Turn to Stone

by James W. Ziskin

  I got the hang of it. Before I’d reached Via Boccaccio, I was shifting and accelerating like a pro.

  I made it to Piazza della Libertà in twenty minutes. There, I parked Franco’s Vespa in front of a bank and found a phone booth. The directory inside yielded no Pincherles. Not one. My clever idea was butting up against a major roadblock. But if my years of reporting at the New Holland Republic had taught me anything, it was that closed doors sometimes have a transom overhead or a window off to the side. There was always another path you could try, a different tack, to get around an obstacle. So, standing in a phone booth in Piazza della Libertà, I thought back on what I knew about Giuliana. I recalled a discussion she’d had with Max Locanda about olive and grape presses a couple of days earlier. She’d said her mother’s family had been in the machinery business once upon a time.

  “The company was Dalla Torre Fratelli,” Giuliana had told him.

  I flipped through the directory and came across only one listing, under the name Sra A. Dalla Torre on Via Laura.

  The elderly neighbor woman at the Via Laura address said the signora wasn’t in. She was never in during the day. Instead, she directed me to the nearby synagogue. She said Signora Dalla Torre spent most of her time helping out there. Then she lowered her voice to tell me there wasn’t actually much the old lady could do.

  “It’s more a kindness for her sake than the other way around. She wants to feel useful.”

  “What kind of work does she do there?” I asked.

  “She helps with reading to older congregants. And with donations of books and food. Sometimes she polishes a piece of brass. Other times she watches the little children at the shul. But her hearing’s not good. Mostly she sits and chats about the old days. Before the war. Before the Ventennio.”

  Tempio Maggiore was only a short distance from Via Laura. I approached the synagogue from the north. It loomed large ahead on my left, its green copper dome, flanked by a tower on each side, was visible long before I’d come close. The view from the street took me by surprise. The great synagogue rose before me like a pink Moorish palace. Less than a hundred years old, it nevertheless projected a weighty history. It had been built in the 1870s and was one of the largest synagogues in Southern Europe. Florence counted fewer than 1,500 Jews, yet this magnificent house of worship stood in disproportionate grandeur to its congregation’s size. A true monument to faith and tradition. I wondered how it had survived the German occupation during the war.

  A porter met me at the gate. He knew Signora Dalla Torre and directed me through the garden to an entry on the northeastern side of the apse. He said I might find her there.

  I pushed through the little door, announcing myself as one does in Italy, “Permesso?” An elegant lady in a black dress sat alone in the room. She looked up at me from a chair beside the window where she was reading, and closed the book in her hands. Her eyes were sharp and intelligent. She seemed a matron of society or a quick-witted doyenne, ready to charm or reduce you to size according to her whim.

  “Buongiorno,” she said. “May I help you?”

  I explained that I was looking for Signora Dalla Torre.

  “I am Alide Dalla Torre,” she said, striking me as neither feeble with age nor hard of hearing.

  Her bearing was so dignified, so proper, that I felt a wretch with my hair all tangled from racing down the hill from Fiesole on Franco’s Vespa. I introduced myself and explained the purpose of my visit. She was happy to hear her granddaughter’s name.

  “Giuliana came to visit me last Tuesday,” she said with a bright smile. “Such a good girl. I raised her when her parents passed away ten years ago. Are you a friend of hers?”

  “Yes. She told me about you. She said you know Alberto Bondinelli. I was hoping you could tell me about him.”

  I was playing a hunch, of course, figuring she was the witness Giuliana had mentioned. But I was mistaken.

  She looked perplexed. “Who?”

  “Alberto Bondinelli. Giuliana’s professor. He died last week.”

  Still no sign of recognition from the signora.

  “Giuliana has many professors. I don’t recall her ever mentioning this Bondinelli. And Giuliana said I knew him?”

  I wriggled and lied, claiming I must have misunderstood.

  “Why do you want to know about this man?” she asked.

