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.
He saw Carletto the next day. The Beltraminis were heading to a train that would take them out into the countryside for the night to sleep and escape the bombardment. The following afternoon, Pino, his father, Aunt Greta and Uncle Albert, and Tullio Galimberti and his latest girlfriend all joined the Beltraminis in overnight exile.
As the train left the central station and headed east, Pino, Carletto, and Tullio stood in the open door of a boxcar crammed with other Milanese fleeing for the night. The train accelerated. Pino looked at the sky, which was so perfectly blue he couldn’t imagine it black and filled with warplanes.
They crossed the Po River, and long before dusk, while the countryside still lay blanketed in summer torpor, the train squealed and sighed to a stop amid gently rolling farmland. Pino carried a blanket over his shoulder and climbed after Carletto to a low grassy hill above an orchard that faced southwest toward the city.
“Pino,” Mr. Beltramini said, “watch out, or there will be spiderwebs across your ears by morning.”
Mrs. Beltramini, a pretty, frail woman who always seemed to be suffering some malady or another, scolded weakly, “Why did you say that? You know I hate spiders.”
The fruit shop owner fought against a grin. “What are you talking about? I was just warning the boy about the dangers of sleeping with his head in the deep grass.”
His wife looked like she wanted to argue, but then she just waved him away, as if he were some bothersome fly.
Uncle Albert fished in a canvas bag for bread, wine, cheese, and dried salami. The Beltraminis broke out five ripe cantaloupes. Pino’s father sat in the grass next to his violin case, his arms wrapped around his knees and an enchanted look on his face.
“Isn’t it magnificent?” Michele said.
“What’s magnificent?” Uncle Albert said, looking around, puzzled.
“This place. How clean the air is. And the smells. No burning. No bomb stench. It seems so . . . I don’t know. Innocent?”
“Exactly,” Mrs. Beltramini said.
“Exactly what?” Mr. Beltramini said. “You walk a little too far here and it’s not so innocent. Cow shit and spiders and snakes and—”
Whop! Mrs. Beltramini backhand-slapped her husband’s arm. “You show no mercy, do you? Ever?”
“Hey, that hurt,” Mr. Beltramini protested through a smile.
“Good,” she said. “Now stop it, you. I didn’t get a wink of sleep with all that talk of spiders and snakes last night.”
Appearing unaccountably angry, Carletto got up and walked downhill toward the orchard. Pino noticed some girls down by the rock wall that surrounded the fruit grove. Not one of them was as beautiful as Anna. But maybe it was time to move on. He jogged downhill to catch up with Carletto, told him his plan, and they tried to artfully intercept the girls. Another group of boys beat them to it.
Pino looked at the sky and said, “I’m only asking for a little love.”
“I think you’d settle for a kiss,” Carletto said.
“I’d be happy with a smile.” Pino sighed.
The boys climbed over the wall and walked down rows of trees heavy with fruit. The peaches were not quite ripe, but the figs were. Some had already dropped, and they picked them up from the dirt, brushed them off, peeled the skin, and ate them.
Despite the rare treat of fresh fruit right off the tree in a time of rationing, Carletto seemed troubled. Pino said, “You okay?”
His best friend shook his head.
“What is it?” Pino asked.
“Just a feeling.”
“What?”
Carletto shrugged. “Like life isn’t going to turn out the way we think, that it’s going to go badly for us.”
“Why would you think that?”
“You never paid much attention in history class, did you? When big armies go to war, everything gets destroyed by the conqueror.”
“Not always. Saladin never sacked Jerusalem. See? I did pay attention in history class.”
“I don’t care,” Carletto said, angrier still. “It’s just this feeling that I get, and it won’t stop. It’s everywhere and . . .”
His friend choked up, and tears ran down his face while he fought for control.