The Italian Wife (10 page)

‘Hello, Rosa. How are you?’

It was the architect.

‘I’m well.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it.’

Rosa could not take her eyes off her visitor. She was sitting in a smaller carved chair and seemed to glow in the amber light of the fire. Her dark hair hung wet and shiny to her shoulders and her skirt, the soft colour of mushrooms, was speckled like a bird’s egg by raindrops.

‘Signora Berotti has generously come to visit you, Rosa, to enquire after your welfare.’

Rosa didn’t know what to say. She nodded.

‘Don’t be sullen, girl. Come and sit here.’

Mother Domenica jutted her pointy chin towards a small pine stool placed beside her own chair. Rosa wanted to pick it up and carry it over to place it beside the architect’s chair but she didn’t want her knuckles skinned in front of her visitor, so she did as she was told and sat on the stool. Sister Consolata backed out of the room and shut the door quietly, leaving Rosa alone with the grey mist of dislike.

Rosa had thought a lot about the architect since she’d been brought to the chill corridors of the convent. Signora Berotti was different. And she had that way of looking at you. Isabella, she’d said her name was. An architect with a dead husband and a bullet hole in her back. Rosa wondered what it looked like. What she did know was that Signora Berotti wasn’t like other people. No one else had ever talked to her about ‘
pilasters
’ or ‘
symmetry
’. No one else would ever think she would care.

‘Tell me about your day, Rosa,’ the architect prompted gently. ‘Mother Domenica tells me that you had French and mathematics lessons this morning and a good lunch of lasagne.’

Then Mother Domenica is a liar
.

Rosa nodded. She could smell the lies in the black material that hung its holy disguise on the woman in the big carved chair. The lies smelled like rotten grapes. Sour in her nostrils. When Rosa lifted her gaze to the pointed face, the Reverend Mother was smiling at her, but Rosa didn’t smile back. She stared straight at the nun’s sharp black eyes.

‘Do you enjoy learning French?’ the architect asked when the staring had gone on long enough.

‘
Oui
,’ Rosa muttered.

What else could she say? She thought about saying: No, Signora Berotti. We stand in a row in the French class and Sister Maria fires a word at each of us that we have to shout back in French. If a girl gets it wrong, she has to kneel on the floor and the flat side of Sister Maria
’
s ruler slaps down on her head. She stays there until she gets a word right. I have never learned French. My head is sore. My knees hurt. Is that what you want to know?

Rosa lowered her eyes to the round table that stood at knee height between the two chairs. On it sat two cups of coffee. The Reverend Mother picked one up and raised it to her thin lips, the aroma of it drifting thick and heavy to the back of Rosa’s throat, making saliva spurt into her mouth. Beside the other cup stood a small silver jug of milk and a stubby glass of water. She could guess who the water was for. The hard bones of her shoulder blades slumped forward and she sat in silence, listening to the logs crackle in the flames and feeling the coffee torment her empty stomach.

‘Rosa.’

The architect drew her attention.

‘Rosa, I’ve brought you something.’

Rosa’s gaze jumped to her face. The architect’s eyes were blue, not blue like a flower is blue, but blue like the sea, full of greys and purples and greens that threaded their way in and out of the blue. They were smiling at her.

In the large carved chair the black robes rustled and the coffee cup was replaced on the table. ‘And what might that be, signora?’ Mother Domenica asked.

‘I’ve brought Rosa some
torcetti
.’

‘Our girls are not allowed to eat between meals.’

‘I’m sure you can make an exception in this case.’

Rosa became aware of the architect changing shape. When she’d first entered the room, Signora Berotti had seemed soft in the chair, her body curved, her head tilted on one side, her mouth rising at the edges in a smile. Now, Rosa could see that the signora’s limbs had grown spiky, her fingers straight, her shoulders back. Her eyes were no longer round when she looked at Mother Domenica but had a hard edge to them that had not been there before. From a canvas bag at her side she withdrew a small package wrapped in greaseproof paper and held it out to Rosa, offering it on the palm of her hand, the way you would tempt a nervous foal.

‘Enjoy them,’ she said.

Rosa’s hand was fast. Faster than the Reverend Mother’s. She snatched it on to her lap and started to rip open the paper, hunger driving her stomach to lurch and bile to shoot into her throat.

