THE SECRET MESSENGER
Mandy Robotham

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Mandy Robotham 2019

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Cover photographs © Mary Evans Picture Library (Piazza San Marco, Venice), Elizabeth Ainsley/Trevillion images (woman), Shutterstock.com (flags, planes, sky)

Mandy Robotham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008324261

Ebook Edition © December 2019 ISBN: 9780008324254

Version: 2020-02-20

Dedication

To my mum, Stella – a woman of stamina and enduring style

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s note

Prologue: Clowns

Chapter 1: Grief

Chapter 2: The Lion’s Den

Chapter 3: Bedding In

Chapter 4: Discovery

Chapter 5: A New Task

Chapter 6: Two Sides of the Coin

Chapter 7: New Interest

Chapter 8: Finding and Frustration

Chapter 9: Drinks with the Enemy

Chapter 10: A New Role

Chapter 11: Casting Out

Chapter 12: Opening Up

Chapter 13: Story Time

Chapter 14: A Voice from the Lagoon

Chapter 15: Love and Fury

Chapter 16: A Lull

Chapter 17: On Hold

Chapter 18: Small Talk

Chapter 19: A Detour

Chapter 20: Arrival

Chapter 21: The City Cauldron

Chapter 22: The Seeker

Chapter 23: A Fiery Reaction

Chapter 24: Across the Lagoon

Chapter 25: A New Hope

Chapter 26: Revenge

Chapter 27: The Bloody Summer

Chapter 28: Seeking and Waiting

Chapter 29: Sorrow

Chapter 30: A Low Ebb of the Tide

Chapter 31: Playing Detective

Chapter 32: A Parting

Chapter 33: In Hiding

Chapter 34: The Search for Coffee

Chapter 35: Red-Handed

Chapter 36: Taking Flight

Chapter 37: Age and Enlightenment

Chapter 38: After

Chapter 39: Completion

Chapter 40: The Typewriter

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Author’s note

War is ugly. Wherever it strikes, it destroys people, families and places, decimates lives and precious objects. Yet being so widespread, conflict also happens in beautiful places, and it was that contrast of light and dark which prompted The Secret Messenger. For me, there is no more stunning or fantastical place on earth than Venice; since my first trip in 1990, I’ve been beguiled on countless visits by the idea of a city effectively floating. I’m still in awe of its very existence and its beauty.

When I began to research how World War Two affected Venice, it became clear that historians were less captivated by its story of Resistance as perhaps in France or the Netherlands; that Venice, by comparison, had experienced a ‘soft’ war. What research I found seemed brief and factual, but those details of Venetian life – of how Venetians existed day by day – were scant. On a research trip (yes, of course, I needed to go back again!) I walked miles through Venetian calles, itching to know which areas of the city played their part in the fight against the Nazis and fascists combined.

It wasn’t until my return home that I struck gold; a chance email launched into cyberspace sparked a reply from the wonderfully named Signor Giulio Bobbo, a historian at IVESER, the Venetian Institute for the History of Resistance and Contemporary Society. His own area of expertise? The Resistance in wartime Venice. It was like manna from heaven.

Thanks to Giulio, his grounding in factual research and the nuggets of priceless detail about real life in wartime Venice, the book began to take shape. At last, I could see a Venice under the cloak of war. The more Giulio and I traded emails, the more my search seemed to run parallel to the quest within the story – it seemed only fitting Giulio’s character should make an appearance, along with Melodie the cat who, by the way, is very real and does indeed love a warm photocopier!

I knew also that I wanted to highlight the role of women in the eventual victory over the Nazis; not only the bravery of undercover agents, but the army of female messengers across Italy – Staffettas – who helped the Allies to victory. It’s hard for us in this day of social media and instant messaging to understand the value of transporting a simple slip of information on foot or by boat, but in those times it was crucial. Life-saving, in fact. Without the thousands of mothers and grandmothers across Europe who risked their own lives by carrying contraband in prams and shopping bags, we might never have seen peace at all. I hope Stella is an embodiment of those women – selfless for those around them.

Once Stella and her city became my backdrop, the next element was easy. Where else is better suited for romance to blossom than a place that hovers amid the constant ripple of water and sits under the most stunning of sunsets? And, of course, my Venice is in there too: the Accademia is my favourite bridge, Campo Santo Stefano among my preferred piazzas to people watch, and there is a small café in the corner opposite the church doorway where I have sat many a time with a good coffee and my notebook, imagining myself as a writer. Oh, and to the side is a very good gelato parlour. You can’t escape it – Venice gets under your skin.

I hope I have paid homage to those who braved the conflict in Venice; there is no such thing as a ‘soft’ war when one person loses a life, one mother a son. Venice lost too. But as with the previous centuries of invasion and plague, it recovered. It remains a jewel. Glittering. And I’ll be back there soon.

Prologue: Clowns
Venice, June 1934

A sudden eruption of noise guided us – one burst after another, pushing up into the air like fireworks on a dark night. We zigzagged through the crowds, my grandfather slicing through the swarm with his broad muscular shoulders – still with a boat-builder’s strength despite his sixty-five years. Reaching the edge of the vast piazza he pulled me by the hand, threading his way to the front of the audience, which was fenced off with a line of black-shirted militia, their backs to the expanse of the square and their stern, fixed faces towards the crowd. Inside the square, lines of Italian troops paraded up and down like ants to a continual brass band pomp of military music.

At seventeen, I was of average height and had to crane my neck to see the object of our attention, along with the rest of the crowd. The imposing, rounded girth of Benito Mussolini was easily spotted – a common figure on the front pages of the fascist-run newspapers. Even from behind, he had the appearance of being smug and overbearing, strutting next to the slightly smaller man walking beside him, distinctive only because of his dark suit rather than a gilded uniform dripping with medals. There was nothing physically remarkable about Mussolini’s revered guest from the distance we were at. I knew who he was, what he represented, but to my young eyes his presence didn’t warrant the thousands of fascist militia flooding Venice over recent days, let alone the crowds mustered to welcome him – some of whom we suspected had been strong-armed into their flag-waving support.

‘Popsa, why have we come here?’

I was perplexed. My grandfather was a confirmed anti-fascist and, though he kept his hatred of Mussolini largely within the family, he had nonetheless been a fierce opponent in the twelve years since ‘Il Duce’ had ruled Italy with his brigade of militarised bully boys. Quietly, at home or in the cafés with his most trusted friends, he raged over the way good Italians were being trodden on, their freedom curtailed, both morally and physically.

He bent to whisper into my ear. ‘Because, my darling Stella, I want you to see with your own eyes the enemy we will face.’

‘An enemy? But isn’t Hitler proposing to be a friend to Italy? An ally?’

‘Not to Italians, my love,’ he whispered again. ‘To good, ordinary people – Venetians like us – he is no friend. Look at him, watch his stealth – know your enemy when the time comes.’ His heavy, lined face set into a frown, and then he painted on a false smile as the militia neared, hoisting their guns to elicit a timely cheer from the crowd.

I peered at the object of their fraudulent praise, dwarfed by Mussolini’s pompous stature. I couldn’t see the distinctive face or the sharp lines of his frankly mocked hairstyle, which had dominated the newspapers in recent days. Yet the way Adolf Hitler moved among the Italian troops in the Piazza San Marco seemed almost reticent, guarded. Was this what we were supposed to be afraid of? Next to Mussolini and his army of bullies, he looked smaller in every way. Why did my big, burly and strong grandfather seem almost fearful?

Looking back on that day, Popsa’s whole demeanour was my first experience of the mask we Venetians – Italians, in fact – needed to adopt over the coming years. Behind the beautiful and glittering facade of Italy’s jewelled city, the veneer of Venice would take on Popsa’s frown, hiding its determination to maintain the real fabric of its people against Hitler and fascism.

But, back then, in my late teens, I wasn’t politicised – I was a young woman enjoying my last days at high school, relishing a summer on the beautiful beaches of the Lido, the late, low sun of endless Venetian days and perhaps the prospect of a fleeting summer romance. It was several years before I appreciated the significance of Hitler’s visit on that warm June day more than five years before war broke out, or the impact of Mussolini’s public fawning to a man who would become the devil to a good part of the world. At the dawn of war, when Italy pledged its military might alongside Hitler, I recall telling my grandfather what I later learned about that day in 1934.

‘You know what Mussolini said about Hitler on that visit?’ I asked him, pulling up the blanket over his whispery chest hair, watching his beleaguered lungs fighting the pneumonia which only days later would defeat him. ‘He called him “a mad little clown”.’

Popsa only smiled, suppressing a laugh he knew would force his lungs into a lengthy coughing fit.

He scooped in a breath. ‘Ah, but Mussolini is simply a big clown. And you know what clowns do, Stella?’

‘No, Popsa.’

‘They create havoc, my darling. And they get away with it.’

1
Grief
London, June 2017

The tears come in a torrent – great fat orbs that well up from inside her, catching momentarily on her eyelids. For a second, she feels as if she is looking through a piece of the thick, warped Murano glass dotted around her mother’s living room, until she blinks and they roll down her dried-out cheeks. Ten days into her grief, Luisa has learned not to fight it, allowing the deluge to cascade in rivers towards her now sodden chin. Jamie has helpfully placed boxes of tissues around her mother’s house; much like city dwellers are supposed to be never more than six feet from some kind of vermin, now she is never without a man-size hankie to hand.

Emotional fallout over, Luisa faces a more frustrating issue. The keyboard of her laptop has fared badly from the human cloudburst, and a glass tipped over in her temporary blindness – several of the keys are swimming in salt tears and tap water. It’s too late to mop up the flood – even a consistent jabbing of various keys tells her the screen is frozen and the machine displaying its dissatisfaction. Electronics and fluids do not mix.

‘Oh Jesus, not now,’ Luisa moans into the air. ‘Not now! Come on, Dais – work, come on girl!’ She jabs at the keyboard again, following it up with a few choice expletives, and more tears – this time of frustration.

It’s the first time she’s been able to face opening Daisy, her beloved laptop, since the day before her mum … died. Luisa wants to say the word ‘died’, needs to keep on saying it, because it’s a fact. Her mum didn’t pass away, because that somehow alludes to a serene exit, floating from one dimension to another without rancour, where there is time to put things to right amid crisp white sheets and soft blankets, to say things you want to say – need to say. Even with her limited experience of death, Luisa knows it was short, blunt and brutal. Her mum died. End of. Two weeks from first diagnosis, one week of that in a drug-induced coma to combat the unbearable pain. And now Luisa is the one enduring the inevitable ache of grief. Throw anger and frustration into the mix and you might touch on the myriad of emotions pitching and rolling around her head, heart and assorted organs, twenty-four/seven.

So, Luisa attempts what she always does when she cannot settle, eat, speak or socialise. She writes. Battle-scarred and sporting dog-eared stickers of love and identity, Daisy has been a reliable friend to Luisa in her need to bleed emotions onto a screen page. Often, it’s nothing more than crazy ramblings, but occasionally there is something of worth amid the jumble of words – a sentence or string of thought she might squirrel away for future use or that might well make it into the book one day. The book she will write when she is free of the inane meanderings she currently commits to the features pages of various magazines about the very latest thing in cosmetics, or whether women really do want to steer their own destiny (of course they do, she thinks as she writes – do I really need to spell it out in no more than a thousand words?). But it’s work. It keeps the wolf from the door while Jamie establishes himself as a jobbing actor. But one day the book will happen.

Daisy is party to this dream, a workmate and a keeper of secrets too, deep down in her hard drive.

