Deep and Silent Waters

It had been her husband’s bedroom – but she had never shared it. She had been given another room, on the floor above. After Domenico died, she had moved into his room but after one freezing, sleepless night in it she had fled back to her own room and never tried to sleep in his again.

Outside the window, the wind howled like a wolf – if her own sense of dignity were not so great she would have howled, too. The patterns of her life kept on repeating, as if time was a record stuck on one note, shrieking it over and over again.

She was so cold: her breath froze on the air in front of her. Draughts blew under the heavy wooden doors, down the long, endless corridors, bringing her memories of other, even colder, lonelier winters.

Venice, 1942

The winter of 1942 had been terrible, not so much because of the weather as because they had little food or fuel to make it bearable. The Italian army was defeated in the battle of El Alamein, and people in the streets wept openly, for their sons, their brothers, and themselves. Grief was hard enough to bear, but hunger made it worse, especially when they were always cold. People burned anything they could find: trees, shrubs, driftwood, old shoes, the wood from attic floors, books. Beds were piled with coats, and to save fuel everyone retired early, kept warm like moles, by tunnelling through the bedclothes with shutters closed over the windows.

Carlo slept downstairs so that he could be wheeled out of his bedroom to the kitchen, where he insisted now on working, preparing vegetables, cooking, washing up.

By then they had only one servant, who had stayed on because she was too old to get work anywhere else. Leo Serrati had been furious when Carlo first suggested that he worked in the kitchen.

‘My son will not be a servant in my own house.’

‘At least that way I can be useful.’

‘If you want to be useful, come and work in the factory for me.’

Carlo’s face took on that grim, mutinous look, which signalled one of his angry moods. ‘And have them all staring at me and whispering behind my back? You know how men despise cripples. They wouldn’t respect me – and they wouldn’t take orders from a man in a wheelchair.’ He stared at his father. ‘Would you, Papa?’

Leo went red and walked away without another word.

Carlo began work the next day. At first he was clumsy, kept breaking things, but slowly he got used to it, and soon he could be heard all over the house, singing Italian opera as he cooked.

Just before Christmas that year Anna collapsed with pneumonia and overwork. She was kept in hospital for several weeks, then sent home with orders to stay in bed until she was completely recovered.

The only servant they had left, old Agnese, nursed her, but had no time to do much else. Carlo couldn’t cope with a lively child as well as the other household jobs he was now doing, so it was decided to send Vittoria to Venice to stay with her mother’s aunt, an old woman of seventy who lived in a small house in the maze of streets behind San Marco.

‘I don’t want to go away! I want to stay at home with Mamma,’ Vittoria sobbed.

Carlo patted her heaving shoulders roughly. ‘We all have to put up with the way things are. Mamma is sick, she needs a rest. Be a brave girl and stop crying. Tears do no good. When Mamma’s better, we’ll send for you.’

The journey by train was long and frightening. Vittoria travelled with a neighbour, Signora Rossi, who was visiting her daughter whose husband had just been killed in North Africa, leaving her with two children and another on the way. They had to be up at dawn and the station platform was packed with people. The train was hours late, and when it finally set off it jerked and dawdled through the countryside, the compartments crowded with soldiers and sailors, who drank cheap wine from bottles they passed around, laughing, shouting, growing ever noisier the more they drank. Signora Rossi became tight-lipped and angry. Even the corridors were full of people standing up, crammed together like sardines.

Vittoria was crushed into a corner of a compartment beside Signora Rossi, who had achieved a seat by pulling a young man out of it, glaring ferociously at the other people, daring them to say anything. At intervals she fed Vittoria furtive titbits of unappetising food produced from a large carpet bag while the other passengers watched hungrily.

‘Like seagulls at a picnic,’ muttered Signora Rossi, in Vittoria’s ear. Vittoria was too unhappy to eat, especially under those fixed, ravenous stares. If the other people had been seagulls she would have thrown her food to them just to get rid of it and stop them watching her. But she was afraid of Signora Rossi.

When, at last, the train drew into the nineteenth-century railway station of Santa Lucia, it was dark. They could see nothing of Venice but the outline of a huddle of roofs pierced here and there with spires.

Vittoria’s name had been pinned to her coat, printed on a luggage label, but Signora Rossi felt she had to stay with her. She danced from one foot to the other, eager to go to her daughter, yet duty-bound to look after the child. The noisy, echoing railway terminal filled and emptied with people as trains arrived and left, while the Signora impatiently watched the clock over their heads.

At last a young girl ran towards them, panting, red, out of breath, staring at Vittoria and trying to read her label. ‘Are you the little girl? From Milan? Oh, thank heavens – I thought I might have missed you, and then the Signora would have killed me.’ She looked apologetically at Signora Rossi. ‘I’m sorry, I left in good time but I didn’t know the way and kept taking wrong turnings.’

‘Have you some proof that you have come from the little girl’s family?’ demanded Signora Rossi, still holding Vittoria’s shoulder as if expecting to have to fight for her.

The girl pulled a large card out of her coat pocket, with Vittoria’s name printed on it. ‘I’m Rosa Bonacci. I work for Signora Bari – she sent me, she’s very old, you know. She lives just off the Frezzeria and she cannot walk this far.’

Signora Rossi bent down and kissed Vittoria. ‘Be good, do whatever your aunt tells you. I’m sure you will soon see your mother.’

As she was taken away Vittoria began to cry silently, with Rosa clutching her hand tightly to make sure she didn’t get lost.

‘Don’t cry, la Signora is very kind and I’ll look after you. But don’t cry, because we have to hurry, to get in before the curfew.’ Rosa squeezed her hand comfortingly, but Vittoria went on crying. She was so tired she could scarcely walk, her head ached, she wanted her mother, and her own home. She was afraid she would never see either of them again.

An hour later, after a bowl of hot onion soup and a chunk of new-made bread, she was tucked up in a narrow little bed, with a heavy old quilt piled over her, Her stomach full, her body warm, sheer weariness made sure she slept soundly all night.

Next morning she had her first, dazzling glimpse of Venice by winter sunlight when Rosa took her out to a street-market to buy whatever they could find.