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

  Had it not been for Mamma’s letters from home, brief but full of love, my Zia Costanza’s, so full of details that they made me feel like I was there, and Pietro’s little notes, his childish handwriting getting better and better as years passed – I would have given up right at the beginning. I’m a little bit ashamed to say that, but it’s true. I owe them so much. At home, I was beloved; but at the convent, I was the rebel.

  Anyway, all of this is in the past now! I’m home and I’ll enjoy this summer in Montevino. In the next few days, I’ll go to Torino and apply for the university.

  Yes, me, little Elisa from Montevino, at Torino University! Well, if I get in, of course. It seems impossible, yet it’s been my dream since I was a little girl: I want to be a doctor.

  Healing runs in my family. My great-grandmother and my grandmother were the village midwives. Mamma would have liked to study as a nurse but married Papa very young; she, too, is a midwife to the village women and has gained a reputation for being the one to call on when a baby is on the way. People come from miles away to see her, often shunning Dottor Quirico, our local physician, and she gives them herbs and teas and tinctures. I have learned so much from her, but I want to know more. My dream is to be like Dottor Quirico, to work here in Montevino and make people better.

  So much stands between me and university: I need to pass an impossible exam, get through a rigorous interview, and then, if I’m accepted, find the funds to go. But I must believe it’s going to happen. There’s nothing else I’d rather do, nothing else I could do. I truly feel this is what I’m on this earth for…

  I paused reading and wondered what it felt like to have a purpose in life. I, too, was working hard to save to go to college, but, unlike Elisa, what I wanted to become was still a dilemma. I looked outside the small window to a blanket of clouds set on fire by the sunset. I had lost all sense of time. I knew that something new would begin for me the moment I stepped off this plane. But, until then, I wanted to cram in as much as I could of this diary.

  I slipped the photograph out from between the pages, and looked into the woman’s deep, dark eyes behind the thin wire glasses. Her smile was like a sunny day. Elisa…

  Montevino, July 25, 1939

  Caro Diario,

  At last, the exams results are out…

  I’ve been accepted into the medicine course in Torino! And according to the lists pinned outside, I am the only woman among 112 new students.

  Zia Costanza saw my name first, and she very nearly shrieked! Can you imagine, the calm, quiet Costanza shrieking? I must admit, I was so happy I nearly cried! But there was no way I would shed a tear in front of all my future fellow students. I must be tougher than they expect – and twice as tough as any man.

  When we came home on the train and gave everyone the news, I could see that Mamma and Papa had mixed feelings. Their happiness was muted. And I know why. I am now faced with a challenge bigger than any entrance exam. I must find the funds to support me there. My family own almost nothing – the clothes on our backs, Papa’s tools. We don’t even own Firefly House and the small working farm that goes with it – we got it from the Conte of Montevino, who took pity on us when Papa had his accident. That’s why we can’t ask the Conte for another favor, we are too proud to beg. My parents work to eat and to keep us warm and clothed; there’s nothing left over. I need to look at other ways, and I will. I know I’ll find a way, no matter what.

  I have already applied for the one and only scholarship available. Soon the applicants will receive a letter with the result of their application. I’m going to go to the post office every day in the morning, before helping on the farm, because I can’t stand waiting until lunchtime, when our postman does the rounds. Zia Costanza went to church this morning to light a candle for me, and she, too, will do it every day until the letter arrives.

  Yours,

  Elisa

  August 24, 1939

  Caro Diario,

  I didn’t get the scholarship.

  This diary is secret, so I can admit here that I cried.

  But, I must keep going.

  I’m looking for another solution. There must be one!

  As soon as I got a hold of myself again, after reading that horrible letter, I went to Don Giuseppe. He promised he’d petition the bishop again, but the bishop already paid for me staying at the convent to get my diploma. I doubt his superiors will let him help me again. The only other person I can turn to is the Conte, but my parents are very much against the idea. Today I brought it up again, but Mamma said no.

