Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel Read online

  Pushing the ballroom door open, Pino called out, “Hello?”

  Hearing the metal friction of a rifle action loading, Pino threw his hands up.

  “Drop da gun,” a man demanded.

  “I have no gun,” Pino said, hearing the shake in his voice.

  “Who are ya?”

  “Pino Lella. I was told to come here to see an American named Knebel.”

  He heard a hoarse laugh before a big lanky man wearing a US Army uniform stepped from the shadows. He had a broad nose, a receding hairline, and a wide smile.

  “Lower the gun, Corporal Daloia,” he said. “This one’s got an invitation.”

  Corporal Daloia, a short beefy soldier from Boston, lowered the gun.

  The bigger American walked over to Pino and stuck out his hand. “Major Frank Knebel, US Fifth Army. I flak for the Fifth, do some writing for Stars and Stripes, and dabble in psychological operations.”

  Pino didn’t understand half of what he’d said, but nodded. “You just got here, Major Knebel?”

  “Last night,” Knebel said. “Came in ahead of the Tenth Mountain Division with this advance scout group to get an early sense of the city for my dispatches. So tell me what’s going on out there, Pino. What’d you see coming over?”

  “There are dead people lying in the gutters from revenge killings, and the Nazis and Fascists are trying to get out,” Pino said. “The partisans are shooting at all of them. But the lights went on last night for the first time in years, and there were no bombers, and for a little while it felt like the war was really over.”

  “I like that,” Knebel said, pulling out a notebook. “Vivid. Say it again.”

  Pino did, and the major wrote it all down. “I’ll call you a partisan fighter, okay?”

  “Okay,” Pino said, liking the sound of that. “How else can I help?”

  “I need an interpreter, heard you spoke English, and here you are.”

  “Who told you I spoke English?”

  “Tweety Bird,” Knebel said. “You know the score. The point is, I need help. Are you game to give a hand to an American in need, Pino?”

  Pino liked the major’s accent. He liked everything about him. “Sure.”

  “Attaboy,” Knebel said, putting his hand on Pino’s shoulder and continuing on like they were longtime conspirators. “Now, for today, I really need two things from you. First, get me inside that telephone exchange so I can make some calls and file a few stories.”

  Pino nodded. “I can do that. What else?”

  Knebel smiled toothily. “Can you find us some wine? Whiskey? Maybe girls and music?”

  “For?”

  “A goddamned party,” Knebel said, his grin getting bigger. “I have friends sneaking in here after dark, and this son-of-a-bitch war is almost over, so they’ll be wanting to blow off some steam, celebrate. Sound good to you?”

  The major had an infectious quality that made Pino grin. “Sounds fun!”

  “Can you do it? Get a record player, or a shortwave? Some pretty Italian girls for us to cut a rug with?”

  “And wine and whiskey. My uncle, he has both.”

  “Your uncle is hereby awarded a Silver Star for conduct above and beyond the call of duty,” the major said. “Can you get everything here by nine tonight?”

  Pino looked at his watch, saw it was noon. He nodded. “I’ll take you to the telephone exchange and get started.”

  Knebel looked at the American soldiers, saluted them, and said, “I think I love this kid.”

  Corporal Daloia said, “He gets a few pretty broads in here, Major. I’ll put him up for the Medal of Honor.”

  “That’s saying something for a guy who’s up for a Silver Star for valor at Monte Cassino,” Knebel said.

  Pino reappraised the corporal.

  “Who gives a fig about medals?” Daloia said. “We need women, music, and booze.”

  “I’ll find you all three,” Pino said, and the corporal saluted him smartly.

  Pino laughed and studied the major’s uniform. “Take off the shirt. You’ll be noticed.”

