The Light in the Ruins (39 page)

Now, make no mistake, the battle for Italy was horrible. But it was nothing like the Eastern Front. That was an innermost ring far worse than anything even Dante conceived
.

Still, for two days in the summer of 1944, the Villa Chimera was hell. It was—of this you can be sure. It’s a wonder anyone survived
.

During the war, I promised the dead I would never forget them. I stared at them, barely able to move myself. Pretended I was one of them. To this day I can recall the light in the ruins
.

Eleven years later I watched the family and the mourners and the police file into the church across the valley from the villa. Then, of course, I was pretending only that I was civilized
.

By the time they filed out, I was ready. The sky that day, if anyone had happened to paint it, was lapis lazuli
.

1944

THE FIRST SHELLS fell in the pool, sending up oddly mischievous sprays of water—Massimo cannonballing into the deep end—along with the killing shards of marble. The wooden and wicker pergola beside the water erupted in flame, illuminating that side of the terrace, and the small statue of Venus in the raised garden near the loggia was decapitated. And then it was gone, obliterated in an instant. The chimera was butchered, the conjoined triplets—a lion, a snake, a goat—separated, gutted, and then blasted to pebbles. The remnants of the olive grove caught fire and the olive press started to burn.

And the Germans fired back, the great howitzers shaking the hillside, and Marco winced reflexively each time the ground around him heaved or a part of his childhood was destroyed. He was terrified. He was more scared now than he had ever been in the past year, more frightened even than when the Allies had first invaded Sicily or, months later, when he had thought the Germans were going to execute him rather than merely force him at gunpoint into a work crew. This was worse, much worse, because he was afraid that somewhere here on the grounds of the estate was his family. He told himself it wasn’t possible, they had to be gone, long gone. But what if they were here, trapped amid the bricks and mortar that seemed sure to come down in the battle?

He knew enough not to move, at least at the moment, to stay crouched behind the tufa boulder. He recalled the rock from his childhood, because as a boy he’d pretended it was an asteroid.
When a shell would explode and briefly the night would become day, he would see tendrils of tobacco-brown smoke wafting up from the cratered gardens and lawn. He might have remained hidden there until the shelling subsided, curled in a ball as his home was destroyed, but amid the furious din of the artillery and the sounds of the Germans barking their orders, he heard a woman’s voice screaming out his wife’s name.

“Francesca! Father! Francesca!” He peered over the stone and there she was, his little sister. Cristina was running, hunched over, between the remnants of the gardens on the far side of the pool, trying either to get through the shelling to the villa or—perhaps—to escape from the house. He couldn’t decide, because she was making no progress as she ran back and forth between the explosions, hysterical, calling out for their father and his wife. And so he emerged from his hiding spot and raced after her, grabbing her by her arms when he reached her and pulling her down to the ground. Then he rolled her against the marble blocks that marked the side of one of the raised flower beds and fell on top of her, shielding her from the shrapnel as best he could. He told her that yes, yes, it was him, he was home and alive. He could feel her body trembling, and her face was wet with tears and sweat. But she didn’t seem to be wounded. He was about to ask her where everyone else was—their parents, his wife and children, whether Vittore was here, too, because clearly the family had not escaped—when a shell crashed into the hillside nearby and the ground beneath them rolled like an ocean wave and briefly they were lifted up. Then they were showered with small rocks and dirt, the stones bruising them as they fell hard upon their arms and legs. He realized they couldn’t stay here; they had to find better cover than this. He asked her again where everyone was and she told him they were inside the villa. And so he pulled her to her feet by her hands, shocked at the blisters there. Then, zigzagging, he led her toward the terrace and up the marble steps that led to the swimming pool. When he reached the terrace, he paused for the briefest of seconds, wondering whether to continue on to the left or the right to get to the house, and then he
heard a pair of German privates screaming for them to stop where they were and put their arms up. And so they did, and Marco was careful to spread wide his fingers so that even in the dark the fellows could see he was unarmed. Both soldiers’ eyes were wild with fear, and one was waving his Karabiner rifle at them.

“We live here!” Marco told them in German. “Our house!” he added, pointing up at the villa.

For a long second the two men watched them. And then, when another shell blew apart three of the cypress trees that columned the exterior stairwell, one of the soldiers ordered them inside, prodding them at gunpoint through the loggia and the living room and into the kitchen. Inside, the second private switched on a flashlight and waved it across the room.

And there, huddled on the floor, Marco saw his family. His wife. His children. His parents. And, leaning against one of the counters, he saw also a Lee-Enfield rifle. A British sniper rifle. He wondered what in the world it was doing here, but then lost track of it when Massimo and Alessia threw themselves upon him, the children oblivious to the German soldier who was pointing a gun at their father and their aunt.

