Me Amore

My mum and dad met on the Island during the war.

Antonio, my dad is Italian, he had been captured along with a German unit back when the fighting was still young and sent to the island where they were imprisoned in the hotels and guest houses that had been requisitioned by the war ministry.

It wouldn’t have been so bad.

My mum was a young woman, just beginning to bloom and along with the other islanders were initially nervous about an influx of foreign soldiers, but they soon found out that these young men were very happy to no longer be at the beck and call of commanders in the field of battle. Most would have surrendered to the enemy as soon as possible if they had been sent back to the front line.

Once a week the ‘prisoners’ were escorted to the local cinema where they got to watch propaganda and westerns; my mother was one of the volunteer usherettes and part of her jobs, along with the other young women of the island, was to clean up after the screenings and the men had been returned to their digs.

It didn’t happen at first but after a few weeks the young women started to find notes under the chairs where they were sweeping; some were crude, young men’s frustrated sexual awakenings but once in a while something turned up that was different.

 

Bella Maria

Ascoltami.

Mia amore para ti is profundo like the seas intorno a quest'isola

It is alto come I monti de paradiso, dove ti vedo 

Vieni to mia.

Resta with mia 

Para siempre.

Antonio.

 

The girls, once they had finished giggling, gave it to my mother whose name was Mary and it was the only thing they could understand in the note. My mother took it to the local vicar as she was sure he would understand Latin, but all he could tell her was that he thought it spoke of paradise and isolation, that it was the Devil’s work and that she should burn it and forget it. She didn’t. She slept with it each night under her pillow and tried to imagine which one was Antonio.

 

A month later another note was found:

 

Bella Maria

Ascoltami.

Mia love para ti is profundo like the seas intorno a quest'isola

It is alto like I monti de paradiso, dove ti vedo 

Vieni to me.

Resta with me 

For ever.

Antonio.

 

His English was slowly improving and within the year my mother understood that the stack of letters under her pillow were a declaration of love. By the time the war was over she knew who Antonio was and they were married by the local vicar two days after the armistice. The service was in English.

 

Yet there was always a doubt in my mother’s mind and as she lay dying in a hospital on the mainland in the city they had made their home, she asked my father.

 

‘Anti, tell me, were those notes really for me or for Mary mother of Christ?”

 

Antonio looked at her, his blue eyes reddening with tears, replied: - “Maria, Maria, don’t leave me”, and he took her hand in his and held it against his heart and sobbed. The last words my mother heard were:- “para siempre, para siempre.”

 

He died a week later and I buried them both on the Island in the cemetery next to the abandoned cinema where they first fell in love.

 

 

editor's note - this was previously published in the archives and refers to a different me