‘Christ Daisy, what happened to loyalty, eh?’ Luisa mutters, and then feels immediately disloyal to her hi-tech friend. Half drowned in human tears, she may well have reacted in the same way and refused to go on. Daisy needs TLC and time to dry out on top of the boiler. In the meantime, there are pent-up emotions to spill – and for some inexplicable reason a pen and paper is not up to the job. Luisa feels the need to hit something, to bash and clatter at the keys and watch the words appear on screen as if they have magically appeared from somewhere deep inside her, separate to her conscious thinking. Being a child of the computer age, and with her grief threatening to spew, a pen will simply not allow those words to explode from her with venom or unbounded love, or the anger that she cannot contain.

A thought strikes her: Jamie had been up in her mother’s attic the day before to assess just how much clearing out lay ahead of them. As Luisa was tackling the cancelling of direct debits and council tax, he mentioned seeing a typewriter case tucked in the eaves, one that looked fairly old but ‘in good nick’. Would it be worth anything? Or was it sentimental value, he’d asked. At the time, she dismissed it as non-urgent but now her need is greater.

The loft space is like a million others across the globe: a curious odour of old lives dampened and dust that flies up with irritation as you disturb its years of slumber. A single light bulb hangs from the timbers, and Luisa needs to adjust her eyes before objects come into focus. She recognises a few Christmas presents she took pains to choose for her mother – a thermostatic wrap for her aching back and a pair of sheepskin slippers – both of which look to have been barely out of their wrappers before being abandoned to the ‘Not Wanted’ pile. Another reminder of the distance between mother and daughter, now never to be bridged. She pushes the memory away – it’s too deep inside her for now, though it constantly threatens to push through into her grief. It’s therapy for another day. Luisa ferrets around for a few minutes, feeling her frustration rise and wondering if this is the best pastime at this moment, when things still feel so raw. She both relishes and dreads finding a family album where she knows she won’t be able to stop herself from turning the dog-eared pages of so-called happy memories. All three of them on the beach – her, Mum and Dad – fixed Kodachrome smiles all round. In better days.

Mercifully, an object that is not a fat bound book of memories pushes its way out of the gloom. Instead, it’s a grey, moulded case whose shape – square and sloping towards a brown leather handle – means it can only be one thing. It has the look of a life well worn, the scuffs and scratches immediately reminding her of the history Daisy sports on her own casing. There is a distinctive twang as both clasps spring upwards under Luisa’s fingers, and what almost sounds like the escape of a human breath as she lifts the lid. Even under the dim light, she can see it is beautiful – a monochrome mix of black and grey, white keys ringed with a dull metal and glowing bright against the dimness. Luisa puts a tentative finger on one of the keys, pressing it gently, and the mechanism reacts under her touch, sending a thin metal shaft leaping towards the roller. It hasn’t seized up. She notes, too, that there is a ribbon still attached and, even better, a spare, sealed reel tucked alongside the keyboard. The aged cellophane is intact but almost disintegrates under her finger. If fate is on her side, however, the ribbon won’t have dried up.

Luisa fixes the lid back down and pulls the case away from a pile of boxes – it’s surprisingly light for an old machine. As she pulls, the lid on one of the boxes slides off, sending a puff of dust in its wake. She turns to replace it, but her eye catches a single photograph, black and white yet sepia-toned with age. It features a man and a woman – their joyful expressions suggest a couple – standing in St Mark’s Square in Venice, the distinctive grandiose basilica behind them, surrounded by a groundswell of pigeons. She recognises her mother in the features of the woman, but not the man. Luisa searches her memory – did her mother and father even mention going to Venice, perhaps for their honeymoon? It looks that kind of photo – the couple seem happy. It’s not how she remembers her parents, but she thinks even they must have been in love once. And yet the photo looks older than that, from a bygone age.

Luisa is aware of her Italian roots, the spelling of her name being an obvious indication. Both of her mother’s parents were Italian, but they died some years ago; her grandfather when she was just a baby, and grandmother in her early teens. She knows very little about their history – her mother would never talk about it – except that they were both writers. She likes to think she has inherited at least that family trait from them.

She flips over the photograph; scrawled in pencil are the words ‘S and C, San Marco June 1950’. Her mother was Sofia, but she was born in 1953, so maybe it’s her grandmother’s face beaming contentment? S for Stella? Perhaps that’s Luisa’s grandpa standing alongside her – Luisa barely remembers him, only a fleeting image of a kindly face. But his name was Giovanni. So who is C? It’s entirely possible he was a suitor before Grandpa Gio, as she knows they called him. Luisa’s curiosity gives way to a smile, her first in days, and the movement of the muscles feels odd. She thinks they look so stylish, he in his high-waisted suit trousers, and she in a neat Chanel-like suit and elegant court shoes, her hair swept in a chic, black wave.

Luisa bends to replace the photograph in the box, but sees that underneath a decaying layer of tissue paper there is more – photographs and paper scraps, some hand-scribed and others typed in an old font, perhaps on the newly discovered machine? To any other curio browser it would warrant a look at the very least, but to a journalist it spikes the senses. There is something about the smell too – the pungency of old dust – which sticks in Luisa’s nostrils and makes her heart beat faster. It reeks of lives lived and history unmasked.

The whole box is heavy and awkward to manoeuvre down the attic stairs and into the living room. In the daylight however, she sees the real treasure come to light. Under a layer of loose type and several browned, brittle newspapers bearing the name Venezia Liberare, Luisa can sense it: a mystery. It’s in the fine sandy texture under her fingers as she gingerly lifts the paper cache – men and women grinning in fuzzy tones of black and white, some she notes casually using rifles as props, or proudly holding them across their chests, women included. Momentarily, she is shocked; in a distant memory, her grandma never appeared as anything other than that – a sweet old lady who dished out cuddles and chocolates, grinning mischievously when she was inevitably rebuked by Luisa’s mother for spoiling her with sweets. Sometimes, Luisa remembers her slipping little wrapped bars when no one was looking, whispering ‘Shh, it’s just our secret’, and she felt like they were part of a little gang.

The typewriter is momentarily forgotten as Luisa picks up each piece, peering at its faded detail, squinting to fill in the gaps of pencil scratchings lost to the years. It hits her squarely then – how many people’s histories are contained in this cardboard box with its sunken edges and corners gnawed at by the resident mice? What might she discover in its depths amid the deceased spiders and smell of mould? What will she learn about her family? She wonders, too, if there is an element of fate in her discovery, if today of all days she was meant to find it – to piece it all together in some order, and in turn glue her recently shattered self back together. For the first time in weeks, she feels not defeated or leaden with grief, but lifted a little. Excited.

2
The Lion’s Den
Venice, early December 1943

I think of that pre-war exchange with Popsa often; the word ‘havoc’ resonates a lot these days, more so after last night’s atrocities in the Jewish ghetto: hundreds rounded up like cattle by Nazi troops and their fascist handmaidens, men and women pulled out of their homes – stoical in the face of their screaming, tear-stained children abandoned behind them – and herded into boats destined first for the prison of Santa Maria Maggiore. To be separated from their families was bad enough, but all of Venice knew their eventual destination, and they did too – east into Germany, to Auschwitz. To an almost certain death.

I rub the obvious lines around my eyes, hoping to smear away any smut from the fires that continue to smoulder in the ghetto. Having spent the early hours running from house to house across Venice, breathlessly passing messages and false identification papers to those in need of them, the smell of cordite and desperation is still there in my nostrils. If there was any chance to save even a few families from the cull, we – the Resistance – had to try; huddling women and children in the smallest of hiding places, in cupboards and attics. I saw mothers trying desperately to keep their babies quiet, hands cupped over little mouths, the fear of just one cry or murmur etched on their faces. Our partisan leaders were taken by surprise by the Nazis’ sudden strike on the Jewish enclave; as I weaved breathlessly through the warren of alleyways and tiny passages, avoiding the Nazi scrum, staying out of sight of any patrol and their inevitable questions as to why I was out during curfew and where exactly I was going, it felt like we were fighting a losing battle. We worked all night but, in the clear light of day, it’s evident we only succeeded in damage limitation.

My whole body feels limp and defeated, though I’ve had the luxury at least of returning briefly to my own apartment for an hour’s sleep, a change of clothes and a smear with a wet flannel. Those Jews taken simply for their birthright, born into a religion despised by the Nazis, are now on a cold, inhospitable floor with little respite to look forward to. I am a lucky woman.

‘Another espresso?’ Paolo pulls away my empty cup from the counter and pushes a second, full cup in its place, without waiting for an answer. He only has to look at my face, hastily touched with some of the precious make-up I’ve been rationing and a smear of red lipstick. The coffee is welcome, though it isn’t, of course, the sharp but silken blend of pre-war days. Paolo and his father, owners of the café in the square below my apartment since time began, are masters at making the fake coffee – ersatzkaffee – seem Italian at least; the hiss of the gleaming machine, the way Paolo pours it lovingly into the tiny cup with a true flourish. If nothing else, it helps wake me up.

‘Good luck, Stella,’ Paolo chimes as I swallow down the coffee and wave goodbye. His parting wink tells me he knows exactly where I’m going.

I walk the twenty minutes from streets around the Fondamenta Nuove to the Nazi headquarters on the grand central piazza of San Marco, trying to nurture a spring in my step the closer I get to the Platzkommandantur. The bright winter sun rising over the Arsenale helps lift my mood, lending a distinct pinky hue through the smaller canals, from one bridge crossing to another, the milky jade of the water lapping at the red and orange brickwork. Usually, this is the best time of the day for me, when Venice is waking up, stout old women in black optimistically on their way to buy whatever they can in the relatively sparse markets. Today, though, the morning buzz feels dampened as news of the ghetto’s cull winds its way through the city. Soon, each and every café and bar will have talk and opinion, someone will know of another who has been taken – be it relative or colleague. In a city like Venice, the people connect and weave like the canals that are its vital arteries.

There are few troops – either Nazi or fascist – around at this time of the morning, but we Venetians have been schooled into believing that eyes are everywhere. Despite my true feelings, those of a proud anti-fascist, like my beloved grandfather, I have to look eager as I’m about to enter the enemy’s nerve centre – and not as a prisoner or suspect, but an enthusiastic new member of staff. Automatically, I adjust my mask and take on the look of a grateful collaborator, a Venetian glad to have the protection of our better, bigger German cousins. We Italians have learned to play the part of the poor relation very well. We’ve had years of practice.

We know what people in the outside world say – that Venetians have had a ‘soft’ war, protected as a kind of oasis because of our city’s beauty and grandeur, its precious art, targeted by the Allied bombers as a place to avoid rather than effect ruin. To some extent it’s true: the classical music still plays in Piazza San Marco, although these days it’s more likely to be the Hermann Goering Regimental Band with its stylistic pomp, replacing any true elegance. The annual celebration of art at the Biennale continues, attracting the rich and beautiful, as well as the Nazi propaganda king in Joseph Goebbels. But tell that to the mothers whose teenage boys were swiftly marched away to Lord knows where as slave labour for the Nazi machine, like a warped playing out of the Pied Piper fable. That early September day only a few months ago is still fresh with me, when the coloured leaflets fluttered from the sky, informing us that the Nazis were coming to conquer our city. To most Venetians – after years of fascist dictatorship under Mussolini – it was simply another coup, another plague. It was followed only days later by the resounding stomp of jackboots on our ancient flagstones, and the Nazis quickly made themselves very comfortable in our requisitioned palaces on the Grand Canal, easing themselves into the bars and outdoor eating places like it was some sort of vacation.

