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Since Mussolini caved in to Hitler’s pressure in ’38, Lidia has been reminded of her Jewishness constantly by restrictions and regulations that circumscribe her daily life. The race laws are an insulting, but temporary, a
She rummages through the mending basket and slips another stocking over the darning egg. “Tranquillo is a good man,” she admits, making her voice carry. “He was a great support to me when your father died, but I have never met anyone so inaccurately named! He believes every story the refugees tell him. I’m sure they’ve suffered, but honestly? I think they exaggerate. Understandable, of course. Makes them feel more worthy of charity. Saves their pride.”
Suspiciously jaunty, Renzo returns, with a silver cigarette case she’s never seen before. Casually, he snaps it open and offers the contents to her. “A gift from my new German friend. He’s decided to quit smoking. He’s got a terrible cough.”
Shamefaced, she puts her mending aside and reaches for a cigarette, resting a hand on her son’s wrist as he leans over with a match. She smells liquor on his breath, but this is not the time for a lecture on vice. “How long have you known?”
“That you smoke? Since 1926.”
Machine-made and elegant, the cigarette is a slim and perfect package of oral gratification, nothing like the harsh Italian tobacco people roll in squares of newspaper these days. “This is wonderful,” she murmurs.
“American.” Renzo props his hips against the credenza. “The Germans confiscated a smuggler’s boat off the coast of Rome. Remember the mafiosi Mussolini jailed down in Sicily? The Allies thought they were political prisoners and let everybody out. They’re robbing Patton blind and selling the stuff up here. Cigarettes, oranges, blankets, coffee.”
His voice is light, but Lidia is paying attention. “What else did you find out?”
Renzo turns toward the mirror, smoke curling around his face as he tilts his head from side to side to inspect his temples. “Do you think I’m losing my hair? I don’t mind going gray, but bald—”
“Renzo, caro,” Lidia says wearily, “don’t be an ass.”
He gets a heavy crystal ashtray from the kitchen and brings it to the table. “Tranquillo’s right about the occupation. Schramm thinks Hitler will take the armistice as a personal insult, and he’ll make Italy pay.”
“Then Jews won’t be singled out. We’ll all be in it together.”
“Mamma, the Germans have something like a hundred thousand troops on the peninsula now. Schramm says Kesselring got his men out of Sicily and onto the mainland last month. No matter what Radio London says, that wasn’t a rout.” He taps off a coil of ash. “The Germans expected Badoglio to switch sides— they’ve put eight more divisions into Italy since July. Hitler pulled troops away from the eastern front— that’s where Schramm served. Hausser’s panzer corps took horrendous casualties at Kursk, but those units are back up to strength now, Mamma, and Schramm says their officers are excellent.”
They smoke silently for a few moments, Lidia adjusting her opinions, Renzo watching dust dance on a thin shaft of morning light. “I won’t see Schramm again,” he says. “He only knows my first name. Even so…”
“It was foolhardy, but that kind of information is valuable.” Lidia stubs her cigarette out delicately and sets the rest aside for later. “The resistance will need to know what the situation is.”
“The resistance!” He snorts. “Eleven boys in Cuneo printing an underground paper? Six Communists in Milan painting ‘Death to Fascism’ on a wall?” He shakes his head. “Mamma, I just spent three years locked up with hundreds of dissidents representing several thousand political parties. I’ve seen more organization in an alleyful of cats.”
“There were strikes all over the north last spring, Renzo. Huge antiwar demonstrations. I marched in one myself.” He gapes at her. “It was the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done. Twenty-two years of fascism. That squalid little colonial war in Abyssinia— and then an alliance with the Germans, of all people. Five years of being treated like a second-class citizen. My only son in prison! To go out in the sunlight and join with thousands of others and shout, No more!” Her needle stabs at the darning egg, and the edges of a hole draw tight. “We shut the factories down, Renzo. We ran Mussolini out of power.”
“We’ve got a Bolshevik in the family, all right, but it’s not me.”
“There weren’t only leftists in those marches, Renzo! There were royalists, Catholic Action people. The Communists will probably run things,” she concedes. “They’re the only ones organized for an effective opposition. But the whole country’s sick to death of fascism, and everyone hates the Germans for dragging us into this war. Everyone hates the Germans, full stop,” she mutters, biting off the thread. “They’ve always been the enemy! And now there’ll be soldiers, and we’ll fight—”
The ashtray shatters against a wall. Open-mouthed, Lidia stares at the glittering pieces.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He is on his feet, his eyes opaque. Turning his back on her, Renzo crosses to the window. A fragment of breeze finds its way in from the sea. The curtains flutter weakly. His fingers tap the shutter’s framework in time to some i
Abyssinia, she thinks. It always comes back to Abyssinia!
The bronze bells of San Giobatta ring eight. She withstands the chilly silence as long as she can. “All right,” she says evenly. “We know what we are not going to do. I won’t oblige the Nazis by disappearing. You won’t fight. We are left with Tolstoy’s question: what then shall we do?”
He speaks without facing her. “Go back to bed?”
“That’s a plan,” Lidia admits drily, “though not quite as ambitious as I had envisioned.”
His fingers curl into a fist that he touches to the woodwork, once, twice, gently. He backs away from the window and stumbles over a low table covered with books. “This place is a mess!”
“Signor Mussolini is welcome to clean it himself.”
When he returns from his bedroom, the remains of the ashtray have disappeared, and she is back to her mending as though nothing has happened. “That shirt came out well,” she observes. It was his father’s. Renzo lost weight in prison, and she had to cut it down, but the fabric was a pleasure to work with. Checking the collar in the credenza’s mirror, Renzo knots his tie. “You’re rather overdressed for a nap,” she notes.
He shakes out a linen jacket. “I’m going to apply for a job.”
“Really?” she remarks, brows lifted. It’s illegal for Catholics to employ Jews, and for Jews to own businesses, but getting around the race laws is a popular Italian sport. “What sort of job?”
He jerks his shirt cuffs down to provide a centimeter of reveal. “I met a man in prison whose cousin is a member of the Dairy Association. They need drivers. If you can keep a truck with a gasogene rig ru
“Get him to pay you in cheese. I can trade it on the black market.” She peers over her spectacles. “You do realize that milkmen are expected to be out of bed before noon?”
He turns from the mirror and smiles at her brightly. “Mamma, you and I have two additional tasks before us this morning, and you may have your choice: clean this apartment, or seduce a priest.”
Serenely, she surveys the domestic chaos around her. “How old is the priest?”
Downstairs, the rabbi’s wife props her aching back against the open door and bids each member of the minyan a good day as he leaves. “Buon giorno,” the first seven say, adding, “B’sha’ah tova! May the child be born at a lucky hour!”
Bald and bent, the eighth to leave is Giacomo Tura, but he takes his time about it. With hands twisted by a lifetime of gripping pens and brushes, the widowed scribe waves arthritic fingers over Mirella Soncini’s swollen belly. His rheumy eyes rise slowly, lingering on her breasts before arriving at her wry and smiling face. “Mirella! Chè faccia bella!” he sings in a raspy tenor. “If you weren’t a married woman, O Dio! I’d make you mine!”