‘Just one.’

The Reverend Mother’s stern voice barely reached her ears. All she could hear was the tearing of the paper. All she could smell was sugar. On her lap lay a nest of
torcetti
. Baked worms. That’s what they looked like, worms with heads crossed over tails, sugar-crusted and crunchy. Rosa lifted one, sank her teeth in, bit it in half and felt the sweetness and crispness explode on her tongue, making her dizzy. Immediately she pushed the rest of the biscuit into her mouth.

Dimly she was aware of the architect talking, moving her hands through the air, laughing and shaking her head, telling a story it seemed. Something about a train. A brass band. A horse and a rabbit. But Rosa only caught snatches of it. She was too busy with the
torcetti
, her golden twisted worms, the crust of sugar gleaming like diamonds catching the firelight. Swiftly she started to cram them whole into her mouth, to fill up the lonely spaces, to stifle the voices inside her, to squeeze more and more down her throat until all the emptiness would be gone and all she would feel was full. Stuffed full. No more pain or —

‘Rosa Bianchi, stop that at once!’

The Reverend Mother’s hand was reaching for what was left of the package. Vaguely Rosa was conscious of the architect rising to her feet, still narrating her story of people arriving on a train, still trying to distract the Reverend Mother’s attention from the appalling and repulsive sight of Rosa cramming food into her mouth.

‘Enough!’ Mother Domenica shouted.

The nun’s veinless hand seized a corner of the greaseproof paper.

‘You are disgusting, girl.’

The hand started to remove the package but Rosa clamped both her own hands tight around it. The Reverend Mother’s face distorted with disbelief and a shudder ran through her.

‘Give it to me, Rosa Bianchi. At once.’

‘No.’

A shocked silence made the room suddenly grow smaller but Rosa dug her fingers in tighter.

‘Let go, you undeserving child.’

‘No.’

Crumbs spilled from her lips. She was suffocating in sugar. Air wouldn’t go in and out of her lungs.

‘Do as I say, girl!’

‘They’re mine.’

‘Release it at once.’

‘No.’

The crucifix that hung around the nun’s neck rattled on its chain as the other veinless hand started to swing forward. Rosa was so fixated on the biscuit package that she didn’t see it coming. It hit her full across the face, sending slugs of half-chewed biscuit sailing out of her mouth over the table and into the milk jug. For no more than a second a numb silence ricocheted through Rosa’s head but then came the bolt of pain and a roaring in her ears. For a moment her mind couldn’t recall where she was, but then the architect’s hands were lifting her to her feet, softly touching her hair, and it was the architect’s voice that hissed, ‘How dare you hit her?’ at the figure in black.

‘Apologise!’

The nun spat the word into the room. She moved stiffly out of her chair, raising herself to her full height, stretching her skinny white-bound neck to its full extent until she looked to Rosa like a crane on a riverbank preparing to strike a frog in the mud.

‘Rosa, apologise to Signora Berotti and to myself. May God forgive you in His mercy. You should be ashamed of yourself. You are no better than your mother.’

That was when the shame came, thick and foul-tasting. It seeped under the door, dripped down the chimney and squeezed under the window frames. Shame that was white-hot when it touched Rosa’s skin. It crawled up her legs, beat its way across her chest, drumming on her heart, and burned a path across her cheeks. She was consumed by shame.

She detached herself from the architect’s touch and backed away with eyes lowered.

‘It’s all right, Rosa, there’s no need to apologise or —’

‘I am sorry, Signora Berotti.’ Rosa dragged air into her lungs. ‘I am sorry, Reverend Mother.’

‘God in Heaven is the One who sees a truly repentant heart,’ the nun said in a brittle voice.

‘The girl has done nothing to repent. Let me speak with her alone, Reverend Mother. Allow me to take her into the courtyard to —’

‘You have done enough,
grazie
, Signora Berotti,’ the nun said coldly. ‘Please leave now.’

There was a long hard silence in the room. Behind it Rosa’s ears could pick up faint whispers, as though the Devil were laughing behind the paintings of the old men. The only movement came from the architect’s hands as they clenched and unclenched at her sides, long-fingered and restless, a tangle of fine bones that she was holding in check.

‘Do you want me to leave, Rosa?’ the architect asked quietly.