Venice appears on the surface to be compliant, relenting. But I know different. For all its outward splendour, Venice hides itself well; in deep, dark alleyways, behind the painted green shutters, I know for certain there are hives of activity, thousands working to skew the intricate planning of our unwelcome squatters and claim back our city. For now, we do it quietly. But we aim to be ready.

It was a heart-stopping moment when I received a message to attend the offices of the German High Command, on one end of the Piazza San Marco. Since the full occupation in September, when the city swarmed with the grey-green troops of the Wehrmacht and the ashen colours of the SS, it’s a place I’ve taken pains to sidestep, going out of my way to avoid walking across the piazza in full view of the young German sentries, bored and eyeing up pretty young Venetian women. On being summoned, I imagined my membership of the anti-fascist Action Party had been discovered or revealed, but, if it had, there would have been no request to attend – more likely a sudden raid by Italian fascist Blackshirts, and a stay in their none too salubrious headquarters at Ca’ Littoria, becoming painfully familiar with their torture methods. We have learned quickly that the Germans are not here to get their hands dirty if at all possible. Only to oversee the annihilation of freedom.

I have been careful in recent years to publicly align myself with no one in particular, keeping a low profile as a typist in the Venetian works department, the government division responsible for making our fairy-tale city function day to day, even through war. I’d been ‘recommended’ for the job by Sergio Lombardi, a seemingly fine upstanding citizen who, in his other life, is Captain Lombardi, the commander of Venice’s Resistance brigade. The information I gleaned while in the works department proved useful to the partisan groups fighting the Nazis and fascists across the entire Veneto region, though I never imagined it saved lives. When I doubted it, when I itched to do something more useful – more visible – Sergio took pains to reassure me that the detailed knowledge of the city’s workings was vital in helping their troops move undiscovered in and out of Venice. The comprehensive plans I had access to were perfect tools for ghosting Allied soldiers away to safety now the Nazi occupation of Northern Italy made it impossible to move freely.

And now, thanks to maintaining that low profile, I am here, about to enter the lion’s den; my transfer to Nazi High Command – the Reich headquarters – has been requested because of my fluent German, although the move couldn’t be more timely or fortuitous. Or intimidating.

Beyond the grand exterior near the Correr Museum in San Marco, I present my pass from the works department and a young German soldier runs down a list for my name. He seems pleased to find it.

‘Up the stairs, first door on your right,’ he says in faltering Italian.

‘Thank you, I’ll find it,’ I say in German and he smiles his embarrassment. Poor boy, he’s no more than a child, perhaps the same age as my brother, Vito. Too young for this, both of them.

The office at the top of the sweeping marble stairway is behind a large, ornately carved door. It’s filled with desks in a strict formation, the opulent walls of the vast room deadened by the austere dark wooden furniture and the Nazi icons dotted around. A fierce clattering of typewriters hits me like a wave and I’m briefly startled. I must have shown it because a man approaches – I can tell from his face and his civilian clothes that he’s Italian, and I’m surprised again, though pleased too. Even now, a stark Nazi uniform makes me pull in a short breath and I feel a guilt rising in me, although I’ve become adept at hiding it.

‘Morning. Can I help you?’ the man, in his well-cut grey suit, says in Italian. He’s not Venetian; his accent says he’s from the south. Tall and with a short, dark beard – in his early thirties I guess – he looks immediately out of place amid the military surroundings, reminding me of an academic or librarian. His whole demeanour is Italian; it’s only the tiny metal pin on his jacket lapel – the jawless death’s head insignia – that tells me he is a fascist too. A paid-up member of Mussolini’s gang. In any other scenario, I might have thought him attractive, but here, he is marred by his allegiance.

‘I’ve been sent here by the works department – as a typist and translator,’ I venture, holding out my references. ‘Am I in the right office?’

He scans the papers, holding them closer to his face, and I notice his large brown eyes scanning the script.

‘Welcome Signorina Jilani,’ he says. ‘Yes, you’ve found the right place. I’ll show you to your desk.’

He turns and leads me towards the back of the room, passing a vacant desk with a silent typewriter upon it. Backing onto a wall entirely shelved with books and files, he gestures to an empty desk with a large machine to the side.

‘There, that’s for you,’ he says.

‘Oh, I thought I would be over there with the other typists,’ I say, casting a backwards glance. The desire to blend in is well grounded in me.

‘Well, as you’ll be translating for General Breugal, I thought it would be better if you were nearer his office’ – he nods his head slightly towards a closed door, even larger and more ornately carved than the last – ‘since he has a tendency to be a little brief when it comes to instructions. I can’t see him striding across the office ten times a day – he would get a bit annoyed about that. It will hopefully spare you some of his …’ he falters over the next word carefully … ‘irritation.’

He smiles as he says it, an embarrassed offering, perhaps because he’s betrayed a little of his opinion of the general, in painting him as some blustering despot. Except the general’s reputation is anything but – a despot, yes, but his cruelty is already well known within the Resistance.

‘Well, thank you for that in advance,’ I say. I’m genuinely grateful, since the last thing I want to do is attract any unwanted attention. I’m here to type, to translate and to absorb what will help the partisan Resistance wage war with effective sabotage against our German trespassers. But I’m also here to be utterly compliant, in office hours at least.

‘Marta will show you the bathroom and the canteen, and I will arrange a meeting with General Breugal when he arrives shortly.’

I nod, and he turns to go. ‘Oh, and by the way, my name is Cristian – Cristian De Luca – under-secretary to the general, admin mostly. Civilian.’ He adds the last part most definitely, as if he doesn’t want me to guess he’s a card-carrying fascist. As if by not wearing a black shirt and donning a dark ski cap, he’s not part of the bully brigade. But I know plenty of innocents who have been condemned by a typewriter, by being on a list. I have to remind myself that what I’m doing is not collaborating – my Resistance commander assures me the information I can absorb will save many more lives than I could ever condemn.

‘Please come to me if you need anything, or you have a problem.’ Cristian De Luca smiles weakly, but even his friendly eyes don’t convince me. I nod again and return his expression, because that’s what I’m supposed to do.

I have time enough to meet some of the other typists over tea before I’m called in through the foreboding door. I grab the pen and notebook on my desk, not knowing whether it’s simply an interview or if I’m expected to begin work immediately. Beyond the door, the walk towards the desk is a long one as the office is vast, with high ceilings and walls crawling with carved plaster figures. My eye is drawn to the overly large picture of the Führer placed over the grand fireplace. His expression in such portraits never ceases to make me laugh inside, as though he’s swallowed too much of my mother’s chilli pasta and is feeling the effects on his digestion. There’s an unmistakable stench of cigar smoke, and the winter sun streaming through the tall windows creates a swirl of dirty white clouds.

‘Fräulein – I beg your pardon – Signorina.’ A voice comes from behind the smoke, and I see his face at last. It’s fat. That’s my first impression. He’s vast. His red, oily skin is stretched tight over wide cheeks, pumped up no doubt by good living and too much grappa, and he sports a meagre moustache, not even worthy of being fashioned into anything like Hitler’s silly little brush. His black eyes sit like minuscule cherries in the pudgy dough of his face; his body a larger version of the same, squeezed with effort into his green Wehrmacht tunic. At first I think he has the face of a fool, but know at the same time it’s never good to underestimate the hatred he and his kind might harbour; hatred for Jews, alongside a disdain for weak Italians who need hand-holding in this war. He hasn’t earned his place behind that desk by not showing strength. Already General Breugal has made a distinct – and deadly – impression on Venice’s opposition to Nazi penetration of our city; last night’s ghetto cull was just one example of his zeal to carry out Hitler’s cleansing of Jews from our city.

Breugal doesn’t get up, but merely extends a hand across the desk and I have to make contact with his moist fingers before I sit down in one of two chairs placed in front of the desk. He looks up from his furious scribble and digs the stub of his cigar in a nearby ashtray.

‘So, I will need a minimum of two typed reports daily, translated from German to Italian,’ he says in clipped German. ‘I take it you are fluent?’

‘Yes, Herr Breugal.’

‘General,’ he corrects briskly.

‘Sorry – General,’ I say. I worry that I’ve marked myself out already but he barely looks at me, so I feel safe his arrogance will lead to a general ignorance about me. And that’s the way I want to keep it.

Once I’m dismissed with a grunt and a wave of the general’s hand, I head back to my desk, clutching the first report I need to translate. Outside the door, I meet the general’s long and lean – and much younger – deputy, Captain Klaus. He introduces himself, but there’s no emotion in his voice – it’s merely duty. There is, however, a steely glint to his blue eyes. I do the best I can to remain businesslike even though I can almost feel the heat of this first report on my chest.

Finally, Captain Klaus feels we have exhausted the formalities and I sit down and open the pages. This is pure gold for the Resistance, information straight from the horse’s mouth which they will use to plan sabotage of German movements, initiate rescues of targeted families, and generally be a thorn in the side of the Nazi regime. Tempting though it is, we can’t use all of the intelligence consistently – my Resistance colleagues have made it clear my position is to be protected, so that I can remain in post without arousing suspicion. To General Breugal, and the slightly odd Cristian De Luca, I am a good Italian girl, a patriot and lover of order, a true believer that fascism will win out over the current chaos. I am to be trusted.

At first glance, the report I am to translate looks to be merely an engineering update on precious water supplies in Venice, pumped in from the mainland. But as I consult my German-Italian dictionary for more specific words, I discover it’s also about rerouting food supplies through new shipping lines, although the word ‘supplies’ doesn’t always appear to refer to scarce flour, sugar or wheat. The report’s complexity means I can’t possibly remember it word for word, despite having a talent for ingesting and harbouring facts. Luckily, the Resistance has prepared for this. They know I can’t risk making a carbon copy of my translation, or writing notes in my own hand, so it’s been agreed with my unit that I’ll type up brief notes I can immediately recall in the office. Operating in plain sight is sometimes the best form of camouflage and I’m suddenly grateful that having a desk backing onto a bookcase is useful for not being overlooked. Or else I will scribble any facts the minute I can make excuses for a toilet break. A sympathetic cobbler has already made adjustments to several pairs of shoes, allowing me to hide folded notes in my heels. I’ll return to my desk, with an expression of indifference and a willingness to carry on the Reich’s work. That’s the plan.

‘Fräulein Jilani, have you settled in?’ The voice is raised above the office noise and takes me by surprise, not least because Cristian De Luca’s German is cut-glass perfect. He sees my surprise.

‘Yes, we speak German in the office – the general prefers it,’ he explains. ‘Do you have everything you need?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ I say, my eyes glancing back to my keyboard. I need to work quickly to complete both the official and unofficial notes, though not so noisily that I attract attention. Sergio, Captain of the Venetian Resistance Central Brigade and my commander, has stressed that I’m to lie low for several days, or even weeks, not be intent on passing information, but this to me looks too important. I feel sure it could really make a difference. I need to get on and this man is loitering.

Still, Cristian De Luca hovers beside my desk. I look up, inquisitive.

‘Erm, I’m just hoping everything was all right with you and the general?’ he ventures. ‘Nothing too … brusque?’

‘No … no,’ I lie, purposely upbeat. ‘He was … direct, but perfectly charming.’

‘Good, well, don’t hesitate to, you know …’ His last words are lost as the general’s voice comes booming from behind me, prompting one of the secretaries to scurry towards the door, almost turning a heel as she goes.

