‘They won’t tell me. They keep saying it’s too soon to know if he’ll ever be the same. He just lies there, his head all bandaged, so white and still. He’s out of the coma but he doesn’t react when you speak to him. He just lies there, hour after hour, not moving.’
‘I’ll come to the hospital tomorrow, see for myself. It sounds like shock to me. You’d expect it, wouldn’t you? He knows Rachele is dead, does he?’
‘I told him. He just lay there as if he was deaf, staring at the wall.’
‘I expect he already knew. Didn’t you say she was killed in the crash? He must have realised she was dead.’
‘Do you think he blames himself? But it wasn’t his fault. The crash was an accident. There was ice on the road. Rachele couldn’t control the car when it went into a skid.’
‘Poor Carlo. He’s had very little luck.’
When they went to the hospital, after the funeral, Carlo was limp, white, silent, but there were glistening tracks down his face where he had cried.
As Domenico drove her home he said, ‘He knew. That the funeral was today. He may not react but he’s conscious of what is going on around him. The specialist told me he’s not too confident about the prognosis. Carlo doesn’t have any real future, long term.’
‘You mean he’s going to die?’ She knew her voice sounded raw, as if torn out of her. Domenico glanced at her sideways and sighed. ‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, darling, but somebody had to. The doctors weren’t sure for a while, but now they are. Carlo isn’t going to live beyond a year. We must get a specialist nurse for him. But, more than that, he’ll need you, Toria. His physical needs are easy. It’s the emotional side we have to deal with. We must put off our marriage. I can’t ask you to marry me and walk away from your dying brother. That would be too cruel.’
Vittoria was rigid with despair. Time stretched ahead, bleak and grey and empty. But she didn’t argue. There was no point. Domenico had made up his mind. In some ways he was as obstinate and immovable as her father, and she was afraid of losing him. Her instincts told her he was looking for a way out of their marriage; she mustn’t give him the chance. She had to hang on, by this tiny thread that still bound them together. She wasn’t letting go of him. She never would.
Her life became a ceaseless round of work and anxiety. She couldn’t have managed without Antonio. They employed a nurse for a while but Carlo disliked her; he couldn’t speak but he made his feelings clear enough, growling in his throat like a dog whenever he set eyes on her, and glaring at her. After a month she gave notice, and when she had gone Antonio did most of the physical work involved in caring for Carlo. He lifted him in and out of bed, washed him, dressed him, fed him, unless Vittoria was at home when she took over, and kept him in touch with whatever was happening at the factory, in the offices. God alone knew if he understood it all, but she felt he listened keenly. He blinked replies. One blink for yes. Two for no. Three meant, I don’t understand, explain. It took an age to communicate in blinks and long pauses but she often needed Carlo’s advice before she made a decision concerning the firm.
She was working long hours every day, continuing with her university course, sandwiching her studies between working at the company in Carlo’s role. Normally, she did a morning at the college, had a quick lunch then spent the rest of the day at the firm. Exhausted, pale, at the end of her tether, she would return to the house each evening. Antonio would meet her at the front door and make her sit down. Then he knelt, took off her shoes and massaged her hot, throbbing feet. He gave her a glass of wine, then left her relaxing while he got her meal – melon and Parma ham, soup or bruschetta, heaped with roast peppers or tomatoes, then pasta or risotto or some fresh grilled fish.
While she ate he told her how her brother was, and asked how her day had gone. ‘Another glass of red wine, for your blood. You need it, you’re so pale,’ he would insist.
‘I shall get fat.’ She sighed, but drank the wine, although she wouldn’t have any dessert or coffee.
‘You’re too thin.’
‘They say a woman can never be too thin.’
‘Whoever said that wasn’t an Italian.’
‘It was that American woman, the Duchess of Windsor.’
He made a face. ‘Oh, her. She isn’t a woman at all. More like a man, with that hard, ugly face.’
They no longer talked like employer and servant, they were friends. He knew her better, was closer to her, than any other friend she had ever had, including Olivia.
After she swayed one evening and fell downstairs out of utter exhaustion, Antonio got into the habit of coming upstairs with her, his arm around her to support her. They would go into Carlo’s bedroom and if he was awake, as he often was, drifting in and out of consciousness, day and night, she would talk to her brother for a little while, then she would go to her own room. Once she was so tired that she collapsed on her bed fully dressed and slept there all night. After that Antonio insisted on helping her change into her nightdress. He would lift her between the sheets before turning out the light and leaving her to sleep. At first she had protested, been embarrassed, but when you were almost dead with weariness such intimacies no longer seemed to matter.
It was like a marriage, she often thought. Without the sex, of course. Antonio never once touched her that way. She would never have let him. Antonio was necessary to her, though. He became her other half, who stayed at home while she left to work at a dozen different things, driving herself until she was almost crazy.
In the summer of 1954 she took her exams and passed although not as well as she and her tutors had hoped. She hadn’t given her work the necessary concentration. At least leaving university meant she had less to do each day. She decided to put off the accountancy course for a year, to spend more time with Carlo, but he died in the early hours of a frosty Christmas morning. Outside, Milan was still and calm until first light, when the bells of the churches and the cathedral began calling people to Mass. Vittoria and Antonio knelt beside the priest, praying silently, while he gave Carlo Extreme Unction, murmuring the ritual in a sleepy voice. Carlo hadn’t spoken since the car crash. He lay with eyes shut, breathing faint – it was impossible to say whether he was listening or understood.
Vittoria had not slept for thirty-six hours. She was past responding to anything, couldn’t even shed a tear when Carlo stopped breathing. Antonio made her go to bed while the body was prepared, and the undertaker came to take it away.
She slept right through Christmas Day, and woke in the evening to hear the bells ringing again for Benediction, the last service of the day in the cathedral. Remembering at once that Carlo had died, she thought, It’s over. It’s finished. I’m free. She couldn’t even be sad for him. It had been a release for him, too. He had scarcely been living, more waiting to die.
Her body was light and cool, as if she was floating. Domenico. The name sang in her head, in her heart. At last they could be married.
When she came downstairs Antonio told her Domenico had rung from the States to wish her a happy Christmas. ‘I told him your brother had just died and I didn’t want to wake you, you were so tired.’
Disappointed, she cried, ‘You should have put the call through to my bedroom! How dare you!’
Antonio paled, his mouth tight. ‘I’m sorry. I did it because I was worried about you. You don’t know what you looked like, white as a ghost. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. You needed that sleep.’
‘I know you meant well but I would have wanted to talk to him. I shouldn’t have shouted at you, Antonio, after all you’ve done for me. I’m sorry.’