The Incident at Montebello Read online

  THE INCIDENT AT MONTEBELLO

  A Novel

  P.A. MOED

  Copyright © 2012 P.A. Moed

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Printing, 2012

  Revised Edition, 2015

  DEDICATION

  For Richard—Tu sei sempre nel mio cuore.

  “One seldom recognizes the devil when he has his hand on your shoulder.”

  —Albert Speer, Chief Architect, The Nazi Party

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  PART I: Montebello, Italia—September 1932 Prologue

  Chapter 1: Isolina

  Chapter 2: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 3: Benito Mussolini

  Chapter 4: Isolina

  Chapter 5: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 6: Isolina

  Chapter 7: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 8: Isolina

  Chapter 9: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 10: Isolina

  Chapter 11: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 12: Isolina

  Chapter 13: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 14: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 15: Cornelius Vanderbilt

  Chapter 16: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 17: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 18: Benito Mussolini

  Chapter 19: Isolina

  Chapter 20: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 21: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 22: Isolina

  Chapter 23: Elio Sardolini

  PART II: Montebello, Italia—December 1932 Chapter 24: Isolina

  Chapter 25: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 26: Cornelius Vanderbilt

  Chapter 27: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 28: Isolina

  Chapter 29: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 30: Isolina

  Chapter 31: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 32: Cornelius Vanderbilt

  Chapter 33: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 34: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 35: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 36: Isolina

  Chapter 37: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 38: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 39: Benito Mussolini

  Chapter 40: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 41: Isolina

  Chapter 42: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 43: Isolina

  Chapter 44: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 45: Elio Sardolini

  Chapter 46: Isolina

  Chapter 47: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 48: Isolina

  Chapter 49: Donato Buonomano

  Chapter 50: Elio Sardolini

  Epilogue: Boston, Massachusetts and Montebello, Italia—1936-1937

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Glossary

  PART I

  MONTEBELLO, ITALIA

  SEPTEMBER 1932

  PROLOGUE

  The three men from Montebello had never seen a machine so fast or so beautiful before. They were smoking near the bridge in an oasis of shade because the summer heat had lingered that year, exhausting nearly everyone except a few children who shrieked and laughed in the stream just beyond the road. In this swelter the men could do little more than start conversations and idly drop them like the ashes flicked from their cigarettes, until one of the policemen glanced down into the valley where pillows of dust were rising from a lone car, speeding past donkeys, ramshackle cottages, and peasants with sun-dried faces, stubbornly farming in the shadow of Monte Vesuvio. He pointed.

  The fruit seller crushed out his cigarette and swore that the car was faster than the train he had taken once to Roma. The policeman whistled, recognizing the Fiat 514 Mille Miglia and its driver dressed in black because he was often photographed at the auto races in Monza.

  “What’s he doing around here?” the officer asked.

  “He’s lost. He was looking for the Coliseum and he took a wrong turn,” the fruit seller said.

  He rolled on top of her, his face just inches away, blocking out the sun. Making a game of it, he brushed his lips against hers and then pulled back, stirring her hunger, robbing her of her breath. Isolina shut her eyes and the world fell away—the blue swatch of sky, the cicadas whirring in the grass, and the flattop mountain capped with a cloud of steam. When Rodi convinced her to climb up the embankment and stretch out in the field with him, he made her forget her brothers and cousin playing by the stream, he made her forget practically everything, except his mouth and hands cradling her face.

  Still, she heard a committee of nuns and priests whispering in her ear, “Have children.” That’s what they said to the girls too poor to finish school. But she didn’t want to end up like her mother—stuck in Montebello with a houseful of babies, so she managed to whisper, “Come to America with me. Say yes, Rodi, why don’t you?” But instead of answering, he slid his hands over her breasts and pressed his hips against hers until a low vibrato echoed between them—insistent, sly, bone-to-bone. Helpless against it, she kissed him until shouts broke through the silence.

  “Wait,” she told him, pushing hard against his chest until he rolled off her, sighing. Staggering to her feet, she stumbled to the edge of the clearing and peered down the hill. Through the fringe of trees, she glimpsed the children running and shrieking through the stream. Sofia’s blue dress appeared and disappeared in the bands of sunlight.

  “I should go,” she said.

  “So go.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  He laughed and reached for her hand, but she knotted her fingers and stepped back even though it broke her heart for he was truly magnificent, worthy of being painted on a ceiling in Roma: his bold nose as fierce as a falcon’s, his eyes as black as watermelon seeds, and his tender lips, curving easily into a smile or a kiss—all that framed by a tumble of brown hair as soft as wool, curling over his forehead and neck, begging to be stroked, begging to be coiled around her fingers. But she couldn’t stay and he knew it because she was an unmarried girl who didn’t have much besides her reputation. So when she told him, “Don’t follow me, don’t let anyone see you,” he sighed again, planted a kiss in her palm and plunged into the tall grass, his head bobbling over the stalks of alfalfa rippling towards the abandoned soap factory and the Via Franca.