Cristian De Luca walks towards a desk by the window, annoyingly only two away from my own. He puts on a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses and opens up a file to read. Now I think he looks even more like a librarian.

The efforts of the previous night are beginning to take their toll – my eyes are smarting with tiredness as I pull the cover over my machine at the end of the day, while the office begins to empty. One of the office girls asks if I’d like to join them for a drink but I make an excuse that I’m expected at my parents’ for dinner. The thought of a bowl of Mama’s pasta – exquisite even with increasingly scant ingredients – makes my mouth water, but instead I grab a bread roll from a nearby bakery and head briskly in the opposite direction, wrapping my coat around me as I head towards the canal’s edge. Despite my fatigue, it’s time for the third part of my full and sometimes complicated life.

Waiting at the stop for the vaporetto that will transport me across the expanse of water to the island of Giudecca, I stare at the soaring tower of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, perched on the adjacent island’s edge. The Palladian monolith looks particularly magnificent tonight, caught in the occasional beam of boat traffic toing and froing across the lagoon. I’m not particularly religious – not as much as Mama would wish anyway – but the tower’s continued existence through centuries of war and strife warms my heart. That warmth is particularly welcome now since the bitter wind is apt to whip through this wide stretch between Venice proper and what’s considered the less ornate, more industrial Giudecca. But that’s what’s so attractive about it tonight, for me at least. The sometimes choppy waters are a divide which helps more than hinders.

The crossing is unhindered by German patrol boats and takes just ten or so minutes; I’m one of only a dozen or so passengers stepping onto the pontoon at Giudecca. The streets are mostly dark with minimal lighting – a consequence of burned-out bulbs not replaced – but I have a mind map of where I’m going. I think I could find it in my sleep, which is a bonus since my eyes are struggling to stay open after so little rest. But I must. This is business and not pleasure. However tired I am, there is more typing to do, though rather than reports to uphold the Nazi occupation, these are my words. Each time I come to Giudecca, I become a different type of translator, one whose fiercely loyal passion for the Resistance is laid on a page for all of Venice to see. It’s one part of my contribution to the partisan cause, defenders of our city. Popsa always said that one day my love of words would mark me out and, each time I step onto Giudecca, I like to think he’s right.

As I round the corner into the tiny, darkened square, a glow pushes out from the ground-floor windows of the café-bar, blinds only half drawn, while the low hum of conversation from behind a heavy wooden door is the sole noise in the empty plaza.

‘Evening Stella,’ says Matteo, the bar’s owner, as I walk in to a general wave of welcome from the ten or so customers. I’m among friends here.

‘Hello everyone,’ I say as chirpily as I can manage. I walk to the back of the bar and into a tiny room, little more than a cupboard, where I replace my coat with a white waitress’s apron around my waist. Instead of heading back out to the bar, though, I knock three times on a door tucked in one corner of the room and turn the handle.

‘It’s Stella,’ I sing in warning as I descend a short set of wooden stairs, towards the dim light below. Arlo looks up from his desk, squinting at me and then back at the paper he’s working on. Poor Arlo – his eyesight is bad enough as it is, without the strain of the faint light and the tiny print he peers at for hours on end. His thick glasses lie discarded on the table as he pulls the page close to his face – his eyesight is a family trait that saved him from an enforced draft into the Italian army, and more than likely prevents the Resistance from allowing him anywhere near a gun, but he’s the best of typesetters. Twice a week, our little band of aspiring paper-producers meets under a cloak on Giudecca to create and construct the weekly Venezia Liberare newspaper. As its name suggests, it’s about spreading the word of liberty and freedom for all Venetians, reclaiming something of our own. And amid the typeset lines of news and local chatter, there is – we think – a manifesto of hope.

Yet Venezia Liberare does not lie side by side on the newsstands with Il Gazzettino and other mainstream papers, those largely controlled by fascist sympathisers. It’s created, printed and collated in this tiniest of spaces, packed and transported under cover of darkness to all corners of Venice, where shopkeepers loyal to the cause will keep a pile of ‘something special’ under their counters, passing over the goods on the quiet, and, with it, the word that we are all still here. Ready and waiting.

‘Hey, Stella, we’ve got eight pages to fill tonight. I hope you’re raring to go,’ Arlo says enthusiastically. My heart sinks for a second and my fatigue rises like a wave but, as I pull up my chair and lift the lid on my typewriter, there’s a rush of energy within me. Just the sight of this machine has that effect on me. It’s much smaller and neater than my industrialsize typewriter in the Reich office, the one with a high slope of keys and tall roller, the shiny metal of grey and black, emulating the SS livery. The shine that my own machine once sported on its black frame is now dimmed and scratched, and some of the bright white keys are grey and smudged with ink, tattooed with my own fingerprints, but it cheers me like a good friend. For years now, since Popsa brought it home on my eighteenth birthday, this small machine has been my workmate, my comrade even. My voice.

We’ve been through quite a lot. In what now seems like an entirely different life as a journalist, I shunned the heavy, brooding office typewriters in favour of my neater, more portable tool. We went on story assignments together, allowing me to type up my notes quickly, settle my thoughts on paper, sometimes sitting on the steps of a nearby church or outside a quiet café, basking in the spring sunshine. I was a junior reporter only, but it was my dream job after high school: slightly frowned on by Mama, secretly tolerated by Papa, and overwhelmingly encouraged by Popsa.

‘This could be your future,’ he’d beamed as I’d opened the carefully wrapped birthday present. ‘You can win battles and change minds with this, Stella – better than any weapon.’ He had insisted on buying an Olivetti machine, the good Italian family firm having solid anti-fascist affiliations, later proven in their wartime actions of creative sabotage which saved many lives.

Of course, being Popsa, he was right. I typed until I drove the entire household to distraction; I created stories, I tapped out memories and wrote fairly terrible poetry. And all those words, channelled from inside me onto the page, via the conduit of my beautiful, clattery Olivetti, helped me towards securing my dream post on Il Gazzettino, the influential daily covering the entire mainland Veneto region surrounding Venice. I was blissfully happy for a time, until its increasingly fascist politics became as dark as the storm clouds of war over Europe.

However, I haven’t got time to dwell on that as I sit in the much less salubrious – but no less important – underground office of our clandestine newspaper. In my hand is a sheaf of hand-scrawled notes on crumpled scraps of paper, some typewritten reports and shorthand transcripts of radio transmissions. Each has made its way from Resistance members in Venice or captains in charge of the mountain fighting groups, via several messengers, to our unassuming basement office. Mothers and grandmothers have sat for hours in their dimly lit kitchens listening to transmissions via Radio Londra – the aptly named BBC service which brings us news of the outside world – scratching down details of the fight beyond Venice. Somehow, in the next three hours, I have to understand and shape these snapshots of defiance into news stories, in time for Arlo and his one regular helper, Tommaso, to typeset and print our weekly edition of Venezia Liberare. It’s our own, tangible way of telling ordinary Italians that they are not alone in the fight against fascism.

Matteo brings me another welcome cup of coffee and I set to work. Not for the first time, I thank providence that my first year on Il Gazzettino was spent converting press statements into readable stories. Back then, I thought it a form of punishment for the new girl, intensely frustrated at not being allowed beyond the office doors to carry out any real reporting. Now I know it was a valuable skill to perfect. As each story is finished, I tear it from the machine, lean backwards in the chair and hand it to Arlo and Tommaso, a young boy not yet out of school whose father is a partisan lieutenant, as they set to work mapping out the pages.

Tommaso is fairly new to our little workroom and, we’ve recently discovered, is something of an artist with a gift for adult cartoons; his dry, sarcastic take on fascist leaders – our pompous beloved Benito Mussolini especially – has worked its way into the pages. In among the serious reports of partisan victories in the mountains, ground captured and trains derailed, we’re able to provide a lighter tone to our readers. After all, it’s our sense of humour as Italians that’s enabled us to survive through twenty years of fascist oppression, and a war to top it off. In the cafés and canteens and campos, you can still hear Venice laugh.

When he first joined us, I could sense Tommaso’s wonder at the barmaid in her apron typing out the stories – the whispered question to his fellow setter – until Arlo explained that my name is on the bar’s list of employees and as such I have to be ready to play my part at a second’s notice, albeit quite badly. Fascist soldiers occasionally make it over to Giudecca in the late hours, looking for trouble, alcohol, or both. Only a month ago. two officers – already half-drunk – demanded drinks along with the employee rota; I just managed to make it up from the basement in time to grab a discarded apron, steering them away from the ‘beer cellar’ with a winning smile and several more drinks. Since then, I’ve donned an apron as a habit.

As the evening wears on I feel myself flagging, and several times Arlo prods me playfully.

‘Come on, girl, anyone would think you’ve done a day’s work!’ he teases.

I see him peering at my copy intently, rubbing his ink-marked fingers on his forehead, and I wonder how many typing mistakes I’ve made out of sheer tiredness. Ones that he will have to correct in the final print.

‘Everything all right, Arlo?’ I say.

‘I’m just wondering when you’re going to replace that old crock of a machine, Stella? This wayward e is driving me crazy.’

Automatically, I put a hand to my beloved machine in defence, taking comfort from its familiar, rough surface. It’s true that being a little too portable has caused one of the metals shafts to shift slightly, making my typed sentences easily recognised with a sagging e. It’s only Arlo’s expertise in re-setting the print that makes sure my machine’s quirk doesn’t transfer to the finished newspaper.

‘At least you can tell it’s written by a master,’ I come back swiftly. And that’s how we combat our fatigue: with innocent banter, to shield against the bad news that occasionally filters through the ranks – having to write of fellow partisans captured or tortured, at times executed. In those moments we force ourselves to think of the bigger picture, of what we can realistically achieve in a tiny basement with almost no resources; we do what we can to inform, to spread the word and help fuel solidarity among fellow Venetians.

I stretch and yawn as I finish the last piece for Arlo to edit and set.

‘Have you enough to fill the pages?’ I say, hoping he does. My eyes can’t seem to focus beyond my nose at this point. Usually, I stay until the setting is complete, but I need to catch the last vaporetto from Giudecca back to the main island and I’ll have to walk home quickly to beat the curfew. More than once I’ve been stopped by a fascist or Nazi patrol, and I’ve all but used up my smiles and excuses of a sickly relative needing medicine.

‘More than enough,’ Arlo says. ‘Your copy gets more lyrical by the day.’

‘Too much? Too flowery?’ I counter anxiously. ‘Should I tone it down?’

‘No, no. I happen to think our readers are inspired by the way you describe even the harshest of events. My mother says she looks forward to your storytelling!’

‘My grandma reads it cover to cover,’ Tommaso cuts in, shyly. ‘She pesters me until I deliver one personally.’

‘I only hope it comes across as fact and not fiction – these things are real,’ I reply. ‘Horribly real.’

‘Don’t worry, you’re not soft-soaping it,’ Arlo reassures. ‘If anything, your descriptions make us feel we’re all living it. Which we are.’

He’s right – everyone knows someone with a family member taken or killed. Even so, I make a note to keep an eye on my language, perhaps to stick to the facts and not embroider the copy too much. It was always the criticism of my news editor on Il Gazzettino – ‘Stella, your idea of a “short” is five hundred words!’ he would bellow from his desk, striking through my words with his red pen. It was clear from the beginning I was much more suited to the lengthier feature stories, where I could happily tinker with words, rather than strip back to the bald facts. And I would have made it as a feature writer, I’m sure, had that career path not been abruptly cut short.