Francesca thought about when she was happiest. She sat with her head against Marco’s shoulder, the side of her face buried against his skin where his neck met his chest. She had unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt because she needed to touch him and hear his heart beat. Alessia was curled up on his legs and Massimo on hers. The children weren’t sleeping, but in the intervals when the shelling ceased—the air still charged and the stench of gunpowder a fog that wouldn’t lift—she thought they might be dozing. They were so tired. They all were. Her ears were ringing from the cannonade. Her thighs were sore; her knees were weak.

But Marco was home and she sighed against him, recalling the litany of firsts she had shared with this man and how happy he made her. First kiss. First embrace. First time they made love. First
baby. Second. Nothing, she decided, made her really happy but Marco and Massimo and Alessia. That was it. That was all in the world that she really needed, and that was what this war had taught her. Let the walls come tumbling down around them, let the estate become a lifeless moonscape—a massive necropolis filled with the Fascist artifacts of a cruel and stupid regime. Let the vineyards and the olive grove burn. Let the Medici mirrors crack. So long as she had this man and these children, all would be well. The war would end, the fires would burn themselves out.

She kissed his sternum. She felt his arm around her pull her even closer against him. Through the window she watched the flares and the phosphorous white chrysanthemums, and she told herself they were only fireworks and no one was going to die. At least no Rosatis. At least not Marco and Massimo and Alessia.

In the morning the shelling stopped, and Antonio stood before the kitchen window and gazed out at the ruined grounds of his estate and assessed the damage. He heard, among other things, the raspy
kowk
of a tern, and he glanced at the sky to see if he could spot the bird. He watched the soldiers emerging from their firing pits, squinting like old men at the sky; others sat, exhausted, their heads in their hands, beside the howitzers. There did not seem to be many wounded, but he really had no idea what was occurring on the other side of the house. The villa itself, however, seemed to have been spared. But he couldn’t be sure: neither he nor his family had been allowed to leave the kitchen.

By the light of the morning, he honestly couldn’t decide whether he was angrier at the damage to his property or at the degradations his family was enduring. His wife, a marchesa, peeing into a pot in front of her grandchildren, as if they were all peasants. It was appalling. The children were hungry and, worse, thirsty. Without electricity, they had no water at the villa, and they weren’t allowed to retrieve some from the well, even though the fighting had, for the moment, subsided. He overheard a German sergeant telling
two privates that if the British didn’t attack that morning—and the sergeant said he didn’t believe that they would—Captain Muller might abandon the big guns and allow them to try to fight their way north to Arezzo, where they could rejoin Colonel Decher and the rest of the division. Antonio recalled all the wine that Decher had drunk here. On the terrace outside this very window. Down the marble steps and beside the swimming pool. Now, it seemed, Decher actually had combat responsibilities. The man’s dangerous and stupid little prayers had been answered. What an architect was doing in combat was beyond Antonio. It made as much sense as his son Marco mining beaches and then repairing roads.

He felt Marco beside him, and his son’s presence cheered him. It reminded him of what was really important. Even this nightmare would soon be over. He put his arm around his son’s shoulders.

“Tell me something,” Marco whispered.

You made it. You’re here
, was all he wanted to say.
And soon they’ll be gone. The Germans. This time forever. Either they’ll surrender or they’ll leave. But we, the Rosatis, will have endured
. Instead, however, he said simply, “Anything.” In the corner, Francesca and the grandchildren were dozing. His wife and Cristina were awake but dazed.

“How could you allow the partisans to hide here?” Marco asked him, his voice an urgent whisper. In the night Antonio had told his son about Enrico and his men and the dying girl, but it had been difficult to share many details amid the shelling and the riot of emotions the family was experiencing. There was the terror as the Germans and the British dueled with mortar fire and artillery, and it sometimes felt as if the stone walls of the villa were going to collapse upon them, and yet there was also the children’s—and Francesca’s—undeniable delight that Marco was home.

“I had no choice,” he told his son. “They just … appeared. And then suddenly the Germans were here, too. We never thought they’d be coming back.”

“You know they’ll kill us all, even my children, if they find them.”

“How will they find them? Why would they go to the tombs?”

Marco gently pulled Antonio’s hand off him and took a step back. He pointed at the gun that was still leaning against the wall. “You know what that is?”

“A rifle, obviously.”

“It’s a British sniper rifle.”

“No.”

“What did you think it was? A rake? A fencing foil?”

“I thought it was German. I assumed one of the soldiers left it here.”

“No. One of the partisans left it here.”

“God,” Antonio said, shaking his head. “We have to hide it. The Germans must not have noticed it last night in the dark. They will today.”