The Secret Messenger. Mandy Robotham
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I have in my cupboard to cook up a soup or a bowl of pasta. It’s too late to divert to Mama’s for a hug and a welcome hearth – she and Papa know little of what I do outside of work, and I don’t need to worry them.
I see only a few bodies moving under the ghostly blue streetlights in the larger campos – after last night, and away from the Jewish ghetto, everything seems to have calmed for now. The narrow alleyway leading to my door is pitch black, rendering me almost blind as I approach my apartment, but I know every cobble and paving stone, the way my footsteps echo, and I can tell instantly if there’s another body in my midst. My tiny second-floor apartment is freezing, and I don’t need to check the scuttle to know I have scant coal for the burner. The food cupboard, too, is almost bare – one solitary onion stares back at me, alongside a handful of polenta in a paper bag. I weigh up what I need the most – to dive under the blankets piled on my bed and shiver myself into a vague warmth, or to satisfy my hunger. I decide I’m almost past hunger now, so I boil the kettle and take a hot cup of tea to bed, having wrapped my nightdress around the kettle for a few minutes before swiftly undressing and pulling it over my head, relishing the patches where it has made direct contact with the hot metal. The thick woollen socks Mama knitted for me last Christmas are already under the covers, giving my feet the impression of warmth.
In the few minutes before I fall asleep, I reflect on the past twenty hours – as different as day and night for me. For eight hours I could be accused of helping the German Third Reich to consolidate control of our beautiful city and country – yes, our country – and for the last four or five of aiming to knock holes in their plans to ride roughshod over Italian heritage and pride. I feel like a female Jekyll and Hyde. Yet what helps me sink into a satisfying sleep is the knowledge of what we – me, Arlo and everyone else in our secret cellar – are doing. It may only be eight pages of print, and yet I firmly believe in Popsa’s principle: that they represent immense power. In my mind’s eye, communication is like the fine lines of a spider’s web; one tenuous strand makes little difference, but put them together – weave them well – and you have something of inordinate strength. A web that can withstand the mightiest of tanks.
Venice, December 1943
‘Jilani! Here!’
Over the next few weeks I get used to General Breugal’s gruff call, largely when he can’t raise his increasing girth from his chair and travel the short distance from his own desk to mine to hand me a report. Which is most of the time. Venetian living clearly suits him well. I note that in the outer office, his manners are charming towards all the female workers: German and very proper. Behind his own, closed door, however, he tries to engage me in conversation on the pretext of practising his appalling Italian. It’s a shame that he feels the need to attempt his impression of Casanova too, the leer on his broad face becoming frankly laughable. More than once I’ve had to skip out from the reach of his grasping, pudgy paw, affecting a tinkling laugh that I know is a necessary part of the facade, but that still makes me feel grubby from head to toe.
The work is challenging, mostly due to the technical nature of the translations. But it’s their complexity, I’m told, which is helping the Resistance understand German movements, and, more importantly, their thinking too. My reports and the scraps from my shoes are passed promptly via a chain of Staffettas – a whole army of largely female Resistance workers, like me, used to move vital messages across Italian cities and towns. They are passed to the underground offices of the Resistance, vital information that helps to thwart Nazi efficiency in occupying our city. In office hours, I am responsible for gleaning that critical information directly from Breugal’s reports and passing it on to my fellow Staffettas, organised in a network between each of the partisan battalions in Venice. Once I step out of the office, though, I become one of that army – those who slip nonchalantly into bars with girlfriends, chatting in groups, who might slide a message under the table or pass notes via a waiter in the know. A whole other band of mothers and older women are employed in the same task, secreting written missives in baby carriages, nappies and shopping bags, innocently sailing through the checkpoints set up around the city. It’s merely a piece of paper, but the consequences of discovery by Nazi or fascist patrols are grave – at times, deadly. It’s war work and we are all soldiers in some way.
Some evenings, I will stop for a coffee in Paolo’s café, other times at a string of bars in the Castello or San Polo districts, sharing a drink and deep conversation with women I barely know as though we are best friends, looking as if there isn’t a war on. As we embrace goodbye, each of us slips the other a piece of paperweight contraband, and we say ‘Ciao’ with smiles and waves. I move on to my delivery destination, and she to hers, while the Nazi officers who are sometimes in our midst carry on, none the wiser. It makes my stomach flip with fear as I move away, then do somersaults of triumph when I round the corner with no patrol on my tail. I realise sometimes I actually enjoy the excitement, and it makes me think of Popsa and his defiant streak.
The pretence, however, is exhausting. I seesaw between the persona of a flighty office girl, with the daily demands on my memory for such detail, and the physical role of a Staffetta – the time and energy spent zigzagging across Venice on foot to pass messages and parcels along. What with visits to the partisan newspaper cellar at least twice a week, it means I barely see my own friends. Trips home to Mama and Papa’s house, the home where I grew up in the streets around the Via Garibaldi, are once a week at best. It’s not enough, but it’s all I can manage with my double – no, triple – life.
‘You’re getting thin,’ is Mama’s familiar refrain as I arrive unexpectedly at her door one evening. She would be within her rights to make a flippant remark about my gracing them with my presence, but her mother’s love stops her. I don’t tell her I’ve made a message drop just two streets away, and that familiar guilt gnaws at my stomach. It’s only manageable when I think of the greater good – bringing back the Venice that belongs to hard workers, honest people like my parents.
‘How’s work?’ she asks, as she serves polenta on my plate, along with the lion’s share of a thin mixed-fish stew, which needs to be stretched after my arrival.
‘It’s fine,’ I lie. ‘Lots of activity in keeping the water supplies coming in from the mainland.’ I haven’t told them of my move to Nazi headquarters, and I don’t plan to yet – Mama worries enough. While both are confirmed partisans, sharing anti-fascist beliefs and willing to help the cause, they are not active in the way I am. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I note a twitch to Papa’s normally calm face. He swipes his eyes away as I flick mine towards him.
‘Stella, you should move back home again,’ Mama goes on, in her unending plea. ‘We could manage the household much better, and we would know you are safe. I worry about you so much. It seems as though Vito is never here either. You shouldn’t be on your own.’
As with every visit, I say, ‘But Mama …’ trying to justify my need for independence. She doesn’t need to know how much she would worry at my trips across Venice, sometimes on a boat to the Lido or the mainland under cover of darkness, wherever the message takes me. Her ignorance is bliss, although she doesn’t know it.
Papa walks out into the yard as I’m taking out the rubbish. I know enough of undercover work now to sense the cigarette he is lighting is simply a ploy, but I don’t stop what I’m doing. He draws hard and the scent catches in my nostrils, his plume of smoke a sheet of white in the cold December air. Finally he speaks.
‘So how is it working in the wolf’s lair?’ He looks directly at me as I spin round. I say nothing, but my own stare doesn’t deny it.
‘What did you expect, Stella? I work in the docks – there are ears and eyes everywhere. I hear things. And people know you, care about you, enough to tell me.’
Even so, I’m shocked that the news has travelled, like a baton in a relay race, to my father. But then