  Knebel did so, following Pino out of the Hotel Diana in his T-shirt, fatigue bottoms, and boots. At the telephone exchange, partisan guards blocked the entrance, but once Pino showed them the letter he’d gotten the night before and explained that Knebel was going to write the glorious history of the Milan uprising for his American audience, they let him enter. Pino set up Knebel in a room with a desk and a phone. Once connected, the major covered the mouthpiece and said, “We’re counting on you, Pino.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pino said, and tried to salute with the same finesse as Corporal Daloia.

  “Almost,” Knebel said, laughing. “Now, go round us up a party to remember.”

  Feeling energized, Pino left the exchange and started north on Corso Buenos Aires toward Piazzale Loreto, trying to figure out how he was going to find everything Knebel asked for in eight and a half hours. A pretty woman in her twenties, no wedding band, came walking down the street toward him, looking anxious.

  On impulse, Pino said, “Signorina, per favore, would you like to come to a party tonight?”

  “A party? Tonight? With you?” she scoffed. “No.”

  “There will be music, and wine, and food, and rich American soldiers.”

  She tossed her hair and said, “There are no Americans in Milan yet.”

  “Yes, there are, and there’ll be more at the Hotel Diana, in the ballroom, tonight at nine. Will you come?”

  She hesitated, and then said, “You’re not lying?”

  “On my mother’s soul, I’m not.”

  “I’ll think about it, then. The Hotel Diana?”

  “That’s right. Wear your dancing dress.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she allowed, and walked away.

  Pino grinned. She’d be there. He was almost sure of it.

  He kept walking and when the next attractive woman came along he said the same thing and got roughly the same answer. The third woman reacted differently. She wanted to come to Pino’s party immediately, and when he said there would be rich American soldiers, she told him she’d bring four friends.

  Pino was so excited that only then did he realize he’d reached the corner of the Piazzale Loreto and Beltramini’s Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. The door was open. He caught the silhouette of someone standing in the shadows. “Carletto? Is that you?”

  Pino’s oldest friend tried to slam the door shut. But Pino threw his shoulder against it and overpowered the smaller Carletto, who fell onto his back on the floor.

  “Get out of my shop!” Carletto shouted, crabbing backward. “Traitor. Nazi!”

  His friend had lost a lot of weight. Pino saw it as soon as he slammed the door shut behind him. “I am no Nazi, and no traitor.”

  “I saw the swastika! Papa did, too!” Carletto sputtered, pointing at Pino’s left arm. “Right there. So what did that make you other than a Nazi?”

  “It made me a spy,” Pino said, and told Carletto everything.

  He could see his old friend didn’t believe him at first, but when Carletto heard Leyers’s name and realized that was who Pino had been spying on, he had a change of heart.

  Carletto said, “If they’d known, Pino, they would have killed you.”

  “I know.”

  “And you did it anyway?” his friend said, shaking his head. “That’s the difference between you and me. You risk and act, while I . . . I watch and fear.”

  “There’s nothing left to be afraid of,” Pino said. “The war’s over.”

  “Is it?”

  “How’s your mama?”

  Carletto hung his head. “She died, Pino. In January. During the cold. I couldn’t keep her warm enough because we had no fuel and no produce to sell. She coughed herself to death.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Pino said, feeling emotion ball in his throat. “She was as kind as your father was funny. I should have been here to help you bury both of them.”

 
“You were where you were supposed to be, and so was I,” Carletto said, looking so crushed Pino wanted to cheer him up.

  “You still play the drums?”

  “Not in a long time.”

  “But you still have the set?”

  “In the basement.”

  “Know any other musicians who live around here?”

  “Why?”

  “Humor me.”

  “Sure, I think so. If they’re still alive, I mean.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  “What? Where?”

  “To my house to get you something to eat,” Pino replied. “And then we’re going to find wine, food, and more young ladies. And when we’ve got enough, we are going to throw the end-of-war party to end all end-of-war parties.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  By 9:00 p.m. on the second day of the general insurrection in Milan, Pino and Carletto had moved six cases of wine and twenty liters of homemade beer from Uncle Albert’s private stock to the Hotel Diana. Pino’s father contributed two full bottles of grappa. And Carletto found three unopened bottles of whiskey someone had given his father years before.

