The Caviar Lady Read online

I thought I’d seen it all, more was yet to come. On September 8th Italy signed the armistice and since then it’s felt like the world and his wife are passing through here. Down on the riverside and here in the station. School hasn’t started yet, but the war has finished, or at least that’s what they’re saying on the radio. Cavicchi would know the score, but I haven’t seen him since the extra lessons ended.

  Since then it’s been summer here: the usual mosquitoes, a gnawing feeling of hunger in my stomach, that feels emptier and emptier, a great deal of hustle and bustle in the station, some railwaymen thinking about going on strike and all the villagers conveniently forgetting they used to be Fascists. Comrade Baffoni, first and foremost, who has even reverted to the “lei” form of address with Uncle now when we go to get our hair cut. In the space of a month everything is different. The only person who doesn’t seem to have changed his tune is Remo, who still manages to get hold of all the best food.

  “You can get anything if you’ve got the money,” Mother comments, with a hint of bitterness.

  I reckon she had really been counting on the sturgeon season and the factory because since that went wrong she hasn’t smiled a lot. And she never sings. Me and Nicola are friends again, at least for the fishing. The Turk always manages to wangle it so that I am never alone with Bechi, and when I turn up at their place he always gives me some job to do.

  We manage to survive the mosquitoes and every so often I bring Mother home a carp to roast, or a barbel, or a porcupine, which isn’t a fish but we come across them now and then and Uncle loves the meat. Mother is never overjoyed, because it’s a lot of work: you have to pull out all the quills that always prick your hands, then get rid of the skin, and the blood, then it needs to be hung, then...

  “I know, I know, Mother. I won’t bring them any more.”

  “That’s not what I said. Uncle loves them.”

  It’s a habit of hers, this business of saying something and then pretending she didn’t mean it. The solution, when I’m lucky enough to catch more than one, is to take the porcupines to Remo’s wife. If I give one to her in exchange she prepares the others. One afternoon by the river while Nicola is working on the boat, which is grounded, and I am telling him about the ancient Egyptians, a real passion of his, a group of Italian soldiers comes along. They don’t have weapons, but are in uniform, or what’s left of it - rags, more like. Unshaven, with accents from the other side of the Po. When the Turk goes out to greet them they tell him that they’ve come from the pontoon bridge.

  “Can you take us across the river in your boat?”

  “No, you can see for yourself that it’s grounded.”

  “We’re willing to use force,” says one of them, who might be a corporal, and is the leader of the group.

  “That boat is staying right where it is,” growls the Turk. Tough man talk. He even looks bigger, and you can tell he has a strength that is unthinkable for a man of his age, which is fifty-two. That’s what Uncle says, talking about their generation.

  “Why don’t you go over the bridge? If it’s the toll that’s the problem we can give you a hand. I’ll get someone to take you, we know the keeper well. For soldiers I’m sure he’d turn a blind eye.”

  “The problem is not the toll-keeper. It’s the Germans.”

  “The Germans?”

  “The bridge is guarded by German soldiers and we don’t know if we’re still allies...”

  “To be honest,” another soldier adds, “we don’t even want to be soldiers any more. The war’s over and we just want to go home.”

  The Turk is perplexed and offers them a glass of wine.

  “Take a seat, let’s have a look.”

  He gives me and Nicola a quick glance that means we’ve to go and do a recce. We get to the embankment above the bridge. We don’t even need to go down, because at the start of the bridge we can see a real-life checkpoint with Germans guarding it. Nicola runs to tell his father, and I go to warn Uncle. But Uncle is all too aware of the situation already: there are Germans in the station too. They have taken over the freight office and have told Uncle he is to collaborate to keep the railway running in good order. I cycle up as fast as I can, but I can see for myself right away, when I see military vehicles parked in front of the station. But I can’t work out why. If the war is over, if we’ve signed the armistice, what do the Germans want with us? Today, as I find out later, they are freeing Mussolini at Gran Sasso. The station is no longer ours either. I need to speak to Cavicchi about this. So I tell Uncle that I want to go to Ferrara to look for Andrea. He shakes his head:

  “You’re staying right here.”

  Then he looks me straight in the eye: “That name, Cavicchi, don’t say it here any more, and don’t say it in the station again.”

  I’m not sure I understand why, but I know that I’m scared now.

  XXXV

  It’s very hard to speak to the Germans, but Uncle has a go. He also tries in English, because he reckons he’s good at it, but it has a disastrous effect, and almost gets him arrested. In the end they speak to him in Italian. Actually there’s only one that speaks to him, an NCO of some kind, maybe a corporal, who says his name is Kraus or something like that:

  “Stationmaster! Today two trainz must arrife and vee must check zee passenchers of zee civil convoy.”

  But if Kraus isn’t there guarding the station, to us it’s just guttural sounds barking orders.

  Luckily they are polite to Mother. Uncle looks at me, dejected.

  “Forget Latin and Greek, you should be studying German at school.”

  “Don’t you worry Pompeo, from now on I’ll be here to talk to the Germans and everything will be easier.”

