Plot reminder: Mary and Lucio have travelled to Verona in the hope of speaking to Ettore Lo Bianco, who was Vincenzo D'Ambra's closest wartime friend. Over the phone the previous evening the old man had mysteriously refused to broach the subject of his wartime experiences and hung up.
During their long journey north, Lucio recounted to Mary how his pregnant wife had died while attempting to save a drowning child from the sea.
~~~~~
It was a little past eight o'clock that we checked in at our hotel; a little before nine that, freshly showered and changed, I scuffed sandals along the corridor and rapped a knuckle against Lucio's door, this three down from my own. He appeared almost immediately, as if he'd been awaiting my knock. His hair was damp, the curls more tightly coiled, the usual striking silver darkened to an ironlike tone. His image seemed both familiar yet at the same time somehow modified, like a photograph of oneself taken from an angle inaccessible to the flat reflective stare of a mirror. Such a subtle adjustment of aspect had perhaps less to do with the fact that only minutes earlier he'd stepped out of the shower, and more that I was viewing him through a new filter, some delicate shift of chromatic shade. No longer just Lucio, that erudite knight in shining armour who'd dragged me across three of Italy's three corners in search of truth and justice - in search of myself - but a widower whose wife and unborn child had been so cruelly snatched from him. Who still, more than three decades later, hadn't yet quite come to terms with his loss. Of course he now seemed different - his dimensions deeper, the downcast shade of facial contours somehow longer, darker. How could it have been otherwise?
"Fifteen minutes Mary," he eagerly informed me, brandishing the same complimentary city map which had featured amongst the tourist leaflets piled atop the bedside cabinet in my own room. "Lo Bianco's address, I calculate it is only a fifteen-minute walk from here." A biro point had been at work - a firm, jiggering line curving between one x and another, this second adjacent to the snaking blue stripe of the river.
As I briefly perused our route, I could feel his inquisitive gaze upon me.
"Unless of course you would prefer to wait until tomorrow."
I looked back at him: decisive, determined.
"No," I replied. "No, we must go there tonight."
*
As the lift beeped the end of its short downward journey moments later, the sliding doors revealing the marbled, plant-strewn elegance of the hotel foyer, I could feel the tension build in my stomach. Could feel it like a fist tightly clenched around my insides. Somehow, I just knew. Tonight was going to be one of the most fundamental, the most soul-shaking, of my entire damned existence.
As we passed through Piazza Bra I would of course pause for a some moments before the majesy of the uplit Arena - a smaller but much less crumbled cousin of Rome's Colisseum - but it was mostly out of a sense of duty that I did so, my gaze cursory, my words of appreciation as automatic as some banal social pleasantry. A simple act of politeness, that was all, like being ushered into an acquaintance's front room and remarking on the antique mahogany dining table.
As for Verona's numerous other treasures - the ancient Ponte Pietra bridge, Piazza Dell'Erbe, the Capulet house and its iconic balcony - all that could wait, indefinitely so if necessary. Now that I was there, so close, my sense of urgency had become all-consuming. What did Ettore Lo Bianco know about that tragic night of September 1943? What was he trying conceal? And perhaps just as significantly, why?
His map every so often tilted towards overhead streetlight, Lucio steered us eastwards through the milling Friday evening crowds, along stone-paved sreets, beneath the renaissance-era frescos which adorned the cramped groaning buildings to either side. A boisterous early-summer procession of bars and pizzerias and ice-cream shops.
It came as a relief when the bustle and noise gave way to the relative calm of the riverside. The necklace of streetlights lay fractured and gently bobbing in the southward-flowing water, the river's source located somewhere amidst the peaks which had once more re-emerged to our right, their height and steepness discernable by the faint scattered lights of the mountain villages.
"Just over this bridge," Lucio indicated, once more checking the map.
As we stepped out across the street, he began to outline his strategy.
A plan, yes. I hadn't thought to consider one myself. Like a foot soldier who had complete faith in her general, I'd just somehow known that he would have come up with one.
*
The building was river-facing, a five-storey affair. Old, seventeenth century perhaps, its age evident in the slight crookedness - its lines on close inspection not quite straight, its angles not precisely ninety degrees. The place was well-maintained though, its facade like many of its neighbours washed an earthy terracotta shade. A dwelling place of the city's well-to-do, its doctors and lawyers and academics.