  Corporal Daloia, in the meantime, had discovered a dismantled stage in the basement of the hotel and saw it reassembled at the far end of the ballroom. Carletto’s drum kit was set up at the rear of the stage. He was thumping the bass drum and adjusting his cymbals while a trumpeter, a clarinetist, a saxophonist, and a trombonist were tuning up.

  Pino sat at the upright piano the Americans had lifted onto the stage and was fiddling nervously with the keys. He hadn’t played in almost a year. But then he let loose with a few chords from each hand and stopped. It was enough.

  The crowd began to hoot and call. Pino put his hand to his brow theatrically, looked out at twenty American GIs, a squad of New Zealanders, eight journalists, and at least thirty Milanese women.

  “A toast!” Major Knebel shouted, and jumped up onto the stage, holding a glass of wine, spilling some and not caring. He raised his glass. “To the end of war!”

  The crowd roared. Corporal Daloia jumped up beside the major and yelled, “To the end of homicidal dictators with weird black bangs and puny square mustaches!”

  The soldiers broke into gales of laughter and cheers.

  Pino was laughing, too, but he managed to translate for the women, who shouted their approval and raised their glasses. Carletto gulped his wine in one long belt that finished in a lip smack that left him grinning.

  Cracking his drum sticks, Carletto yelled, “Eight to the bar, Pino!”

  His arms, elbows, wrists, and hands held high, his fingers dangling over the keys, Pino started with high notes, tinkling before he brought in the bass in a bouncy rhythm that rolled over into one of those tunes he used to practice before the bombing began.

  This time it was a variation of “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie,” pure dance hall music.

  The crowd went wild, and wilder still when Carletto went to the brushes and the cymbals, and the bass joined in on top of him. Soldiers started grabbing the Italian girls and dancing swing style, talking through their hands, knees bopping, hips shaking, and spinning. Other soldiers in the room stood around the dancers, nervously looking at the women, or standing in place, drink in one hand and the index finger of the other hand wagging time, hips swaying and shoulders popping along with Pino’s wicked boogie tune. Every once in a while, one of them would scream just for the drunken hell of it.

  The clarinetist played a solo. So did the sax man and the trombonist. The music died to clapping and shouts for more. The trumpet player stepped forward and slayed the house, blew the opening of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”

  Many of the GIs sang the lyrics by heart, and the dancing got frenzied as the other soldiers drank, cheered, and brayed, and danced and drank more and fell away into the sheer fun of letting go. When Pino brought the song to an end, the sweating crowd of dancers cheered and stomped their feet.

  “More!” they shouted. “Encore!”

  Pino was drenched with sweat, but he didn’t think he’d ever felt this happy. The only thing missing was Anna. She’d never seen Pino play a note. She would have fainted. He laughed at that image and then thought of Mimo. Where was he? Still fighting the Nazis?

  He felt a little guilty about celebrating while his younger brother was out being a warrior, but then looked back at Carletto, who was pouring himself another generous glass of wine and smiling like a fool.

  “C’mon, Pino,” Carletto said. “Give ’em what they want.”

  “Okay!” Pino shouted to the crowd. “But the piano player needs a drink! Grappa!”

  Someone rushed up a glass of the liquor. Pino downed it and nodded to Carletto, who cracked his sticks. And they were off again, pumping the boogie-woogie with Pino messing around with every example he’d ever heard or practiced.

  “1280 Stomp.” “Boogie Woogie Stomp.” “Big Bad Boogie Woogie.”

  The crowd loved all of it. He’d never had this much fun in his life and suddenly understood why his parents adored having musicians at their parties.

  When they took a break around eleven that night, Major Knebel reeled up to him and said, “Outstanding, soldier. Just outstanding!”

  “You had fun?” Pino said, grinning.

  “Best damned party ever, and it’s just getting started. One of your girls lives close by, and she swears her daddy’s got all sorts of booze in his basement.”

