What We May Become, page 18
Travere swallowed hard.
‘They were using human beings in their experiments like we use mice and rabbits and guinea pigs in ours, but they even called them that. They saw them like that. And there was more,’ he went on, staring into space. ‘Adler was fascinated with mind control, if you could achieve that with drugs, and deprivation, and a combination of those and hypnosis.’
Diana remembered the feel of Adler’s fingers on her wrist, the swirling amber cordial picking up the light, the power that had seemed to emanate from the man’s eyes.
The sun poured down on the two figures crouched in a field, dark figures oblivious to the beauty of summer all around them, transported to concrete cells splashed with ice water and blood, listening to the echo of screams that still carried across Europe.
Diana was the first to recover, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
‘Thank God we found it. Thank God the Americans will take it now and destroy it. And thank God we stopped these madmen.’
Travere looked up, his face haggard, his eyes rimmed with red. He struggled to his feet.
‘Thank you for listening to me, Diana,’ he said, but his voice was flat and lifeless. Diana had thought talking about it would help him, help release him from his torture, but Travere seemed more defeated than ever.
‘Don’t go,’ Diana said, reaching out her hand towards him, saying again the words that had brought comfort to so many desperate men. ‘You’re not alone.’
Travere looked down on her, sadly, for another moment, before striding away quickly across the field.
‘I wish to God I was.’
Diana walked up the long hill back into town, one last time. Halfway up, she passed the shrine to Saint Anne, where she had slept while Adler was being murdered, past the home with the chickens and the girl in pink, where Diana had knelt in the dust and forgave herself for the loss of another child. When Diana reached the piazza in town, she saw a knot of old men and small children crowded around the tobacconist’s shop. She knew the town had run out of tobacco months earlier, and wandered over to see what the attraction was. The old men were talking loudly over each other, gesticulating at a newspaper that was being snatched from one hand to the next. Diana caught the image of a battleship, and Japanese men in incongruous top hats and tails standing alongside American servicemen in khakis, and then she saw the words in thick, block print. Il Giappone si arrende. Japan surrenders.
Diana stood motionless in the square, as the men argued and the children ran in and out among them, laughing and trying to steal packs of stale gum from the distracted shopkeeper. It was over. It was really over. All the death and the destruction, all the countless lives lost around the globe, and it was finally over. She stepped back from the little group, walking towards the side street that would take her to Lucia’s. She moved like someone in a dream, looking down at the shiny, slate-grey cobblestones beneath her to make sure her feet were really touching them. Japan seemed a world away, the men standing at attention on that deck as far from her as the sun or the moon. But they were real men who had stood there and said words and signed papers that would change the course of the world – of Diana’s world – because now the war was over. She had been ready to go back to the army, to serve in the Pacific and, most likely, die in the Pacific, but now no one would be going because the war was over. She kept repeating those words to herself like a mantra, like a prayer she could not yet believe had been answered because she had stopped daring to ask for it. She wanted to feel elation inside – to whoop and holler as she was sure people were doing back home, stopping work and throwing up their hands, kissing friends and strangers alike, holding on to their young boys who had just been called up but would not have to go. She wanted to do and feel these things, but she couldn’t, not yet, wandering as she was down a Tuscan side street that had remained unchanged for half a millennium, through a sleepy, sun-drenched town that had just survived its own war, which would see to its own healing before turning its attention to the Orient. Diana was unable to take in the enormity of what had just happened; it was too much, coming from too far away, leaving her numb inside. But she knew, someday soon, that elation would come.
Diana stopped walking and found she was in the same dark alleyway, in front of the same gaping portico that had swallowed her up only a few months before, when she had been desperate enough to sell her soul, only to have it flung back in her face by a bunch of laughing women. But back then, they had been faceless, nameless entities, throwing back their heads and baring white teeth. Now Diana knew them as people, as young girls, as innocents caught in the crosshairs of war. Diana smiled when she realized – despite their differences in age, and education, and even nationality – they were more alike than different. That she would be glad to call any one of these young women her friend.