Finally, I untie my apron and head on up the stairs. Soon, several other members of the brigade will join Arlo and Tommaso in the tiny cellar, moving to crank up the small press shrouded in a nearby outbuilding, working through the night to produce and assemble the paper. Before she turns in, Matteo’s wife will haul down a large pot of soup she has managed to conjure up, from whatever ingredients she can find, to help them push through into the small hours. It’s a team effort, always. We know our only hope of surviving this war is with a combination of loyalty and friendship.

For now, though, my work is done. I pull the cover over my typewriter until its services are needed in a few days’ time. I climb the stairs wearily, hang up my apron and pull on my coat, saying goodbye to Matteo, who is washing glasses in a bar where a lone figure lingers over his beer.

The icy wind whipping through the open-sided vaporetto is the only thing keeping me awake, and I have to consciously propel my legs through the almost empty streets, making a mental search of what I have in my cupboard to cook up a soup or a bowl of pasta. It’s too late to divert to Mama’s for a hug and a welcome hearth – she and Papa know little of what I do outside of work, and I don’t need to worry them.

I see only a few bodies moving under the ghostly blue streetlights in the larger campos – after last night, and away from the Jewish ghetto, everything seems to have calmed for now. The narrow alleyway leading to my door is pitch black, rendering me almost blind as I approach my apartment, but I know every cobble and paving stone, the way my footsteps echo, and I can tell instantly if there’s another body in my midst. My tiny second-floor apartment is freezing, and I don’t need to check the scuttle to know I have scant coal for the burner. The food cupboard, too, is almost bare – one solitary onion stares back at me, alongside a handful of polenta in a paper bag. I weigh up what I need the most – to dive under the blankets piled on my bed and shiver myself into a vague warmth, or to satisfy my hunger. I decide I’m almost past hunger now, so I boil the kettle and take a hot cup of tea to bed, having wrapped my nightdress around the kettle for a few minutes before swiftly undressing and pulling it over my head, relishing the patches where it has made direct contact with the hot metal. The thick woollen socks Mama knitted for me last Christmas are already under the covers, giving my feet the impression of warmth.

In the few minutes before I fall asleep, I reflect on the past twenty hours – as different as day and night for me. For eight hours I could be accused of helping the German Third Reich to consolidate control of our beautiful city and country – yes, our country – and for the last four or five of aiming to knock holes in their plans to ride roughshod over Italian heritage and pride. I feel like a female Jekyll and Hyde. Yet what helps me sink into a satisfying sleep is the knowledge of what we – me, Arlo and everyone else in our secret cellar – are doing. It may only be eight pages of print, and yet I firmly believe in Popsa’s principle: that they represent immense power. In my mind’s eye, communication is like the fine lines of a spider’s web; one tenuous strand makes little difference, but put them together – weave them well – and you have something of inordinate strength. A web that can withstand the mightiest of tanks.

3
Bedding In
Venice, December 1943

‘Jilani! Here!’

Over the next few weeks I get used to General Breugal’s gruff call, largely when he can’t raise his increasing girth from his chair and travel the short distance from his own desk to mine to hand me a report. Which is most of the time. Venetian living clearly suits him well. I note that in the outer office, his manners are charming towards all the female workers: German and very proper. Behind his own, closed door, however, he tries to engage me in conversation on the pretext of practising his appalling Italian. It’s a shame that he feels the need to attempt his impression of Casanova too, the leer on his broad face becoming frankly laughable. More than once I’ve had to skip out from the reach of his grasping, pudgy paw, affecting a tinkling laugh that I know is a necessary part of the facade, but that still makes me feel grubby from head to toe.

The work is challenging, mostly due to the technical nature of the translations. But it’s their complexity, I’m told, which is helping the Resistance understand German movements, and, more importantly, their thinking too. My reports and the scraps from my shoes are passed promptly via a chain of Staffettas – a whole army of largely female Resistance workers, like me, used to move vital messages across Italian cities and towns. They are passed to the underground offices of the Resistance, vital information that helps to thwart Nazi efficiency in occupying our city. In office hours, I am responsible for gleaning that critical information directly from Breugal’s reports and passing it on to my fellow Staffettas, organised in a network between each of the partisan battalions in Venice. Once I step out of the office, though, I become one of that army – those who slip nonchalantly into bars with girlfriends, chatting in groups, who might slide a message under the table or pass notes via a waiter in the know. A whole other band of mothers and older women are employed in the same task, secreting written missives in baby carriages, nappies and shopping bags, innocently sailing through the checkpoints set up around the city. It’s merely a piece of paper, but the consequences of discovery by Nazi or fascist patrols are grave – at times, deadly. It’s war work and we are all soldiers in some way.

Some evenings, I will stop for a coffee in Paolo’s café, other times at a string of bars in the Castello or San Polo districts, sharing a drink and deep conversation with women I barely know as though we are best friends, looking as if there isn’t a war on. As we embrace goodbye, each of us slips the other a piece of paperweight contraband, and we say ‘Ciao’ with smiles and waves. I move on to my delivery destination, and she to hers, while the Nazi officers who are sometimes in our midst carry on, none the wiser. It makes my stomach flip with fear as I move away, then do somersaults of triumph when I round the corner with no patrol on my tail. I realise sometimes I actually enjoy the excitement, and it makes me think of Popsa and his defiant streak.

The pretence, however, is exhausting. I seesaw between the persona of a flighty office girl, with the daily demands on my memory for such detail, and the physical role of a Staffetta – the time and energy spent zigzagging across Venice on foot to pass messages and parcels along. What with visits to the partisan newspaper cellar at least twice a week, it means I barely see my own friends. Trips home to Mama and Papa’s house, the home where I grew up in the streets around the Via Garibaldi, are once a week at best. It’s not enough, but it’s all I can manage with my double – no, triple – life.

‘You’re getting thin,’ is Mama’s familiar refrain as I arrive unexpectedly at her door one evening. She would be within her rights to make a flippant remark about my gracing them with my presence, but her mother’s love stops her. I don’t tell her I’ve made a message drop just two streets away, and that familiar guilt gnaws at my stomach. It’s only manageable when I think of the greater good – bringing back the Venice that belongs to hard workers, honest people like my parents.

‘How’s work?’ she asks, as she serves polenta on my plate, along with the lion’s share of a thin mixed-fish stew, which needs to be stretched after my arrival.

‘It’s fine,’ I lie. ‘Lots of activity in keeping the water supplies coming in from the mainland.’ I haven’t told them of my move to Nazi headquarters, and I don’t plan to yet – Mama worries enough. While both are confirmed partisans, sharing anti-fascist beliefs and willing to help the cause, they are not active in the way I am. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I note a twitch to Papa’s normally calm face. He swipes his eyes away as I flick mine towards him.

‘Stella, you should move back home again,’ Mama goes on, in her unending plea. ‘We could manage the household much better, and we would know you are safe. I worry about you so much. It seems as though Vito is never here either. You shouldn’t be on your own.’

As with every visit, I say, ‘But Mama …’ trying to justify my need for independence. She doesn’t need to know how much she would worry at my trips across Venice, sometimes on a boat to the Lido or the mainland under cover of darkness, wherever the message takes me. Her ignorance is bliss, although she doesn’t know it.

Papa walks out into the yard as I’m taking out the rubbish. I know enough of undercover work now to sense the cigarette he is lighting is simply a ploy, but I don’t stop what I’m doing. He draws hard and the scent catches in my nostrils, his plume of smoke a sheet of white in the cold December air. Finally he speaks.

‘So how is it working in the wolf’s lair?’ He looks directly at me as I spin round. I say nothing, but my own stare doesn’t deny it.

‘What did you expect, Stella? I work in the docks – there are ears and eyes everywhere. I hear things. And people know you, care about you, enough to tell me.’

Even so, I’m shocked that the news has travelled, like a baton in a relay race, to my father. But then this war is all about information and gossip. And isn’t that what I trade in, every day? ‘Just don’t tell Mama – please,’ I entreat. ‘She’ll only worry. You know she’s already suspicious about Vito.’

I, and perhaps Papa, know about my younger brother’s place in the Resistance brigade. Coupled with his sometimes reckless pursuit for adventure, it would send Mama into a spin if she knew for sure that both her children were courting danger. On the grapevine, I hear of Vito’s hunger for ‘doing his duty’ as a partisan and it makes me nervous; I’ve heard his name mentioned more than once in plans to derail troop-carrying trains into Venice, or scupper German supply boats – plans that involved explosives. Sometimes I wish my hearing wasn’t so acute.

‘Do you know anything about Vito?’ Papa asks anxiously. Seeing my strained look, he adds: ‘Please, Stella – look, I know he’s in the brigade. I can’t stop him doing it, but I just want to know he’s safe. He disappears for days at a time.’

‘Papa, I’m in a different battalion,’ I sigh, and he knows what I’m saying. Either I won’t or I can’t talk about it. It’s a mixture of both. He slumps back against the brick wall, draws on his cigarette again. The pause is leaden.

‘So, how did you get the job in the Reich office?’ Papa asks at last, if only to break the impasse. ‘Was it Sergio who managed to place you?’ His natural protectiveness towards his only daughter brings an edge to his voice, an unspoken suspicion that my own commander would willingly put me in harm’s way.

‘No,’ I say truthfully. ‘It wasn’t really a choice. I was simply seconded by the Reich department, because I speak decent German.’

‘Ah, the benefits of a good high school education.’ He half laughs, but without humour.

‘It’s just a job, Papa,’ I say, looking at the night sky so I don’t have to meet his accusing eye.

‘And I’m an Italian who hates pasta,’ he says, a smirk beginning to curl his lip. Now he stubs out his cigarette and faces me, grasping my arms with both hands. ‘Just be careful, my love. I know you’re far smarter than you probably let them believe, but I also know you have too much of my father in you. And that’s the bit that worries me. These are dangerous people.’

‘The Nazis or the fascists?’

‘Both,’ he says resolutely.

I shrug, trying to make light of it, to protect him as much as Mama. ‘I will be careful, Papa, I promise. Listen, I want to be around to see the Venice of old return. I want to preserve us as much as anyone else. That’s why I need to work there.’ I kiss his cheek, and make to go back inside. ‘Didn’t you know, I’m a good Italian girl, who adores our beloved Benito?’

‘Like I say, I’m an Italian who loathes pasta,’ he quips back, and follows me inside.

Christmas comes and goes – our first under the awning of occupation – and a cloak of snow covers the city, marking out the waterways and canals of the city as the lifelines that they are. Venice exists under a muffler of white powder, cut by a distinctive chipping of the icy water as the boatmen free their craft each morning. In black and white, the city somehow seems starker, better defined. And yet still so beautiful. As I lie every night under my heap of blankets, a new pair of Mama’s knitted socks over the old, I think of the young partisan men and women up in the mountains near Turin, fighting the elements as much as the Nazi patrols, and my heart goes out to them.

The snow, however, helps the Resistance cause in our city. To an outsider, Venice is a labyrinth at the best of times, with one campo looking much like another, tiny streets and alleyways virtually indistinguishable to those with an untrained eye. Under a carpet of white, it becomes a complex maze – except to those who know its cobbles and pavements off by heart. The Nazi patrols are less visible in the cold; they remain holed up in their barracks or keep warm in several bars that have become their hangouts. For a few weeks at least, I and my fellow Staffettas feel a sense of freedom as we weave our way almost unchallenged.