  “He invited me to Florence for a symposium in honor of my father. But he died before I could meet him.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you. I never met the man. What does he have to do with me?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s why I came here today.”

  Then I told her that Bondinelli had once been a Black Shirt, wounded in Spain fighting alongside the Nationalists, and left the service before the war began. He later joined the partisans to fight the fascists and their German overlords.

  “But you said he was a professor.”

  “Yes. He was hired after the racial laws of thirty-eight.”

  “In thirty-eight my son-in-law, Giacomo—Giuliana’s father—was a professor of philosophy at the university. When the fascists passed those laws, he was dismissed. If what you tell me is true, this man—Giuliana’s professor—effectively took her own father’s position.”

  This news nearly bowled me over. It cast doubt over every opinion I’d formed about Giuliana to that point. Her antipathy toward Bondinelli was personal, not ideological or political. I found myself wondering if she might not have been capable of violence against the man who’d profited from the injustice done to her father. And, of course, Giuliana had concealed the detail about her father’s having lost his job, even as she railed against the man who, for all intents and purposes, had taken it. That sparked in me a suspicion bordering on certainty. Giuliana had good reason to hate Bondinelli. She’d spoken to him an hour or two before his death. Something unpleasant had taken place during their last meeting, as the department secretary claimed the professor was distraught after the encounter. I wondered if they’d met again before his tumble into the Arno.

  Alide Dalla Torre fretted, smoothed her dress, and moistened her lips with her tongue.

  “I can’t believe that this man changed. Il lupoperde il pelo ma non il vizio,” she said. (“The wolf loses his pelt but not his wickedness.” I was unfamiliar with the expression but took it to mean, “A leopard can’t change his spots.”) “I find this story incredible. This man was a fascist, then a partisan? No. Non ci credo.”

  I explained that I was as confused as she. “Since I arrived in Florence, I’ve heard terrible stories about his character. But I’ve also heard loving praise of his goodness.”

  “What does Giuliana say?”

  “She believes he was an evil man. But, according to her friend, she only recently came to that conclusion.”

  Signora Dalla Torre knitted her brow and considered me carefully. “Why have you come here to ask me this? Where is Giuliana?”

  “She’s under quarantine,” I said. “For rosolia. She can’t leave the house where she’s staying for a few more days.”

  I assured her that the diagnosis was probably incorrect. No one was exhibiting any symptoms at all. This seemed to satisfy her, though she worried her granddaughter might fall sick. We chatted a while longer and, at length, her nerves settled. She seemed to like me well enough despite the upset I’d caused by reminding her of the ugly past. She asked me about my family, my husband.

  “I’m not married,” I said.

  “Don’t wait too long. You won’t be young and pretty forever. I tell Giuliana the same thing. She’s so beautiful, that girl. She should get married.”

  Then she asked if I’d like to see the synagogue.

  I lent Alide Dalla Torre my arm as she escorted me on a private tour of the treasures, from the frescos to the mosaics. She explained how the architects, for the first time in Christian Europe, had been freed from longstanding requirements to hide Jewish places of worship in nondescript buildings. They designed a
synagogue worthy to stand as a monument beside the great churches and cathedrals of Florence. The Jewish Emancipation, she said, was the period after the Enlightenment when European Jewry gradually achieved some measure of acceptance in the Christian world, including citizenship and the rights that came with that status. It went hand in hand with the Haskalah, the so-called Jewish Enlightenment, which espoused, inter alia, the integration of Jews into gentile society.

  “My father told my brother and me about the Maskilim,” I said. “He wanted us to belong to Western society, but also to know and appreciate our Jewish heritage.”

  “Are you a Jew?” she asked. “I didn’t realize.”

  I nodded, stopping short of explaining that I wasn’t a religious Jew. Or even a believing one. What would I have accomplished with such a declaration?

  Instead I turned the subject back to her granddaughter. “You said you last saw Giuliana Tuesday.”

  “Yes, we had a short chat. A little before noon. She said she had an appointment at the university. It’s very close by, you know.”