She spent the day with them. Blessedly, Lucia was out, and Diana and the girls could speak freely. She asked after their rations, their treatment by the men in the towns, if Lucia was good to them. Two of the girls were pregnant. There had been three, they explained, but one girl had miscarried after visiting strega glicine, the witch of the wisteria vines, an old woman who lived outside the city gates by the church of Saint Agnes, whose small home had become almost completely overgrown by the creeping, purple flowers. The two girls proudly presented their firm, round bellies for Diana’s inspection, laughing and rubbing the small of their backs. Diana checked on the other girls – out of the whole household, half a dozen were showing the first signs of venereal infection and needed antibiotics, and one girl – who had been struck during a bar fight – needed three stitches above her left eye. But Diana did more than just administer first aid during her visit. Emboldened by Lucia’s absence, she did in the open what she had only tried clandestinely during her earliest days with them. She encouraged the girls to seek other employment, to carve out new lives for themselves, on their own terms. Even to the girls who had been sold as children, who had grown up in Lucia’s house and knew no other life, Diana preached heresy, urging them to seek out work as scullery maids, nannies, and even, eventually, students when the schools opened up again, just as the posters back home in her high school cafeteria had encouraged her to seek out her own career.
‘But, signorina, no one hire us,’ they said in the halting English they were picking up in the cities. ‘They will no permit us in their schools. We are bad girls. We are fallen.’
‘Fuck that,’ Diana laughed brazenly, the girls laughing along with her, surprised to hear the word that needed no translation.
‘Who knows that?’ Diana asked, impassioned. ‘Just the people who live here, in this small town. The next town over – in Pienza, Chianciano, Acquaviva – no one knows that. No one knows you. You do not deserve to be here, to be bought and sold. You work hard. But you could work hard at something else, and keep your own money, rather than have Lucia take it all.’
Diana gave them her address back home, spelled out her rank and full name carefully for them, even the middle name she hated, and had them memorize it in case Lucia came upon the small slip of paper and destroyed it. Diana would be their patron, their reference, an American Army officer who would vouch for them, Dear sir or madam, Angelina is the perfect cook, Rosaria an honest housemaid, of course Benedicta can be trusted with your children, I would trust her with my life.
As the rest of the girls stood around giggling or strutted about with sheets draped over their shoulders imitating ladies of leisure, Diana saw Gabriella frown and take up a basket of damp laundry. She followed the girl downstairs and out to their small, enclosed back yard, crisscrossed with half a dozen clotheslines.
‘You did not like what I said?’ Diana asked as she came up alongside the titian-haired girl and helped her hang up a printed sheet. Remembering Gabriella had spoken no English at all when she had arrived, Diana tried to translate the question she had just asked.
‘Non – non ti è piaciuto quello che ho detto?’
To Diana’s surprise, the girl answered her in English.
‘Is OK. I know small English now. I understand what you say to us.’
‘But you do not like it?’
Diana snapped out a pillowcase to get rid of the wrinkles before securing it with an ancient clothespin. Gabriella shook both hands in a placating manner.
‘Is no that. Is no I no like. Is only … what is the word in English? Is no nice? No, maybe, is no thanks?’
The pretty girl closed her eyes and squinted hard.
‘Ah, is difficult, in your language. The word for me is grato.’
‘Grateful?’ Diana asked, translating quickly. ‘You do not think it is grateful, what I suggest? Grateful to who?’
The sun burned down on the girl’s hair, turning it to strawberry gold. She smiled.
‘To Donna Lucia, of course.’
The horror showed in Diana’s face.
‘To that woman? That horrible, horrible woman? How can you, Gabriella, how can you say a thing like that?’
Gabriella turned a placid face towards Diana.
‘I owe it her. I belong to her.’