  My Zia Costanza was quiet, as she usually is, and my brother Pietro is too young to be listened to. And Papa? He deferred to Mamma, on this one, something he almost never does.

  I’m left with two choices: to become a mondina, a rice girl, working in the rice fields away from home, ankle deep in water and bent in two all day, like so many girls my age; or get a job at Leone’s, Montevino’s candy factory. But neither position will allow me to save enough money to ever attend my medicine course, so I suppose that’s the end of it.

  Yours, crushed,

  Elisa

  “You’ll want to put a jacket on when we land.”

  One of the flight attendants, pretty in her uniform and perfect make-up, interrupted my reading. She’d spoken to me in Italian, the first time someone had done so since school, and then it was only in a lesson. Being spoken to was different from reading words in Italian; words laid out black on white, waiting patiently to be deciphered. All of a sudden, I was nervous, but tried to hide it and pretended to be confident.

  “Sì?” I felt myself blushing intensely. I clutched the diary to me, as if it were a precious secret.

  “Oh, sì. There’s a storm preparing.”

  “Ho solo questo – I only have this,” I said, tugging on my thin jacket. I was surprised to find the words rolled off my tongue after all these years.

  “I’m sure the storm will pass soon,” the flight attendant said smoothly.

  The captain’s voice came through the intercom: “This is your captain speaking, we’ll be landing in Turin shortly, twenty minutes ahead of time.” I put the diary away and began to prepare for landing. “I hope you had the chance to admire the mighty Alps from the air.”

  I had. In seeing the snow-capped peaks I’d been half awed, half freaked out. It really was another world, so far from Texas and everything I knew. I ignored the wave of fear that hit me as the plane lowered its wheels, ready to hit the runway. Where does fear end and excitement begin?

  I had imagined being greeted by blue Italian seas and flowering pergolas, but, just like the flight assistant had predicted, I was surrounded by people wrapped in rain jackets, gray-blue mountain landscapes, and fresh, crisp air. I fiddled with the heating dials in the bright red FIAT 500 I’d just rented, my cross-body bag beside me on the passenger seat and my backpack and suitcase in the back. The evening shadows were beginning to fall, and on both sides of me were illuminated signs to industrial sites, malls and warehouses.

  After not even twenty minutes of semi-urban landscape, I was already out of the highway and onto narrow country roads, farms and fields having taken the place of the brightly lit buildings in Turin. Even the GPS seemed confused, because it kept guiding me into tiny villages, where I would take turn after turn onto alleys and small, stone-paved roads. It seemed to me that Italians make great artists, poets and designers, not to mention their food – but one thing was sure: they were not great at putting together road signs.

  Every place I passed – even in the rain – was ancient and beautiful. Spotlights illuminated the facades of lovely churches, and I passed cafés, ice-cream parlors and restaurants all lit up, as I drove along cobblestone roads. Often, built into the walls of houses and alleys, I saw tiny shrines with statuettes illuminated by electric candles. Some villages were nothing more than one road, a small cluster of houses and a church, mounted on the landscape like a gem on a ring. Where I came from, street lighting simply had a
practical function; but here, it seemed to be used to accentuate the beautiful, ancient buildings, almost like stage lights in a theatre.

  Over the fields and woods loomed a darkening sky, the moon and stars blocked out by a thick cloud cover. Ahead of me stretched the dark gray shape of the Alps, growing closer and closer until, suddenly, gone were the woods and fields on either side. In their place towered walls of gray stone; rock faces that seemed to become steeper and steeper as I drove. There were clusters of lights scattered here and there: small villages that appeared to cling to the mountain sides. At one point there was a castle on top of a craggy hill, illuminated in yellow and white. I almost gasped as I saw, passing on my left, what looked like a fortress, rising from the stone as if it was born of it.

  “This is amazing,” I said to myself, startling at the sound of my voice after so much silence.

