“They say the Allies will try to land soon. Sicily or Sardinia, they say. Perhaps Apulia. No one knows where.”
The voice belonged to Massimo Brindisi, her father’s closest friend, and, as far as Vittoria was concerned, the most mysterious and puzzling man on earth. Massimo was her godfather, and for years during his frequent visits, he’d plied her with gifts and stared at her as if she were a painting in a museum. Love, lust, admiration—she couldn’t read his eyes, and she wondered, at moments, if he was biding his time, waiting for the right visit during which to ask her father for her hand. The night before, a new layer of confusion had been added to her impression of him. Very late, after Massimo and her father had emptied several bottles of the best recent vintage, someone had tapped on the door of her room, tentatively, as if checking to see if she were awake. When she climbed out of bed and opened it, Massimo stepped inside and swung the door most of the way closed behind him, then put his hands on her shoulders in a way that might have been the gesture of a beloved relative, or might have been something else. “You don’t know who I am, you don’t know,” he murmured. He didn’t force her, didn’t move his hands, didn’t try to kiss her or press against her, but she was half-asleep, and he was clearly drunk, in her room, that late, and—she regretted it now—she’d panicked and started screaming.
“Quiet, quiet, please quiet, Vittoria. It’s not what you think!” Massimo said, squeezing her shoulders a bit more tightly. But she screamed and yelled and even scratched at his cheeks and neck until he let go. By then, Eleonora was at the door, and Massimo was making excuses. “A nightmare,” he said, the words slurred. He seemed chastened. “My dear godchild was having a nightmare. I came to the rescue. Are you all right, my Vittoria? What was it? The war? The Germans? Of what were you dreaming, sweet girl?”
It was the flimsiest of acts, but what was Eleonora to do, challenge him? The nineteen-year-old serving girl challenging the middle-aged industrialist, a man who practically owned every judge in northern Italy? And what was she, herself, to do, Vittoria thought, further damage the tattered relationship with her father by accusing his best friend, her own godfather, of attempted rape, when she wasn’t really sure why he’d come to her room, what his intentions had been? Massimo would act shocked, gravely offended. Her father would stare at her for a few seconds, then shake his head. More female craziness. More disappointment in the daughter he’d raised to take her place in the family dynasty. Vittoria didn’t look very much like him, didn’t share his political views, and it seemed to her on some days that, beyond the fact that they were sheltered by the same roof, nothing at all linked them.
When Massimo left her room, still muttering his wine-soaked excuses, she closed the door and wrestled an armchair over to block it. She’d skipped breakfast and Mass this morning, claiming a headache. But her father had sent Eleonora to insist she join them for the midday meal, and Vittoria had obediently gone downstairs and taken the chair to his left, facing Massimo across the wide table, smelling his cologne even from this distance, glancing at the thin red scratch mark on the left side of his neck. Had she overreacted? Had Massimo been about to tell her something so important and shocking that he had to be drunk to say it, and had to be out of her father’s hearing? Starting to show gray at his temples, but handsome in his own fashion, the man was going on now about the possible invasion, though he had no son in the army of Mussolini, and, she guessed, if Italy fell, he stood to lose only that part of his fortune he hadn’t been able to transfer to Swiss banks.
“Between Il Duce’s army and the German forces, I don’t think the Allies have a chance of taking Italy.”
“They took Egypt,” Vittoria couldn’t keep herself from saying. “They took Libya.”
Her father glared at her. Massimo smiled indulgently, mysteriously. “True,” he said, lifting his fork as if to begin eating, then looking up at her from beneath his unruly black brows, “but only because the Axis supply chains were stretched thin. I’m sure you understand that, my beautiful Vittoria. Plus, defending one’s homeland is the equivalent of defending one’s property. It’s—”
“Or one’s body,” she said.
Another indulgent smile. Was he a rapist? Innocent? A loving family friend who’d wanted only a private conversation? “Yes, of course. Exactly. Which is why I feel confident in eventual victory. Totally confident.”