Mussolini's Island

by Sarah Day

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; LGBT Gay

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BETTY TRASK AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA DEBUT CROWN LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI FIRST NOVEL PRIZE Sarah Day's MUSSOLINI'S ISLAND is a novel of sexuality and desire, of hidden passions and the secrets we keep locked within us. Based on the true story of the rounding up of a group of Sicilian gay men in 1939, this book is sure to appeal to readers of the Elena Ferrante novels, Anthony Doerr's ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE or Virginia Baily's EARLY ONE MORNING. 'A fascinating debut...the setting and characters are strong and the story is written with verve. Day is a talent to watch' - The Times Francesco has a memory of his father from early childhood, a night when life for his family changed. From that night, he has vowed to protect his mother and to follow the words of his father: Non mollare. Never give up. As Francesco is herded into a camp on the island of San Domino, he realises that someone must have handed a list of names to the fascist police. Locked in spartan dormitories, resentment and bitterness between the men grows each day. Elena, an illiterate island girl, is drawn to the handsome Francesco. Sometimes, she is given a message to pass on. She's not sure who they are from; she knows simply that Francesco is hiding something. When Elena discovers the truth about the group of prisoners, the fine line between love and hate pulls her towards an act that can only have terrible consequences for all.

Release date: February 23, 2017

Publisher: Tinder Press

Print pages: 400

Sample

20 January 1939

From: Alfonso Molina, Chief of Police, Catania

To: His Excellency the President of the Provincial Commission for the Assignment of Confino, Catania

Subject: Proposal for the confinement of . . . (name to be inserted)

The plague of pederasty in this province’s capital is worsening and spreading because youths so far unsuspected are now so taken by this form of sexual degeneracy, both passive and active, that they often develop venereal diseases. In the past, one rarely saw a pederast frequenting cafés and dance halls, or wandering around in crowded streets; even more rarely was he publicly accompanied by young lovers or clients. Before, pederasts and their admirers preferred lonely streets where they could avoid salacious jokes and comments, which were generally despised not only by the most timid homosexuals, but also by those more bold and unscrupulous, but who in the end were of sound morality.

Nowadays, we can see that a lot of spontaneous and natural disgust has been overcome, and we must admit sadly that some cafés, dance halls, seaside and mountain resorts, according to the seasons, welcome these sick people, and that young people from all social classes publicly seek their company, preferring their love, and thus become enfeebled and brutish.

The spread of degeneration in this city has attracted the attention of the local police, who have intervened to suppress or, at least, to stem this serious sexual aberration that offends morality and is fatal to the health and improvement of our race. Unfortunately, the means used so far have proven insufficient. Indeed, pederasts have become more cautious to avoid our vigilance.

I therefore think it is essential, in the interests of morality and the health of our race, to intervene with more drastic measures, so that the breeding ground of this disease can be attacked and cauterised. In the absence of a particular law, we must resort, in the case of the most obstinate offenders, to the use of confino.

Catania, February 1939

He knows, before he hears them knocking. Something about the sudden silence of the street outside, the hush, as though all the many eyes of the city have been trained towards him. Then the sound of feet marching on cobbles, doors banging, and then his own. Three heavy, slow knocks. He imagines the raised gloved fist on the other side.

His mother, standing in the kitchen, looks up. She is wearing a white silk dressing gown, her dark hair uncombed across her shoulders. He notices, for the first time, how it is beginning to lighten with streaks of grey. Her face is thin and tired.

He has sewn and resewn the dressing gown for her many times since they came to Catania. He has been promising to buy her a new one for months. Soon. In time. A few more weeks at the restaurant will be enough.

The knocking starts again.

‘Francesco Caruso. Does Francesco live here?’

She looks at him. There is nothing in her face to say she knows. She doesn’t know. What will he tell her? He has stolen something. Bribery, perhaps, or fraud. Anything that isn’t violent, or the truth. She opens her mouth to speak.

‘Caruso?’ the voice says again. ‘Francesco Caruso. You will answer. We are coming inside either way.’

He wipes a hand across his eyes as a sound escapes her, a stifled, wordless sound. He can’t look at her now. His hands begin to shake. She has always had such pride in him, in his goodness. Despite all the times he has been in trouble, she has believed in him. He thinks of his father, the last time they were all together, thirteen years ago in that terrible rented room in Naples. ‘They will come for us now,’ she had whispered, her face pale with fear, and Francesco’s father had smiled. Shaken his head.

