The Time in Between

by Marcello Fois

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Small Town & Rural

Synopsis

Vincenzo Chironi sets foot for the first time on the island of Sardinia - 'a raft in the middle of the Mediterranean' - in 1943, a year of famine and malaria. All he has with him is an old document as proof of his name and date of birth, but to find out who he really is he has had to undertake an even more stressful journey than the one he has just faced in the steamer from mainland Italy to Sardinia. At Núoro he will find his grandfather, a master blacksmith, who will act as a substitute father but also as an accomplice to him, and his aunt Marianna, who greets the unexpected arrival of a previously unknown nephew as an opportunity to redeem a life previously afflicted by misfortune.

Years later, when the presence of Vincenzo Chironi in Núoro seems to have become taken for granted, as natural as the sea and rocks, his blood asserts itself. Vincenzo meets Cecilia, a beautiful girl with eyes of an undefinable shade who is a wartime refugee from elsewhere in Sardinia, and falling in love seems the only course open to either of them. Never mind that she is already engaged to Nicola, a boy with whom Vincenzo is indirectly connected by marriage through his aunt Marianna . . . Even if it may be a fact that "disobedience must involve punishment", it may also be true that love cannot avoid adding the latest link to an endless chain.

Release date: April 19, 2018

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 256

Sample

(October 12–17, 1943)

HE DID NOT KNOW HOW TO SAY HIS OWN NAME IN FULL. When the official asked him all he could manage was “Vincenzo”. The official stared at him and made a sudden movement that released a powerful blast of sulphur. Vincenzo held the man’s gaze, unable to judge his age, though he had obviously somehow managed to avoid being called up for the war, which probably accounted for the fact that he was now checking immigration documents for the Harbour Authorities.

“And?” the official said.

Venturing the hint of a smile, Vincenzo pulled out of his pocket the worn piece of paper that in these uncertain times had proved as essential to him as the Gospel.

The man took the paper hesitantly, as if fearing something unclean. In fact, it was just a piece of paper yellowed by time and by having been so long in Vincenzo’s pocket. With a care more appropriate to an ancient piece of vellum, the man spread it on the table, smoothing its edges like a garment in need of ironing.

Then he got down to reading it.

Now that the first faint trace of dawn was beginning to reach them from the sea, Vincenzo was able to see the man more closely. He was younger than he had seemed at first sight, with a large grey shaven head. Among the prickles on this leathery white surface, Vincenzo detected the red bites of lice. Which must be why the man was exuding such an acrid smell of petrol and sulphur. Vincenzo instinctively scratched his own head. Then asked himself again how this man, who surely could not be more than thirty years old, had escaped the trenches. He knew he himself had only escaped call-up as an orphan from the First War.

Meanwhile the official finished reading, folded the paper back into four, and picking it up gingerly like a palaeographer, handed it back to its owner.

“Chironi, Vincenzo,” the man murmured, copying down the name. Watching him, Vincenzo realised he was being designated. “I only accept this as valid since it is a document officially stamped by a notary, which in these days when so many offices have been bombed, is a rarity. At any other time it would be no more than waste paper,” the official pointed out weightily in perfect syntax. “Have you any reference in Sardinia?” he added.

Vincenzo did not understand. “Any reference?” he said. The need for this repetition made it clear that he and the immigration official were worlds apart. Both had pronounced the same word, but their contrasting accents had emphasised their difference. The official’s question had sounded gross and heavy; Vincenzo’s repetition of it, weak and tentative.

“But are you Sardinian?” the immigration officer asked.

As he spoke, the sun rose. Now for the first time Vincenzo could see that the shed he had been directed to when he came ashore from the ship contained at least a hundred people. Or rather, now that he could see clearly, he became aware of something he had only been vaguely aware of in the darkness when they docked: the astonishing silence. Men, women and children had all been overwhelmed by it as if stunned by gratitude for whoever had saved them from the waves.

The sea had not been calm; they had been tossed about for hours and at one point it had seemed they must find somewhere to make a forced landing. But at about three o’clock in the morning the waves had backed off – intimidated, people said, by the rocky coast of Corsica. So in the shelter of the coast the overloaded ship had been able to proceed unimpeded. Yet fearing the worst, the people still massed together despite the calm, keeping up a silent qui vive, never allowing themselves a moment’s rest.

The silence had remained, as though clinging to them, until the very earth itself stopped moving.

