Pino sat at the upright piano the Americans had lifted onto the stage and was fiddling nervously with the keys. He hadn’t played in almost a year. But then he let loose with a few chords from each hand and stopped. It was enough.
The crowd began to hoot and call. Pino put his hand to his brow theatrically, looked out at twenty American GIs, a squad of New Zealanders, eight journalists, and at least thirty Milanese women.
“A toast!” Major Knebel shouted, and jumped up onto the stage, holding a glass of wine, spilling some and not caring. He raised his glass. “To the end of war!”
The crowd roared. Corporal Daloia jumped up beside the major and yelled, “To the end of homicidal dictators with weird black bangs and puny square mustaches!”
The soldiers broke into gales of laughter and cheers.
Pino was laughing, too, but he managed to translate for the women, who shouted their approval and raised their glasses. Carletto gulped his wine in one long belt that finished in a lip smack that left him grinning.
Cracking his drum sticks, Carletto yelled, “Eight to the bar, Pino!”
His arms, elbows, wrists, and hands held high, his fingers dangling over the keys, Pino started with high notes, tinkling before he brought in the bass in a bouncy rhythm that rolled over into one of those tunes he used to practice before the bombing began.
This time it was a variation of “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie,” pure dance hall music.
The crowd went wild, and wilder still when Carletto went to the brushes and the cymbals, and the bass joined in on top of him. Soldiers started grabbing the Italian girls and dancing swing style, talking through their hands, knees bopping, hips shaking, and spinning. Other soldiers in the room stood around the dancers, nervously looking at the women, or standing in place, drink in one hand and the index finger of the other hand wagging time, hips swaying and shoulders popping along with Pino’s wicked boogie tune. Every once in a while, one of them would scream just for the drunken hell of it.
The clarinetist played a solo. So did the sax man and the trombonist. The music died to clapping and shouts for more. The trumpet player stepped forward and slayed the house, blew the opening of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”
Many of the GIs sang the lyrics by heart, and the dancing got frenzied as the other soldiers drank, cheered, and brayed, and danced and drank more and fell away into the sheer fun of letting go. When Pino brought the song to an end, the sweating crowd of dancers cheered and stomped their feet.
“More!” they shouted. “Encore!”
Pino was drenched with sweat, but he didn’t think he’d ever felt this happy. The only thing missing was Anna. She’d never seen Pino play a note. She would have fainted. He laughed at that image and then thought of Mimo. Where was he? Still fighting the Nazis?
He felt a little guilty about celebrating while his younger brother was out being a warrior, but then looked back at Carletto, who was pouring himself another generous glass of wine and smiling like a fool.
“C’mon, Pino,” Carletto said. “Give ’em what they want.”
“Okay!” Pino shouted to the crowd. “But the piano player needs a drink! Grappa!”
Someone rushed up a glass of the liquor. Pino downed it and nodded to Carletto, who cracked his sticks. And they were off again, pumping the boogie-woogie with Pino messing around with every example he’d ever heard or practiced.
“1280 Stomp.” “Boogie Woogie Stomp.” “Big Bad Boogie Woogie.”
The crowd loved all of it. He’d never had this much fun in his life and suddenly understood why his parents adored having musicians at their parties.
When they took a break around eleven that night, Major Knebel reeled up to him and said, “Outstanding, soldier. Just outstanding!”
“You had fun?” Pino said, grinning.
“Best damned party ever, and it’s just getting started. One of your girls lives close by, and she swears her daddy’s got all sorts of booze in his basement.”
Pino noticed a few couples leaving the ballroom holding hands and heading upstairs. He smiled and went for some water and wine.
Carletto came over, threw his arm around Pino, and said, “Thank you for knocking me on my ass this afternoon.”
“What are friends for?”
“Friends always?”
“To the day we die.”
The first woman Pino invited to the party walked up and said, “You’re Pino?”
“That’s right. What’s your name?”
“Sophia.”
Pino held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Sophia. Having a good time?”
“So much fun, but I can’t speak English.”
“A few of the soldiers, like Corporal Daloia over there, speak Italian. The others? Just dance, and smile, and let your body speak the language of love.”
Sophia laughed. “You make it sound easy.”
“I’ll be watching,” Pino said before heading back to the stage.
He had another shot of grappa, and they went at it again, boogie-woogie, holding it, and then messing around, and then boogie-woogie again; and the crowd stomping and dancing. At midnight, he glanced at the dance floor and saw Sophia doing back bends and spins with Corporal Daloia, who was grinning ear to ear.
Things could not have gotten better.
Pino had another grappa and then another, and played on and on, smelling the sweat of the dancers and the perfume of the women, all melding into a musk that made him drunk in yet another way. Around two it all became a blur and then black.
Six hours later, on the morning of Friday, April 27, 1945, Pino woke up on the hotel kitchen floor with a splitting headache and a foul stomach. He made it to the bathroom and vomited, which made his stomach better, and his headache worse.
Pino looked out into the ballroom, seeing people sprawled everywhere: in chairs, on tables, on the floor. Carletto was on his back, arm over his face, on the stage behind his drums. Major Knebel was curled up on a couch. Corporal Daloia was on another couch, spooning with Sophia, which made Pino smile through a yawn.
He thought of his own bed and how good it would be to sleep the hangover off there rather than here on a hard floor. He guzzled some water and left the Hotel Diana, heading more or less due south toward Porta Venezia and the public gardens. It was a spectacular day, clear blue and as warm as June.
Within a block of leaving the hotel Pino saw the first body, facedown in the gutter, gunshot to the back of the head. In the next block, he saw three dead. Eight blocks later, he saw five. Two of them were Black Shirt Fascists, by their uniform. Three were in nightclothes.