The Italian Villa: An emotional and absolutely gripping WW2 historical romance Read online

  The night was so dark, with no moon in the sky. I kept tripping and Leo held me up. I could feel a build-up of sobs in my throat, sobs that would soon spill out, I knew it.

  Oh, Pietro. The memory of a bouquet of wildflowers held tightly in your still-childish hands at my eighteenth birthday party assails me. Caught in-between, now you’ll never grow up…

  When we arrived at the cabin, Leo held me for a long time. I hid my face in his chest and didn’t want to move ever again. If I did, I would have to face what had happened.

  “If only he’d come with us,” Leo whispered in my ear. “At least for now he’d still be safe.”

  “My brother believed in all that stuff, you know,” I said. All the rage I felt was yearning to come out. I wanted to destroy everything around me, I wanted to scream and hit the trees until my hands bled. “The fascist cause. He thought he was doing good! He thought he was helping our country, defending it! And they killed him!” I began sobbing so hard, I couldn’t speak anymore. My whole body trembled with anger, and now, as I’m writing these words, it still does.

  “They deceived him,” Leo murmured in my ear, and he echoed my mamma’s words to the letter. I forced myself to take a step back from him and look at him in the face.

  “I’m coming with you to the camp, Leo. You were right all along. I should have joined the Resistance when you did. I should have taken a side. You were right.”

  Leo shook his head, and for a horrible moment, I thought he wouldn’t take me with him. “You must stay here with your parents.”

  “No! I want to fight too!”

  “I know. I understand. But listen to me. I’m staying here with you. My comrades won’t be at the camp for much longer. They’ll be coming down from the mountain tomorrow night; everybody is returning to their villages.”

  “What? You’ll be taken away!”

  “We have to come back. News arrived from the south. The Nazis will be here in a matter of days. The Americans are taking back the south, the Germans are retreating and destroying as much as they can along the way. They have nothing to lose now, they just want to kill. Women and children too… We can’t leave Montevino without anyone to defend it. There will be a battle, Elisa. Here, in our village. There are weapons hidden all over the place, including at your house.”

  “What? In our house?”

  “Your father and Martino organized it all.”

  “Martino? Agnese’s father?”

  “Yes. He’s the one who came to tell me about… about Pietro.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. Weapons all over the place, including at our house. A battle coming. “What will you do now?”

  “Stay here with you. At the cabin. I have some rifles buried here.”

  Rifles. Of course, I would have to handle a gun. I was thankful for the times I’d gone hunting with my father before his accident.

  So here I am now, writing in the gloom, urgently, because if we’re all to be killed, I want history to know what happened to us all.

  Are these the last moments I’ll spend with my husband? Because if they are, I want to be with him every second. Let’s not waste a minute of this short life we have. I want to be in his arms until…

  I suppose, until it’s too late.

  These words resounded with me in a way I could not quite describe.

  I don’t really know what possessed me, but I closed the diary and walked out of Firefly House and up to Tommaso’s. He was in his garden, even though it was getting late, and I made my way to him, slowly. I could see his surprise as I went closer and closer to him, until my arms were around his waist and my head was against his chest. I held him for a moment, and his strong arms wrapped around me too; he squeezed me hard, like he wanted to savor my closeness. For someone who had been taken by surprise, he’d recovered his cool quickly.

  “I’ve dreamed of this moment ever since I first met you,” he whispered, and then he sealed my lips with his. As soon as my mouth was free again, I giggled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing. I’m laughing because I’m happy.”

  “Come,” he said, and his voice was suddenly low, with a touch of hoarseness to it. He took me by the hand, and began to lead me into the woods. It was like he’d read my mind. I wanted to go to the High Woods, to the stone cabin hidden away from the world. Me and Tommaso alone, like Elisa and Leo had been all those years before, celebrating their love with war and fear and chaos all around them.

  He laid me on the soft grass just outside the cabin, swallows flying all around us. We were one, melting our bodies and souls into each other, and then it was all clear to me: everything that had happened in my life had taken me here, to this moment with Tommaso, the man from a faraway country who was meant to be my destiny, all along. Every moment of pain, of fear, of loneliness and confusion, every choice I’d had to make, every time I’d had to be strong and keep faith, and take risks with places and people I knew nothing about, everything was meant to lead me to here, and now.

  15

  I awoke in his arms. “Good morning, dormigliona,” he said. Sleepyhead.

  For a moment I wondered where I was – and then I remembered – the woods, the cabin, Tommaso. A smile came from the depths of me, and I didn’t regret a thing.

  It had been my first time.

  And the dreams I’d dreamed about that moment didn’t even remotely match the reality of it.

  I was in a haze as we walked back to Firefly House, separating as we went to shower and get dressed – even just that short separation was too much for both of us, because we came back together just to hug and say goodbye, before parting to go to work.

  “Vineyards, today,” he said.

  “Okay.” I kissed him again, and again. And then once more.

  “I love you, Rissi.”

  Oh. “Seriously?”

  He laughed. “Seriously. I do. You know, men from around here don’t say such a thing easily…” I detected a little bit of fear, of insecurity.