The faint smells when they came into the shed seemed no longer to have any relation to humanity. It was a particular smell that Vincenzo was sure he would never forget.

“Well?” the immigration officer asked again.

It took Vincenzo a moment to remember where they were in their conversation: “My father came – from Sardinia. Chironi Luigi Ippolito . . .” he began to recite. Then, afraid he had not made himself sufficiently clear, he poked himself in the chest with his index finger, adding: “Chironi Vincenzo, son of the late Luigi Ippolito.”

The man nodded; he had understood perfectly. But what he could not know, since there was no-one to explain it to him, was the fact that the first name, Vincenzo, and the surname, Chironi, had never before been pronounced together by their owner. But naturally the immigration officer, who did not look like a man to be troubled by surprises, would not have fallen off his chair on learning this. Though these were terrible times. And it was even worse overseas, so they said, more than anyone on this raft in the middle of the Mediterranean called Sardinia could ever suspect.

*

It had been like the end of the world, people said, something inconceivable, a sort of abyss in time and space. Incomprehensible to the human mind. Everything upside down, hell on earth, fire from sea and sky, houses destroyed, forcing humans back to living like the cavemen in picture books, eating cats and dreaming of roast mice. They loved to exaggerate when talking of cities reduced to burning heaps of dust and rubble, as people do who are distant enough to no longer be in immediate risk of losing everything. And people said that throughout the whole of that year 1943 not a single drop of rain had fallen. The sky, they said, had never changed its colour, it had been like a scrap of cloth rotted by caustic soda, syrupy, full of dribbling filaments of storm-clouds that had gathered in the part of the world that the sarcasm of history had named the Pacific. They said the orchards had hurled curses at the imperturbable sky, and that the earth’s crust had entombed the seeds in impenetrable petrified clay. Life itself had miscarried in the very heart of the earth, with pallid foetuses of grain, wheat, rye and maize dying as they struggled towards the light in a movement nature herself had decreed feasible but man had now managed to make impossible.

They thought they were exaggerating, these people, but far from it.

From their rock in the middle of the sea, the war had sounded like quarrelling neighbours smashing plates, or a father raising his hand against the son who will not listen to him, or pressing your ear against the wall to hear a wife swearing at her unfaithful, drunken or spendthrift husband. That was how this war had been, a war they did not even dignify with the name of “war”. They preferred to call it a conflict, because the War or Gherra had been the other one, from 1915 to 1918. Oh yes, that had been a Real War . . .

*

Once off the steamship the little crowd of survivors had noticed a young man of above average height, nervous though sober and dry after many days without food. Every inch his father, someone told him, because he wore his uniform like a figure on a fashion-plate and made the girls tremble with excitement. Girls like his mother, ready to fall for the good-looking non-commissioned officers with hidden tufts of hair that popped out like rabbits from a magician’s hat whenever they pulled on their peaked caps. If they had cared to learn more, these refugees could have noted the touch of green that came into this man’s dark eyes in direct light. A green inherited from the Sut family from Cordenons, now dispersed or escaped into Slovenia, or having perhaps jumped from the frying-pan into the fire, who knows? Apart from this, Vincenzo had grown up a hundred-per-cent Chironi in all respects, if perhaps a little on the tall side, taller than his late father Luigi Ippolito.

The light in the port immigration office had assumed the form of a mournful stroke of conscience. All around him exhausted, dirty, starving people were silent. Unnaturally silent. Vincenzo understood well, having lived the same life himself, that some of those mute people were finding it difficult to accept the imminent brilliance of the new day since, having expected to die inside the ship so violently shaken by the turbulence of the tormented sea, they had come to believe they would never see another dawn. Yet here they were, assembled together in the harbour, thinking back over their family histories and supposing there must be some link between what they had been and whatever they were about to become.

Which was why the only answer Vincenzo had been able to give to the question “First name and surname?” had been “Vincenzo”.

*

It was not surprising that once Vincenzo had succeeded in articulating both his first name and surname, the immigration officer could not miss the look on the young man’s face, a look filled with the sort of unwitting awareness given to witnesses of a topsy-turvy world. How could it be otherwise?

When he reached his tenth birthday, the director of the orphanage at Trieste had sent for him and told him that a document, a letter and a small sum of money had been left for him. The document was official proof of his paternity certified by a notary in the year of his birth, and dated May 6, 1916 at the Plesnicar Notary Office in Gorizia. While the letter was a simple note dated 1920, in which his dying mother, signing her name Sut Erminia, begged him that when the time came for him to leave the orphanage in which she herself had placed him for his own protection, he would make his way to Núoro in Sardinia where his heroic father had relatives and property. As for the money, this added up to 275 Italian lire of uncertain present or future value.

