter for every one of the days of her imprisonment. At least she could do that.
Neither distances, nor walls nor bars, nor jailers, can keep me from you. I love you. I love you. I think of you night and day.
And then, out of the lowering sky, like a bolt of lightning came the news of the Armistice and of Mussolini’s rescue. She fell to her knees and drew out her rosary. She should have known Saint Rita would look after him, with all the prayers she had offered up. Claretta’s sobs of relief ricocheted throughout the corridors but did not generate much rejoicing for her. Now he will have us set free and send for us, she knew. She took up her pen.
Suddenly, they tell us you will speak on the radio tonight at 9.30 from Germany. I have a shock to the heart. I begin to tremble … and in the profound silence, the radio sends me your voice, your voice, your voice. My Ben, my Ben. A convulsion, a shudder, a burst of unstoppable crying, sudden violent sobs that I try to suffocate in the arms of Mimi. I cannot, I cannot stop myself, it is all my soul that overflows, I hear you, I hear you, you speak, you are love, I live still to hear you, it is you.
Some time later, one of the prisoners told her that Il Duce was now on Lake Garda and that he was back in charge of the government – what could it all mean? Never mind, as soon as he got them out, she would know everything. The days passed and the nights did not and no news came from Ben. It was not possible that he had forgotten them! Or was it all lies and he was really dead?
Giuseppina complained to her daily. ‘Find a way to contact him. It is impossible to think,’ she huffed, ‘that he is free and we are still here, locked up with these common felons.’
Then one day, after a lifetime had passed, one of the elderly nuns, looking furtive, produced the local newspaper for Clara – the girl might be a sinner, she said to her sisters, but she was suffering, poverina. Greedy for news of any sort, Clara rushed to her cell to read it, only to learn that Rachele and the family had joined Ben on the lake. So it was true. The words tumbled over each other on the page as if the ink had run – the heat of her rage almost set her clothes on fire. Her breathing escalated to danger point and she began to hyperventilate. Knowing what would follow, her mother called for help – she was smaller than her daughter and could not hold the weight as Clara collapsed forward over her. The nuns ran back and forth carrying damp cloths and water. They too would be relieved when that fractious family was released. The sooner the better, they muttered.
At last, Clara managed to get a letter smuggled out through the nuns, who sent it to the German headquarters in Novara, and the very next day, a German staff car arrived with an SS escort and collected the whole family. They were taken, not to Ben, but to Merano.
‘At least it is not prison,’ said Giuseppina, ‘and Merano has always been a very nice town.’
CHAPTER 6
Florence
Resurrection
September 23, 1943
I will never forget the sound of his voice today. It was like hearing a ghost. No, a monster. A monster you thought was dead who then came back to life. People were terrified. How I have come to hate the wireless.
They had lived through more than twenty years of fascism, called il ventennio, then Mussolini’s dismissal, the defection by the King and Badoglio, weeks of uncertainty, the surrender and the German invasion. For nearly two months, Mussolini’s absence glowered over them. Then suddenly he was there: a little reedier, a faint tremor, but indisputably Il Duce.
After a long silence you can hear my voice again. Unless you present yourself immediately you will be considered rebels, ribelli …
It was Annabelle’s seventeenth birthday. In the kitchen, her mother and Anna Maria were making a celebration lunch, with whatever ingredients they could assemble. They had sugar and they had eggs – a torta, they said. A cake. Hearing his voice issuing from the cathedral arch of the Philco radio, Annabelle imagined a zombie rising from the grave like the story in an old book called The Magic Island. Why did we not drive a stake through his heart? Isn’t that what they did to vampires? Her mind twitched with more static than the radio. It made a lie of everything they thought they knew. We thought we were at war, said her uncle, but that was nothing; for us, the real war begins now.
The familiar voice on the wireless was a sharp blade rending the already tattered fabric of daily life. The heart went out of the birthday festivities.
September 24, 1943
We have heard through Enrico’s sources that Marshall Badoglio has officially surrendered and signed the full Armistice with the American President. His name is Roosevelt. Is that a Jewish name? It was on a ship called HMV Nelson off Malta. I looked up Malta on the map. It looks so small, so unimportant.
Sept 26
Yesterday we were bombed. Bombed! The noise, the fear, the confusion. It felt as if the whole city was turned into an inferno. They were supposed to hit the railway station at Campo di Marte. Rome was bombed dreadfully last week. Thousands injured and the Pope distributed money from one of the basilicas. He cares more about his precious Vatican not being bombed, Enrico says. We have been hearing for six months about the bombing of Milan and the dead and the damage but it was all like the cinema to us. Until now. You could hear it everywhere in the city. Anna Maria was screaming like a madwoman and Mamma could not comfort her. So the Allies are our friends. What good friends, killing us, she shouted. She was not even there. I was.
Annabelle walked her bicycle over the rough patches of the footpath. It was Saturday and she was going to visit Nonna’s friend Alma who lived near Campo di Marte. Alma had no telephone and Nonna was worried about her. She is getting on, she said, she is finding it hard to get out. Nonna Lucrezia always referred to ‘the old people’ as if she herself were not one of them.
The state of the roads and footpaths deteriorated more every day and it was harder and harder to ride the bici, for the huge potholes. There was no money, no time and no labour for mending roads. The Germans had other priorities. Towards
