Authors: Andrea Molesini
The Swedish ambassador was seated in the back of the car of von Below, the victor of Caporetto, commander of the
Austro-German 14th Army. On the bonnet the blue and yellow flag of the Baltic monarchy fluttered side by side with the red, black and white standard of the Kaiser. The fusilier corporal who opened the door for him stiffened to attention.
The great general was the first to emerge. He was bare-headed despite the cold, with receding white hair and deep-set eyes stamped in a face both tranquil and absorbed. He didn’t have the look of a Caesar acclaimed under a triumphal arch, but that of a tired man who perhaps already foresaw his final victory was in doubt. The ambassador, on the other hand, was on the portly side, and the chestnut curls emerging from under his hat-brim gave him an air of frivolity. He had blue eyes and wore a long camelhair coat with a fur collar.
I saw not a single helmet, but only caps with the battalion badge. Korpium sprang to attention before his commanding officer, who returned his salute by raising two fingers momentarily to his temple and smiling thinly.
Grandpa was flaunting his dark frock coat and Grandma a mauve silk dress that covered her ankles; round her neck was a string of artificial pearls. Donna Maria and I were also equal to the occasion. Grandpa had lent me a dazzling bow tie, while my aunt was wearing a long blue dress, the lace fastened at the neck with an oval enamel depicting a swallow soaring into a blue sky above green fields, a church tower and the motto
Je reviendrai
. Von Below kissed the ladies’ hands with studied gravity, while the ambassador’s gesture was hasty and clumsy. He seemed in a hurry to flee from the cold of the garden and get his teeth into a tasty morsel.
In the middle of the oak table stood two silver candelabras. The tall, deep fireplace was giving out a pleasing warmth. The candelabras did not belong to us, but were part of the general’s
furnishings, and it occurred to us all that they were spoils of war – they were of Lombard or Veronese workmanship – as were the tall candles. To be guests of the enemy in one’s own house is perhaps more embittering than the sorrows of exile.
Grandma had imposed on us a polite, though firm, refusal to collaborate. Thirst for information, however, had altered her strategy. This excited me, and I was proud to be taking part in an enterprise far greater than me, the limits of which were beyond my ken.
Our places at table were marked with cards bearing the names of those present elaborately inscribed in sepia ink. Capitain Korpium, Monsieur Spada; the ladies and I were spared the embarrassment of a surname, called merely Monsieur Paolo, Madame Nancy and Madame Maria, while the bigwigs, seated at the top of the table, were Monsieur l’Ambassadeur and Monsieur le Général. For conversation French was
de rigeur
. Grandma was seated on von Below’s right, Madame Maria to the right of the ambassador, while Grandpa was placed on the left of the former and Monsieur le Capitain on that of the latter. I was between Grandpa and Aunt Maria, rather glad to be breaking up the symmetry of the dinner party.
The flames from the fire boosted the illumination of the room, their light rising from behind the general and conferring on him a Luciferian aura. On the wall facing me, between the two windows, in the wavering candlelight hung the portrait of Great-Grandma Caterina, which did more honour to her bewildered girlish face than to the skill of the painter. On the general’s left, dressed in black with a white apron and frilly white cap, stood Teresa, ramrod stiff, while Loretta, whose cap gave her the air of a frog with aspirations to queenship, held the opposite fort, between the Swede and Aunt Maria.
After the first hesitant openings, the conversation, ably steered by Donna Maria, turned to matters of war. The ambassador was drinking Marzemino like water; Loretta had already uncorked two bottles. Monsieur le Capitain let slip the remark that in the near future the Villa would pass into Austrian hands. ‘The Austrians have a conspicuous talent,’ said von Below in impeccable French, ‘for making a mess of a good job.’ He said it with the corners of his mouth turned down and his eyes fixed on some distant, invisible point. He said nothing more for practically the whole dinner, and no more did his captain, who took refuge behind his monocle.