  “And she has no other living relatives?” I asked, still trying to reconcile Giuliana’s statement about a witness, as it clearly wasn’t her grandmother.

  “No. They’re all gone. We’re the only ones left.” Then she reconsidered. “Wait. There’s her uncle. Her father’s sister’s husband. Not a blood relative, but he’s still alive.”

  Alfredo Levi lived at 28 Borgo Pinti, minutes away from the synagogue on Franco’s Vespa. I leaned the scooter against the wall of the building on the narrow street and rang the bell. After a long moment, a buzz unlocked the heavy arched door, and I slipped inside a dark vestibule. A few trash bins stood lopsided on my left, mailboxes and a wood-and-glass entrance on my right, leading to a set of stairs. I checked the names. A. Levi was in apartment four.

  When I reached the top landing, the door to number four creaked open a couple of inches. An elderly man peered out and asked who I was. His right eye—the one he was aiming at me through the crack, was clouded with cataracts that glowed eerily in the low light. I wondered if he could even make out my shape.

  “I’m a friend of Giuliana’s. Your niece. Her father, Giacomo, was your brother-in-law, wasn’t he?”

  He let the door fall open. A small but sturdy man of about eighty, A. Levi stared back at me with his milky eyes. From where I stood, I could see that the apartment was dark and close, with old furniture, tarnished silver pieces, dusty lace doilies, and threadbare rugs and chairs. Nothing had changed for decades, I was sure.

  “Who did you say you were?” he asked.

  “My name is Eleonora Stone. American. Visiting Florence. I’m a friend of Giuliana’s.”

  The man made no indication he’d even understood me, let alone believed or trusted what I’d said. Then he asked me to come inside, addressing me as Giuliana.

  I considered my options. I could try to explain that I wasn’t his niece, but that might have been more trouble than it was worth. And—for all I knew—he might ask me to leave. I opted instead to say nothing. He closed the door behind me and shuffled over to a well-worn chair, where he dropped into the cushion with a plop reminiscent of a baseball landing in a catcher’s mitt.

  “It’s nice to see you, Giuliana,” he began. “Twice in one day. Brava ragazza.”

  “I visited you earlier today?” I asked.

  “You cooked Sunday dinner for me.”

  “Sunday? But today’s . . . Never mind. I’ve come back to ask you a question. Do you know a man named Alberto Bondinelli?”

  The old man wiped his mouth with his rough hands. “No. Who is he? Your boyfriend?”

  “No. He’s . . . He was . . . I mean he’s my professor. Are you sure you’ve never heard the name?”

  He shook his head. “Thursday,” he said.

  “Scusa,giovedì?” I used tu with him; if I was playing the part of Giuliana, I might as well play it all the way.

  “Sorry, I meant Friday. Friday I have my driver’s test. For my license.”

  Oh, dear, I thought. This wasn’t going well. The poor man didn’t know what day it was. And, for some reason, he wasn’t even curious as to how his niece had suddenly acquired an American accent.

  “Last Sunday I was tired,” he said now. “I slept for a couple of hours, and you kept me company. Then you cooked me dinner. We had a nice visit. I’m glad you’ve come back again today.”

  “It was nice,” I said, sensing we’d reached the end of any useful conversation.

  “No. I don’t eat much these days,” he said, confusing me again. “Just a minestra and some bread.”

  “What did I do to occupy myself while you slept?” I asked. “Did I read a book or listen to the radio?”

  “You wanted to look at some of Gabriele’s things.”

  “Gabriele?”

  “Your cousin. Don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I do. Tell me about Gabriele. Where is he?”

  “Where is he? He’s dead. You know that. He died in the war. Captured and shot by the Germans.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Lucky for me he’d primed the pump and was happy to talk without further urging.

  “It was in La Chiusa, near Calenzano. Northwest of here. Not far. Some of the boys came out of the woods and ambushed a German soldier. In those days, the SS killed ten Italian civilians for each German to discourage hostilities against them.”

