The Italian Romance, page 6
She was playing a tune from an American movie. She could do that, easily enough, or Schubert or Chopin or even Liszt. It wasn’t true that Rachel lived her whole life at the piano, but she’d spent an inordinate amount of time there over the past year or so. She didn’t stop now, though she was speaking to her son as Sonia entered. She was saying, ‘You should have brought her, Jacob. She needs the fresh air. It’s getting so hot down there in town...’ and she closed her eyes and began to hum.
‘Hello, darling!’ she said suddenly. ‘Are you all right, my lamb? Look at her, Papa, she’s so pale.’
‘I’m fine, Mama,’ Sonia said.
His gaze fell on his daughter from where he stood in a huddle with Jacob, and he said, ‘She looks all right to me.’
Her mother raised her eyebrows. ‘Ah, well,’ she said, bemused at the world. She brought the Hollywood song to a crescendo and finished it off with a few downward chords.
Her father, noting his wife’s temporary distraction, winked at his daughter. Sonia smiled like a naughty little child. He left Jacob and came across the room to her. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her in to him. He kissed her cheek with a loud smack and enfolded her further so that he could pat her back as he used to do. ‘Are you all right, Princess?’ he asked her.
‘Very well, Papa,’ she said. She disengaged herself, but she was flushed, pleased at his affection. She unbuttoned her glove and pinched it off, finger by finger. ‘I have good news. I received a letter today.’
‘Now!’ her father said. ‘Now, didn’t I tell you not to worry. See, Mama. I told you.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ Rachel said. She held her hands to her cheeks. ‘What does he say?’
‘He begs to extend his regards to you all,’ she said. ‘And he hopes for a speedy end to the war.’
Her father’s eyes made her look away. He said, ‘As we all do.’
‘And he’s well?’ Rachel said.
‘Very well. They treat them with courtesy ... He says it is cold.’ She touched at her hair. They were silent, waiting.
‘So. That is England for you,’ her father said at last. ‘Let us have coffee. Where’s Maria?’
Rachel, her hands useless now on her lap, said, ‘This terrible war. What are they all doing? It’s ridiculous.’ She lifted a hand to her hair, too, and combed her fingers up under the bounce of curl over her ear.
‘It’s not that bad,’ her father said. He walked to his chair, a soft-pillowed armchair covered in striped silk. He sat down and crossed his legs. ‘Not that bad,’ he said again. And just as he did, the young maid, dressed neatly in a black dress with a little white starched collar, bobbed into a curtsey at the door.
‘Excuse me, Signori,’ she said timidly, ‘may I ask if you would like refreshments now?’
Sonia caught the girl’s eye and nodded to her. The girl dropped another curtsey.
‘Prego, Maria,’ her father said.
‘Some rolls with it, if you don’t mind, Maria,’ Rachel said. She looked across the room to her son. ‘You must be hungry.’
Sonia addressed the girl. ‘Are the boys in the kitchen?’
‘Yes, Signora. Ruth is giving them some pasta.’
Sonia nodded.
The girl looked at the gentleman, but he was busy with a fingernail between his two lower teeth. She gazed then over at Rachel, who was leafing through a stack of music sheets balanced on the edge of the piano.
Sonia said to her, ‘Thank you.’
The girl, in her haste to escape, bumped into the sharp edge of the door. Sonia made a step towards her. No one else seemed to notice. The girl rubbed at her forehead and walked out, a little more slowly, into the hallway. When Sonia heard her steps fade, she said, ‘Who’s that?’
Her brother was leaning his hands on the windowsill. He seemed to be examining the garden immediately below him.
‘Who?’ her father said. He was using his tongue now to dislodge a remnant of lunch. Sonia was about to say, ‘The new maid,’ when he said, ‘Oh, the new girl. Maria. Susanna left.’
‘Oh, no. Why?’
Rachel said, ‘Some nonsense about the Germans. She’s gone to Sicily to get away from them.’ She raised her brows again, and shook her head.
‘Little Maria is Guiseppe Tucci’s daughter. You remember her, Son,’ her father said to her. ‘She was born the year before Gianni, same day. Nervous little thing.’
‘Who’s in Sicily?’