Its retired art restorers...
Lo Bianco's name was the uppermost on the elegant brass intercom list beside the entrance door.
"Must live on the top floor," concluded Lucio.
It wasn't Lo Bianco's button he then pressed index finger to however, but some randomly selected other.
"Out," he concluded, half a minute having ticked by without response.
His second selection was more successful, the hiss of the picked up receiver almost immediate.
"Chi e'?" croaked an elderly female voice. Who is it?
"Pubblicita'" responded Lucio, the pretence that he was delivering advertising material which needed to be deposited in each of the hallway letterboxes the first part of his plan.
There was a dutiful electronic twitch, the door squeaking invitingly open before us.
"We're in," nodded Lucio encouringly, a hand indicating that I step through first. As I did so, the tension began to manifest itself as a firm, steady thud of my heart. Just one doorway left now to breach. One final obstacle to overcome and the story would reach its conclusion. Ettore Lo Bianco, the man who had craned neck to that altar wall beside my father, mixed colours, blocked out bases. Who had been there right next to him all the way through, from the provincial barracks in Lecce to the battle of Tobruk, on then to Kenya, finally England... Surely he would know whose bones they were which had been dug up from the Lincolnshire soil. Whatever manner of fate it was which had befallen my father.
The entrance hall was neat, high-toned, its floor a chessboard of worn red and beige stones. A lemon tree in an earthenware pot stood centrally, its fruits still to yellow. Along one wall was a row of black letterboxes; judging from the cluttered overspill of mail and advertising material, a couple of the residents were away - off on early-season holidays perhaps. Lo Bianco's box, however, was empty.
Thankfully, there was a lift - one of those open affairs with clanky folding iron doors. The shaft some late-nineteenth century structural modification, clearly.
The upwards journey was rickety and juddering, the restricted space causing Lucio and I on a couple of occasions to bump into each other like rag dolls whirling around a washing machine. At one point my nose padded against his chest, the unbuttoned section of his sleeveless shirt beneath throat. There was the soapiness of his recent shower, yes, but also some spicy undertone. A faint hint of alluring Mediterrannean zest.
With a final judder, the lift deposited us onto the top floor. For a moment there was an almost impenetrable darkness before some hidden electronic eye sensed our presence, obligingly clicked on the landing light.
There was a door at either end of the corridor. Outside the one to the right was an umbrella stand, its design decidedly feminine, the visible curved handle sticking out above the rim pink of colour.
We turned thus to the left, stepped cautiously along the landing, the thud of my heart ever stronger, faster, my veins squealing with adrenalin.
Lo Biano, E
The confirmation that we had the right flat was contained in the eye-level brass panel on the door.
Finger poised over bell, Lucio turned me a questioning glance.
Ready?
I nodded. As much as it was possible to be, yes.
At first it seemed no-one was home, enough seconds passing by to force Lucio's index finger to once more squeeze into button. True that Lo Bianco was in his eighties, I reflected, but true also that it was Friday evening. Maybe he was at that moment taking his place at the table of some refined arty dinner party somewhere. Enjoying a glass of wine or two amidst cultured company in an elegant city centre bar.
I could feel my heart sink, the prospect of repeating the venture the following day a wearying one. I turned my shoulders, ready to slink back to lift. It was at the same moment that a faint clatter could be heard from within, the voice which called out a decidedly unimpressed one.
"Arrivo!" I'm coming!
After a series of clunks and clicks, the door finally yielded, juddered itself backwards. The revealed figure was somehow taller than I had been expecting, his skin taut over bald dome, folded and loose over face. His delineaments were classical though - finely ridged eyebrows, high cheekbones, a firm jawline. It wasn't difficult to imagine that in his younger years female hearts would have fluttered at his entrance into their line of vision.
He turned a steady assessing gaze first on Lucio then towards me. From inside the flat, a swirl of violins could be heard.
"Si?"
The syllable was intoned with equal measures of impatience and apprehension.
Lucio would later recount the following conversation in detail to me, but even as it was unfolding I was able through gestures and shifting expressions, the occasional recognisable word, to understand the gist.
"Mr Lo Bianco, I called on the phone yesterday. About camp 106a in England."
At this, dread chased shock across the old man's face. A hand grabbed instantly at edge of the door, began to yank it closed. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you both to leave."
