Page 31 of The Tuscan Child
I thanked them profusely for their hospitality and remembered to comment again on the quality of their olive oil. This was met with broad smiles all around. At least I had done something right.
“So tomorrow, Signorina.” Gianni still hovered beside me. “Any time you want to see my sheep and my cheese making, you come and find me, okay? I can tell you lots of interesting things, also about the wartime.”
“What do you know of the war?” one of them bellowed. “You were just a child. We were off fighting. We can tell her what the war was like.”
“I was a child, yes, but I ran errands. I took messages for the partisans. I saw much,” Gianni said. “You would be interested, I think, Signorina.”
“You and your tall tales.” Alberto shoved him aside and took my arm to lead me away from the group.
“That Gianni, he is full of hot air,” Alberto said to me. “You must take anything he says with a pinch of salt, Signorina. In the wartime he ran messages, but they were more likely to be for the black market dealers than the partisans. No partisan would have trusted him with an important message. He’d have blabbed about it to the wrong people and squealed to the Germans if they had questioned him.”
We walked then in silence across the piazza and through the tunnel. I suspected that he was now tongue-tied and perhaps was already wondering what the shrewish wife would say about being seen with a young lady. On the other side of the tunnel we emerged into the last of the pink twilight. Bats were flitting and swooping silently across our path, attacking the mosquitoes that now hummed around us. We reached the path to Paola’s front door.
“Here we are, Signorina,” Alberto said. “May I wish you a good appetite for your evening meal and a good sleep.” He gave a quaintly old-fashioned bow and then strode off down the path that led to the valley.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HUGO
December 1944
In the middle of the night Hugo awoke with teeth chattering. His whole body was shivering and shaking. He sat up and felt around for Guido’s shirt that he had stuffed into the parachute bag under his head. It took him a while to extricate it, take off his bomber jacket, then put the shirt on. It smelled of damp sheep but was actually nicely dry. By the time he got the jacket on again he could not control the shaking. He tried to huddle himself into a ball, but it was impossible with his splinted leg.
The shaking finally ceased, leaving him exhausted and drenched with sweat. It was all he could do to stop himself from tearing off his leather jacket. He passed into black dreams. He was flying and was surrounded by mosquitoes trying to bite him. Then the mosquitoes turned into German planes, tiny vicious planes zooming around his head as he batted at them ineffectively.
“Go away!” he shouted into the darkness. “Leave me alone.”
Then the planes turned into fluid, flying creatures and they left him, swooping across a red sky to where Sofia was walking through the olive groves. And they descended on her, grabbing at her shawl and her dress, trying to lift her up.
“No! Not Sofia!” He was screaming now, struggling to stand up and run to her. But his legs had turned to jelly and collapsed under him. He watched helplessly as they lifted her up and bore her away into the darkness.
“Sofia!” he cried out in despair. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”
“Sono qui.I am here,” said a quiet voice beside him. Someone was stroking his hair.
He opened his eyes with difficulty. It was day, and a watery sun was peeping over the jagged edge of the chapel wall. His head was still pounding and he had difficulty focusing, but gradually he could make out Sofia’s sweet little elfin face looking down at him with concern.
“You were shouting,” she said.
“Was I? I was dreaming, I think.”
She knelt beside him. “And your forehead is so hot. You have a bad fever. I am afraid your wound has become infected. Let me see.”
He was too weak to stop her as she unbuckled his belt and eased down his trousers.
“Your clothing is wet with sweat,” she said, shaking her head. Carefully she inched off his makeshift bandage, then shook her head some more. “You need a doctor. This looks very bad.” She stared at his leg, chewing on her lip like a nervous child, trying to make up her mind.
“I think Dr.Martini is a good man...He was good to Renzo when he caught measles.”
“No doctor,” Hugo said. “It is a risk we should not take. At the very least he would be seen coming up here.”
“That is true.” She nodded. “But if we do not bring a doctor, I think you might die.”
“So be it,” he said. “I would rather die than risk your life any more.”
She took his hand. “You are a brave man, Ugo. I hope your wife appreciates what a good and kind man you are.”
Even in his fever this made him smile. He didn’t think that Brenda would ever describe him as brave, good, or kind. But then at home he had been a different person: arrogant, selfish, playing at the lord of the manor.