  The voice comes through the glass door of the office which is always open as autumn is late in coming this year. The voice is Remo’s, but it’s not the usual Remo. He’s standing there, all puffed up, hands on his sides, legs slightly apart, smiling with all thirty-two teeth. If he had that many, obviously. Twenty-five would be closer to the mark.

  “Afternoon Remo,” Uncle says.

  He’s wearing a uniform that looks new, but against the light it’s hard to see. Remo Sacchini, we learn that day, has been transferred from the railway to the Militia, or rather what is shortly to be known as the National Republican Guard. The Republic is that of Salò. I don’t even know where it is.

  “School should be starting as usual soon,” he says, to reassure me. “I’ll look after the Germans, I mean our German allies. And you keep the trains running.”

  “Passenger or military?” asks Uncle with a sarcastic tone he doesn’t manage to hide.

  “Both,” answers Remo, lighting up a cigarette.

  “At headquarters,” he adds casually, “they told me that I stand a good chance of getting the flat above the station. Of course, I said to myself, it would be good accommodation, but Comrade Scaramagli lives there. So you can see we have all the more reason to cooperate amicably. As a token of my good will I have taken the liberty of bringing you some sugar.”

  And to Uncle he hands not a twist, but a whole, one-kilo pack of sugar from the sugar plant. Uncle gapes. I think that he’s going to insult Remo, kill him, spit in his eye for talking like that. But all he says is: “Thank you Remo, you shouldn’t have taken the trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble at all, I assure you.”

  Remo raises his arms and clicks his heels. Uncle raises his arm too. So basically nothing has changed. He’s gone back to using “voi” after a couple of months of “lei”. From that day we become a military station, with Germans and Republican soldiers guarding the rail infrastructure, as Remo has taken to calling it.

  XXXVI

  School did not start as usual, as Remo had promised, but on November 8th, more than a month late. And before that Uncle wouldn’t let me go to Ferrara. I’ve had no news of Cavicchi, so it’s a relief to see him in class as usual.

  “Hey Scaramagli,” he says.

  I
hug him. “Hi Andrea.”

  Mrs. Boldini coughs to express her disapproval, but says nothing. Anyway the only thing worth saying, or announcing, is that we are going to be spending another school year with no heating.

  During lesson time we have to do air raid drill more and more often: we all have to run to the basement, where they have even set up a small chapel for prayers.

  And then there are the Jews. Unfortunately the headmaster was being over-optimistic when he said that our classmate Salvi, alias Rimini, was the only Jewish infiltrator in our school. In the fall of ’43 they seem to be coming out of the woodwork in the middle school and even in the high school. All these Jews, who in one way or another have managed to make a mockery of the law.

  I myself continue to be Aryan, strawberry blonde with blue eyes. The way I am, it’s impossible for me not to be taken as an example. Because not only do the Jews have their own laws to prevent them from mixing with us, but Mussolini, yes the Duce in person, who was arrested but is now in charge again, is saying that they are enemies and foreigners. In our class Rovighi and Ismani get sent away.

  “False surnames,” says the headmaster curtly.

  Not only are they kicked out of school, they are going to be taken somewhere, to some kind of camp, and from there to Germany. Apparently that’s where they have the solution for Jews.

  But life here is hard enough, and I don’t want to think about it.

  “We have to get to the bottom of the racial question,” says Cavicchi, who is just not interested in talking about Jews.

  The murder of the Fascist Federal Secretary just after school started has got us trying to figure out too many things that are pretty hard to understand, as always. The planes that we hear overhead are often enemy ones, but the newspapers and radio say that other cities are being bombed. So when Ferrara gets bombed during the Christmas holidays, all Mother says is that I’m lucky school is shut. Lucky my foot!

  The first time I see enemy planes over the Po I am down on the riverside with Nicola. It is an unforgettable sight, planes that people say are American, flying over the river, at the end of the year. They are noisy, solid-looking and enormous. Yet there is one sound missing from all that noise because what Nicola and I are waiting for, squinting up into the sky, is for the Italian fighter planes to show up. Or the German ones. Or the Anti-Aircraft Brigade. But there’s nothing. And on the riverside there are no warning sirens. So if a bridge gets bombed you only know about it if you’re on it at the time. Seeing them is scary, but also shocking: these enemy planes are so massive and what’s more they seem to have complete freedom of the skies. I never thought that they could actually attack us, attack our things, the station and the railway.

  But one day we see a formation of smaller aircraft, two or three of which break away and head straight for us. I can see that they’re American, bombers I think, and they’re coming to bomb our railway! In the station the siren sounds for real. For the very first time it’s not just a drill. We rush down to the basement, which up to now was where we kept the Lambrusco. Now it’s our salvation. I don’t understand how it can be happening. Remo manages to be allocated a Republican machine gun, as he calls it. He has it installed on our kitchen balcony, which is a bit like inviting the enemy to bomb the station.

  What’s more, Mother has to make coffee for the gunners, and coffee is like hen’s teeth these days. And it’s not like the gunners manage to hit any enemy planes in any case. There are bombs raining down, and Mother is busy making coffee. Uncle says that the trains should probably not even be running. But they keep going: there are still three trains a day to Ferrara, including the one I take to school.