  She took the longer way down the hill, but she couldn’t stop thinking of him and his touch, making her body judder with love and longing, fusing them into one word—Rodi. Even as she neared the stream, her mind was still fixed on him until the church bells clanged in the distance making her blink and start as if awakened from a deep sleep. Only then did she remember the children. Only then did she shout their names, but they were not by the stream. They were not under the trees.

  The men left Roma early that morning. For two hundred windswept kilometers the Italian talked, one hand on the steering wheel, the other beating the air. Veering off the highway in Ercolano, they climbed into the mountains, Monte Vesuvio looming on the horizon. At the side of the road, stone markers signaled the fiery reach of the lava, which had smothered every rock, tree and farm in sight in 1872, 1906, and 1929. The American shivered, but Benito Mussolini, the Italian head of state with a fondness for racecars, was immune to the ashes and mud. He swept his arm across the horizon. “The italiani men do not know the fear. We go and make the progress. We let the women cry the hot tears.”

  But Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. wasn’t deceived by the grazing sheep or the rustics trudging behind oxen in cobbled patches of green and gold. Dresse
d in black, they were smudges against the bright landscape except for the tremors of light from the crosses around their necks and a few capped teeth. He knew they stayed because they were poor; only the rich had choices. But even a family fortune had not insulated him from a different shame and despair.

  Benito Mussolini took credit for the lush soil, improved crop yields, and the stark beauty of the countryside and his people. Jabbing his finger towards the volcano, he said, “You see, nothing can stop the italiani people, even the great Vesuvio.” And then he laughed, showing off his teeth as strong and square as little shovels.

  Vanderbilt nodded and smiled. He had given up contradicting the Italian.

  The motorcar surged through a village, rising out of the rock and rubble of the surrounding hillsides. Beyond the bridge and the sharp curve in the road, barefoot children were waving and tossing flowers. Vanderbilt was still smiling when a little girl dashed into the road, trying to keep pace with the car. She was no more than a flash of dark hair, a blue dress, and skinny arms. Mussolini swerved, but in the next moment, the car shuddered, its wheels rising and falling. To his horror, Vanderbilt glimpsed the child crumpled in the dust. “Someone’s hurt.”

  Mussolini clamped his hand on the millionaire’s knee. “What’s one life in the affairs of a State?”

  “But it’s a child.”

  Mussolini rammed the accelerator and Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. gripped the dashboard. Underneath his fawn kid gloves, the knuckles of the shocked millionaire were most definitely white.

  When they heard the wail of the brakes and the screams, the policemen ran, reaching the children ahead of the fruit seller. The barefoot boys weren’t hurt, but the girl in the blue dress was sprawled in the road, her legs crushed, her blood seeping across the cobblestones.

  Officer Pullucca wrapped Sofia in his jacket and carried her to Dottore di Matteo’s, and Officer Pazzarini followed him with the boys cradled in each arm. The streets were hushed. Even the dogs were quiet, sniffing the air, their ears flat against their skulls.

  “Santa Maria!” the doctor’s maid cried, making the sign of the cross when she opened the door and saw the boys crying for their mother, and Sofia, so still—her skin smeared with grease and dirt, her curls matted with blood. “Che disastro. The doctor is visiting a patient in Grappone and won’t be back until suppertime.”

  Officer Pullucca’s legs were weakening. He imagined the child’s mother sewing in innocent silence in her dress shop, and how in one horrible moment her peace and contentment would shatter. “Tell the doctor to hurry,” he said, his voice rising. “Tell him Sofia was hit by a car and left in the road like a wounded animal. Tell him we know who’s to blame.”

  Officer Pazzarini cut him off. “These children need their mothers,” he said, his eyes flashing a warning. And so, after a long pause, the men trudged down the Via Condotti.

  Through the trees Isolina saw it all—the car roaring towards the children, her cousin’s foolish dash towards the road, the blast of the horn as the fender smacked against Sofia’s legs, jerking her forward and trapping her under the grill. Long after the car sped away, Sofia’s screams cut through the stillness. Swaying, Isolina fell to her knees, her head bowed. “Dear God,” she whispered. “Dear God.”

  When she looked up, the policemen were carrying the children away and the fruit seller was left standing in the middle of the road, smeared with blood. Yanking his cap off his head, he rubbed the brim between his fingers. When a cry escaped from her mouth, he turned and squinted in her direction, but she could only stare at him, her eyes filling with tears, her knuckles pressed against her mouth. Tiberio slipped the cap on his head and strode towards her, shoving her deeper into the woods.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, but he said nothing until they reached the stream.

  In a hoarse whisper, he told her, “You didn’t see it.”

  “But I did, Tiberio. I wish I hadn’t. But I did.”

  “No, you didn’t,” he repeated. “It’s too dangerous. Do you understand me?”

  She nodded.

  “Now go home. Take the back way through the trees, so no one sees you.”

  She hesitated, but he pushed her towards the grassy slope where moments before she was stretched out with Rodi, where moments before her heart quickened with happiness.

