At fifteen, Annabelle was already tall but Enrico towered over her by a full head and he was still growing. It was their Australian blood on the distaff side. Their Australian grandmother, Nonna Annabelle, Annabelle Drummond from Orange, was tall for a woman of those times and she came from a long line of males much taller. All that sunshine and food. Annabelle was named for her but her grandmother died when Annabelle was three. Orange, what a beautiful name for a town.
Australia was a ridiculous shape on the map, a whole country in a single continent. Imagine having a whole continent, all to yourself! A continent at the bottom of the known world. Further than the moon. The Gumnut babies lived there. Her mother read stories of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie from an old book with magical images of cherub babies with fat little bottoms, who lived in exquisite flowers, the putti of her Renaissance ceilings transposed to the New World. In another book, exotic creatures ate from a pudding that never got smaller. Antipodean fables were so much lighter and sunnier than the European myths and legends of vengeful Gods and poor children. She listened to all the stories – all of them, the old ones and the new ones, and she melted into them and tried on the lives she found there. What else did she have to do?
Annabelle had never seen Australia but when a distant cousin was executed by the fascists, Papà sent her brothers there, to relatives, to save them from being drafted into Mussolini’s army, or shot. It had been more than two years. Enrico was to have gone but now it was too late. He would never have gone anyway. She missed Giacomo and Umberto, and the whispers in the house frightened her. What was internment?
In Annabelle’s family there were more cousins than she could count. No-one of her age except Enrico, and Lorenzo, a little younger. Annabelle and Enrico had shared every story and every secret since they could talk. Now, most conversations between his father and hers about Enrico – half-heard, overheard and misheard – began with ‘Quel ragazzo …’ Annabelle had grown used to eavesdropping in a society where it was commonplace.
‘That boy …’ too had lived his whole life under the shadow of Il Duce, in a family that did not belong to the Party. At seventeen, he was in great danger. Soon, they feared, he would be conscripted for Mussolini’s war, or – more frightening and more likely – be arrested for some act of rebellion and disappear into the maw of Le Murate.
Seen from above, in the newsreel Annabelle watched at the cinema afterwards, the crowd on the day of Hitler’s state visit was a living organism, a brain-coral: a collective brain given over to a single function. Fascist propaganda newsreels were obligatory in cinemas before the screening of a film. In her short life, Annabelle had known no politics but that of Mussolini.
They had no contact with the main branch of the family and had long since parted ways with many friends and family as fascism drew a dividing line right through the middle of personal relations. Although she officially lived in the Kingdom of Italy, the flag of the National Fascist Party, with its gold Fasces and Axes, swamped the King’s Tricolour. Fascist posters loomed everywhere and on everything. D’Annunzio extolled the Duce in poetry and Marinetti shaped the art world to his visions. Mussolini’s thrusting jaw and bellicose oratory formed the backdrop to the daily events of her life. His bellowing voice bombarded every home with a wireless radio. It was only two years before Annabelle’s birth that the first radio broadcast in Italy went to air, but the Regime took to it immediately and radios in bars, schools and fascist headquarters and buildings pumped out propaganda, day and night. Florence was a city of military uniforms, marching feet and blaring loudspeakers …
When she was small, Annabelle had pined to be allowed to join the Sons of the She Wolf. She watched with envy as girls between eight and eleven participated in the Piccole Italiane, with all their sports and games, or the Balilla Giovani Italiani physical education programs, with exercises such as ‘farmers hoeing’ and ‘sailors rowing’. She gazed with wonder at their splendid uniforms with the ‘M’ on the buckle. She yearned to grow up to be part of the fascist dopolavoro circle, with all its sporting grounds and clubhouses and cinemas. What fun. But she was never permitted to take part in Mussolini’s ‘indoctrination program’, as her father called it. The cover of her school notebook in fifth grade carried a striking image of a child in uniform at attention, a rifle with bayonet over his right shoulder and the words Giovinezza in Marcia – ‘Youth on the March’ – across the top. Her pagella, her school report, was adorned with the word Vincere. Win. Conquer. ‘War,’ said Il Duce, ‘is to man what maternity is to women.’ It was too much. That was Annabelle’s last year of school. From then on, she was tutored at home.
London 2008
Memento mori
Delia checked the flashing screen. Her mother. There goes another half hour, she thought, watching her Blackberry jig across the wooden table beside The Guardian. Outside the window, Saturday people in Burberry and cashmere thronged Kensington High Street. She debated letting it go to message bank. Her mother was losing it a bit. Her father was worried too, but Bert was not given to confronting things before he had to. Her brother Tom was as hearty as ever: ‘Come on, Dellie, Mum’s always been vague.’ Alzheimer’s. No-one wanted to say the word aloud … Delia sighed and answered the phone brightly. ‘Hi, Mum.’
Today, Maddie’s voice was youthful and firm, though it must have been late in Sydney. ‘Hello, darling. Your uncle Enrico died last night.’
‘Shit!’ Delia closed the newspaper and fished out her address book. ‘I’ll go over straight away. What happened?’ … Whatever that means, she thought. Nothing had to happen. Enrico must be eighty-five, and hadn’t been well for a while, but he always behaved as if death did not apply to him.
‘Have you spoken to Belle?’
‘No. I’m about to telephone her now, but I wanted you to know first.’ Maddie had forgotten to reprimand her for swearing.
Delia rang off, found the number for British Airways and booked a flight to Florence for later that day. She ordered another coffee. Not that piss-weak French stuff this time, but a double-shot espresso. And an almond croissant. Why not! No matter how many almond croissants she denied herself, she never got any thinner … Enrico was not her uncle. He was her father’s cousin and Annabelle’s cousin, her second cousin. She had always called him Zio because he seemed too old to be a cousin. She sent a text to Annabelle who was her aunt, saying simply, ‘I’m on my way. There this afternoon.’ Between them, no more was necessary.
Florence
‘Eight o’clock is too early to kill yourself.’ Delia’s tone was light but her heart was not in it. Beside her, Annabelle faced the television, hunched into her high-backed armchair, chin resting on her drawn-up knees.
‘And nine o’clock will be too late,’ she replied. ‘I would like to kill somebody. Anybody will do.’ The 8 pm telegiornale was only ten minutes in but it was all bad news. The polls had just closed and counting had barely begun, but it was already clear that Silvio Berlusconi would be catapulted back into power. A leap year, 2008. Delia loved that expression. Leap Year. It carried a sense of vitality, hope, joy even. For superstitious Italians though, an anno bisestile brought bad luck and it looked like they were right this time. It had turned out to be a leap back into the past, with little joy and no vitality. All day, the terms ‘crushing victory’ and ‘greatest post-war
