Little Lucia kneels by her sister’s bed, gripping her hand in hers, trying to wish away the pain, afraid Isabella will die before their father gets back. If he ever gets back.
“Papà will be here soon. He will bring help and then soon we will have another member of the family. You will have a baby boy or a baby girl and I shall be an auntie!”
“Oh, Lucia! It hurts. Why does it hurt so much?” Isabella’s face is twisted in agony and it breaks her heart to see her beloved sister suffer, but she has to remain calm.
“It always hurts when a woman has a baby,” she says with all the authority of a fourteen-year-old. “Mama said it hurt when she had you and it hurt when she had me; it’s normal.” Isabella arches her back and screams and another explosion rocks the house, sending flakes of plaster and dust down on their heads.
“Make it stop, Lucia!”
“I can’t. It will stop when they are ready to stop.”
She wipes Isabella’s forehead with the sleeve of her dressing gown. Isabella pants as the contractions come and she writhes and twists her head on the filthy pillow and Lucia tries to contain her rising panic. She hears the latch of the door and turns her head towards the sound.
“Papà,” she whispers.
Alfredo Girardi hobbles into the room and closes the door behind him, gasping for breath. “Papà?” She looks expectantly at her father as he approaches the bed.
“How’s my little girl?”
“Papà, where is the doctor?”
“They are here, Lucia. They are outside. But you must go upstairs.”
“But why?”
“Please! Lucia.” He gives her a look that alarms her. “They are soldiers. English soldiers. I don’t know them. I don’t know what they might do. I can’t take the risk.”
“But, Papà…”
“Go now. At once!” He pulls her to her feet and pushes her towards the staircase. “Go!” She runs up the stairs. She’s always obedient towards her father. Always.
She kneels on the landing at the top of the stairs as her father opens the door and then she sees a soldier come in behind him, crouching, moving slowly and carefully, swinging a big gun from side to side. His uniform is greenish brown in colour, different from the grey and black ones she’s used to and he looks wary, not angry like the others. She ducks into the landing corridor in case he sees her. She sits on the floor with her back to the wall, listening, but the sound is muffled and he speaks a language she doesn’t understand. All she recognises are Isabella’s screams amidst the explosions that happen at random intervals and make the house shake and she puts her hands over her ears because being able to hear but not see makes things worse.
Isabella screams again and she hears her father.
“You can name the baby,” and then, “Reggio, yes, or if it’s a girl? Catalina. Yes, Catalina.” Then the soldier is asking for hot water and there is another big bang outside and then there is quiet and after a while she dares descend a stair or two and peek between the uprights of the balustrade. The soldier is bending over Isabella, looking between her legs and then there’s an almighty explosion outside that rocks the farmhouse again and Isabella is screaming and her father’s shouting and praying, “Mother of God, Holy Mother Mary!” and the soldier is shouting, “Baby, baby!” and she scuttles back upstairs and onto the landing, shaking with fear.
And then a whistle approaches from the distance, rising like a banshee until it hurts her ears and she pulls the dressing gown over her head until there’s a deafening boom and she feels the air being sucked out of her lungs as the roof above her head flies off into the sky. The wall at the end of the landing disappears and she tucks herself into a ball on the moving floor in case it tips her backwards and she has to grab hold of the doorframe to stop herself falling into the room below and then the roof tiles fall back to earth through a hole where the floor used to be.
And then there’s quiet again, apart from the odd piece of loose brick and creaking beam yielding to gravity, settling in its final resting place.
Her hair and dressing gown are covered in a thick layer of dust, and she rubs her arms and chest to shake it off and after a moment or two ventures a little way down the stairs and peers through the broken balustrade. The room is open to daylight and the fire continues to flicker in the chimneystack and the floor is covered in rubble. She inches further down the staircase and lets out a whimper. Her father is gone, and a huge wooden beam lies across the top of the bed. Only Isabella’s lower half remains visible, knees bent upward, legs wide apart. The soldier lies partially covered by rubble, moaning but moving. She freezes and she watches him as he drags his broken body over to the bed and tries to help Isabella. She watches him howl like a wolf and cry like a baby. What kind of soldier cries? A good one. She cries too but she can’t move. Her family is gone but the soldier is back behind the bed, kneeling over her dead sister’s body and he’s muttering to himself and still sobbing and then he has a knife! He has a knife and he’s cutting her open and she gives out a silent scream and she can’t watch so she scurries back up the stairs and rolls into a ball and cries.
More explosions, a distance away; she counts eight in succession and then she hears a baby cry. A baby? She opens her eyes, straining to hear but there are more explosions now and they are coming closer and closer and then the devil himself is shouting and the roar of a thousand lions is above her head and the stampede of a thousand elephants is at the door and she screams and she screams…
***
It’s quiet now. It’s been quiet for hours or maybe it’s only minutes or seconds, but the devil and the lions and elephants have all gone and she stirs and moves down the staircase on her bottom: one, two, three steps. The chimneystack has fallen into the room, the last flames of a dying fire weak and withering. The soldier is sitting on the floor with his back to the wall. She crawls towards him on all fours over the stones and the bricks and the wood but he looks dead and blood oozes red and glistening from his shoulder. He’s holding a baby. Isabella’s baby! Then he moves his head and his eyes open and she stares at him but he looks blind because he’s smiling stupidly through her and his lips are mumbling something she can’t understand. She looks down at the baby lying still in his lap and she picks it up and holds it to her chest. Catalina. The soldier closes his eyes and his head lolls to one side. He looks peaceful, sleeping.
***
The old men in caps had reached the end of a round and kicked off again. The sudden noise broke Harry out of his trance and he saw Lucia looking at him closely.
“So you see, Harrimale, I am no angel. I am just the one who was left alive and at the time, I didn’t even want to be alive. I saw what you did. I saw what you did for my sister before she was killed and what you did to her afterwards and I thought, this man has died trying to help her and her baby.”
He was profoundly moved by her testimony. His own horror had been bad enough, and the re-telling of the hideous drama by someone who observed it, sobering beyond measure. But he could not imagine how a child could possibly have witnessed such carnage and yet survived mentally; go on to live some semblance of a normal life, however challenging and distasteful. He had never coped with the aftermath and he wondered how she had.
“Where did you go?” he asked, but his voice quavered and he had to clear his throat.
“I wanted to get away as far as I could, but I had no shoes and I had only a nightdress and dressing gown and there was still ice on the ground. I heard soldiers coming and I was frightened and ran away across the field.”
“Where did you bury her?”
“Who?”
“Catalina.”
The smile dropped and her gaze shifted to somewhere over his shoulder. He turned his head. A black Mercedes-Benz pulled up outside the café and two men jumped out, leaving the driver, engine running: Paolo in his red jacket and sunglasses and another in a grey suit, faces grim and determined.