“Sí, sí,” the immigration official said. “But if you are planning to get to Núoro you will have to wait till tomorrow morning for the post bus . . . Or walk towards Orosei.” At this point he raised himself on his arms to look over the desk and check whether
Vincenzo’s shoes were up to such a long walk and Vincenzo noticed that the official had no legs. “Of course you may be able to catch the post bus along the road . . . if you see it, stop it, understand? Orosei, is that clear? I’ll write the name for you.” And without waiting for Vincenzo to answer, he inscribed the word “OROSEI” in ornate capitals on a piece of paper and held it out to him.

Vincenzo grasped the paper and agreed “sí, sí” to everything to show he had understood and that with the name written down he would not be able to forget it; while the soles nailed onto his boots seemed still good enough to carry him quite a long way.

*

He emerged from the enclosed area of the port with the legless official’s approval just in time to greet the light coming directly off the sea.

The earth he was now treading promised to reconcile him to himself, helping to close a circle that had so far remained dramatically open throughout the entire course of his life. Yet he was also aware of the subtle anguish of the dawn reflected in on itself before risking total exposure once again to human judgement.

It was the worst dawn imaginable in those cursed days when a verminous shambles seethed back from land to sky.

Or he could accept the dawn for what it was, and simply leave a mark on the prison wall of History.

The area around the harbour did not seem like a war zone, or at least not like the wrecked dock at Livorno from where the old steamship had set out for Sardinia. There, nothing had been growing but barbed-wire barricades.

Like a skin ravaged by alopecia, a vast, level, no-man’s-land now opened before him, and it had to be crossed before he could
reach the first modest houses of the district known variously as Terranova or Olbia. In an age of changing regimes, place-names could be more significant to those who imposed them than those who suffered their imposition. Only the little group of buildings around the church had been touched by the conflict with a few buildings destroyed by planes on their way to attack Cagliari. It was only a minor port, but whether as Olbia or Terranova, it had been visited occasionally by a de Havilland Mosquito or a Messerschmitt Bf 110, or both, streaking greedily through the sky. The variegated scales of the church cupola looked as though they needed propping up on one side. A mere nothing compared to what, in this belching of reason, was happening all round on other islands and across the sea.

It took Vincenzo Chironi a hundred steps to cross this no-man’s-land, and hardly more to cross the little deserted streets of the built-up area and reach a sponge-like hint of countryside.

This bleak space was covered by dry moss that squeaked underfoot like stale bread. A few rocks interrupted the order of things. There, between hills and sea, the light was still uncertain as a dazed sun struggled to shake off the previous day, which for Vincenzo had been his third at sea after his twenty days’ walk from Gorizia to Livorno, during which he had risked being mistaken for a deserter at every step. He could no longer remember how many times he had had to prove he was the only son of a widowed mother and a war hero decorated on the Bainsizza Plateau. That exemption from military service was his only documentary history, together with the notary’s certificate and his mother’s letter. But now, standing on a rock to note the exact point from which the new day was dawning, he told himself this would be the beginning of a new life. Leaping in the air like a child and dropping back to earth again, he smiled and walked on. Walking faster now, he remembered the most important thing was to keep the sea on his left. Never mind whether he could see it or only hear it, it had to stay on that side: “Going south, the sea must be on your left, going north it would be on your right, because the other way round would mean the opposite, is that clear?” That was how the knowledgeable immigration officer had put it before writing down the word “OROSEI” for him, so that if he ever got lost – and of course these people from the mainland always say they understand and then of course never do – and after Orosei anyone could show him the way. Post buses go from there to Barbagia, the man had said, and then on to Núoro, which was of course where Vincenzo had to go.

