The Secret Messenger. Mandy Robotham

and smell of mould? What will she learn about her family? She wonders, too, if there is an element of fate in her discovery, if today of all days she was meant to find it – to piece it all together in some order, and in turn glue her recently shattered self back together. For the first time in weeks, she feels not defeated or leaden with grief, but lifted a little. Excited.

       2

       The Lion’s Den

       Venice, early December 1943

      I think of that pre-war exchange with Popsa often; the word ‘havoc’ resonates a lot these days, more so after last night’s atrocities in the Jewish ghetto: hundreds rounded up like cattle by Nazi troops and their fascist handmaidens, men and women pulled out of their homes – stoical in the face of their screaming, tear-stained children abandoned behind them – and herded into boats destined first for the prison of Santa Maria Maggiore. To be separated from their families was bad enough, but all of Venice knew their eventual destination, and they did too – east into Germany, to Auschwitz. To an almost certain death.

      I rub the obvious lines around my eyes, hoping to smear away any smut from the fires that continue to smoulder in the ghetto. Having spent the early hours running from house to house across Venice, breathlessly passing messages and false identification papers to those in need of them, the smell of cordite and desperation is still there in my nostrils. If there was any chance to save even a few families from the cull, we – the Resistance – had to try; huddling women and children in the smallest of hiding places, in cupboards and attics. I saw mothers trying desperately to keep their babies quiet, hands cupped over little mouths, the fear of just one cry or murmur etched on their faces. Our partisan leaders were taken by surprise by the Nazis’ sudden strike on the Jewish enclave; as I weaved breathlessly through the warren of alleyways and tiny passages, avoiding the Nazi scrum, staying out of sight of any patrol and their inevitable questions as to why I was out during curfew and where exactly I was going, it felt like we were fighting a losing battle. We worked all night but, in the clear light of day, it’s evident we only succeeded in damage limitation.

      My whole body feels limp and defeated, though I’ve had the luxury at least of returning briefly to my own apartment for an hour’s sleep, a change of clothes and a smear with a wet flannel. Those Jews taken simply for their birthright, born into a religion despised by the Nazis, are now on a cold, inhospitable floor with little respite to look forward to. I am a lucky woman.

      ‘Another espresso?’ Paolo pulls away my empty cup from the counter and pushes a second, full cup in its place, without waiting for an answer. He only has to look at my face, hastily touched with some of the precious make-up I’ve been rationing and a smear of red lipstick. The coffee is welcome, though it isn’t, of course, the sharp but silken blend of pre-war days. Paolo and his father, owners of the café in the square below my apartment since time began, are masters at making the fake coffee – ersatzkaffee – seem Italian at least; the hiss of the gleaming machine, the way Paolo pours it lovingly into the tiny cup with a true flourish. If nothing else, it helps wake me up.

      ‘Good luck, Stella,’ Paolo chimes as I swallow down the coffee and wave goodbye. His parting wink tells me he knows exactly where I’m going.

      I walk the twenty minutes from streets around the Fondamenta Nuove to the Nazi headquarters on the grand central piazza of San Marco, trying to nurture a spring in my step the closer I get to the Platzkommandantur. The bright winter sun rising over the Arsenale helps lift my mood, lending a distinct pinky hue through the smaller canals, from one bridge crossing to another, the milky jade of the water lapping at the red and orange brickwork. Usually, this is the best time of the day for me, when Venice is waking up, stout old women in black optimistically on their way to buy whatever they can in the relatively sparse markets. Today, though, the morning buzz feels dampened as news of the ghetto’s cull winds its way through the city. Soon, each and every café and bar will have talk and opinion, someone will know of another who has been taken – be it relative or colleague. In a city like Venice, the people connect and weave like the canals that are its vital arteries.

      There are few troops – either Nazi or fascist – around at this time of the morning, but we Venetians have been schooled into believing that eyes are everywhere. Despite my true feelings, those of a proud anti-fascist, like my beloved grandfather, I have to look eager as I’m about to enter the enemy’s nerve centre – and not as a prisoner or suspect, but an enthusiastic new member of staff. Automatically, I adjust my mask and take on the look of a grateful collaborator, a Venetian glad to have the protection of our better, bigger German cousins. We Italians have learned to play the part of the poor relation very well. We’ve had years of practice.

      We know what people in the outside world say – that Venetians have had a ‘soft’ war, protected as a kind of oasis because of our city’s beauty and grandeur, its precious art, targeted by the Allied bombers as a place to avoid rather than effect ruin. To some extent it’s true: the classical music still plays in Piazza San Marco, although these days it’s more likely to be the Hermann Goering Regimental Band with its stylistic pomp, replacing any true elegance. The annual celebration of art at the Biennale continues, attracting the rich and beautiful, as well as the Nazi propaganda king in Joseph Goebbels. But tell that to the mothers whose teenage boys were swiftly marched away to Lord knows where as slave labour for the Nazi machine, like a warped playing out of the Pied Piper fable. That early September day only a few months ago is still fresh with me, when the coloured leaflets fluttered from the sky, informing us that the Nazis were coming to conquer our city. To most Venetians – after years of fascist dictatorship under Mussolini – it was simply another coup, another plague. It was followed only days later by the resounding stomp of jackboots on our ancient flagstones, and the Nazis quickly made themselves very comfortable in our requisitioned palaces on the Grand Canal, easing themselves into the bars and outdoor eating places like it was some sort of vacation.

      Venice appears on the surface to be compliant, relenting. But I know different. For all its outward splendour, Venice hides itself well; in deep, dark alleyways, behind the painted green shutters, I know for certain there are hives of activity, thousands working to skew the intricate planning of our unwelcome squatters and claim back our city. For now, we do it quietly. But we aim to be ready.

      It was a heart-stopping moment when I received a message to attend the offices of the German High Command, on one end of the Piazza San Marco. Since the full occupation in September, when the city swarmed with the grey-green troops of the Wehrmacht and the ashen colours of the SS, it’s a place I’ve taken pains to sidestep, going out of my way to avoid walking across the piazza in full view of the young German sentries, bored and eyeing up pretty young Venetian women. On being summoned, I imagined my membership of the anti-fascist Action Party had been discovered or revealed, but, if it had, there would have been no request to attend – more likely a sudden raid by Italian fascist Blackshirts, and a stay in their none too salubrious headquarters at Ca’ Littoria, becoming painfully familiar with their torture methods. We have learned quickly that the Germans are not here to get their hands dirty if at all possible. Only to oversee the annihilation of freedom.

      I have been careful in recent years to publicly align myself with no one in particular, keeping a low profile as a typist in the Venetian works department, the government division responsible for making our fairy-tale city function day to day, even through war. I’d been ‘recommended’ for the job by Sergio Lombardi, a seemingly fine upstanding citizen who, in his other life, is Captain Lombardi, the commander of Venice’s Resistance brigade. The information I gleaned while in the works department proved useful to the partisan groups fighting the Nazis and fascists across the entire Veneto region, though I never imagined it saved lives. When I doubted it, when I itched to do something more useful – more visible – Sergio took pains to reassure me that the detailed knowledge of the city’s workings was vital in helping their troops move undiscovered in and out of Venice. The comprehensive plans I had access to were perfect tools for ghosting Allied soldiers away to safety now the Nazi occupation of Northern Italy made it impossible to move