‘You’ve got him,’ he had said, gesturing towards Francesco, ten years old, standing in the doorway. ‘He’ll grow up strong.’ He had turned to Francesco then, holding out his hands. ‘You will grow up to be a man, Francesco. You will fight like a man.’ And Francesco had nodded, without considering for a second what that meant. ‘What must you remember?’

He had buried his face in his father’s soft woollen jumper, curling his fists around it, breathing him in, not wanting to be a man. Not wanting to be anything but a child, willing his father to stay. ‘Never strike first,’ his father had whispered, rubbing Francesco’s back, rocking him softly. ‘And do not give up.’

Non mollare. Never give up.

The knocking starts again, harder now. His mother moves towards the door and Francesco puts a hand out to stop her. He remembers the promise he made that night they left Naples. Not to leave her. Just the two of them, alone in a new city. He would never leave her. He would be a real man, the kind of man his father would be proud of.

He stands up slowly. Takes a deep breath. Clenches his fists. Unlocks the door with slow, steady fingers.

But when he sees them on the other side, their pressed uniforms, the shadows of guns in their belts, so many of them when he is just one man, his instincts react. It is no surprise, perhaps. They call him Femminella at the dance hall. Feeble woman. He hears Emilio’s voice, loud in his ear. Run. It doesn’t matter where, Cesco. Just run. Now.

Now.

And he is running, past his mother, through the kitchen, through the door to the courtyard; he is vaulting over the wall and out through a narrow back alley into the street, and running hard, in no particular direction, just away.

Catania is quiet. Usually, as the evening pales into night, there is a steady hum of voices, footsteps, radios playing through open doorways. Women shouting across balconies, calling their children in. Men walking in groups towards the castle square, fights breaking out in narrow alleys, the last street vendors carting home what’s left unsold.

Tonight, the streets are empty. As though they know it is a night for hiding, for keeping silent. All Francesco can hear is the slow sighing of the sea beyond the railway arches, and the shouts of the men who are following him.

He pauses, breathing hard. He knows this city better than any of them. He has been living a second life in its shadows for long enough to know every side street, every hidden alleyway and dark recess. There is nowhere he cannot hide.

He looks east, towards the arches. Remembers the nights he hid there with Emilio, holding their breath to keep from making a sound. They will look there first. North, towards San Antonio and the dance hall; they will know he is not stupid enough to go there, but they might send one of the men, just to be sure. Or down towards the Duomo, the wider, lit-up streets, where the city’s fashionable residents will be dining in the open air, women walking arm in arm with their husbands, elegant bands playing in the squares. It is not his Catania, those streets. He would be mad to try there.

They will never think to look.

He runs through a series of dark side streets, making sure to cross back on himself, to take an illogical way. After a few turns, he reaches the castle, still standing intact amidst a sea of lava cooled centuries ago. He pauses for a second to catch his breath. Then downhill, hurtling along the Via Garibaldi, in full view but moving fast.

The open space, after so many narrow streets, is shocking. A few men are still lingering in the Duomo square, sitting around the fountains, dealing cards and sipping from flasks. There is no sound but the murmur of the fountains, the flick, flick of the cards and, from somewhere far behind him, a shrill whistle.

He pauses to look up. His father used to teach him to do this, whenever he felt afraid. If you can see the sky, you know there is a way out. You are still free. The sky is dark but clear above the cathedral dome. Against it, the blank, hard-eyed faces of saints are leaning over him, hooded in white stone.

It is still warm, though the sun has long since set. Francesco feels like a stranger in the square. His city is one of narrow darkness, of hiding and whispering, just two turns of a street away. He doesn’t know this square, its open, lit-up spaces. He longs for the shadows of the railway arches by the sea, or the thick, hot air of the dance hall, the arrusi pressed together in a space hardly larger than the living room of his flat, arms wound around his waist, breath hot on his neck, a voice in his ear. Emilio, whispering to him: Femminella, Francesca, stavo cercando, I was looking for you . . .

He straightens, and keeps running.

