of the room, beneath the lapis and gold of the Zodiac. Her gilded cage.
Another long evening yawned in her face. She yawned back, tossed aside the stitching, took out her diary and flicked back through the pages of cramped handwriting. We passed like two gods over the clouds. Ben’s words to her after one of Hitler’s visits. She uncapped her pen. Writing their life had become her great consolation. She had written constantly to Ben since their first meeting, letters mostly, which she kept meticulously, along with his to her. The diaries she began in earnest the year after their love affair started, recording everything: every telephone call, every conversation. God knows she had enough time for it and for reflecting upon Ben and his mysteries. Sometimes she thought her life was actually lived more between the pages of her diaries than in reality.
By the time the sentries in the corridor stamped to attention for Ben’s arrival, the shadows had lengthened to become the dark. Clara jumped to attention herself, turned on the lamps and rushed to recline casually upon the sofa in what she hoped was an enticing pose, her skirt draped a little high. One look at his face told her she might as well not bother. Quinto Navarra followed him with a fresh tray of tea, which he placed on the table with the small dish of Ben’s medicines, then withdrawing without a word.
‘Would you bring some fruit as well?’ Clara asked as he neared the door.
‘I don’t want fruit. I’m not hungry.’ Ben did not sit but strode to the darkened windows where he planted himself, hands on hips, feet apart.
His jowls quivered, his neck now too scrawny for his collar. Why hadn’t Rachele ordered him new collars? It was the least she could do.
She suppressed a sigh. She could feel her shoulders going up. Don’t start, my love, she thought. Do not start. Tonight I cannot take it.
But she smiled and said, ‘Come and sit with me, amore. Has it been hard today?’
Time, Clara had learned, was a mutable thing. Some days it whirled and swirled and curled and left her dizzy. Other days it stalled and crawled. ‘Time is not linear’, Ben once said, in his schoolteacher voice. She was not sure what he meant but she certainly knew that time was heavy, that it weighed upon her and often pressed inexorably on her chest. Today it was suffocating her.
‘I am not feeling well at all.’ He paced and postured. ‘My head aches and my bowels are playing up again. I did not sleep at all last night.’
Nonsense, Clara thought, though her face did not say so. Ben affected to sleep little and his loyal subjects believed him to be always alert and working on their behalf, but she knew her Lion slept like a cub and could sleep through a war. In fact, he often slept through this one. I’m the one who doesn’t sleep for worry, she sniffed silently. Most afternoons while Ben slept on the sofa, she sat awake beside him, watching his face in repose, covering page after page of the heavy blue notepaper she used for her letters, notes and diaries. Navarra knew to awaken him only in the most extreme circumstances.
‘My son-in-law has been at it again. And I’ve been locked up with Achille for most of the afternoon,’ Ben continued. ‘He has some thoughts on a new national holiday. It might have merit.’
Achille Starace. She hated him. The feeling was mutual. ‘I’ll bet he has some thoughts. He has thoughts on everything,’ she said.
Ben’s brow lowered. ‘Don’t be stupid. Just because you have an irrational dislike of the man does not mean he is not a genius.’
She did not like the way Ben slapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other, rising up and down on the balls of his feet. It was not a good sign, but today Clara was not heeding signs.
Starace. That man and his manias. He had gradually altered the whole way Italians lived their daily lives. True, some of his ideas were good but Clara liked the way people used to shake hands. Now it was no longer allowed. Too English, Starace said. So everyone had to give the Roman salute. It was all right for men perhaps, but it was ridiculous for women. Now anyone who shook hands was designated a bad fascist, of dubious character. It did not stop Ben shaking hands with his dear friend the Führer though, she noticed. On the other hand, the way Ben’s title must be entirely written in capitals pleased her. DUCE. It definitely carried more weight. It had been Starace’s idea to have the lights of Palazzo Venezia burning all night so the citizens would think their DUCE worked all night for them, and it was a good idea too, though Ben had enough sense to have the lights turned off after midnight. Let us not exaggerate, he said.
‘You are obsessed with Achille,’ Ben said.
‘No,’ she said, her voice rising dangerously, ‘you are obsessed with him. You listen to him more than me.’
‘Well, at least he is loyal to me. He will be loyal to the end.’ He hiked the needle off her Chopin record, scraping it across the shellac, and dropped it roughly in its cradle.
‘Loyal!’ She heard her voice crack but there was no turning back. It was going to go that way tonight; she could see it. ‘I am the only one who is loyal to you, who is here by your side day and night, who truly loves you. And how dare you call me stupid.’
Most of the time Clara tried to placate him: diffuse the bomb, soothe her Lion, turn away the wrath – but when Ben wanted a fight, nothing on God’s earth would deflect him. Try as she might, the dam would burst and the blows would rain. Sometimes she did not care, and this was one of those times.
CHAPTER 2
Florence 1942
The Day of the Dead
November again. All Souls Day again. Again and again. A whole year since Hitler’s state visit. Annabelle opened her eyes reluctantly and wiggled deeper beneath the heavy blanket. The rough wool itched her chin, but at least it was not that awful synthetic stuff people were using since wool became unavailable. Lanital – her father said it was made from milk. How disgusting. To think Florence was once the city of cloth.
She sighed and forced herself out of bed. A great lassitude assailed her; the shadow of a monster loomed at her shoulder. The war was going badly. America had been in the war for nearly a year but still it dragged on. For months, photographs of captured Italian soldiers in Egypt had been circulating. El Alamein. Wasn’t that where their cousin Roberto was fighting? Italian troops were in Russia too – Stalingrad. A new name. The whole world was at war: countries Annabelle had never heard of were fighting with each other in places she could not even find on a globe. Thailand! Where on earth was that? Terrifying stories of what Hitler was doing to the Jews were no longer in doubt. She had never given much thought to whether people were Jews. Now there were Jews in hiding all over the city, many from the north, running from the Germans.
It was not Il Duce’s fault, people said. Everything, they whispered, was the fault of ‘that woman’, Clara Petacci, who governed the country from his bedroom. Le voci corrono, word has it … Annabelle heard these conversations between Anna Maria and her husband in the kitchen, at the vegetable stall in Sant’Ambrogio market, between elderly ladies at the butcher and, in a slightly different register, in her own drawing room. It was open conversation now, as Annabelle’s parents had given up any pretence of keeping her inured to the goings-on in the nation. The city was full of gossip and fear, of plot and counterplot. It must be the fault of the woman beside the leader. To blame him would be, her father said, to lose the last shred of faith holding the whole shambles together. Se lo sapesse Il Duce, they said. ‘If only Il Duce knew about it …’ He would do something. Put a stop to the things done in his name. The saying had