  And then the road began to rise again, at first gently, then scaling the mountain, the treacherous bends becoming tighter and tighter, the road narrower and narrower. And just as suddenly as I realized this, my little red car was swallowed by the darkness. No lights, other than the reflective lights at the edges of the road. Only a guardrail stood between me and the steep slope down the mountainside.

  My clammy hands gripped the steering wheel. I was almost shaking. Up and up that stubborn mule of a car climbed, until finally the streetlights appeared again, and to my relief I saw that a softer valley had taken the place of the abyss. At that moment, just as I was murmuring words of thanks for having made it up the mountain before the storm, and in one piece – a white road sign appeared: Montevino.

  I had arrived.

  I drove along a long avenue that led up to the village. It was lined on both sides by tall trees, each one gleaming almost gold under the light of old-fashioned, wrought-iron lamp posts dotted along the way. Beckoning me was an ancient, red stone belfry with an old-fashioned bell on top. My heart began to beat faster as I passed tree after tree, all of them tall, gnarly and ancient. Then the road ended, and I came to a small, stone bridge running over a stream. The GPS told me to keep going, and I drove on through narrow streets, where small shrines were encased in the walls, with red candles inside them burning like St. Elmo’s fires.

  “You’ve reached your destination.”

  The robotic words of the GPS felt almost like a sign. I stopped the car by the side of the road, just across from what seemed to be the village square, then opened the door, stepped out onto the cobblestones and inhaled the thin fresh air, laden with the scent of burned wood and pine trees. Everything spoke of rain to come, and the wind was intensifying even as I stood there, slowly but surely. A thought hit me then. Elisa must have been here, in this same square. That church, with its red stone belfry, which I’d seen from a distance, was it there that Elisa had gone to ask Don Giuseppe for help with university funding? I laid a hand on my cross-body bag, where the diary lay, waiting to tell me more.

  I turned around to take in the whole scene. At the four corners of the square were four ancient pines, tall and almost black in the night air, and in the center there was a monument. I walked closer and noticed that it was an angel cradling a soldier in her arms. A sign at her feet read “To the Fallen,” followed by a list of names. At its base sat a laurel wreath with a red ribbon. Beyond the village, white and illuminated, was the castle Malva had written about, sitting on top of a dark hill. And beyond the castle were the mountains, etched against the night sky, encasing Montevino like a rocky nest.

  There were alleys departing from the square, and I couldn’t wait to see and explore more. I wondered where the painting Elisa had written about was – the Christ with the clouds around the cross, who they used to pray to when rain wasn’t forthcoming – but my exploring would have to wait. I needed to find the B&B I’d booked, the Aquila Nera, confirm the room, and then look for Firefly House.

  I walked past the row of small stores, all closed now, except for a well-lit window in which an old-fashioned painted sign told me that here was the place I was searching for; I stepped inside. It seemed to be both a café and a restaurant, but it was half empty. No wonder, if a storm was preparing.

  “Buonasera… Callie?” A short, black-haired woman with a colorful apron tied over her woolen sweater, all red flowers and swirls, came to greet me. She pronounced my name “Call-ee”, and it made it sound exotic. A few locals looked up, and a couple of them smiled. I supposed there wouldn’t be many American girls turning up in the village, just like that.

  “Yes, that’s me. Callie DiGiacomo. I booked a room for tonight.”

  “Welcome, I’m Adriana. Nonna, she’s here! The American girl!” the woman called.

  An elderly lady with a wizened face – just the Italian nonna you would see in a film – sat in the corner behind the counter, also with a colorful apron over her clothes. “Oh, la ragazza Americana…! My goodness, what a night to arrive! Will you want to eat something after you settle in? You must be famished, after the long journey…”

  I swallowed, lost for a moment in the stream of Italian words that followed. Nonna had a strange accent, different from the Italian films I’d watched and the audio bits of the books I studied. It would take a while to get used to it.