  One day the planes, which are getting lower and lower over the bridges, hit some of the houses on the riverside.

  “This war will be the end of us down here on the riverside,” says Nicola.

  But when the planes start firing at the train with their guns, and we have to stop because there are bombs landing on the line, Nicola admits that it’s tough for everyone. Mother would prefer me not to go to school, because the train is a target. But the station is too. So she is resigned to the fact that I keep going.

  That year is a horrendous school year. Not to mention the fishing season. There are Germans down on the riverside. They search the huts and question the fishermen. But it’s not just Germans. Remo and his lot give them a hand too. They seize all the boats and take them to the pontoon bridge. To make them available. For who, we don’t know. They’re left there, piled up round a makeshift mooring, where the current often makes them bang together. They really need a longer pontoon. Or fewer boats. Or just to be a bit more careful with other people’s things.

  “They didn’t take ours,” Nicola tells me.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we didn’t have it,” interjects the Turk, who has heard us. “The Italian soldiers took it, the deserters who came in September.”

  Oh them, I’d forgotten all about them. Life is going too fast round here, and I’ve got to study.

  XXXVII

  “People say there are groups of partisans in your neck of the woods,” Cavicchi says one day.

  “Groups of what?”

  “Anti-fascists.”

  “Who?”

  “Rebels.”

  “Oh yes, the fugitives. There are posters up in the village asking them to surrender.”

  “Ah, Nello, sometimes you’re such a blockhead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can’t you see it’s time we got rid of the Fascists and Germans?”

  “The way I see it, the English and Americans are trying to get rid of us, bombing us most days like this.”

  “My father says that if it goes on like this, middle school and high school pupils will get called up too.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, not at all. There are boys getting called up now too. My brother at university got his card in the post.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He ran away.”

  “He ran away?”

  “Yeah, he joined the partisans.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  “Scaramagli! Cavicchi!”

  Boldini’s screech is drowned out by the sound of the siren.

  “I’ll see about you two later,” she says as we all hurry out of the classroom.

  The good thing about being in the shelter is that there are girls in there too, and the scaredy cat teachers huddle into the back of the shelter where it’s supposed to be safest. So we can basically do what we like. I read. I’ve decided that reading is my true passion. Girls are too difficult. You have to spend all this time chatting to them and giving them sweet talk, and making them think you’re some kind of big shot, then when it’s time to make out they say you’re too young, or start laughing at you. The ugly ones are the only ones who’ll kiss you. It’s better down on the riverside where at least they’ll show us their knickers.

  “They’re not all like that,” says Cavicchi. “There’s one in fourth grade that if you get her in a corner she’ll let you get a good feel, and even though she’s short she has great knockers.”

  And he mimes two great balloons on his chest to make his point.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You can have a go too.”

  Needless to say, that day never comes.

  XXXVIII

  Every time I come home from school I look up to see if there are any planes. To be honest I really like seeing them. Much more than the machine gun on the roof. The only time we really get a proper look at them is when we’re on the train and they’re bombing the line or flying over to Ferrara or the Po. Then you get to see them. On the train there’s no siren and no shelter to go to. All you can do is sit there and look up. Or you can try and hide under the wooden benches like some of the women do, as if that’s going to save you from a bomb.

  We�
��ve seen what they did to the pontoon bridge over the Po: it took the Germans a whole week to get the boats sorted again, and there are still bits and pieces of the old pontoon bobbing about in the water. When the Turk looks at the river he says the sturgeons will be gone for good.

  “Even if the war ends it’ll take two lifetimes to dredge the riverbed. What with the dead bodies and the scrap metal, the fish won’t spawn here again. That’s the end of that.”

  He sighs heavily and pulls on his cigarette. He smokes whatever he can find, straw, butts, dried corn husks, or with any luck, a German cigarette or two. Those get shared by four or five people. Having a whole one to yourself is something people dream about.

  Like in the station, Remo has had two small machine guns installed on the train. He has been promoted to second lieutenant and is in command of the Railway Guards of the Republic, at least on our line. Those in the know say that Remo bought his rank with bags of sugar and coffee. The machine guns are mounted one up by the driver, the other at the end of the train. So now in addition to the drivers and the controller there are four soldiers on board too. They have helmets. We don’t even have those.

  XXXIX

  At home I ask Uncle what he knows about the rebels who, according to Cavicchi, are on our side. “Nothing” he replies curtly. “It’s nothing to do with us. Especially not with the army on the balcony and the Germans in the office.”

  This time I understand, I have been careless with my words. At home, actually, it is no fun these days. It’s like being in prison. Mother says so too, but Uncle pretends not to hear. Until the day a plane crashes by the station yard. It’s not a bomber, but an Italian fighter that has been shot down. I rarely see Italian and German fighters attacking American and British planes, which are an increasingly common sight these days. When it happened I was at school. I was on the train home but it was ordered to stop half a mile out of the station, so I stomp home in a temper, and then I see the firemen and the flames, real flames, much higher than when they tried to burn Remo’s house down. The station is all hustle and bustle, there are even military ambulances with the red cross on the side. Two railway workers and a republican soldier were killed.