Rosa nodded. Shame scorched her throat.

‘Very well. I’m sorry, Rosa. The biscuits were meant to bring you pleasure, not anguish.’ She picked up her canvas bag. ‘Good afternoon to you both.’

‘Goodbye, signora,’ Mother Domenica said. ‘There’s no need to come again.’

Still Rosa could not bring herself to look at the architect’s face and after a pause Signora Berotti swung away and limped across the Persian rug to the door. There she turned.

‘Take care, Rosa. I am sorry about your mother. You know where I live if you need me.’

The door opened, then closed. She was gone. Rosa tried to call her back but there were no words in her throat and no breath in her lungs. The Reverend Mother did not speak but she seized Rosa’s wrist with her sinless fingers and hauled her across the room under the accusing eyes of the men in red and purple. She swept her down the corridor until she stopped in front of a door and Rosa stood there, mute and obedient. The nun yanked open the door. It was a cupboard full of mops and buckets.

‘Repent!’ she commanded.

She thrust the sinner into the cupboard, slammed the door shut and turned the key. Rosa uttered no sound but stood in total silence, shaking in the darkness.

The darkness kept moving. Shifting around her. It was never still. It brushed itself against Rosa’s skin, cold and clammy, making her turn her head blindly again and again. It twisted through her hair and whispered in her ear sounds that sent her heart fleeing up into her throat. It crept deep into her lungs, squeezing out the air, while her small fingers clawed at the door. She dropped to her knees on the stone floor and begged. She hammered on the door with her clenched fists. With her head. With her feet. With a bucket.

No one came. Not even God.

The hours ticked past. She made herself lie quietly on the hard floor, curling her body into a tight ball, knees up under her nose, but the blackness grew too heavy. It was bruising her ribs, crushing them, so she groped for one of the buckets, turned it upside down and sat on it instead. She paraded through her head those moments that she’d spent walking through Bellina’s streets with the architect, opening her eyes to the buildings, but they were forced out by other images that stalked the darkness. Taking up space. Cracking open her skull. Gnawing at her feet. She cried out once to her mother, but only once.

Don
’
t let me die. Please, don
’
t let me die.

The door was thrown open and light streaked inside, making Rosa screw up her eyes. She was startled to see it was morning. She had been in the cupboard fourteen hours and had peed in one of the buckets with no shame.

But she was not the same Rosa when she emerged from the cupboard. She knew that. She could feel it. A part of her was missing – she’d lost the part that wanted to be with people. It had spilled on to the floor in the cupboard, alongside the stinking mops and the rat poison, and made her feel lonelier than ever before.

Sister Agatha was the one who opened the door and stood there with a black Bible in her hand. She made Rosa kneel in the soulless corridor right outside the cupboard and she prayed over the small sinner’s bent head for thirty long minutes. At the end, Rosa asked for forgiveness. But as she trailed behind the shapeless black figure on her way back to her classroom, Rosa knew she had gained something too. She hugged it to herself, as warm and comforting as a kiss.

Rosa knew now that whatever they did to her, these devils in black robes, she would come out of it alive.

Not like her mother.

Rosa had refused to let herself die in the cupboard because she had promised her father that she would keep going. Until he came for her.

‘Where did you live in Rome?’

It was Colonnello Sepe asking the questions this time. He didn’t frighten Rosa, not any more. She knew now what it meant to be frightened and Colonnello Sepe didn’t come close. She was in the Reverend Mother’s high-ceilinged room once more, watched by the secretive eyes on the wall, and the police colonel was trying but failing to make his thin face appear kindly. He was seated behind Mother Domenica’s sturdy oak desk and Rosa was perched in front of it on the edge of a hard chair. The room was too warm. The nun was pretending to read the Bible in her carved chair over by the fire but couldn’t resist glancing across at Rosa each time she spoke.

‘I don’t know the addresses where we stayed,’ Rosa insisted, fighting to keep herself from snatching the heavy brass inkwell from the leather desktop and hurling it at the Reverend Mother. She had even picked out the spot on her white left temple where she wanted it to land. ‘We moved around so often,’ she explained. ‘Rome, Milan, Padua, Naples.’ She shrugged the bony tip of one shoulder. ‘We stayed in a shepherd’s hut in the mountains one year. I liked it up there.’