“You’re full of it.”
“I am not,” Pino said. “Where do you think I got this?”
He peeled off the bandage, and Carletto’s lip rose in disgust. “That’s nasty.”
With Mr. Beltramini’s permission, they went to see the theater in the light of day. As they walked, Pino told the story all over again, watching his friend’s reaction and feeding off it, dancing around when he described Fred and Rita, and making booming noises as he related how he and Mimo ran through the city.
He was feeling pretty good until they reached the cinema. Smoke still curled from the ruins, and with it a harsh, foul stench that Pino would come to identify instantly as spent explosives. Some people in the streets around the theater seemed to wander aimlessly. Others still dug through the bricks and beams, hoping to find loved ones alive.
Shaken by the destruction, Carletto said, “I could never have done any of what you and Mimo did.”
“Sure you could. When you’re scared enough, you just do it.”
“Bombs falling on me? I would have hit the floor and curled up with my hands over my head.”
There was silence between them as they contemplated the theater’s charred and blown-out back wall. Fred and Rita had been right there, nine meters high, and then— “Think the planes will come back tonight?” Carletto asked.
“We won’t know until we hear the hornets.”
Chapter Four
Allied planes came for Milan almost every night the rest of June and on into July of 1943. Building upon building crumpled and threw dust that billowed down the streets and lingered in the air long after the sun rose bloodred and cast down merciless heat to deepen the misery of those first few weeks of the bombardment.
Pino and Carletto wandered the streets of Milan almost every day, seeing the random carnage, witnessing the loss, and sensing the pain that seemed to be everywhere. After a while, it all made Pino feel numb and small. Sometimes he just wanted to follow Carletto’s instincts, to curl into a ball and hide from life.
Almost every day, however, he thought of Anna. He knew it was stupid, but he frequented the bakery where he’d seen her first, hoping to run into her again. He never saw her, and the baker’s wife had no idea whom he was talking about when he asked.
On June 23, Pino’s father sent Mimo to Casa Alpina in the rugged Alps north of Lake Como for the rest of the summer. He tried to send Pino as well, but his older son refused. As a boy and a young teenager, Pino had loved Father Re’s camp. He’d spent three months up at Casa Alpina every year since the age of six, two full months in the summer climbing in the mountains, and a cumulative month skiing in the winter. Being at Father Re’s was great fun. But the boys up there now would be so young. He wanted to be in Milan, out in the streets with Carletto, and looking for Anna.
The bombing intensified. On July 9, the BBC described the Allied landing on the shores of Sicily and fierce fighting against the German and Fascist forces. Ten days later, Rome was bombed. News of that raid sent a shudder through Italy, and the Lella household.
“If Rome can be bombed, then Mussolini and the Fascists are finished,” Pino’s father proclaimed. “The Allies are driving the Germans from Sicily. They’ll attack southern Italy, too. It will soon be over.”
In late July, Pino’s parents put a record on the phonograph and danced in the middle of the day. King Vittorio Emanuele III had arrested Benito Mussolini and imprisoned him in a fortress on Gran Sasso Mountain north of Rome.
By August, though, entire blocks of Milan lay in ruins. And the Germans were everywhere, installing antiaircraft guns, checkpoints, and machine gun nests. A block from La Scala, a garish Nazi flag fluttered over the Hotel Regina.
Gestapo Colonel Walter Rauff established curfews. If you were caught out after hours, you were arrested. If you were caught breaking curfew without papers, you could be shot. Having a shortwave would also get you shot.
Pino didn’t care. At night, he hid in his closet to listen to music and the news. And during the day, he began to adapt to the new order in Milan. The trolleys ran only intermittently. You walked, rode a bike, or hitched a ride.
Pino chose the bike and went all over the city despite the heat, going through various checkpoints and learning what the Nazis looked for when they stopped him. Long sections of road had been reduced to craters, and he had to walk around them or find another route. Riding on, he passed families living under canvas tarps amid the brick ruins of their homes.
He realized how lucky he was. He sensed for the first time how that could change in the blink of an eye, or the flash of a bomb. And he wondered if Anna had survived.
In early August, Pino finally understood why the Allies were bombing Milan. A BBC announcer said that the Allies had all but destroyed the Nazi industrial base in the Ruhr Valley, where much of Hitler’s munitions had been built. Now they were attempting to blow up the machine tools of northern Italy before the Germans could use them to prolong the war.
The nights of August 7 and 8, British Lancasters dropped thousands of bombs on Milan, targeting factories, industrial facilities, and military installations, but also hitting the neighborhoods around them.
When bombs exploded close enough to make the Lellas’ building tremble, Porzia panicked and tried to get her husband to take them all to Rapallo on the west coast.
“No,” Michele said. “They won’t bomb near the cathedral. It’s still safe here.”
“All it takes is one,” Porzia said. “I’m taking Cicci, then.”
Pino’s father was sad but determined. “I’ll stay and keep the business going, but I think it’s time for Pino to go to Casa Alpina.”
Pino refused a second time.
“It’s for little boys, Papa,” Pino said. “I’m not little anymore.”
On August 12 and 13, more than five hundred Allied bombers attacked Milan. For the first time explosives struck close to the Duomo. One damaged the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie but miraculously did no harm to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
La Scala was not as fortunate. A bomb blew through the roof of the opera house and exploded, setting the theater on fire. Another bomb struck the Galleria, which suffered extensive damage. That same detonation rocked the Lellas’ building. Pino waited out that horrible night in the basement.