Grandpa chuckled away beneath the moustache he no longer had but never ceased stroking. He was amused by the ambassador, whom wine had bereft of more than a few inhibitions. His curly locks, which he continuously thrust back with his chubby, twitchy left hand, kept flopping forward over his rather low brow and ending up in his eyes. He started talking about Sweden and butterflies. He told us his country was like an overfed horse, asleep on its feet in a spotlessly clean stable. He went on to say that in Italy he loved the butterflies in summer but hated the churches, because they were too beautiful. ‘The result is that as soon as you leave one you feel sucked down into the maelstrom of barbarism. There are too many angels in Italian painting, too many angels and no butterflies. You Italians are strange people: practical people who have no love for reality.’
The roast pork was delicious, served with egg sauce and potatoes. There was even a dessert, an apple tart, which Teresa served to the Prussian warrior accompanied by a
diambarne de l’ostia
which, though uttered in an undertone, caused both Grandma and Aunt Maria to look daggers at her. But the general took no notice of the cook. A broad brow crowned his
distinguished features and melancholy expression. That bold, meticulous strategist was courteous more by calling than by custom. Though his warrior skills and instincts were legendary, what I saw before me was nothing but a worried man.
At a certain moment the ambassador, dropping the etiquette, addressed the conqueror of Rumania in German. He spoke rapidly for a long minute, amid the stunned silence of the rest of us. The general responded with a few brusque remarks. His face had hardened and his eyes suddenly glittered. The smattering of German possessed by our family was enough to make out that they were discussing an exchange of coal and steel and a large consignment of machine pistols needed by Sweden for purposes of defence. To observe the new German automatic weapon in action was, very likely, the reason for the ambassador’s visit to the front line. All the same, we were amazed that they didn’t mind being overheard. Even if this was not priceless information for the destiny of Italy, it was certainly a message worth entrusting to the shutters in the bay window, and we were thankful for it.
Then, after a rather long lull, the Swede said something that infuriated the general. Otto von Below shot to his feet, wide-eyed as if seeing a ghost. He crumpled up his table napkin. We all got up, like musicians obeying an imperious gesture from a conductor. Only the ambassador dithered.
Monsieur le Général gave a hasty bow to Grandma at his side, who returned him an astonished look, then walked round the table to raise Donna Maria’s hand to his lips, retaining it just a moment longer than necessary. He stalked to the door, turned, and with a barely audible click of the heels said, ‘
Mesdames
,
Messieurs
,
je vous remercie
.’ And, turning his back on us, he added a whispered ‘
Adieu
’.
The captain and the ambassador followed him without deigning to say so much as a word.
‘
Diambarne de l’ostia
, may they burn in hell,’ muttered Teresa, as Grandma signed to us to sit down.
‘Loretta, shut the door,’ ordered Aunt Maria.
‘New automatic pistols…no great matter, is it?’ said Grandpa, stroking his upper lip. ‘But after all, in this business we’re just raw recruits.’
Aunt Maria got up and blew out some of the nearby candles. ‘So we’ll soon be taking orders from the Austrians.’
‘But if the Germans are moving out’ – and there was barely concealed jubilation in Grandpa’s voice – ‘it means that at the front…everything’s going to pot for them.’
‘However that may be,’ said Grandma irritably, ‘we will face matters a day at a time.’
Thirteen
T
HE GENERAL LEFT BEFORE DAWN, ALONG WITH THE AMBASSADOR
and the escort.
I got up late, at about nine. The machine guns were already loaded onto the mules. Of the camp hospital and kitchen there was no trace. When I came down to breakfast Teresa was like a hen seeing her chicks emerge from their shells. The pots and pans, ladles and wooden spoons had been restored to the expert hands of their rightful sovereign, who with a few well-placed
diambarne de l’ostias
was swearing to herself that no one would ever again dethrone her. Her daughter, on the contrary, was on edge. She no sooner saw me than she asked where Renato was.
‘Probably gone out to do some bartering.’
Loretta covered her face with her hands.
My grandparents came down at about midday. It had been snowing for a little over an hour. The captain had only just finished inspecting his men, drawn up ready for departure. The motorcycles were the first to leave, followed by two lorries and the long file of mules, about thirty of them. His second-in-command had stationed himself near the sentries at the gates, and the snow, little by little, turned him into a snowman with a glassy stare and a carrot-coloured nose. I did up the top button of my overcoat. Korpium circled the garden at a trot. He went out as far as the graveyard, passed in front of the chapel, then
cantered all round the main building and slowed to a walk beneath Donna Maria’s windows. I looked up. She was there, upright and motionless, visible through the falling snow. The captain, standing in his stirrups, brought his right hand smartly to the peak of his cap.