He stops on the Via Etnea. At the end of the street, shadowed against the darkening sky, the volcano rises high above the city, dark clouds rolling from its slopes. A familiar threat. Francesco can see its snow-tipped crater from his window at home. It is quiet now, but it is always watching. When Francesco was thirteen, it had woken and buried a nearby village in fire. Then retreated in silence as quickly.

Once, when he was a boy, his father had taken him to climb it. They were holidaying in Sicily, back when his life had been one of holidays, trains and boats and expensive dinners. Francesco had not known then that he would one day live in the volcano’s shadow. That everything of that life would vanish, faster than the red glow of lava as it cooled. He had not known what the mountain could do, but close to the summit, the two of them gasping and laughing together at the effort of it, he had seen whispers of steam emerging from between rocks, and put his hand down to touch them, reeling back at the burning air on his skin. His father had poured out the contents of his water bottle across Francesco’s palm, then hoisted him up onto his shoulders and carried him the rest of the way, not quite to the summit but as high as they could go. He remembered the feeling of his father’s hands on his ankles, holding him steady. The strange, undulating rhythm of the climb, his hands gripping his father’s wiry hair, the two of them pressed so closely together that Francesco forgot the pain in his hand, forgot how far they still had left to go.

He has still never climbed to the summit. On days when the restaurant is quiet, he and Gio sometimes leave the city and walk together through the hills, but on foot they don’t get very far. The volcano is a distant, unreachable presence, a background solidity, like a painted piece of set dressing. In Francesco’s dreams, it is where his father has gone. He is somewhere on the slopes of Etna, waiting for Francesco to catch up with him, holding out a hand as he climbs on up towards the summit, hot steam rising from the rocks around him.

He hears a shout, and ducks into a side street. It is still wider than the streets around the castle, trees planted along its length, street lights flickering at its corners. He can hear laughter from behind a fogged window, glasses clinking. Further in, the road narrows into shadows. Francesco heads towards the darkness, hands in his pockets, trying to walk slowly, casually, without looking back.

He knows now he can never go home. He will not see his mother again, Emilio, Gio, the Via Calcera, the castle or even the volcano. He will keep running. Somehow he will find his father and they will run together.

For a moment, he has forgotten where he is. What he is. He has forgotten that on an island, men like him can’t run forever. In Naples, his mother tells him, he was another person, loud and conversational, happy to talk to strangers when they came to the house. Since Catania, he has learned to be quiet, to guard what he says and who he talks to. It is what drew him to the arrusi in the first place, perhaps, that acquired art of silence. He knows now that it has not been enough. He will always be caught, whichever direction he takes, however guarded his silence. When he hears the whistle again, closer now, then the shouting of the police behind him, he remembers.

Something hard meets the back of his skull and he feels himself falling. A boot shoves his face into the narrow seam of dirt running through the gutter at the side of the street.

‘Arrusu!’ he hears one of them spitting over him. ‘Fucking whore.’

He tries to grip the paving stones with his fingers, finding no purchase on the smooth black lava stone. He tries to breathe, and his mouth fills with earth. He thinks of Emilio, the two of them running together from the dance hall, laughing, towards the sea. He tries to turn his head, to look up at the sky, to feel free, but he is pinned beneath a heavy weight. He feels a cold circle of metal against the back of his neck. He can hear Emilio’s voice in his ear again, see his dark eyes widen with fear. Run.

This is my curse, Francesco thinks, as arms reach around him, hauling him up, his hands pinned behind him. Someone spits in his face and he closes his eyes. Not standing still, but running at all the wrong moments.

San Domino, June 1939

The first prisoners had arrived in the spring. It was the wrong kind of spring that year. Still winter, really. In San Domino, everyone was waiting for the sun to break, but something held it back behind the clouds. The tomatoes refused to swell on their stalks.

Of the fifty or so inhabitants of the island, Elena Pirelli always claimed she had been the first to see them arrive. She saw a boat from the pantry window, she said, a shadow in the corner of her eye. To get a better view, she had pulled a stool against the wall and climbed up until she could raise her eyes to the glass, her fingers gripping the sill. The boat was large, approaching from the neighbouring island of San Nicola. It was not unusual for boats to pass between the two islands, but they were usually small; rowing boats or fishing trawlers. She had never seen a boat so large approach San Domino.