  Pino noticed a few couples leaving the ballroom holding hands and heading upstairs. He smiled and went for some water and wine.

  Carletto came over, threw his arm around Pino, and said, “Thank you for knocking me on my ass this afternoon.”

  “What are friends for?”

  “Friends always?”

  “To the day we die.”

  The first woman Pino invited to the party walked up and said, “You’re Pino?”

  “That’s right. What’s your name?”

  “Sophia.”

  Pino held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Sophia. Having a good time?”

  “So much fun, but I can’t speak English.”

  “A few of the soldiers, like Corporal Daloia over there, speak Italian. The others? Just dance, and smile, and let your body speak the language of love.”

  Sophia laughed. “You make it sound easy.”

  “I’ll be watching,” Pino said before heading back to the stage.

  He had another shot of grappa, and they went at it again, boogie-woogie, holding it, and then messing around, and then boogie-woogie again; and the crowd stomping and dancing. At midnight, he glanced at the dance floor and saw Sophia doing back bends and spins with Corporal Daloia, who was grinning ear to ear.

  Things could not have gotten better.

  Pino had another grappa and then another, and played on and on, smelling the sweat of the dancers and the perfume of the women, all melding into a musk that made him drunk in yet another way. Around two it all became a blur and then black.

  Six hours later, on the morning of Friday, April 27, 1945, Pino woke up on the hotel kitchen floor with a splitting headache and a foul stomach. He made it to the bathroom and vomited, which made his stomach better, and his headache worse.

  Pino looked out into the ballroom, seeing people sprawled everywhere: in chairs, on tables, on the floor. Carletto was on his back, arm over his face, on the stage behind his drums. Major Knebel was curled up on a couch. Corporal Daloia was on another couch, spooning with Sophia, which made Pino smile through a yawn.

  He thought of his own bed and how good it would be to sleep the hangover off there rather than here on a hard floor. He guzzled some water and left the Hotel Diana, heading more or less due south toward Porta Venezia and the public gardens. It was a spectacular day, clear blue and as warm as June.

  Within a block of leaving the hotel Pino saw the first body, facedown in the gutter, gunshot to the back of the head. In the next block, he saw three dead. Eight blocks later, he saw five. Two of
them were Black Shirt Fascists, by their uniform. Three were in nightclothes.

  Despite all the death he saw that morning, Pino knew something had changed in Milan overnight, some critical point had been reached and passed while he’d been partying and sleeping, because the streets near Porta Venezia were crowded and boisterous. Violins played. Accordions, too. People danced and hugged and laughed and cried. Pino felt as if the spirit of the party at the Hotel Diana had moved outside and seduced everyone celebrating the end of a long and terrible ordeal.

  He entered the public gardens, taking a shortcut home. People were lying on the lawns, basking in the sun, having a good time. Pino looked ahead on the crowded path he was taking through the park and saw a familiar face coming his way. Wearing the uniform of the Free Italian Air Force, his cousin Mario was beaming, looking like he was having the time of his life.

  “Eh, Pino!” he cried, and hugged him. “I am free! No more sitting in the apartment!”

  “That’s so great,” Pino said. “Where are you going?”

  “Anywhere, everywhere,” Mario said, glancing at his aviator’s watch, which gleamed in the sunlight. “I just want to walk and soak it all up, the joy in the city now that the Nazis and the Fascists are kaput. You know this feeling?”

  Pino did know. So, it seemed, did almost everyone else in Milan that day.

  “I’m going home to get some sleep,” Pino said. “Too much grappa last night.”

  Mario laughed. “I should have been with you.”

  “You would have had fun.”

  “I’ll see you later.”

  “You, too,” Pino said, and walked on.

  He had gone no more than six meters when an argument broke out behind him.

  “Fascista!” a man shouted. “Fascista!”

  Pino turned and saw a small, stocky man standing in the path, aiming a revolver at Mario.