I have to be careful not to feel a sense of overconfidence at work. Breugal becomes less of a prowler in the office – word has it that his wife has come to soak up the Venetian sights, as if we are still some cosmopolitan centre for the rich and bored. No doubt she will fill her time drinking real and expensive coffee in Florian’s on Piazza San Marco, and later have cocktails in Harry’s Bar, perhaps beside the sign that clearly states: ‘No Jews here’. She might parade alongside the Venetian women of a certain age who try to maintain the city’s grandiose reputation, even though these days the collars of their coats are more likely to be fashioned from rabbit or cat fur than anything exotic.

In the office, then, the atmosphere feels slightly less frenetic, although Signor De Luca continues to ensure that it runs with industrial efficiency. I note he never indulges in idle gossip or lunchtime chatter, and disappears each day at 12.30 precisely, returning exactly thirty-five minutes later. I tend to take my own lunch as he arrives back, since those precious minutes when he’s absent give me time to type frenetically while not under his watchful gaze. My position to the right of him means I can see his face as he leans over whatever document he is reading or correcting. It’s always intense, eyes tracking back and forth, nostrils twitching occasionally – which strangely reminds me of Popsa reading his daily paper. Sometimes, Cristian takes off his glasses, pinches his nose with his long fingers and draws the paper nearer to his face. If he’s suddenly distracted, he peers upwards without replacing his glasses and squints into the distance, adding to the look of a bibliophile. He’s something of an enigma to the other office girls, who find it hard to ally his appearance with the strict work rate he demands, occasionally raising his voice to quell any chatter if it threatens to slow the steady production of reports.

‘Bloody fascist,’ Marta, one of the other typists, mutters if Cristian takes her to task, although it’s under her breath and masked by the thunder of typewriter keys. Breugal appears to rely on him entirely – not least because his own Italian is so poor and Cristian’s German crisp and fluent – and calls him into the inner office a dozen times a day with a smart ‘De Luca!’ though I note it’s rarely with an irritated bark. For all their innate cruelty, their bulldozing of nations and countries, we in the Resistance realise the secret of Nazi success is that they know how to use people – via a combination of flattery, stealth or the simple and stark threat of death. With Cristian, Breugal is definitely on the charm offensive.

I have perhaps more to do with Cristian than some of the other typists, because of my role as a translator. He sometimes walks over to query a word or a phrase, and if it’s especially puzzling we both stand over the huge dictionary and work out the phrasing. He always smells nice, of soap and what I seem to recall is Italian cologne. Who can afford, or even access, cologne in wartime? Those that have good Nazi connections, I suppose. But still, he perplexes me. He doesn’t fit – a square peg in a round hole – and yet he appears snug within the Nazi hierarchy. I resolve to be wary; Cristian De Luca is meticulous and observant. He could easily be equally as dangerous as the general controlling our occupied city.

4
Discovery
Bristol, July 2017

Back home in Bristol, Luisa flicks through more scraps of aged paper, the fibrous edges disintegrating a little more each time she unfolds the fragile notes. Some of the ink has begun to fade and she needs to hold the paper up to the lamp to make out the scrawl. Some are just letters, numbers or nonsensical phrases – and they are largely in Italian, with the occasional message in phonetical English. ‘My beard is blond,’ one says, with what is presumably the Italian equivalent below. The sometimes bizarre nature of the messages only makes her delve deeper and wonder more. She buys a cheap Italian-English dictionary and pores over the words to try to make some kind of sense of them. In the month since Luisa discovered the attic box, its content has become like the richest compost for her imagination. She finds herself racing through real, paid work, forcing herself to concentrate on its suddenly inane message, when all she wants to do is get back to her large box of intrigue.

‘Lu? Lu, it’s supper …’ Jamie calls from downstairs, in a tone of early despair. He already knows he’ll need to remind her several times to descend from her office in the smaller bedroom. In what seems like every spare moment, Luisa is engrossed in that box attempting to unravel the mysteries amid the dust within. Daisy sits alongside, humming with an impatient flickering of the screen, waiting for Luisa to continue the article she should be working on. Jamie sees that the collection of old paper and photographs has more than captured her imagination – it’s become a purpose, perhaps morphing into an obsession of late. She’s become withdrawn but not in a morbid sense, and that can only be a good thing, he thinks, given she’s just lost her mum. Except he seems to have lost Luisa too. Hopefully, it’s temporary. He has to be patient and wait for her to re-emerge, take her nose out of those dusty scraps and be the Luisa he knows and loves. Right now, it appears that might take some time.

Luisa runs a hand over the keys of the monochrome typewriter she brought from her mum’s house, which takes pride of place in her office now. On that day of discovery in the attic, she bashed out her frustrations – though was careful to be kind to the keys, in deference to its age – and it felt good: the rhythmic tackety-tack of the mechanism winding up speed as her fingers became accustomed to the keyboard. It produced a rambling array of thoughts, now stuck in a notebook entitled ‘Head space’. She’s certain the machine is the origin of some of the typed pages – the dropped letter e bears that out – but the mystery is that some look like fact and others a kind of story, with a fictional, descriptive air. What are they doing amid the pictures of suave Italians with guns and camouflaged faces?

The office wall is now papered with a mosaic of scraps and photographs, topped off with coloured Post-it notes in Luisa’s scribble, as she tries to understand the timeline and characters in this war tableau. As she reads and deciphers over her Italian dictionary, she is becoming convinced that her grandmother was more than simply a bystander to war; that she had some part to play in its direction and the eventual liberation of her city. But what part? The mystery gnaws at her, night after night as Jamie snores lightly beside her. Who was her grandmother? Certainly, someone with more to her past than Luisa could have ever imagined. And why didn’t her own mother ever talk about this potentially colourful life? With her storyteller’s head, it’s not that much of a stretch for Luisa to imagine her grandmother as some sort of underground spy; she’s sure that if it were her own mother, she would have wanted to shout it from the rooftops, been prodigiously proud.

She scrolls back in her memory of her grandmother; Luisa’s own mother always seemed short with her, impatient, as if there was a long-standing feud between them. Something in her past had seemed to colour her mother’s personality, making her bitter and bad-tempered towards almost everyone. Certainly, Luisa’s father had retreated inside himself before his death. Yet no one ever spoke of it.

This new search, however, is a welcome distraction to those memories of home life as often cold and humourless. Luisa has researched enough articles about the grief process to know that it is undoubtedly helping with her own; to imagine something of her family within the paper bundles means she feels closer to her long-dead grandmother, whereas she struggled to find a connection with her own mother in life. Luisa has always known that her grandma Stella was a writer of novels – three or four family dramas written under the name Stella Hawthorn, but long since out of print. Just one had been on her mother’s bookshelves, and Luisa had read it with pride in her early teens. It was good, a definite page-turner, filled with sumptuous descriptions of both places and emotions and a hint of her Italian past as her nineteenth-century characters travelled to and from her native country. Luisa could almost taste the gelato of Milan, imagine the gossamer pink drench of a Naples sunset, the lilt of an Italian lover against the hard vowels of an English accent. Strangely, though, there was nothing of Venice in that volume, and she’s been hard at work since her mother’s death in trying to trace the other three texts, trawling websites specialising in old books or second-hand texts. The publisher, sadly, has long since closed up shop and, aside from visiting every antique shop she can find, Luisa has been reduced to sending feelers out into cyberspace and eagerly checking her email every day. So far, nothing.

With the codes, warped messages and strange initials, threads begin to weave in Luisa’s mind. Had her soft, demure grandmother been part of the Venetian Resistance, donned the rough uniform of a partisan soldier, or even sported a gun? Or acted as some glamorous spy working in plain sight of the Nazis, a Mata Hari character? She laughs then; her imagination is running riot. Still, it’s possible in the shape-shifting of a world war. But where did her Grandpa Gio fit into all this, if at all? It makes for a puzzle of layers, and one that both frustrates and fuels her curiosity.

‘Lu? Luisa! It’s getting cold,’ Jamie shouts, clearly irritated now, and Luisa is forced to leave her past behind and move into the present. But not for long.

5
A New Task
Venice, mid-February 1944

The early months of the year crawl by, with Venice holed up in its own weather enclave, wet and miserable. Due to the transport, the flow of Resistance reports from outside Venice slows to a trickle and it’s harder to fill the newspaper with positive news. Arlo and I flesh out the gaps with Tommaso’s illustrations, housewife recipes designed to eke out the week’s rations, and tips on the best places to shop. As I type, it hardly feels like fighting talk, and I have to remind myself that the paper is as much about helping ordinary people as waging a military campaign. Occupation is a fight against the enemy every day, and even the foe you might tentatively smile at across the market stall could make the difference between liberty or capture. While we all live alongside our Nazi occupiers and under the shadow of their politics, people still have to eat – small trade crafts come and go across the water, gondoliers who once conveyed tourists now scrape a living as supply carriers, avoiding the wash of ominous German gunboats, their weapons cocked and ready. Venetian life, though, functions in spite of our unwelcome visitors and the drone of aircraft passing like small swarms of bees overhead. Like people throughout Italy and Europe, we carry on.

There’s a welcome gap in the clouds in mid-February. At Nazi command, I take the cover off my works typewriter early one morning and see a tiny folded square of paper under one footing. I scout around the office – only Marta is humming to herself as she lays out some of the day’s work. I’d never had her down as a Staffetta, but equally I’m not supposed to be one either, so her innocent enough looks could be her best ally. Looking around me, I slide out the note and pocket it quickly. Cristian strides into the office, looking strangely upbeat and sporting something like a smile.

‘Good morning, all,’ he says, in Italian this time, since it’s only Marta and myself, and then, ‘Good morning Signorina. Are you well?’

I stammer something positive and quickly make my excuses to go to the toilet. The note has all the hallmarks of Resistance, using language and a code known only to my local battalion. It says to meet a contact in the corner of Campo San Polo and await further instructions. I deposit the piece of paper in my heel and head back to the office, barely suppressing my happiness. The tone of the note doesn’t sound like a routine message drop; perhaps there’s something I’m needed for, a task that will make me feel of even more value to the cause.

Cristian looks up as I return to the office, with a smile to accompany.

‘Ah Signorina Jilani, you’re back—’

‘Sorry. I’m needing to visit the—’

‘Yes, yes, no mind at all,’ he says, moving towards my desk, a large book in his hand. ‘I simply wanted to give you this.’ And he lays the volume down. It’s a thick, dictionary-like tome of technical translations. ‘I thought it might make life easier,’ he says. ‘For all those tricky words you – we – ponder over.’ Despite tiny flecks of grey in his beard, he looks like a boy who’s just given his teacher the shiniest, plumpest apple. There’s a proud half-smile under the bristles of his neatly clipped beard.

For a few seconds, I’m stumped for a reaction – part of me thinks I’ve already been found out, and it’s his warped sense of humour presenting me with a fait accompli. Any minute now a line of fascist police will come thundering through the door to escort me to a dungeon somewhere and an unthinkable future. But the expression on Cristian’s face says he’s genuinely pleased at the giving. And there is no rumble of footsteps up the marble staircase. I really wish in that moment that he didn’t sport a death’s head badge, so I could like him more.

‘Well, thank you,’ I manage. ‘It will undoubtedly be very useful.’ Part of me wants to laugh at the ridiculous nature of it – the fact that a fascist overseer is helping a member of the Resistance better translate valuable documents. And yet, I don’t want to laugh at him. I hate to admit it, but it’s a very human act of consideration.

‘Thank you, Signor De Luca,’ I say again. ‘I do appreciate it.’

He looks about the office, making sure that Marta is out of earshot. ‘Cristian, please.’ He turns and sits back at his desk.