‘No, it’s Sardinia,’ Jacob announced from the window. ‘Family connections. You know young Matteo Levi was killed.’
‘Ssh,’ Rachel said. She put a finger to her lips.
Her father whispered, ‘Partisans.’
‘Oh, no,’ Sonia said to her father, also in a whisper.
He nodded.
‘He was a good man,’ Jacob said. He turned around and sat on the wide windowsill. He looked at his shoes.
‘Poor Susanna,’ Sonia said. ‘Was she all right?’
‘Poor darling,’ Rachel said. She sighed, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’
Her father said, ‘Ah, she was terribly upset, wasn’t she, my dear? Poor child. They should have married a few months ago, as they’d intended. But then he got hooked up with all this business. Too late now.’
‘Too late,’ Rachel said. ‘Take life when it comes, that’s what you learn.’ She tapped the sheets of music against her thighs to straighten them.
Jacob said again, ‘He was a good man.’
‘I just don’t know who he thought he was fighting,’ the older man said. His face was creased in struggle with this incomprehensible problem.
Rachel held up a finger to her lips. ‘Ssh, Primo, ssh,’ she said.
He lowered his voice obediently. ‘We’re all Italians, aren’t we? Why turn on each other?’
Sonia looked at Jacob. She was not unintelligent. But she had long ceased to wonder at the world and its doings, and now she could not understand it at all. Her brother raised his brows, just like their mother, and turned his back on them to examine the snail or the troupe of ants or whatever was causing such intrigue outside the window. She’d felt safe in this house, always. And always her father’s presence, his deep voice and his smell of cigar and cologne, had given her all she needed to rid the world of demons. But not today. And she didn’t know why.
Her mother said, ‘The Americans and the British are coming. That will put the cat among the pigeons.’ She half-rose to straighten her skirt. ‘Mark my words.’
‘Mark your words?’ Primo said. ‘Mark your words? What do you mean by that? You’ll have to stop listening to all this gossip, Rachel. I told you.’
‘Well, you may call it idle gossip but everyone else seems to know it’s a well known fact what these Germans are doing to Jews. Everyone knows.’ She displayed her palms to the air, astonished at her husband’s recalcitrance. It was a game they played.
Primo looked at Sonia. A smile of conspiracy brightened his eyes, and he nodded his head in the direction of his wife, shrugged his shoulders. Sonia was supposed to smile in return. But her gaze was restless. She looked at Jacob’s back, at the cold marble fireplace. She thought she heard something. ‘Is that the boys?’ she asked. She walked to the door.
‘Sit down, Sonia, sit down. You’re making me seasick,’ her father said to her.
Suddenly Jacob said, ‘All right, then, why did you ask us to come over? What’s worrying you, if you’re so unworried about ... everything?’ He seemed to run out of steam at the end, unused to speaking with disrespect to his father. ‘Sorry, Papa, but I am worried for my wife and my children. Sonia’s all right, she’s a Christian and her son’s a Christian, and her husband is Italian.’
‘As are you,’ Primo said.
‘I don’t mean to disregard you, Son,’ Jacob said. His own big, dark eyes looked at her with fear that he’d gone too far with her, too.
‘No, no,’ she said. She wanted to walk down to the kitchen, to ensure for herself that the boys were ensconced around the kitchen table, with huge plates of steaming pasta and sauce in front of them.
Jacob continued, ‘But it’s true, Papa, you know it. She’s safe because of Francesco. My wife and my son and my daughters...’ He raised his hands to his head. ‘What might happen?’
‘Oh, enough!’ Primo clapped, just once. ‘This is what I mean. Listening to gossip, ridiculous gossip.’ He cast a glance at his wife which was meant to cut the feet from under her. She did indeed seem struck by his admonition. She pulled her shoulders up almost to her ears. Primo got to his feet after a fight with the down-filling of the cushions under him. ‘No more of it, do you understand? Do you believe little green men will land out there in the garden? Then why believe such arrant nonsense? Number one,’ he said, holding his digit finger, ‘if the Allies invade, Mussolini will no doubt see the good sense in declaring a peace. After all, he’s done well for this country. Why would he want to see it destroyed? Number two, if there are prisons of some kind, either (a) they are for political opponents of the regime and after all, though I may not like it, in times of war extreme measures may be taken to safeguard the state, and (b) if they are, in fact, internment camps for Jews, we will find that is all they are. Internment. After all, I was in Berlin myself fifteen, twenty years ago.’