But Lucio had planted a firm, unyielding foot in the doorway, this the second part of plan he'd outlined to me as we'd passed over the bridge a couple of minutes earlier.
"We just want to talk Mr Lo Bianco, that's all. Ask you a few questions."
Lo Bianco continued to struggle vainly with the door, his manner a combination of ire and fluster. "If you don't remove your foot immediately from the doorway I will be obliged to call the carabinieri."
Now came the third and final part of Lucio's plan, the words delivered calmly, unflinchingly. "And if you don't allow us inside and answer our questions we will be the ones obliged to call the carabinieri."
Ceasing his struggles with the door, the old man turned us both in turn another lingering gaze.
"Maybe you haven't heard Mr Lo Bianco. They've found bones. Human remains."
From the upward flick of right eyebrow it seemed that no, he hadn't heard.
Thin lips squeezed out a croaked, half whispered question.
"Chi siete?"
Though as yet unversed in verb conjugations, the word 'chi' was familiar to me. Who are you?, he was asking. From the way his hazel-eyed gaze seemed to have settled on me rather than Lucio, the question seemed specifically directed at I.
I remembered a detail from the wikipedia entry we'd viewed the evening before: the degree from Oxford University. He at one point in his life must have had a very strong command of English indeed, and even if now rusty and unpractised would surely still remember a little at least.
I therefore felt my vocal chords vibrate as I sought to provide him with the simplest and most direct of answers.
"I am the daughter of Vincenzo D'Ambra and Irene Brennan."
His gaze grew in intensity, the back of his hand brushing over lips as he continued to observe me.
"Irene," he murmured. "She was... She was pregnant?"
His English was still good it appeared. Thus encouraged, I continued. "She gave me away for adoption," I explained. "I traced her though, a couple of years ago. She died last Friday."
The news seemed to sadden him. Back of hand once more swiping across lips, he finally turned, indicated that we follow, the violin music as we did so growing louder. Something melancholy, profound. Wagner perhaps.
Though the interior of the flat was cluttered and unkempt, it was far from the graceless disorder of Peter Harvey's home, more the kind of bohemian haphazardness one might expect of a man who for most of his life had voyaged in the realms of academia and fine art. Bookcases groaned under the weight of the countless tomes they were obliged to accommodate, these stacked vertically, horizontally, diagonally, every which way. Chairs and sofas seemed not so much things to be sat in, but rather receptacles in which objects might be placed, over which items of clothing might be tossed. The wall space was a wild mish-mash of artwork, the frames unmatching, hanging skewiff. That many of the displayed paintings were Lo Bianco's own creations seemed evident from the easel placed over towards the larger of the living room windows, a bright tilted spotlight rigged directly above, suspended from the ancient vaulted celing beams. We had distracted him from his work it seemed.
With a scratch, the music abruptly ceased, Lo Bianco lifting needle back onto cradle. Like the nearby telephone, the record player was vintage - 1950s perhaps. Along with the easel spotlight, these were the only visible examples of modern-era technology anywhere in the room. No television, not even a radio.
"Take a seat," he invited, wafting out a general hand.
I set aside a tie and jacket, Lucio a pot of paintbrushes, the cleared space adequate to squeeze ourselves down onto the dusty central Chesterfield. This faced directly onto a window, the view outside a stunning one - sparkling city lights, thrusting domes and spires and bell-towers, the distinct stone oval of the Arena.
Lo Bianco was meanwhile inspecting the collection of bottles which stood atop an antique cabinet over in the corner.
"What's your name?" he asked.
From the accompanying glance it seemed the question was once more directed at I.
"Mary," I responded.
"Mary," he echoed, almost as if the name were being tasted, swilled around in his mouth like a prestigious vintage. There was a smile - unsurprised it seemed, the fact that this was my name somehow making perfect sense.
"Well Mary," he then continued, "I'm going to pour myself a drop of grappa. A Tuscan red. The strongest liquore I currently seem to possess." With a brief slosh, his glass was duly filled. "Given what I'm about to tell you, might I suggest I pour one for you too."
But even before he had padded across the room to hand me the glass, even before he began to speak, I already knew. Had matched his facial lineaments to the photograph of the unsmiling young soldier Salvatore's wife had rooted out from the biscuit tin.
The man before me wasn't Ettore Lo Bianco. He was Vincenzo D'Ambra.
My father.
~~~~~