Behind her, her mother was beating dough roughly against the table. It shook beneath the force of her fists.

‘What is that boat?’ Elena turned from the window.

‘Boat?’

‘There is a boat coming in. From San Nicola. Look.’

Her mother shook her head, as if that were an answer, and pounded the bread even harder. Elena looked back. There was no sign of a boat now. It must have passed beneath the shadow of the cliffs surrounding the beach. She wondered if she had imagined it. Perhaps it had only been a group of birds, gathered for shelter against the wind and the salt spray, or the shadows of spruces on the horizon.

There was no reason, after all, to come here. No one came to San Domino. Rarely, pleasure seekers might stop to sun themselves on the thin strip of sand by the port, or explore the sea caves in their tiny boats, but they didn’t stay long, and they hardly ever came back.

It was different on San Nicola. A steady stream of boats had been passing between it and the mainland for as long as Elena could remember, bringing with them men to be kept shut up within the island’s towering walls of rock. Though it was the smaller island, San Nicola in the last few months had been swelling with anti-fascists and agitators, men the state wished to hide away. The island swarmed with officers of the carabinieri – she could see them sometimes from San Domino, black specks against the fortress walls. The prisoners, in their pale uniforms, were harder to see, but sometimes she could make them out between the barracks where they were housed, pacing the yard or standing together in groups. Shut up tight like mice in a trap, her mother said, whenever she looked towards San Nicola. They will not trouble us here, furetto. San Domino, with its crumbling cliffs and dense thickets of pine trees, would be left alone.

But later, standing with her ear pressed against the pantry door, Elena had heard her parents talking in the room beyond.

‘Twenty, in that boat,’ her mother spat.

‘I know.’ Her father sounded tired.

‘You know what they are saying. And more to come still!’

‘Perhaps more.’

‘You said they were politicals.’

‘I did. They are.’

‘Then why can’t they stay there? And why do I hear these things about them? That you are to be a keeper of animals?’

‘Work is work,’ her father said dully. His new job, whatever it was, had come suddenly, after weeks of travelling to the mainland, then returning and sitting silently indoors, staring at the floor. Then had come a trip to San Nicola, and everything since had been brighter. Her father had a uniform now. A gun.

‘They are a contagion,’ her mother continued. ‘They spread disease.’

Elena drew back from the door.

A few days later, she had walked the length of the island, tracing the paths through the dense pine woods to the south, back through the village at its centre to the north side, where the land fell away sharply to the sea. She walked for hours in the still, heavy silence. Towards the Cala Tramontana to the west, she saw several figures dressed in white standing amongst the trees. Men, clustered together in groups. She darted quickly behind a tree before they could see her.

When she reached the cliffs, she looked down at the beach that was San Domino’s only port. There was no large boat there now. Only a small row of fishing boats tied up tight against the rocks. She looked across the water to the steep, pale cliffs of San Nicola, which seemed to mould themselves into the walls of the fortress as though it had grown from the island in place of trees. She thought of the boat she had seen crossing the water that had brought those men with it. There was no sign of it now.

A contagion. She tasted the word. A keeper of animals.

In June, the second boat came. This time, Elena was climbing the pines that grew in clusters on the cliffs above the port, high enough to gain a view across the water towards the mainland. The boat, as large as the other, was just leaving San Nicola, turning not towards the mainland, but to San Domino.

The sun had found San Domino at last, fruit finally fattening and bursting from trees, landing in soft puddles of juice on the dry ground. Elena had felt her own body change with it, as though the sun were drawing her out for the first time. The narrow hips and bony shoulders the children on San Nicola had once teased her for were giving way to softer, rounder skin. The dresses her mother had sewn for her years before suddenly needed letting out and adjusting. She noticed it, too, in the way the men looked at her when she walked across the island. Once, she would have gone barefoot and careless, unnoticed by the few people she passed in the fields. For the first time that summer, she found herself drawing her arms across her chest and hunching her shoulders, keeping her eyes to the ground.

It had come late, her mother said. She had long been expecting it, and there was a kind of eagerness to her fingers as she tore the seams of Elena’s clothing to add new folds of cloth. She had been a child for too long already. Elena knew what it meant. She saw the way her mother eyed up boys on San Nicola, boys who seemed hardly more than children. She knew the life her mother had planned for her: endless island summers, endless children, endless work. Never to leave. To live as all the other island women lived, with no chance to see anything beyond San Domino’s narrow horizons. Not even this new Italy that everyone spoke of.