‘Yes, Papa,’ Jacob said, ‘but not recently. You wouldn’t get out with your life these days.’
Primo batted his hand at his son as if he were shooing away an absurd little fly. ‘Where is this coffee?’ he said. He walked to the door and peered out. As he came back, he stroked his daughter’s hair. ‘Don’t listen to him, little one. Your papa is here.’ He kissed her forehead. Sonia flushed again, the whitened anxiety of the past minutes eased away. He turned to his son and to his wife. ‘Let us agree to disagree, eh? You were always the serious thinker, Jacob. Thank the Lord for it, eh Rachel? We have a son to keep us on the straight and narrow in our old age.’ He rubbed his hands, two iron files flinting together.
‘So why did you ring this morning, Papa?’ Jacob would not let it go. Sonia felt for him. He was not serious in any damp way. She knew him better than almost anyone, and she hurt for him that their father’s words irritated a thorn caught in him since boyhood. Jacob stood straight now. The afternoon light shadowed him long across the rug. His hands bulged in the pockets of his jacket.
‘Why, why, why? Can’t a father see his children once in a while?’ Primo looked at Rachel. ‘What is this, the Inquisition?’ Rachel smiled and bent her head this side and that. She was still beautiful to him, and infuriating.
‘No, Papa, this isn’t the Inquisition,’ Jacob said. Sonia’s blood quickened at the quiet anger in his voice. She did not want anger. ‘I know you heard the BBC last night, just as I did.’
Her father’s face changed. He walked over to his chair to sit down, but he reconsidered and turned to them. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to say and it’s this.’ He glanced at Rachel but she had taken to moistening her finger, to leaf through the sheets on her lap. ‘If by any rare chance, and I stress the unlikelihood,’ he said as he shifted his glance to Jacob, ‘things go badly wrong over the next few months, we will talk again, all of us. If need be, you will all come here, and together we will be safe. I will talk to the Mayor, and to certain others. You especially, Sonia, as your husband is not here to protect you, will come immediately if there is an invasion. In fact, I wish you and Gianni would come now. I don’t know what delight you take in staying down there all on your own when you know your mother is so worried about you.’
‘Oh, Papa,’ Sonia said almost silently, and she saw her brother look straight at her.
Primo clicked his tongue. ‘I don’t understand you young people these days.’
‘It was the family before,’ Rachel said. ‘Nobody seems to care anymore.’
‘Ah, well,’ Primo continued, ‘that’s all I have to say. And please try to remember, up to a handful of years ago I was a member of the Party. I know enough people, the Mayor, many others. That’s all I have to say.’ He looked at Jacob as he spoke. Jacob listened, waited, and finally bowed his head.
Sonia tugged delicately at the neck of her blouse; she felt there wasn’t enough air in the stuffy drawing room. ‘I’ll just see where ... Maria’s got to,’ she said.
Her mother stilled, glanced up at her. Sonia caught her eye as she turned to leave the room, and walked away quickly. As she closed the door behind her, she heard her father’s voice raised in some pleasant distraction now, some amusing story to soften Jacob’s surrender.
The large mirror in the hallway captured a perfect still-life: the afternoon sun drew silent shadows of the rosewood bureau on the papered wall, and yet glossed light reflected in the buffed bulging of its rounded edges; a vase of Lady-fern was etched in tender green, more tender, more mysteriously green in its mirrored self than in its own duller nature. As Sonia leaned over the high-backed chair to pick up her handbag, the fall of her hair caught the light too and glowed in the mirror, but she did not see it.
She sat down, slowly, opened the clasp again. She’d been waiting for months for the letter. Every day she’d listened for the slow, rhythmic wheeling of the postman’s bicycle, held her breath as Alphonso’s voice drifted up from the back door. And this morning she’d come running down the stairs, had tried to slow when she’d noticed Berta through the half-opened doorway of the sitting room; the other woman glanced up from her work, the bottle of furniture polish grasped in her hand, the tang of oil and lavender around her. Berta, too, had spotted the young Rinelli lad a minute or so before, his head bobbing above the green hedge. She heard the Signora’s high-heels clatter onto the stone floor of the kitchen, and she shook her head. She rubbed at a smear on the glass-like surface of the side table.