  “Ten to one?”

  “Oh, yes. Ten for each one. The OVRA grabbed Gabriele on the street, rounded him up with some of his friends here in Florence. He was dead an hour later, shot by the Germans.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’d forgotten. Poor Gabriele. He was a hero.”

  The old man’s eyes shifted a touch. He wiped his lips again, then smiled. Yes, he smiled. “I’m not sure if Gabriele was involved in the attack on the German soldier,” he said. “At least not that one.”

  “Was he with the partisans?”

  His smile broadened, his lips parted, and I saw that he was toothless. But he was grinning. “He was with the CLN. The Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale. Mostly Communists and Socialists. Bravi ragazzi, all of them.” He paused, looked confused. “I told you that, Thursday.”

  “Già, Thursday,” I said. “Sorry. Tell me more about Gabriele and the bravi ragazzi.”

  “He led his own squadra of three partisans. Here in Florence.”

  With great difficulty, he pushed himself out of the chair and waved to me to follow him down the corridor. “Come, Bianca. I’ll show you something.”

  He shuffled along, the fingertips of his right hand grazing the wall as he went, perhaps for balance or maybe guidance. I followed, taking in what details I could, wondering who Bianca was. The low light prevented any careful study, but I noticed the unswept stone floor, the faded, crooked photographs mounted on the walls, and the three doors squaring off the corridor up ahead, one on each side and one in the middle. Alfredo reached the door on the right, found the handle with no trouble despite his cataracts, and pushed his way inside. The heavy shutters—the persiane—were closed tight outside the two windows, shrouding the room in darkness, like a mausoleum. He flicked on a light. A single bed—its mattress rolled up on the springs—stood between the windows. A large bookcase, an armoire, a desk, and a couple of wooden chairs completed the furnishings. The walls were bare except for one picture frame over the bed.

  “Vieni a vedere, Bianca,” he said, urging me to come forward. “Can you see it?”

  I gazed up at the frame. Behind the glass was a certificate of some kind with an official stamp and fancy signatures.

  “Read it to me,” he said, his toothless smile splitting his wrinkled face in two.

  “Repubblica Italiana, Ministero dell’Assistenza Post-Bellica,” I said. “Partigiano.”

  The old man could barely contain his excitement. His hands twitched, not from any neurological disorder or physical infirmity, but from giddy j°y.

  “Go on.
What comes next?”

  I read the name, “LEVI, Gabriele,” followed by the date and place of his birth. And then his parents’ names, father and mother, Alfredo and Bianca.

  “And then?”

  “Then, Caduto,’ (Fallen)” I said, “April twenty-first, 1944, at Florence.”

  And that was it. Aside from the signatures and the stamp, there was nothing more to read. Alfredo’s twitching hands fell still. And his smile melted back into his face. The milky eyes drooped, the short-lived happiness gone, having left a hollow hunger in its place. A father’s pride could hide the heartbreak for only so long—for a brief moment in front of a young stranger, or his niece or late wife—but then no more. The mask fell to the ground, and he was a lonely, demented old man again.

  “We’re so proud of Gabriele,” I said, but he’d moved on to some gloomy corner of his memories by then.

  He showed me to the door. I thanked him for the honor of viewing his son’s certificate of recognition and asked if he needed anything. “Something from the alimentari or the farmacia?”

  “I have plenty to eat,” he said. “The neighbors do the marketing for me. But . . .”

  “What is it? What can I get for you, zio?”

  “They won’t buy me cigarettes. I wouldn’t mind a packet of Nazionali.”

  I’d noticed a tabaccheria a few doors away in the street below. Not sure I was doing the right thing, given his age and infirmities, I bought him three packages of cigarettes all the same and climbed the stairs once more to deliver them. Alfredo Levi greeted me as if I’d been gone a week. And as if I were Giuliana.

  “Come back Sunday,” he said. “You and I will talk while you look through Gabriele’s things again.”