When the officer’s bay horse left through the gates, the sentries had already gone. Korpium turned for an instant, raised his eyes towards my aunt’s window. It was empty. Then, for a moment, he looked at me. I was strolling towards the railings, and he gave me a salute. I stood to attention, and without thinking I whipped my right hand up to my brow, stiff as a knife-blade. I seemed to glimpse a smile on his lips. Then a light tap of his heels and the bay started off at a trot.
The Villa was ours again. But I was feeling upset, low-spirited. I maundered around the huge empty rooms, passing my fingers over the few pieces of furniture not filched or used as firewood by the invaders, and over the oak table where we had dined the evening before. The general’s candlesticks were no longer on it. In the huge fireplace two blackened logs still smouldered. The odour of musty fabric, which had always reigned supreme in the Villa, was gradually regaining possession of the rooms, which one by one surrendered to its dominion, contested for three weeks past by the odours of war. Those soldiers had taken much from the house, but also left something behind them. And soon others would arrive, wearing different uniforms but speaking the same metallic-sounding language. The ownership of things had returned into our hands, but nothing any longer had the feel of being ours, of being mine.
That evening we all ate together. There was a festive air, a feeling of freedom which we had quite forgotten. We ate up the
leftovers from the previous evening, reheated pork roast and slices of polenta toasted over charcoal. We laughed about everything. Loretta had to open the last three bottles of Marzemino, survivors of the thirst of the Huns. And so for two long hours, in the room where generals and ambassadors had lately dined, we abandoned ourselves to merriment. And we were lunatics, children, drunkards, poets.
Part Two
Fourteen
G
IULIA’S HOUSE WAS HIGH UP ON THE HILL, LESS THAN
three hundred metres from the Villa as the crow flies. It was an old farmhouse converted into a small neo-Gothic dwelling in the early years of the century. Despite the wooden embellishments around the doorways and windows, it retained its rustic character, and the balcony all round the upper storey bore witness to its peasant origins. The first time I set foot there was at the end of a long walk. The Germans had departed a few days before. Giulia asked me in. It was early in the morning. We climbed some rickety steps to the balcony and entered the house from there. I noticed that the doors and windows of the ground floor were bolted and barred.
Inside it consisted of a single large room, with larch-wood flooring, a ceiling of terracotta tiles, a table two metres by two surrounded by half a dozen rustic chairs, and a large sofa in front of the broad fireplace in the centre of the north wall, which was the only one without windows. On the other side was a spacious Empire-style bed, the counterpane neatly ironed. Giulia put a flame to the carefully laid log fire and hung her overcoat on an iron hook hanging from a tie-beam.
‘So this is where you live.’
‘It’s enough for me. I let the downstairs. I don’t like to be surrounded by things…I find them suffocating and oppressive.’
‘Oppressive? Really?’
She stretched out on the sofa. ‘Come over here, I’ll make coffee later.’
I went and sat by her without taking off my overcoat.
‘You’ve got a fine nose, long and finely chiselled. It’s worth having a face to carry around a nose like yours.’
She looked into my eyes. Her blouse was unbuttoned down to the cleavage between her breasts. In the fireplace the wood was already crackling. I shot to my feet and went over to the window. From there I could see the Villa, with the big garden forming an L-shape around the main building, and the
barchessa
backed up alongside the church.
‘What’s so fascinating about your grandparents’ house? You ought to have eyes only for me.’
‘It looks different from here. Now the Germans have gone the garden looks smaller, but maybe it’s only the perspective,’ I replied, still gazing out. ‘I like your home. It’s so neat and tidy… you know…I thought you were…’
‘A savage? It feels like a boat, doesn’t it? My grandfather was a rear admiral, and when he came here he used to bring his mistresses, and maybe he felt some nostalgia for his ship.’
‘A rear admiral?’
‘Yes, at the Battle of Lissa he was a junior officer in the Austro-Hungarian navy, just think of it! He died in July 1914, two months after your mother and father.’