Sonia had stood motionless then; a pot of water simmered on the range, waiting for pasta. She saw them framed outside in the bright light of the kitchen garden. The boy’s bicycle rested against the yellowed wall. She did not want to intrude too soon on Alphonso’s enquiries, the important snippets of news, the goings-on. The postman was as good as the wireless these days. Better, even.
Alphonso had turned. He made the doorway dark. As he came towards her the Rinelli boy peeked in, smiling, eager. Her heart thumped very hard.
‘A letter,’ Alphonso had said. The smell of his sweat became hugely strong as he approached. She held out her hand. He hadn’t shaved that day, or for a few days perhaps, and his stubble was grey. His blade, mysteriously, was missing.
He’d slid the envelope between her thumb and fingers. He said again, ‘A letter.’
And now, as Sonia sat facing the huge, gilded mirror, holding the letter in her right hand which was shaking, strangely, and her eyes fell again on the elegance of his script, the brevity of the note, the perfect politeness of it, and on the ink-smudged word where one of her tears must have dropped as she’d first read it, some awful truth that she had not wanted to hear whispered from deep inside herself, water against stone. It rose like a wave. He was not hers. She was not his, no matter what she did, nor what passions she endured for his sake.
I thought I’d be late for the bushman and I caught a taxi to make up the time. Here I am now, five minutes early. I’m glad the young fellow showed me to a table near the pond. The tortoises move so slowly that I’m beginning to breathe calmly myself. I smooth my fingers across the almost imperceptible damask pattern of the white tablecloth. The black tortoise, repugnant little head, has been struggling to get up on that stone since I arrived. His pathetic neck bobs this way, that way. Now his mistress, a fast mover by comparison, has climbed on his back and he loses his tentative grip. He slides back. He’s afloat in the water. He’s better off, from the look of him, approaching grace even. He swims so slowly towards that damn stone. God knows what it is that appeals to him. His own crust, the egg-shell on his back, is infinitely more fascinating, curlicues and spirals, and a depth of black that’s so engrossing I am tempted to pick him up and run my fingers over its hills and valleys. I wonder how long he has been around.
I am deeply embarrassed about what happened on the phone this morning. People forget things in time, that’s to be borne in mind. He’ll be terrified of me now – don’t mention the war, seems to be the best solution.
Here he comes. He’s standing at the doorway to the courtyard, looking around; my young waiter is pointing me out. He can’t quite see me with the sun in his eyes.
‘Over here,’ I say. I wave my fingers above my head like an octopus.
He, meanwhile, looks like a bus has run over him. I presume I know the signs, though I am surprised it got to him quite so much and quite so quickly.
‘Sorry, Lilian, couldn’t get a taxi,’ he says. The chair grinds on the flagstones as he pulls it out. ‘Oh, God, good to sit down.’
‘Did you walk?’ I say, surprised.
‘Had to. Thought I’d be quicker than waiting. Bloody hot.’
‘I’m not surprised you’re hot.’ I reach for his glass and the decanter. ‘Here. Have some water.’
He combs his fingers through his hair. He’s not one to run to baldness. It looks remarkably as if those fingers are the first grooming his hair has had all day. He has shaved for the occasion, about two minutes before he left his room, I’d say. He’s nicked himself on the neck. I’m beginning to feel better.
He downs the entire glassful. ‘That’s better,’ he says and slowly pats his forehead with the folded linen napkin. ‘Beautiful spot.’ He can see below us a villa and its roof terrace, and geometric trees ranging down the hill. And a view of the Spanish Steps that I like very much, just a run of steps from here, that’s all, quiet, the way it used to be years ago.
‘I like it,’ I say. ‘I particularly like the tortoises.’
He looks at the pond. ‘Good Lord,’ he says. ‘They don’t eat them, do they?’
‘I recognise that black fellow from the last time I was here, so they mustn’t.’
‘He looks a bit ancient, all right. Have you ordered?’
I hand him a menu from beside my place. ‘No, but I know what I’m having.’
