‘Anyway, I still have a bone to pick with you. Don’t get annoyed, but can you explain why you didn’t want to come with me when I caught up with you in the water?’
‘It’s simple. Because I didn’t want Jute and her brother to see us together when they came back with their motorboat. She’s always nagging at me, telling me that every time I see you I go into a flutter like a nun standing in front of a naked Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows. Not to mention her brother who’s much worse. He’s very jealous of you … to put it mildly, you give him a pain in the balls. If he’d found you and me in your yawl, tangled up in each other’s arms after we tumbled in together, there was every chance he’d have rammed into you with his big, show-off motorboat.’
I was panting like a bellows, but I was also getting rid of all the bile which had built up in the pit of my stomach.
Outside, the storm roared noisily: at times it quietened down, only to begin howling again more loudly than before. We told each other everything, starting from the first time we had met on the beach. She made fun of my acrobatic diver displays, especially since more often than not they ended with horrendous belly flops. I got back at her over certain poses and attitudes she struck: I laughed, and she denied that she had ever behaved in that way.
She was clearly flattered at having produced such emotion in me. I stood up on the bed and began mimicking her various ways of walking, real mannequin parade stuff, in front of us awestruck lads, her way of running, jumping … I even imitated her voice and laughter. Lucy rolled about laughing, and in fact careered about on the bed so much that she fell off and landed on the floor with a great thud. ‘Oh God, my head! What a bump!’ I had to take hold of her to help her back to her feet. She embraced me and gave me a tiny peck on the cheek. My heart was beating in my temples, in my chest and right down to my toes. We carried on chattering, lying one close to the other, but when the first rays of light began to filter in through the shutters, it was a struggle to speak; our words came out mangled by sleepiness. We fell asleep like two children. For both of us it was first love. I was seventeen and she fourteen. Blessed be that squall!
CHAPTER 22. Fleeing to Switzerland
I was seventeen when the British and Americans landed in Sicily. A few months later, the Fascist government fell and the king decreed an armistice. In the immediate aftermath, many men from our neighbourhood returned home, some from Yugoslavia, others from the South of Italy. I saw one friend of mine return from Croatia dressed as a train driver, another arrive on a woman’s bicycle disguised as a baker, covered in flour; yet another was done up in a strange mixture of sailor’s trousers and postman’s jacket.
Some days after that, I found myself in Milan, in the house of my uncle Nino, my mother’s brother, who had been granted exemption from military service. He came to meet me at school. ‘I need you. Perhaps you can help me.’
‘Glad to. What do you need?’
‘Women’s wigs!’
‘Wigs! What for?’
‘Later. I’ll explain later.’
At one end of Corso Garibaldi, there was a shop where wigs were on sale cheaply. We went there. They had about a dozen moth-eaten samples, all at bargain prices, so my uncle took the lot. ‘Come with me to the station.’
When we got there he said: ‘It might be a good idea if you were to come with me to Sartirana. Maybe you could make yourself useful!’
‘Just what do you plan to do with those wigs in Sartirana?’
Once we were inside the compartment, he opened the sack he had with him. Inside, all musty, there were some women’s dresses. Then from a semi-rigid bag, he took out a box with make-up. ‘Are you going to do a performance?’ I asked.
‘Almost. In Torreberretti, there’s a camp with British, South African and a few Indian prisoners. The garrison that’s supposed to be in charge of it has made off, so now we’ve got to get them to Switzerland before the Germans wake up to the fact. I have been asked to take care of about fifty of them. If I stick them all on a train in civilian clothes, they’ll stand out too easily. I can hardly pass them off as people going to the Pirelli factory annual picnic! Apart from anything else, about a dozen of them are Scottish, almost all with red hair and white faces splattered with freckles. Another half a dozen are South African, one metre ninety tall, and feet that take a size fifty-four. And that’s before we get to the four Indians that look like versions of the famous Tugh from Malaya!
‘I don’t get it, Uncle. Do you really believe that if you dress them up in wigs and make-up they could pass as a Variety chorus on the move?’
‘I’ve not going to dress them all up, just about ten of the ones who would stick out like sore thumbs. Then we’ll put them all onto the same train as the catariso folk.’
‘And who would they be?’
‘The catariso are the people who come to Lomellina from the city in search of a few sacks of rice, rye or wheat so that they can for once eat like human beings. The guards on the government warehouses let them get away with it, because as long as the amount does not exceed a couple of kilos a head, it’s permissible. All we have to do is mix our prisoners in with the catariso, who are mostly women. In fact, we might even entrust some of the more passable ones to them!’
‘Are you sure that these catariso women are prepared to take the risk?’
‘Don’t worry. Women are always more generous, and they’re always the ones prepared to run risks.’
The following morning, when it was still dark, we went to the station at Sartirana. The train coming from Mortara for Novara and Luino arrived. It was already quite busy, mainly with catariso women with their bags and packages. The train stopped, took on more passengers, then, instead of moving off, reversed to the shed where it was joined to a goods train. I learned later that this manoeuvre was a ruse to allow the liberated prisoners to get onto the rear coaches undercover, in other words, to dash out from the arches in the shed, out of sight of the guards on duty in the station. Clearly the engine drivers and conductors had been squared.
I followed Uncle Nino down to the rear coaches. Four comrades from Sartirana had been put in charge of overseeing the transport. As my uncle had forecast, at least a dozen women had volunteered to take part in the adventure. Some of them were obviously completely unconcerned about any risk they might encounter. ‘If we’re rounded up, I want to be locked up with that good-looking Scottish guy who is disguised as a rice-gatherer!’ one of the women giggled.
It was an exceptionally well-assorted gang of escapees! Almost the whole bunch were done up in trousers which were too short and tight, while those with the wigs on their heads looked like dockside whores in the middle of a particularly bothersome period of abstinence. Someone had even put a baby who was kicking and screaming in abject terror on the knees of one of those streetwalkers.
The greatest danger was that some traveller or other would ask one them a question, for not one of them had so much as a word of Italian. Of the four from the Indian subcontinent, two spoke an impenetrable Bangladeshi dialect while another was so dark of skin that not even a heavy dose of foundation cream would have lightened his complexion. Having tried everything else, they had decided to swathe his face in bandages, leaving openings for the eyes, nostrils and the mouth. To hide his hands, they had got someone to knit waiter-style gloves. If anyone asked what had happened to him, the reply was that he had been standing nearby when flames from the furnace had blown out … burns all over.