As if to pull something back, as if growing up were a kind of battle to be fought, territory to be defended, Elena was resisting as hard as she could. She only needed a few more months to plan her escape. Some way to the mainland, perhaps, or further.

She watched the boat coming closer. Far on the horizon, others were making their way along the dark shadow of Italy’s coastline, no more than inky spots against the sky. To them, her island must look just as small, she thought. A speck of dust above the water.

Whenever she watched the boats, which never turned towards her island, Elena tried to imagine the world they came from, the palaces and ballrooms and crowded, wide streets of a mainland she had never seen. She imagined herself, draped in expensive cloth, walking along even, neatly paved streets. Strangers parting to let her through. A table, a white pressed cloth, plates of strange, expensive food. The mainland was all she thought about when she wasn’t helping her mother at home, or reciting lessons in housekeeping on San Nicola. Sometimes she imagined a boat from the mainland pulling up on the narrow beach, left unattended long enough for her to hide herself away before it turned back, stowing away like boys did in story books, then climbing out on the other side into a new, brighter world.

She turned back to watch the boat approaching from San Nicola. As it came closer, she could see the faces of the men standing at its stern. They were carabinieri officers, and a number of other official-looking men. As the boat drew up against the beach, they jumped down and began dragging it along the sand, shouting orders. Elena shrank back amongst the branches, suddenly wanting to hide herself away.

As the officers shouted, more men began to emerge from the cabin. Around twenty of them, all wearing the same pale clothing she had seen weeks before on the men standing amongst the trees. They were blinking and shielding their eyes with their hands, as if they had not seen daylight in a long time. They stepped down from the boat and gathered together on the beach, as the police officers conferred with other men at the port. Papers were exchanged. She watched the passengers standing together in a tight group, staring up with bewildered faces at the cliffs that rose above them. There was a flicker of light as one of them lit a cigarette. Then a shout, as one of the carabinieri officers knocked it from his hand. Afterwards, the man stood still, his hand raised to his lips as though he expected the cigarette to still be between his fingers.

The sun was sinking now behind her, the last of it slanting across the sand in seams of gold. Between her knees, the tree bark was pressing roughly into her skin. As she watched, the police officers organised the men on the beach into two long lines. Then, as they gave a shout, the men began to march. Elena paused for a moment in her tree, watching as they spread out along the beach towards her. A contagion. She whispered it out loud.

She slid down, pine needles scratching at her ankles, and ran to catch up with them on the road.

Elena knew how to hide on San Domino. She knew every road and dirt track, every tree, every secluded clearing and hidden pathway. Apart from weekly trips to San Nicola for the Fascist Saturday, she had never left her island. She had seen pictures of the mainland in books and the newspapers that were brought by boat every two weeks, and which her father allowed her to look at when he was finished with them. It was a place where people lived packed together like sardines in a tin. Where you could spend a whole day walking across a city and not see even half of what was there. Elena could cross San Domino in just over an hour. Less if she was running.

She had seen a picture of a volcano in one of the books, towering above the city that clung to its slopes, ochre and white houses like barnacles sticking to a rock. One day, her father had told her, the volcano would wake up and the city would be buried in fire. He had shown her pictures of people, too: Il Duce standing on a balcony wearing a black suit, rows and rows of men holding guns, looking up at him with serious faces. This was not so unfamiliar. She saw something like it on Saturdays, when they went to the square in San Nicola and the Director made his speeches.

She heard the men before she saw them; feet marching on the paved street that took them up the steep climb from the beach. She moved closer to the road, emerging from amongst the trees in time to see them rounding the corner and marching towards her, two carabinieri officers leading them.

They were chained. Twenty, perhaps twenty-four of them, each joined to his partner at the wrist. What had, from a distance, looked like military precision was irregular; they moved at different speeds, one of them tripping, his partner raising their chained hands as if to catch him. Elena stood watching at the side of the road, close enough to make eye contact with any of them, had they not all been staring at the ground.