  “Texan girls don’t say that easily either. I love you too,” I said, and we kissed and we smiled and looked into each other’s eyes without talking anymore, just taking each other in, until, reluctantly, we had to part.

  I would not go to Passiflora. I was still smarting from Sofia’s revelation. Yes, I knew I would forgive Flora, but not now, not yet.

  I went to Leone’s for breakfast instead, deciding I would just ignore Sofia, if she was there. Ten minutes later I was sitting in front of a slice of Century Cake and my decorated cappuccino. I opened the diary, immediately wishing that I hadn’t.

  April 12, 1945

  Montevino is destroyed.

  Leo and I were in the High Woods when we heard them, then saw them in the distance. Leo ran to call for help, to say that the soldiers had arrived earlier than we’d thought, that we needed men with rifles. He begged me to stay hidden, because running down with my little rifle now would mean certain death. I had to force all my muscles to stay still, not to move. It went against every instinct not to go and defend my parents and Zia Costanza.

  I tossed and turned under the starlit sky, a cold, harsh moon watching us as we hid in the cabin in the High Woods. In the shadow of the mountain’s gray granite boulders, I prayed the soldiers would not come all the way up here, or that they’d march past if they did, in too much of a rush to notice. Maybe these soldiers had already fulfilled their tribute of blood. With my kin, my people.

  Below us Montevino was on fire. Shots resounded through the night – each bullet destined for a woman, a child, or a man too old or too sick to fight. That’s all who remained now. All the young men had gone already.

  I don’t know how I fell asleep in such horror, hugging the rifle I barely knew how to use, my cheek against the barrel’s cold metal, but I did. It was a sick, feverish sleep that brought with it a sort of delirium. A memory from a time so close and yet so far, when Leo and I were together, a time when everything that happened after was just unthinkable.


  In my dream-memory, Leo and I lay together in a field not far from my home, with the sky so blue, dotted with soft white clouds. Sunlight played in the poplars and leaves rippled all around us like bunting at a village fair; and his hand, rough and used to manual work, was holding mine. Was it always meant to be, between Leo and me? Or would we dance around each other for years, with him offering his love and me forever running, forever having other plans?

  I’d known him since I was a child, this man with eyes so perfectly black they reflected my soul, the man with a passion for vineyards, the motherless boy who’d spent evenings at our home basking in the warmth of our family. He had a strong mind and a kind heart. Leo Bordet was the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with, before the war came and tore everything apart.

  He kissed me under the summer sky, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe for happiness. In my dream, my family had gathered for us. I could hear them in the distance, not far away.

  “Will you marry me?” Leo’s words echoed in my mind just like I’d heard them a million times before. Like it was always meant to be, only it took me years of growing up before realizing it was so.

  “Yes. Yes. Of course, I will. I will,” I said, and let his eyes and mouth pull me to him. My family’s voices raised to the sky as they surrounded us, their hands full of daisies and poppies and buttercups, teasing us, calling for another kiss. In the glare of the sun I thought I could see Papa rising out of his chair and standing tall, and Mamma was young and beautiful again, like she was before childbirth, before years of hard work, before grief. My Zia Costanza, her dark hair beautifully curled, a sweet, somehow otherworldly smile on her lips, her beloved rosary wrapped around her wrist. And Pietro! My little brother Pietro was there as well, wearing his soldier’s uniform. Oh, Pietro!

  Tears fell down my cheeks. Why was I crying when everyone was with me again, alive and well, and I was surrounded by love?

  Because a part of me, even while asleep, knew it wasn’t real.

  It was then that my family began to fade, starting with my little brother. He waved his hand and slowly disappeared.

  “Don’t go. Don’t go!” I cried as the light of the sunset in his eyes passed by and faded. And then Leo too began to dissolve right in front of me.

  “Don’t go.”

  He held me against him, one hand on the back of my head, the other around my waist, and whispered in my ear:

  “I’ll never leave your side.”

  I awoke calling his name, but Leo didn’t answer – a rough hand grabbed my arm and pulled me up, shots and cries filling my ears. I knew I was about to be killed, but there was no point trying to run. If I couldn’t escape, I reasoned, I wanted to die on my feet, looking straight into the eyes of my murderer. I only had a minute to live, I wouldn’t spend it running away. I wasn’t a hero – I simply saw no way out, so I might as well be brave. How come I was so calm, coldly thinking about my own death? Maybe because I’d had the chance to contemplate this moment coming for a long time, maybe because Leo’s silence told me he’d been killed already, therefore there was no point in me staying alive.

  But it wasn’t death that awaited me. The soldier who’d grabbed me stopped to look at my face. In the light of his torch, I saw his own hard, angular features. His eyes were the lightest blue I’d ever seen, like a frozen lake, so different from Leo’s.

  I can’t say what happened next, because my mind and heart and soul left my body, and watched from some dark, secluded corner of my consciousness. The soldier’s jagged, foreign words and grunts, the weight of his body on mine, are burned into my memory. But more than anything, those blue, blue eyes – almost white – will haunt me forever.

  Leo, I called silently after the soldier was finished, awaiting the shot that would end my life. Yes, the end would be better than living in this hell.