The clock hands crank slowly towards 5.30, and I am packing up as the hand strikes half past, a jangle of emotions inside but careful to appear outwardly relaxed, as if it’s just another end of a normal day. Cristian is still hard at work on his document and looks up only briefly to say goodbye. I have to walk fast to weave my way through the network of streets towards Campo San Polo, taking time to double back, stopping to window-shop as a way of ensuring that no one is following. No matter the hurry, it’s been drummed into us that checking is vital. It saves lives – ours and many others possibly. I feel sure the way is clear as I enter the vast campo, and head towards the church entrance – it’s a good place to loiter at this time of day, as I could easily be one of the worshippers making their way in for evening service, the resounding clanging of the bells calling them to prayer. Ever since I was a small girl, the deep chime of church bells across the city has felt like a security blanket; present each and every day, enduring through war and famine. I feel sure that if they carry on, so can we.

Several older women pass by, bundled in their winter coats, rosaries in hand, looking at me quizzically. They are followed by a few men, some with the hint of a leer. I ignore each, stamping my feet against the cold, and they move on. Ten minutes go by and I’m wondering if my contact will arrive at all – the meet will be cancelled if any fascist patrols are nearby. Any longer and I will start to look suspicious, meaning I’ll have to simply walk away, affecting the irritated look of a woman being stood up by her date, swallowing the pitying looks of those around me. That’s the role of a Staffetta.

In the next minute he comes from behind me, swings around in front and makes to kiss me on both cheeks. In the split second before, I see the subtlest of nods and a raise of eyebrows that signal: it’s fine, play along.

‘Gisella! So sorry to be late. Can you forgive me?’ he cries, at just the right pitch to be heard, but short of a bad actor overprojecting on stage. As he moves to kiss my cheek, he whispers: ‘Lino.’ Gisella and Lino, young lovers. He’s used my Resistance code name so I’m happy to slip into the lie.

‘I forgive you, Lino – just this once,’ and I tease out a smile.

‘Shall we go?’ He proffers a hand and I take it, skipping alongside him like a woman excited to be with her lover.

He leads me through several streets towards the Croce district and we work hard at playing the convincing couple as we pass by others in the street. ‘How was your day?’ he questions. ‘What did you have for lunch?’

Eventually, we reach a darkened alleyway, pass under a low, stone sotto archway, opening out into a courtyard of houses. It’s empty aside from a traditional stone well to one side, and ‘Lino’ leads me to a darkened door. He raps three times on the door, pauses and knocks three more times. The door opens and we climb a set of granite stairs, not dirty but dank, as though someone has brought in canal water to wash them. My heart is pumping, although my breathing is under control for now. In these situations, I always question: Does this feel right? In a strange place, where no one knows where I am. It has to be.

Once we go through a door on the second floor I relax. There’s a welcome orange glow of light in several rooms of the apartment, and an older woman emerges from the kitchen, a vegetable knife in hand, but sporting a big smile.

‘Ciao Mama,’ Lino says, ‘this is a friend.’ He leads me to the living room as she retreats to the kitchen.

‘Please sit,’ he says.

It’s now his demeanour changes. Not brusque or unfriendly, just more businesslike. Now we can drop the facade. I don’t ask his real name, since it’s best not to know, and I’m not likely to see him again.

‘The brigade commander has asked if you can be part of one more task,’ he says, his brown eyes wide and intent. My own eyes flick up with surprise and pleasure – there’s not much I won’t do for Sergio Lombardi, a loyal Venetian and a good friend of my grandfather’s since the fascists took control of Italy back in the 1920s.

Months before, when the Allies stormed Southern Italy and it was effectively sliced in two – the Nazis to the north and Allies occupying below Rome – Italians were forced to make a choice between fascism and the fight. Mussolini took up comfortable residence in Salò with his puppet government, its strings pulled by Berlin, and the Italian army was effectively dismissed, but thousands of ordinary Italians raised arms of protest and guns in a different vein. There was a buzzing in the campos and cafés as Resistance fighters emerged from the woodwork, small bands of partisans willing to give their lives for Italy’s freedom. Those who couldn’t actively fight pledged their support in any way they could; patriot shopkeepers stored covert messages, and elderly couples gave up their homes as safe houses for pursued partisans, risking life and liberty. In its underbelly, Venice was fizzing with sedition.

I still remember that intense feeling when Armando Gavagnin activated the partisan cause in Piazza San Marco, raising his fist and standing tall on a table outside Florian’s, the oldest of Venetian cafés and a hot spot for age-old rebellion. My throat was dry as I listened to his calling on Venetians to fight, so fired up that I was ready to give up my job, ditch my skirt suits and don trousers and neckerchief, rifle in my arms. For Venice and Italy. For Popsa to be proud.

It was Sergio, the new leader of the Venetian brigade, who persuaded me otherwise back then, toning down my revolutionary fervour and persuading me I’d be more use on the inside, waging war with information. ‘You can be the mouse to outwit the large, predatory cat,’ he had phrased it, with his bushy eyebrows dancing a lifetime of mischief. ‘Bide your time,’ he advised me. ‘Without the likes of you we are an army fighting blind. We need your eyes and ears in the works department.’

His weathered, open face made me think of my grandfather in his younger days – so sure that we would triumph. Even then, Sergio made me feel like a soldier, albeit with heels and a handbag. Yet that romantic image of fighting for the cause has never left me. I want – I need – to make a difference. Perhaps now I can.

‘Lino’ speaks again, bringing me back to the moment. ‘Sergio also insists that you can say no if you want – we’re all aware how much you are doing right now.’

‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I can manage. What is it?’

‘You’ll be contacted on your next trip to the newspaper office on Giudecca in two days. There’s a job we need doing there, and, as you’re already back and forward frequently, it will raise less suspicion if it’s you.’

I leave soon after, despite the kitchen mama generously offering to share their evening meal. I’m hungry, but this is business, and ‘Lino’ deserves his privacy.

I walk home thinking how exhausted I am day to day. This new task is one more thing to draw on my senses, forcing me to be on constant alert. Yet I’m also excited as I walk the long stretch towards home at a pace. I know my contribution can never compare to some of the suffering or sacrifice in this war, and I want to do what I can, when I can.

The two days before my next visit to the newspaper cellar drag by. At times, my day job and the German translations appear turgid and unimportant, although I still have to feed the details via my regular contacts so the Resistance are able to further sift through the information. Cristian De Luca is largely absent and General Breugal is in a foul mood, barking orders and stomping about the office in frustration, upending trays of typewritten notes in a childlike temper.

I feel a sense of relief as I hit the cold, fresh air and cross the wide canal towards Giudecca, enjoying the roll of the boat and the slapping of the water against its sides. It’s tempered when a small German patrol boat cuts across us, sailors shouting over the engine’s throaty roar, making my insides swell along with the water. But what words I catch are nothing sinister, general chit-chat only, and I breathe again.

When I arrive, Matteo is at his usual place behind the bar, a few customers in front of him, but as I move to take off my coat he passes me a tied linen package.

‘My wife asks if you can take this to one of the nuns at Santa Eufemia,’ he says. ‘She’s laid up with a bad back.’ His tone is relaxed, as if it’s the most natural of favours to ask.

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I won’t be long.’ Since Matteo has never before used me as a general messenger, I guess it’s something to do with my new Resistance task.

The wind whips up a spray as I walk along the waterfront towards the church and I pull the frayed wool of my coat closer. Santa Eufemia is an ancient building with a long history but, compared to some of the more notable churches in Venice, it’s rundown and slightly scruffy. The vast, vaulted space is empty of bodies as I enter through the scratched doorway, but warm compared to outside. I make the sign of the cross, take a seat in a front pew, and wait. When there are no other instructions, you simply wait. There’s lots of meandering and staring into space when you’re a Staffetta.

I consider taking this opportunity to pray – it would please Mama certainly. But I have never been especially religious and the war, with its stories of families being torn apart, severe beatings for no apparent reason than thought crime against fascism, has taken what faith I had left. I wonder if it will ever come back to me.

I barely hear the soft footsteps of someone approaching, only sensing the gentle waft of her habit as a nun approaches. She comes and sits next to me.

‘Evening Sister,’ I say. ‘I have something for you.’ I offer up the parcel, and she smiles and rises.

‘Come,’ she says.

We move behind the altar, through the vestry and beyond into a corridor, the air colder as we step into an open walkway behind the church. On the opposite side of the small garden is an old brick building that looks like a storeroom, with just two blacked-out windows above head height. The nun gets out an old key from under her habit, so big it looks almost theatrical. She unlocks the door, glances left and right, and ushers me in. There’s a glow from a candle in one corner, and from the gloom nearby I hear a single cough. A shifting movement seems to disturb the combination of soap and disinfectant, plus the musty, aged smell all such buildings have.

‘Sister Cara – is that you?’ a voice croaks.

‘I’ve brought you a visitor,’ the nun says, and there’s some more shuffling, although no one approaches.

‘You’ll have to go to him,’ she says to me. ‘He can’t get up.’

She brings another candle and sets it down on an upturned wooden box acting as a table. The cast of light outlines a man, his well-worn, dark clothes peeking out from under a rough woollen blanket. His face is grimy, and in his hairline are crusts of dried blood he hasn’t managed to wash away. Out of the bottom of the blanket sticks a limb, braced with wooden struts and heavily bandaged, a loose old sock unceremoniously stuck over his toes.

‘Welcome to my humble abode,’ the man says in Italian, and there’s a grimace as he tries to haul himself into a sitting position on the old metal bed.

‘No, no don’t move!’ I say in alarm. I pull up a wooden box that looks hardy enough and sit on it. He extends a hand from his half-sitting, half-lying position. Less grimy but not clean.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ he says, breathing heavily with the effort. ‘It’s nice to have a visitor. Thank you for coming.’

His Italian is faultless but his accent is strange – foreign perhaps? There’s a small pause during which we simply size each other up. He is handsome under the fresh scratches around his high cheekbones and forehead, dark and with full lips. He looks Italian, but that accent …

A boat horn honks outside and breaks the spell.

‘So, I’ve been told you need some help,’ I say.

He laughs good-naturedly, despite his obvious discomfort. ‘Yes, clearly wasn’t as good a parachutist as I thought.’ And he looks down at his prostrate leg. ‘Well and truly broken.’

He was part of an Allied parachute mission, he explains, designed to drop in radio sets for dispersal across the north of the country, allowing the partisans vital links with the outside world. There are unknown numbers of Allied soldiers still stranded after the Nazi invasion without any contact, as the Germans cleverly suspended all Italian radio communications when they occupied the country in September ’43. Since then, we in Venice have relied heavily on Radio Londra, the BBC’s daily broadcast to Italians, to bring us coded messages about partisan and enemy movements. But Radio Londra is reliant on a good radio signal and we know the fascists have spent millions of lira on jamming equipment to prevent such dispatches reaching us. Even a small network of radios would improve communications between the Allies and the Italian Resistance, but they are of little use lying dormant in this church.

‘Thankfully my radio equipment fared better than me and it’s intact,’ he adds. ‘Would you be willing to transport it across to the main island?’

I think of how big the equipment might be, how I will hide it and look in no way suspicious. A larger bag would almost certainly be searched by a fascist patrol. Even in the gloom, this man sees the working of my mind.

‘Don’t worry, it comes apart in multiple pieces,’ he says. I see the white of his teeth in his smile. It’s nice. He looks friendly, genuine.

‘How small?’ I wonder.

‘I can make each package small enough for your handbag, at worst a small shopping bag. But it will mean several trips.’

