Alex Preston - In Love and War

‘You need to go,’ he says. ‘Run to the piazza, Alessandro will look after you.’

‘No,’ says Esmond. ‘I’m not leaving Ada again.’ He starts back along the Lungarno towards the Ponte alla Carraia. Elio runs to keep up with him. ‘You need to get rid of the gun,’ he hisses.

Esmond shakes his head. ‘I’m fucked if I’m caught either way. I’ll keep the gun.’ They have almost reached the passageway when, ahead of them, the light of a German Kübelwagen appears, sweeping from side to side along the Lungarno.

‘Quick,’ Elio says, trying to drag Esmond back the way they have come.

‘No,’ he says again.

Ada is standing in the shadows of the passageway, her skin dimly glowing. ‘Quick,’ Esmond says. The three of them move down the passageway in single file, coming out on the Borgo San Frediano. Esmond tries to lead them back towards Santo Spirito, but Elio hesitates.

‘Wait,’ he says. Esmond feels an urge to wipe Elio’s glasses, misted with rain. ‘They’ll find the body any minute. There’ll be Germans crawling all over the place. We’ll never make it all the way up to the villa.’

‘What about Antonio’s place?’ Ada says.

They walk swiftly along the road, again in the shadows. The rain is starting to drum the street, casting a misty scrim before them. Just as they turn up towards the Ponte della Vittoria, there is the sound of a police siren. Soon, a second joins it. ‘They’ve found the body,’ Elio says. They begin to run. When they reach the river, they look along to see half a dozen searchlights illuminating the Lungarno. Soldiers are spewing across the bridge from the north, their feet rhythmic on the cobblestones.

Outside Antonio’s apartment, they pull the bell and wait. Nothing. One of the German Kübelwagens is moving up the Lungarno towards them. ‘Fuck,’ Elio says. Esmond looks along the river and sees two figures moving quickly, keeping just out of reach of the searchlight that is oscillating first one way, then the other, on top of the car. The figures run across the traffic circle at the bottom of the Ponte della Vittoria and come stumbling up to the front door of the building. Antonio fumbles with his key-ring, gets the key in the latch and the five of them spill inside. Esmond slams the door shut with his foot. They hear the slow rumble of the car pass by, and then they are all laughing, breathless, staggering up the stairs.

‘I need a drink,’ Elio says.

‘What a blast. Wowee!’ Tosca spreads happily back on the wall on the first landing.

Esmond takes Ada’s hand and they come up last of all. She kisses him at the doorway and they go inside.

‘It was horrifying, but distant,’ he’s saying, much later, as they sit by the window, a bottle of limoncello on the table in front of them. ‘As if it wasn’t me pulling the trigger, but me in a novel, a film. Do you see what I’m getting at?’ Tosca is curled asleep in an armchair in the corner. Antonio is cooking at the small stove in his kitchen. Elio is staring out into the night, watching the lights move along the Lungarno.

‘We did it, that’s what matters,’ Elio says. ‘The bastards will take us seriously from now on.’

An hour later, they are all drunk and dead tired. Elio is slumped across the table, sleeping. Antonio insists that Esmond and Ada take his bed and stretches out on the floor by Tosca’s feet. Their faces together on the pillow, Esmond tries to recite ‘God’s Grandeur’ to Ada, but falls asleep somewhere in the first line. They are woken every so often by police sirens. In the night, winds blow away the clouds and they wake to a dawn that is bright and still.

Bruno arrives at the apartment just after seven. Elio, rubbing his eyes, answers the door. Antonio is curled in the chair with Tosca in his lap. Esmond and Ada get up slowly and take turns washing in the sink. Bruno is sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. His face bears none of the triumph that Esmond had expected.

‘Well done last night,’ he says grimly. ‘We did what we had to do.’

‘But—’ Esmond sits down opposite his friend.

‘But Alberti and Mangianello convened a special court in the night, after they found out about Gobbi, I mean. It was decided they should send a strong message to the Resistance. Five prisoners are being executed over in the Cascine this morning.’

‘Not Pretini—’ Ada says. Esmond’s eyes dart to the window and the park.

‘No, not yet. It would seem they think they can get more from him. But Oreste Ristori is one of them.’

At ten o’clock sharp, the soldiers begin to arrive in the park across the river. The shooting range is swept of fallen leaves and then a Black Maria pulls up. Five men are dragged out, their hands cuffed. There is no crowd, just a group of Blackshirts and a single man in a dark suit who begins to scream and swear at the prisoners. Antonio comes back with a pair of binoculars. ‘That’s Gobbi’s brother,’ he says, touching the focus ring. ‘I’ve seen him around.’ The five men are tied to posts in front of the shooting range. ‘Alberti is there,’ Antonio continues, ‘and Mangianello.’ Now an ambulance with a lightning flash on the side pulls up.

‘That’s—’ Ada begins.

‘Carità. Yes.’ Antonio says.

Gobbi’s brother continues to shout at the five prisoners, the harsh notes of his voice coming across the still waters of the river. ‘Can you make out any of the others?’ Bruno asks. ‘Let me look for a moment.’ He takes the binoculars. ‘There’s Luigi Pugi, Gino Manetti. I don’t know the other two. They’re not even partisans apart from Oreste. Just anarchists rounded up because the Germans don’t want troublemakers on the street. This is appalling, it’s criminal.’

As the men are tied to their posts, Carità steps from the ambulance and embraces Alberti and Mangianello. Bruno points out Piero Koch, once as infamous in Rome as Carità in Florence. He is hunched and long-limbed, like a spider. Esmond watches the Blackshirts struggle to tie their ropes around Ristori’s enormous belly. Gobbi’s brother’s voice rises higher as Carità, Koch and three other Blackshirts take their positions facing the men. Over the harsh cries, though, another sound drifts out. Ristori is singing. As the Banda Carità raise their rifles to their shoulders, Ristori leads the five prisoners in the Internationale , although only Ristori’s voice can be heard over Gobbi’s brother’s screams. Esmond reaches his hand out in the air towards the man, towards the voice. ‘C’est la lutte finale / Groupons-nous et demain / L’Internationale / Sera le genre humain.’ Five shots. Five bodies slump forward, Ristori’s heavily enough that his ropes break and he tumbles into the sand. Esmond thinks of Mercedes Gomez, mud-streaked in a jungle clearing, the pictures on Ristori’s mantel, the things for which we live.

Tosca is crying and Ada sits with her. Bruno shakes his head, lowering the binoculars. Elio’s face is set hard. Esmond, still looking down over the five bodies, their five murderers, sees Shelley sitting in the same park a hundred and twenty years ago, writing ‘Ode to the West Wind’. Very quietly, to himself, he mouths: ‘O Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’

They spend Christmas at L’Ombrellino. The Professor comes up in the Bianchi with Bruno, the back loaded down with bottles of wine and food. Maria Luigia’s cousins have given them three chickens, there are carrots and potatoes from the garden. Alessandro has been brewing grappa in the caves at Monte Morello. He and Elio arrive on the Moto Guzzi with a rucksack full of alcohol. Maria Luigia turns up on a bicycle, her plump cheeks flushed from the cold, an enormous salami hanging around her neck, the chickens dangling from the handlebars. Gino Bartali and his wife also cycle up, while Antonio and Tosca, in evening dress, come late, as the chickens are being carved. Antonio’s hair has been carefully cut. He is cleanly shaven and smells of rose water.