  The soldier looked young now, almost ashamed. Almost.

  I closed my eyes and waited.

  But the shot didn’t come, and an eternity later, dawn found me alive. There was no sign of my Leo, alive or dead. I staggered toward the smoking remains of Montevino. My mind flew into action, as it had been trained to do. The dead needed to be buried – but not everyone was dead. As soon as I saw the wounded, all those familiar faces covered in blood and ashes, women and children calling for help, I remembered: I wasn’t just a broken, bleeding woman. I was a doctor, and I was needed.

  Montevino, August 20, 1945

  These days are so frantic; I am exhausted and sleepless, but I’m writing in this diary whenever I can because I want all this never to be forgotten. I want the generations who’ll come after us to know what happened to Montevino, to remember the names of those who were killed.

  Leo has vanished, maybe taken away, maybe buried in the woods. And it seems that the partisans in his division – Davide and the others – were all slain. Somebody had told the Germans where to find them.

  Carlo Caporale came looking for me today at the parish house, where Dottor Quirico and I have organized a makeshift hospital. I wanted to hit him, yes, I wanted to kill him. But I kept doing my job.

  “It was you, wasn’t it? You told the soldiers where to find Leo’s division,” I said, folding the ripped-cloth bandages the women had made.

  Good God, we have nothing. No medicine, not enough bandages, no supplies. Thank goodness for my mother’s herbs and tinctures.

  “Do you really think I would do this to you?”

  “Who was it, then? Who?”

  “I have no idea. But I’ll find them.”

  I looked at him. “You’re one of them. You hate the partisans. I don’t believe you. You gave them away.”

  “I hated Leo because he took you. But I didn’t give him away. I didn’t give any of them away. I would never have harmed Leo because it would have harmed you.”

  I froze.

  “You never took me seriously. To you, I was just a rich fool. I only existed to be made fun of, the man with the fancy car and no brains. But I always loved you, Elisa. Whatever you may think of me. And if Leo is still alive, I promise I will do my best to find out where he is.”

  He strode out and left me gaping.

  Some days later, Caporale came back to the hospital, this time with Davide Carpentieri. Davide had been shot and had a raging infection, but he was alive – the only one left out of Leo’s division.

  He wept as he told me what had happened. It was Agnese. She was the one who betrayed us all. Agnese, the sweet, blonde girl who’d hoped to be Leo’s bride. She must have found out the whereabouts of the partisans from her father, who’d often come to our house to see my own papa. Did she realize that by denouncing them, she’d spelled the fate of her father too? How could she have done something so cruel, so foolish? Neither Davide nor Caporale know if Leo is dead or alive. Nobody has found his body. At least I have this to hold onto.

  Agnese! The girl who’d been paired up with Leo by the village gossip? Leo had rejected her, and she’d denounced him. Because of her rage and jealousy, so many people had been destroyed. I couldn’t believe it. And yet, I knew it was true: one person’s fury or cruelty was enough to alter the course of many lives. Leo was gone, and Elisa… I couldn’t even think the word.

  Oh, Elisa, you have become so dear to me. Please, don’t let the pain and humiliation destroy you. Please, Elisa, fight on. Be strong, remember?

  And Caporale. Carlo Caporale had behaved like a decent man…

  “Callie?” Marco Leone was standing beside my table, his apron on as usual, his eyes, shaded by heavy eyebrows, full of worry.

  “Yes. Hello.”

  “Hello. You know I keep an eye on Flora… I just saw her down in the square. She’s not in a good way. She looks like a ghost. She went home, and… Well, I think she needs someone there.”

  “She’s…”

  “No, not drunk. I think she’s ill,” he said bluntly.

  Oh my God. I jumped onto my feet. “Thank you. I’m going at once.”
r />   “This is for her,” Marco said, and handed me a beautifully wrapped package from Leone’s.

  I hurried down to Flora’s apartment. I was expecting to find her intoxicated, despite what Marco had said, and my heart sank at the thought. She’d made so much progress, I hated the idea of her going backward instead of forward. But there was no alcohol involved. Flora was burning up, lying on the sofa as white as a sheet, but with feverish eyes.

  “Callie?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Marco said you weren’t well. So here I am.”

  “I’m okay. I don’t need help.”

  “Of course, of course. I’ll just make your bed and prepare some tea. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.”

  “I don’t need looking after.”

  “Everybody needs looking after,” I said. “Here, some candies. From Marco.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “Be quiet, Flora,” I said, putting the kettle on.

  “Callie?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “You’re here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t hate me.”

  “No, most definitely not,” I said, and held her hand. It was icy cold, though her forehead was burning.

  “Flora… before I let you sleep, may I ask you a question?”

  She nodded.

  “Are we related to a woman called Elisa?”

  She nodded again. “Elisa gave birth to Alba, who gave birth to Rosa, who gave birth to me. And then, there was you.”

  I smiled. Elisa was my great-great grandmother.

  “Now rest. Don’t worry about anything. We’ll sort it all out.”

  “But I did… I did what Sofia said.” Her eyes were shiny, I wasn’t sure if with fever or tears.