  CHAPTER 1

  Isolina staggered down the crooked streets, cut by shadows. Her house on the Via Condotti, usually a jumble of inefficiency filled with shouting boys, steaming pots, and her mother’s prayers for divine mercy, was oddly hushed. Her heart pounding, she headed further down the street to Sofia’s house, jammed with relatives, neighbors, policemen, and the priest. Looking grim, her father and uncles stood by the door, caps in hand. Isolina’s mother Amelia was already wailing, but her grandmother silenced her with a few sharp words.

  Amelia grabbed Isolina’s sleeve. “Where were you? You were supposed to be watching the children. Your brothers are all right, thank God, but your cousin Sofia…” She broke off, tears falling.

  Isolina remembered Tiberio’s warning and lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry mamma, but I fell asleep by the stream. When I woke up, the children were gone.”

  Her grandmother stood next to Amelia like a big shadow. She was dressed in black, as always, and a silver cross slid back and forth across her chest like a finger raised in warning not to do this or that as if she were still teaching school. “Sleep? How could you sleep? Those children are never quiet,” Nonna Angelina said.

  Isolina lifted her chin, meeting Nonna Angelina’s gaze. “The sun was so warm I couldn’t keep my eyes open.” Nonna Angelina’s lips were pressed together in a disbelieving line, but Isolina stuck to her story even though her lies made her queasy with guilt.

  “God is punishing us,” Amelia said, shaking her head. Wiry hairs escaped from her topknot, which slid to the left and right. “I dreamt last night my teeth were falling out and everyone knows that’s a bad sign. But I didn’t say a word to anyone. Who would believe me? But look, it’s come true.”

  Years before, Amelia had sacrificed her prettiness and youth for her boys, all six of them, and Isolina, the oldest. Even though she was expecting another child in a few months, her squat, plump body looked no different to Isolina.

  Edging past a throng of women murmuring about Sofia’s misfortune and the evil eye, Isolina glimpsed her cousin, so pale and lifeless, stretched out on the kitchen table and her Aunt Lucia mechanically stroking Sofia’s curls. Her steps slowed and then stopped as her eyes darted over Sofia, her spine crushed by the wheels, her leg bones snapped like kindling, her skin ripped raw and bloody by the gravel and rocks. Even her dress with the Peter Pan collar, which Lucia had lovingly embroidered with daisies, was in tatters. Tremors rattled through Isolina, climbing up her legs and through her chest, so she could barely squeeze out, “Zia Lucia.”

  When Lucia’s eyes finally swept over her, Isolina kissed her on both cheeks, but Lucia treated her like a stranger. “My daughter needs me,” she said, before turning away, her beautiful face frozen in grief.

  Hours passed. Word came that the doctor was delayed in Grappone.

  “Do something,” Lucia begged the midwife. So, Cecilia Zanotti, who doubled as the town witch, chanted a spell and slipped the powerful cimaruta charm around Sofia’s neck. Not to be outdone, the priest lit a candle and read from the Book of Job. Afterwards, Isolina’s relatives murmured among themselves, arguing whether their preferred method of treatment—prayer or sorcery—was more effective.

  Still, Sofia’s lips were fading. Isolina didn’t have her mother’s faith. She was quite certain only a miracle would save her cousin and God wasn’t likely to grant her one. She gripped Amelia’s sleeve. “She’s going to die, mamma, if we don’t do something.”

  “Pray,” Amelia replied, pulling out her rosary. Her fingers climbed the beads as if they were rungs on a ladder leading to heaven.

  Fear and hopelessness caught in Isolina’s throat. She co
uld do nothing to save Sofia and this horrified her as much as her guilt. Her mind leapt back to just hours before when Sofia was playing in a pool of sunshine on the dress shop floor. When she had grown tired of drawing pictures and designing outfits for her doll with strips of cloth, she climbed into Isolina’s lap, fingered the ribbon tied to Isolina’s braid and brushed it against her cheek. Even now, Isolina could still see her curls, big brown eyes and mouth that was petal pink and rarely stopped moving. And she could almost feel the weight and warmth of her and inhale the scent of her hair, which smelled as fresh as summer grass. “Play with me,” Sofia had begged, but in a fit of impatience, Isolina pushed her off her lap. “Can’t you see how much work your mamma and I have to do?” she said, ignoring Sofia’s mouth scrunched into a knot.

  Isolina choked back a cry and took refuge in the parlor amidst Lucia’s collection of alabaster angels poised on the mantel and leather-bound books in French, containing suspicious ideas and romantic foolishness, according to Nonna Angelina who used them as evidence that Lucia couldn’t be trusted.

  By the fireplace, one of the policemen was whispering to the priest, who nodded, his black berretta quivering on his bald head. As she walked closer, she heard the policeman say, “That big shot from Roma has no heart. How else could he leave a child to die like a dog in the middle of the road?”

  She didn’t have a chance to puzzle over this for long because the priest caught sight of her and murmured to the officer, “This is best saved for the confessional.” He grasped her by the shoulders and said, “How unfortunate Sofia was in your care when she was hurt.”

  She swiped away tears, but others followed, running down her cheeks. Padre Colletti handed her the handkerchief tucked into his sleeve. As she wiped her eyes, she told him, “It’s my fault, padre. And I can’t do anything to help her.”