Except one. One of them was staring up at the sky. His eyes were blue. He looked much like the rest of them, skin tanned despite the too-long winter, his hair untidy about his shoulders, which stooped as though with resignation. His hand, the hand not chained to the man beside him, was gripping a bag, and all the time, while the others watched their feet in the dust, he was looking up intently, as though he could see something worth watching in the clouds. Elena looked up too, and saw nothing but the branches of pine trees knitted against the sky. When she looked back, the man was staring at her, turning his head as they passed. He was young. Twenty, perhaps, or a few years more. She hardly knew any men that age. Only her brothers, Andrea and Marco, and Nicolo, a boy from San Nicola whose parents owned the grocery store her father had once worked in. She saw him every week at the Fascist Saturday, where her mother would encourage her to talk to him while he wiped his nose on his sleeve and stared at her dumbly.

She felt again that new awkwardness, and drew her hands instinctively across her chest. She remembered how her dress was frayed at the edges, felt the curves of it clinging awkwardly to her own, noticed that her feet were bare in the dust. As the man walked on, his eyes still on her, she felt a pooling of warmth in her stomach. His lips curled slightly at the corners, the beginnings of a smile. Elena smiled back, feeling the thud of her heart, heavy in her chest. His face grew more beautiful as she looked at it, like the paintings she had seen in pictures in her father’s books. Pale, glowing skin on church walls.

She heard a shout then. The suddenness of it made her close her eyes, and when she opened them, the column of men had stopped. The man with the beautiful face had been whipped to the ground by one of the carabinieri. He lay in the dust, clutching his stomach. The officer raised his hand, which held a strip of leather, and brought it down again, hard. The man howled.

Elena stared, trying not to call out. As she did so, the officer turned his head. The realisation came to her more slowly than it should have done. The uniform had changed him, the hat low over his eyes, but as he looked in her direction she recognised her father.

She ducked down quickly in the bushes, watching through the leaves as he brought the whip down once more. The man screamed as her father struck him again. And again, and again, until he stopped making a sound.

She stared at her father’s fist, the leather strap wrapped so tight it was cutting into the skin. A few hours ago he had cupped her chin with that hand, kissed the crown of her head, patted Andrea’s shoulder. She wanted to scream. To run forward and catch the whip in her hands.

His wasn’t even a real carabinieri uniform, she realised as she watched him. It was black like the other man’s, but the shiny buttons were missing, and there were no tassels or colourful stitches at his shoulders. He was only playing at being one of them. She felt a hollowed-out feeling in her stomach as the man on the ground gave a low, heavy moan.

Her father bent down and hauled him upright. He swayed for a moment on the spot, supported by the prisoner he was chained to, before they marched on.

As they walked, the man turned his head again, as though looking for her. Elena kept herself hidden, her eyes fixed on him until he had disappeared over the rise of the hill, her mind filled with the image of her father’s face, red with an anger she had never seen before.

‘You will not listen to radios.’

Francesco stared at his feet. One of his boots had worn itself a hole towards the tip. He could feel the cold floorboards through it. His back stung with the memory of the carabiniere’s whip.

‘If we find one, it will be taken, and you will be punished. You will not gather in public places, nor attend public meetings or entertainments.’

He could still feel the movement of the boat sliding over the waves, some memory of its unsteady rhythm preserved beneath his skin. The dormitory was dark, after the blinding light outside. On the march from the beach, he had tipped his head back and felt the sun on his face. The arrusi had lived in prisons, by then, for four months. First the prison in Catania, then in Foggia, then the filthy dormitories of San Nicola. To feel so much sun, all at once, was like drinking cold water after a drought.

As the darkness resolved around him, he looked at the men standing with him, lined up in the centre of the dormitory. Around twenty of them had been marched from the beach. They had passed through a grove of pine trees, the air heavy with their scent, then taken a right turn along a dirt road towards the sea, pausing at two long, low dormitories, half hidden amongst foliage. Ten of them had been marched into each.

He studied the faces of the men beside him. Most were known to him, and at the same time unfamiliar. He imagined his own face was similar. Wide-eyed and afraid. Streaked with dirt from the prisons, exhausted from their long journey north. They seemed out of place, standing together in a neat line, all wearing the same pale, plain uniforms.

They were all boys of the arvulu rossu. The name was for the tree the younger arrusi sometimes met beneath on the corner of a street by the docks in Catania, where the authorities had usually left them