Diana took the long nightdress from Gabriella’s hands and tossed it back in the basket, taking the girl by both hands and speaking very slowly.
‘You do not belong in this place. You are beautiful inside, like an angel—’
Gabriella smiled, as if she were placating a tiresome child.
‘Your English. It is difficile, difficult. I no mean I belong here, to this place. I belong to Lucia. She owns me. She bought me.’
Diana stared, incredulous. Suddenly, a loud voice from behind them made Diana jump.
‘That is right. The girl is right. She is stupid as the agnelli, the little lambs who trust everyone, even the farmer when he cuts their throats. But she knows her place. She belongs to me.’
Donna Lucia strode across the lawn, towards the pair. Gabriella dropped her eyes meekly and turned to finish putting up the laundry. Diana kicked the basket over and snatched the wet clothing from the girl’s hands.
‘No, Gabriella. Listen to me. Donna Lucia is wrong. You do not owe her anything. You do not belong to her.’
Lucia laughed, menacingly.
‘Ah, the pretty American with her pretty ways. Maybe for you, with your fine manners and your money, maybe for you, you are free. Although do not forget when you come to me, hungry. You are willing that day to do things you are ashamed to admit now.’
‘I am not ashamed.’ Diana was yelling now, she was almost screaming. ‘I was hungry. These girls were hungry, that is the only reason anyone comes to you, to be yelled at, and kicked, and treated worse than dogs.’
There was a whoosh and a rush in Diana’s ears. Gabriella’s angel face looked scared as she held out her white arms, separating the women from each other.
‘Do not fight. Is no worth it. I no worth it. I belong to her, this is true. She paid money for me, she tells me this. It is simple. Oh, do not fight!’
The slender girl looked fragile, swaying between them as the sheets whipped in the wind, but Diana had become a fury.
‘I will fight, Gabriella. I’ll fight for you, even if you won’t.’
‘Stop your nonsense,’ Lucia roared. ‘The girl is right. I tell her I buy her, and I do, for the price of a train ticket. Her mother work for me, and becomes incinta, pregnant, and when this stupid child is born, her mother come to me, weeping. Say she is in love, with someone she first meet in the last war, a German, no, maybe an American soldier – I don’t know which, they all fuck the same.’
Diana saw Gabriella flinch a little at Lucia’s brutality. She realized the girl was hearing these details about her parents for the first time.
‘She sells me the child, says she will be beautiful, like she is, but please, she must go to the man and she needs the ticket. So, I buy her and she leaves and that is why this capretta, this kid goat who bleats and blahs and trusts the world like an idiot is mine.’
Gabriella was crying. Her hands were by her side and her head was bent and she was crying like a lost child. Donna Lucia cursed and walked up to her, her hand raised to strike the girl across her face, but Diana stepped between them.
‘How much?’ Diana asked.
Lucia was stunned for a moment, her hand still poised in the air.
‘You interfering American. What do you mean? How much do I buy her for? The price of a ticket, twenty years ago. I have told that already.’
‘No,’ and Diana’s voice was suddenly devoid of emotion. It had become cold and hard and businesslike. ‘How much to buy her off you, now?’
Both women stared at Diana, their mouths open.
‘I have saved up my pay at the bad house. Whatever you pay for these girls on the open market, I am prepared to meet that.’
‘But—’ Gabriella began.
‘But,’ Lucia interrupted, pushing the young girl aside, ‘what will you do with her?’
And, for a moment, Lucia’s eyes narrowed, as if seeing Diana for the first time, trying to discern if there was some aspect of her she had misjudged, some proclivity or persuasion she had not considered before.
‘I will not use her, and barter with her, as you do. That’s all you need to know. Name your price.’
So the two women haggled and negotiated, as Gabriella – from sheer force of habit – slowly picked up the scattered garments and hung them neatly on the line. In the end, they settled on a price, Lucia laughing and making crude gestures, Diana calmly telling the girl to get her bag, she would be leaving this place and never coming back.