‘I’m here on Giudecca twice a week, but I can easily manage another trip,’ I say, not daring to think how I will fit it into my life.

‘Well, I’m not going anywhere, not for a while,’ he quips, and taps the brace on his useless leg. I feel sorry for him, trapped in this dank hole. He’s undoubtedly well looked after by the sisters, but he must be bored stiff.

‘Is there anything I can bring you? Books, or a newspaper?’ I offer.

His face lights up. ‘A book would be wonderful, even a cheap thriller would lift my head out of here for a while.’

I get up to go, and hold out my hand to shake his. ‘I can be back in two days. Is that enough time to get the first parcel ready?’

‘Plenty,’ he replies. ‘I look forward to it …’ and he’s clearly hanging out for my name.

I look at him intently – the expression that says no names are safer.

‘Please,’ he says. ‘Listen, I’m a sitting duck here. I don’t think names between us will make much difference. It’s just nice to have contact with the outside world.’

‘Stella,’ I say after a pause, for no other reason than I think I can trust him.

‘Jack,’ he offers back, still holding onto my fingers.

‘Jack? Surely that’s English?’

‘Which I am – sort of. It’s Giovanni, really. But everyone at home calls me Jack. Except my mother, of course.’

The perfect Italian with a foreign accent suddenly fits into place, and the fact that he’s part of an Allied operation.

‘Seemingly, they thought I would be better equipped to blend in, with having Italian parents,’ he adds. ‘Only they didn’t reckon my coming down on some very hard Italian stone. Just my luck.’

I find it difficult to concentrate as I return to the bar and descend into the cellar. Arlo is already starting to lay some pages – I have to work fast to catch up. At the back of my mind, projecting a very distinct image, is this evening’s earlier meeting – both Jack, and the job ahead of me. Every time I make the journey over to Giudecca I’m breaking fascist law, since even owning a wireless tuned into Radio Londra can earn you jail time. Being caught creating anti-fascist propaganda will undoubtedly result in far worse than that. Each paper message I transport is heavily weighted contraband, and yet it has never felt dangerous, or potentially fatal. It’s just what I do. I wonder if adding one more task is pushing my luck? And whether I will live – or die – regretting it?

6
Two Sides of the Coin
Venice, late February 1944

It seems like a lengthy wait until my next visit to Giudecca – to Jack and the task ahead of me in transporting his handmade receivers. Luckily, Mimi is there to distract me.

‘So, come on, tell me all,’ my oldest and best friend says as we nestle into the corner space of a crowded bar in the Santa Croce district. It’s tucked down a side street and not widely known by Nazi or fascist soldiers. Still, we’re careful to keep our voices low, hunkering under a fog of cigarette smoke for cover. Mimi’s big eyes are even wider than normal, her painted red lips pursed in anticipation. With her near-black curls, she often reminds me of the American cartoon character, Betty Boop, though Mimi is infinitely more beautiful.

‘I’ve made contact with an Allied soldier, and I’m to transport some vital packages,’ I tell her. Saying it aloud still makes me fizzle with both nerves and excitement, and I can see Mimi – a seasoned Staffetta herself – is impressed. I tell her why the soldier can’t deliver the radios himself and she’s aghast at the story. Since Mimi also has a reputation as a shameless matchmaker, I brush her off when she asks whether Jack is good-looking, saying simply, ‘He’s very grubby.’

For all her flightiness, Mimi understands the risk I’m taking. ‘Be careful,’ she says, although she knows I will be, as we all are – have been trained to be. We are all too aware of the consequences of being caught; man, woman or child, the Nazi and fascist regimes are uncompromising when it comes to betrayal.

Being with Mimi, full of fun and smiles, and talking about her latest flirtations, is the release I need when I’m holding myself in for days at a time, strapping myself into a straitjacket of a different persona, whether it’s at the Reich office or slipping into another guise as a Resistance messenger. It’s good to feel like the real Stella, even for just a few hours, and we dip into what I’ve come to think of as ‘normal conversation’, events untouched by war – the handsome operator at the telephone exchange where she works by day, and her plans to secure his affections. ‘You’re incorrigible,’ I say to her, although I’m full of admiration for Mimi’s ability to rise above the dense cloud of conflict. She’s not unaffected, but she refuses to let it crush her natural optimism.

‘You never know, my current fancy could well have a nice friend,’ she says with mischief.

‘Stop that, Mimi!’ I chide her. While I’m not averse to having someone in my life, I just can’t fit them into it right now.

The next day passes slowly, and I find myself willing the clock to go faster and release me from the endless tapping and chatter. At lunch, I simply have to escape the stifling Reich office and take a walk along the water towards the Arsenale, drinking in my share of the sun’s glittery reflection on the lagoon. Reluctantly, I cut into the side streets behind, where the sun is spliced with shadows and there’s an instant chill, knowing there are some second-hand bookshops I can trawl through to pick up a few cheap volumes for Jack. My own shelves are full of mostly Italian classics, and I’m not sure he would be in the mood for the classically Italian Boccaccio, amusing though he is. I pick out something light, and then an English copy of Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia, thinking it really will take his mind far from Venice. I treat myself to a cheap, dog-eared Italian translation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, having left my old copy at my parents’ house.

I’m walking back towards the office when I spy someone familiar standing on a small bridge gazing intently into the still canal water, his elbows leant on the brickwork. I make to turn sharply, away from the waterside. Too late – he pulls up his stare and clearly recognises me. His expression means I have no choice but to approach Cristian De Luca like the friendly colleague that I am, the pleasing office girl and follower of our great leader, Il Duce.

‘Have you spotted the answer to the universe in there, or simply some poor unfortunate after a night with too much grappa?’ I say lightly.

He looks up, smiles instead of grimaces, catching my humour. ‘No, I’m just admiring the shapes, the sunlight. It’s beautiful.’

He’s right. The reflection of the houses onto the green channel creates warped lines and colours, like some enticing, modernist painting. Every second, each subtle swirl morphs the scene into something more beautiful.

‘See, even the water is art in Venice,’ he says.

‘Really? Even under the cloak of war?’ I turn my eyes away from the water and upwards, to the drone of aircraft overhead – perhaps Allied bombers determined to lay waste to some poor unsuspecting Italian city, either Turin or Pisa. No one around us scrambles for cover; in among the revered beauty of Venice, we’re generally safe, as it’s those vessels out on the lagoon – fishermen or ferries – that run the risk of being strafed with bullets.

He smiles some understanding, showing white teeth and full lips under his neat moustache. I watch his brown eyes track across my face, trying to read me. I’ve seen that deep, enquiring look before – in Nazi and fascist officers, trying to scan inside you for the dirty truths hidden behind the innocent facade. I’m still unsure what Cristian’s motives are though.

Finally, he lets out a laugh. ‘You Venetians! You’re far more practical than the city itself, clearly.’

‘Perhaps it’s a good thing we don’t wear our rose-tinted glasses all the time, or we wouldn’t have a city to wallow in,’ I shoot back, though with an element of humour. ‘Plus, we would fall in the canal far too often – and that’s never good for anyone’s health.’

He pauses to ponder again, eyes on the water, as if he can’t steal them away. I’m just about to walk on when he raises himself up to his full height alongside me. Now I’m genuinely curious.

‘So tell me, what were you really thinking? Not about to toss yourself in, I hope?’ I add.

‘If you must know, I was wondering how many people – classes, creeds and colours – have travelled under this bridge over the centuries. What they would have worn, talked about, were eating, drinking or reading.’ He looks at me directly, like it’s not a musing or a rhetorical question. It’s the longest conversation we’ve ever had. And the most revealing. ‘Do you ever wonder that, Signorina Jilani?’ he adds.

I have, many times. Despite its familiarity, and the practicalities of living in a place that hovers between reality and fantasy, I spent endless hours of my childhood pondering over the colours and past opulence of my own city, the love stories buried in the mud, alongside the wooden piles on which Venice is suspended. Some of those stories were created in my head, to be crudely drawn on the paper while sitting in the kitchen next to my grandfather, as he smoked and dozed. It’s the war that has halted my imaginings on the past or the future, stone dead. Much like my lack of religious faith, I hope it’s temporary. These days, I dream only in grey – a slate war hue. The Venice of now is all that matters; day by day, it must survive and bring with it some sort of future, so we can bring back the colour and vitality to our city.

Cristian’s brow furrows at my silence, and I bring myself back from a sugary nostalgia. ‘So, do you wonder what it might have been like?’ he presses.

‘A darn sight smellier, I would imagine,’ I reply, and turn abruptly off the bridge, in the direction of the Platzkommandantur. I’m purposely glib because I don’t want him tapping into what’s in my head, either past or present. I hear his footsteps as he follows, several steps behind me. Perhaps he imagines – rightly so – that I wouldn’t want to be seen walking with a badge-toting collaborator. And yet I don’t feel any hatred towards him, only slight pity. There is a heart inside him, clearly – one capable of deep feeling. It’s only a shame about the shell he covers it with.

He catches up with me, the clip of his smart shoes resounding through the alleyways. We pass wordlessly under a covered walkway leading to an open street. There’s an old man under the oncoming archway lighting a cigarette and he looks up as we approach.

‘Good day,’ he says and smiles at us both. ‘Come to express your devotion?’ He’s clearly amused at his own humour.

I know exactly what he’s referring to – the small, reddish heart-shaped stone standing proud above the arch brickwork, a natural relic apparently, and a popular pilgrimage for tourists and lovers alike. I try to satisfy him with a weak smile, but the old man is having none of it.

‘You need to touch it,’ he insists, ‘the both of you.’

Cristian is looking perplexed, and I go to explain swiftly so that we can move on, but the old man is in full flow.

‘It’s an old tale from centuries ago,’ he rambles. ‘If you both touch the stone your love will be sealed forever,’ and he coughs from too many cigarettes, chuckling to himself as he shuffles off.

Cristian looks at me for clarity. ‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘Or at least it’s true that’s what the myth says.’ I duck under the stone sotto before he can ask any more.

He catches up again. ‘What is it, Signorina Jilani – don’t you believe in fairy stories?’

He’s smiling once more and I see he’s looking directly at the volume of Jane Austen clutched in my hand.

‘Oh, this? This isn’t a fairy story,’ I come back, striding ahead to avoid any awkward conversation. ‘It’s literature.’

‘I agree,’ he says. ‘It’s very good literature. But equally, it’s not real life, is it?’

‘All the better in this day and age,’ I snipe, though not meaning to do so quite so sharply. ‘Everyone deserves a place of fantasy and safety.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ he says. But he’s no longer smiling or making light, and we walk the rest of the way in silence.

It gets me thinking, though. Cristian De Luca, as much as I hate to admit it, has touched a nerve. I indulge in past centuries and places away from this war by devouring what books I can, on the occasions I’m able to stay awake after the day’s activities. But I miss the creation; as a journalist, I indulged my free time in writing short stories, one or two of which were published in sister publications of Il Gazzettino. It was a total release to open up my beloved machine and simply lay down sentences and words, fabricate people and conversations, without once glancing at notes or quotes. I felt free.

I realise war has stifled me since then. Unsurprising, given the simple desire and effort to stay alive. All the same, I find myself resenting it. Typing up the news stories for the partisan paper comes easily, almost automatically. But it’s not me – yes, there’s a passion in the aim for freedom, but nothing of my heart in the words, despite Arlo’s teasing about my lyrical language. I resolve to try and write. As me, for me. Just for pleasure. Is that so wrong in the times we live in?

If only I could stay awake at the day’s end and find the time.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.