*

Vincenzo had seen the place-name Núoro for the first time on an old Austrian map, trustworthy but too out-of-date to print the name in the bold type reserved for major inhabited areas. This seemed credible for a world likely to be populated by obscure tribes and bloodthirsty brigands. But it had been the home his father had left in May 1915. And if Vincenzo’s calculations were accurate – not forgetting he had been born at seven months – he must have been conceived in August that same year. But where? Who could know? The relationship between the Sardinian soldier from Núoro and the peasant girl from Gorizia probably had not been love at first sight or eternal love either. A wartime relationship. Their names, Chironi Luigi Ippolito from Núoro and Sut Erminia from Cordenons, were probably never printed in bold type. Even so, something must have linked them sufficiently to cause the lightly wounded Luigi Ippolito Chironi to make the most of a short leave to hurry to the Plesnicar Notary Office at Gorizia and officially acknowledge the fact that he had become the father of a newborn son. A unilateral act presumably, since no mention was made anywhere at the time of the Sut woman named as the child’s natural mother. Nor do we know who would have informed Chironi that he had become a father. But something must undoubtedly have induced him to take that action which perhaps involved righting a wrong. And it is a further fact that when the child reached the age of ten in 1927, the Plesnicar notary went in person to the Collegium Marianum at Trieste to hand over the proof.

The director of the orphanage, Padre Vesnaver, had sent for Vincenzo and asked him to sit down since he had something important to tell him. It was then that Vincenzo saw the small map of Sardinia for the first time, as the director showed him on the map exactly where the place called Núoro was. Then, reading in the boy’s eyes anguish rather than enthusiasm at the thought of having to travel to such a distant world, a place that scarcely even seemed to exist, he assured the boy that he did not need to go there immediately.

*

In fact, it had taken Vincenzo fifteen years to decide. And now that scarcely credible location was almost upon him.

*

After walking for an hour with the sea dozing on his left and clutching in his hand the piece of paper on which the direction he must head for had been written so beautifully, Vincenzo found himself in an extensive area of hills the colour of a cow’s back or purplish pressed grapes, where the earth had been ploughed up by bombs jettisoned by exhausted homeward-bound fighter-bombers, though lingering traces of dusty green could still be detected.

The white road took him to a small oasis of young oak saplings. He stopped and listened to the air, which had been motionless since early morning over sea and land, sand and rock, which are after all the same thing in different forms. In that teeming silence he noticed the light sound of a fountain and looked around to see exactly where it was coming from. Pushing his way through saplings scarcely taller than himself, he became aware of an unpleasant smell of shadowed damp earth, and a rivulet gushing from some rocks . . . It smelled of incandescent iron, as if the trickle of water as it crossed live rock had captured heat from the friction of centuries, fortress-like granite suddenly yielding to obstinacy. It was not easy to collect water in his hands, so he took a large leaf, dusted it till it shone like wax, painstakingly filled it with water, and drank. Then he dug round the base of the rock, used more leaves to prevent the earth swallowing up the whole rivulet, and sat down. He searched through the leather bag he was carrying and pulled out a badly folded shirt, a rectangular box and a small waterproof wax container.

Taking off the shapeless jacket and sweater he had worn for the crossing, he pulled the shirt he was wearing over his head, sniffed it, and did the same with the clothes from his bag. Checking that enough water had gathered at the foot of the rock, he took what looked like a piece of amber from his waterproof bag. As he was not wearing a vest, the morning air made him shiver, transforming his bare skin into rough citrus peel and his nipples into cherry stones. Contact with water gave the amber fragment a smell of camphor, lard and ash, and as soon as it began to froth he rubbed it under his armpits, round his neck and over his ears. This ritual, restricted though it was, made him feel more comfortable. Running this virtually dry soap over himself seemed to free him from the whole human race and the odour of their bodies, as though Adam, once condemned for earthly evil but now forgiven, had been given a chance to return pure in his nakedness to Eden.

After making an effort to rinse himself, Vincenzo fingered his bristly cheeks. He had long been used to shaving without a mirror, able to recognise the contours of his face from touch. This was how he had discovered how to shave his high cheekbones and strong jaw, and that his razor needed to negotiate a deep cleft in his chin; and how whirlpools of hair swirled on his neck. Now, feeling his face with his left hand, he continued with the other to work the damp soap into a froth, which he spread with quick circular movements over his cheeks. He took his old razor out of its case. It needed sharpening, though if used with care it could still do its job. The main thing was not to shave against the grain and not to overstretch his skin. He had obviously not been able to learn about this from his father, who had scarcely even seen him. He crossed the whirlpool of hair on his chin with ever quicker movements, as if tempted to shake the blade. Since his childhood he had thought of himself as ugly, but there was no point in dwelling on that now. At the orphanage he had been judged a wise child and later a studious youth, so that thanks to Padre Vesnaver, it had even been suggested he might graduate to the local seminary. Everyone expected him to hear the call, and looke. . .