‘I belong to you, now?’ the girl asked flatly, expecting no more from life than to be bought and sold, as Lucia had done, as her own mother had done.
‘No, you blessed girl.’ Diana’s face was beaming. ‘Now you belong to yourself.’
Diana knocked on Bugari’s door and waited for a response. It came, very low, and if Diana had not had her ear pressed to the door, she would not have heard it. As soon as Diana saw the old woman – back in her own bed now, blankets pulled up to her chin, despite the heat – she knew Bugari was dying. The hands that rested atop the white bedding were motionless and nearly translucent, the thick blue veins showing through the papery skin. Her face looked slumped, uneven, and Diana immediately thought of stroke. Bugari’s dinner tray lay untasted on the side table, the glass of water left that afternoon still full. Diana lifted the cup to the old woman’s lips, supporting her head as she took a sip.
‘Take another,’ Diana coaxed, but the old woman frowned, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. Diana replaced the glass and sat down gently on the edge of the bed.
‘Signora, I am leaving. Going back to America. I have come to say goodbye.’
The old woman looked at Diana for a long while, her dark eyes inscrutable.
‘But, before I go, Signora, I found something I want to return to you.’
Diana pulled the small leather volume from her pocket and slipped it on to the bed. The old woman ran her fingers over the smooth cover for a moment, before slowly bringing the journal up to her chest.
‘I know what I have said here.’
‘I found it, Signora, down below. Where you had Adler’s papers concealed.’
Bugari closed and opened her eyes again slowly.
‘Yes, I lost it around that time. I did not know where I had left it. It makes sense, now, that it would be there. Secrets buried with secrets.’
Diana smoothed back some iron-grey hairs that had gotten in the woman’s eyes.
‘Travere does not know. I did not tell him I found it. I read only the inscription myself.’
‘Yes,’ Bugari smiled weakly, closing her eyes. ‘A man would not understand what is in here. What I have said.’
The room was absolutely quiet except for the ticking of an ornate mantle clock, loud and rhythmic. Diana thought Bugari had fallen asleep until she spoke with an unexpected vigor.
‘I am dying. And I surprise myself that, at the end, I do want to speak. So much of my life has been lived in silence or, when I spoke, I was lying. I would like to tell the truth, for once, now that it does not matter any longer.’
Bugari opened her eyes and stared hard at Diana.
‘I have kept so many secrets and, now, there is no time to recount them all. If there were, I would tell you of my sister, my little fagiola. I loved her more than life, I realize that now, but I lost her, while we were young. And I had to take work, work without honor, as you did. And then I had a chance and I did something bad, for which I am not sorry.’
Bugari’s expression was set, remorseless.
‘I switched places with a rich woman who had died, a woman my own age, a woman who was coming to live in this house for the first time, where no one would know I was not her. Those were happy times, or the only happy times I knew after fagiola, because I was young and I was in love with a man I thought loved me, too. But he only loved my money.’
Bugari’s voice trailed off for a moment, before rallying.
‘Or he loved mostly my money and only a little bit me. But when he died, too, and left me with my baby daughter, that hurt me as now I cannot even imagine hurting, but I felt it then. It hurts so much when you are young.’
Diana felt Bugari was revealing so much of her past, so much of herself that Diana could not take it all in. The color was draining quickly from Bugari’s face and Diana tried giving her water again, but she waved it away, impatiently.
‘No, there is not time. Not for that. Not for me to tell you how lost I felt, how empty. And then, it is not important how, but I was introduced to work I was good at, during the Great War. Work I continued, even until now. Even until Adler.’
Bugari’s lined face darkened as she said the man’s name.
‘That man you call a detective, the man you brought back from the village that day, he has found Adler’s papers, I know. And that is all right, because he will simply do for me what I planned to do all along but am too weak now to finish.’
