“Tonight?” Annamarie shrugged and tried to smile. “I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?”
“Good. We’re going to announce our engagement to my parents. They’ll say we’re young, Annamarie, and that’s fine. The Colonel will let me move in here, and though Grandmother will not allow us to live together in the same room, I’ll at least be near you, and that should make it more bearable. And then? Next year we can get married. Next year I should be employed by the Colonel and have a salary.”
“You want to marry me?” Her thoughts raced in all directions, and she felt dizzy. Seventeen. She would be seventeen in two months, seventeen next January. Her parents. Mother and Papa would not be invited to the wedding. Of course, they couldn’t be. Her brothers. Would she ever see them again? She felt as if she were on the end of a ball of wool, unravelling, falling away from them all. Then she heard Papa say, You make your bed… Would Marco take her to Rome so that she could really become an actress? Why was he suddenly so keen on her?
That final niggling question did not go any further, for Marco was in front of her, kneeling on the edge of the bed, and pushed her back down again. This time gently. This time with a cautious look on his face, with a questioning glance at her, asking for permission this time. His hands were on her breasts again, and this time, she arched her back for him, though she still felt achy and nauseated. A few minutes later, she watched as he put a rubber sleeve onto his organ, terrified again, but not like before.
He seemed confident to her as he did it. “So we won’t have babies, Annamarie. We can’t have any babies now.”
This time, when he was on top of her, she tried to understand what they were doing.
***
A fterwards, Marco got dressed and stood before Annamarie in his underpants and was showing his scars. “This is what it means to soldier for Il Duce.”
He showed her the marks on his knees, his thighs, the back of his arms, his forehead. “Here’s what happened when I scaled the wall. Here, crawling under barbed wire. And this was from a fight in the bar.”
He grinned at her from where she stood before the mirror, mending the buttons of her blouse. She tied off the white thread.
“Are you going to the training now?” he asked.
“Just the final assembly. I’ve missed the gymnastics and physical training today.” She still felt dazed. She’d already been through enough physical activity, and Marco had spent the last quarter of an hour comparing what the training at the GUF was like compared to what the young men did. Their training, he said, was modelled on those of Arditi soldiers. Set as steel, advancing on hands and knees in front of razing machine gun fire. Waiting, open eyed, for a crossbeam to move sideways over their heads. He called it the school for physical courage and patriotism.
For her, the weekend Fascist pioneer camps meant practising wartime nursing, though they too splashed through mud and took strenuous exercise. The women, however, would never be sent to the front lines. Filipa Conti said, “You are the donna madre: patriot, floridly robust, tranquil, prolific. Women are the bearers of numerous children, the mother of soldiers, and the procreators of the race. You are the Fascists of tomorrow.”
Annamarie wondered about the rubber thing Marco used. Was that allowed then? Was it not their obligation to have children? Wasn’t the church and the state in the middle of such debates now?
Marco was dressed before she finished washing herself. His black shirt, his black trousers, the tie. She stood on the other side of the bed, looking at the wrinkled bed linens as she tied the black ascot and slipped on the sensible black loafers. She adjusted her cap, looked in the mirror, and wondered if she looked different now. She remembered what they were to do tonight.
“Marco, I have nothing to wear for your parents’ party,” she said. She did not have the heart to go to Francesca again.
“I’ll arrange for something.” He came to her and kissed her neck. “Can you come to the villa yourself?”
She agreed and kissed him back, more to convince herself this was the right decision.
***
A cross from the church, in the gymnasium hall where the pioneers met, Annamarie fell in with the rest of the troop. They’d been there since just after midday, but she had not had to report for the physical activities today, only for the main assembly. From the high ceilings hung black and white banners, the Italian and Fascist flags, a portrait of Mussolini, larger than life, and the king like a shadow behind him. Someone had pulled down the ropes and set up the mats, the gymnastic rings, and the cracked-leather pommel horse. On the stage, at the far end of the gymnasium, the red velvet curtains were drawn closed. The air was thick with the humid heat of well-exercised bodies.
Filipa Conti called them into line, and the giggling and chattering stopped immediately. Everyone did what Filipa said. After all, her mother, Gina Conti, was the donna madre in Bolzano.
Gemma, Annamarie’s closest friend, was standing near the end of the line but hurried over to be next to Annamarie. She wanted to tell Gemma that she was now engaged to Marco Grimani—had to tell someone—but Filipa turned to the portrait of Il Duce and began singing the national hymn.
Annamarie lightly elbowed Gemma, and when Gemma’s attention was on her, Annamarie puffed out her chest, lifted her chin, jutted out her bottom lip,