  “We are speaking too fast, Nonna Tina!” Adriana said kindly, laying a hand on my arm. The touching and the offering of food, now there were two very Italian things right in front of me! “Scusa, cara.” Sorry, dear. “We will speak more slowly.” She nodded at the nonna as she spoke.

  “No, no, it’s fine! I need to practice,” I said, smiling. “Just, I’m looking for a house… I’d like to see it before I settle in my room. Casa delle Lucciole?”

  “Oh, sì, sì,” Adriana and Nonna both said, looking at one other. “It’s really easy to find, right behind the castle,” Adriana continued. “But are you sure you want to go out there again? There’s a storm coming.”

  “I would just like to check it out, then I’ll come back.”

  “And eat something,” Nonna said slowly and deliberately, making me smile. Out of the corner of my eye I’d seen some pretty amazing-looking plates of pasta on the tables. “I make it all myself, you know?” she told me proudly, catching me looking at the food. “I make pasta almost every day, and I’m—”

  “Eighty-two!” Nonna and Adriana said together, the younger woman smiling at me. “Enough about pasta, Nonna. Call-ee, you can’t go wrong. There are only a few houses up there and Casa delle Lucciole is the biggest,” Adriana said, showing me with her hands in a way that reminded me of my parents so much, it squeezed my heart.

  “Nobody has lived in Casa delle Lucciole for years now,” Nonna said. “People wonder why. There are many stories around the house and the Stella family, but who can tell what’s true and what’s hearsay?” She looked at me for a moment, as if to see if I had understood what she’d told me, but I wondered if she was really asking herself how much I knew.

  So… Firefly House was empty? Of course, it made sense. I had the keys, the house had been left to me… I was desperate to ask them about Malva, but first I wanted to see what awaited me at the house, and then to take some time to process everything.

  I left the warmth and light of the Aquila Nera to go out into the night again, just as the first few drops of rain hit my face and hands. Full-bellied clouds filled the sky now. I had to hurry.

  I got back into the car and drove out of the village and up the hill, bend after bend, heading for the castle. At one point, two pairs of bright, frightened yellow eyes looked at me from the road, before jumping away into the undergrowth. I saw, in the headlights, that they belonged to deer. I drove the rest of the short distance slowly and carefully until I arrived on top.

  Up close, the building looked more like a fortress than a castle, the inclement weather adding to the atmosphere. It was imposing, rising up stark and gray against the dark sky. I drove on, hoping to find a way round it, so I could get to Firefly House without having to get out of the car and wander about i
n the dark. A cobblestone road led me along one of the walls to a wide field bordered by dense, black woods, and on the edge of the woods – nearly invisible had it not been for the car headlights – was a small villa.

  My heart began to beat faster. Was that Firefly House…? It had to be. I could see maybe two or three other cottages around, but this was the biggest one, just as Adriana had said.

  The headlights illuminated a wrought-iron gate, a yard dotted with what seemed like centenary trees, a red-tiled roof, a small round tower, a terrace. The main door was framed by a porch with small, unadorned columns and stony steps.

  It was perfect. Even lit by the simple beam of car lights and seen through rain-lashed windows.

  This house is mine? Seriously?

  I had to pinch myself. There had to be a mistake.

  No, I would not believe it was mine until I heard it from the lawyers.

  A sudden flash lit the sky and illuminated the castle, the house, and the mountains all around me. Horizontal lightning. It was time to be indoors, for sure.

  I got out of the car, hunched against the wind, the downpour drenching me instantly, and fumbled among the keys I’d been given to find the right one for the gate. Finally inserting it and twisting it any which way, and rattling the lock until my hands were wet and frozen, at last the catch sprang open. I ran across the garden, trying not to slip on the wet earth, and stepped up to the elegant porch. Slipping the smaller key into the lock of the wooden front door, I stepped out of the rain and over the threshold.