by André Aciman
That house, his look seemed to say as it shifted away from the typist on whom it had alighted and became suddenly menacing (so much so that the girl at once stopped tapping on the keys), that house where they, the Reds, had settled themselves in for more or less three months, replacing those others who had occupied it before—that is, the Blacks, the Fascists—actually belonged to him, had they forgotten? By what right had they taken possession of it? Both she, the graceful secretary, and he, the likeable and hearty partisan chief, so determined to their credit to make a new world, of a sudden became very careful about how they spoke. What were they thinking? That he would be happy to be lodged in a single room in the house? And would that be the very room in which they were speaking? Was that the one they had in mind to keep him quiet and on his best behavior? If so, they were seriously mistaken.
There was a big sing-song going on down in the street:
The wind blows and the storm howls,
Our shoes have holes, but we must march on . . .
Not a chance. The house was his, make no mistake. They would have to give it back, lock, stock and barrel. And as soon as possible.
3.
DURING THE wait for the Via Campofranco establishment to return effectively and entirely into his possession, Geo Josz seemed happy to occupy a single room. To be a guest.
More than a room, in effect it was a kind of granary built at the top of the crenellated tower that overshadowed the house: a big, bare room into which, after having climbed no fewer than a hundred steps that culminated in a rickety, little wooden staircase, one entered directly into a space once used as a lumber-room. It had been Geo Josz himself, with the disgusted tone of someone resigned to the worst, who had been the first to speak of that “makeshift” solution. All right then, he would adapt himself for the moment, he had said with a sigh. But on the understanding, it should be made very clear, that he could also make use of the lumber-room which was beneath the actual granary, where . . . At this point, without finishing the sentence, he lapsed into a brief, mysterious grin.
From that height, however, through a wide window, it was soon apparent that Geo Josz could follow everything that happened not only in the garden, but also in Via Campofranco. And since he hardly ever left the house, presumably spending hour after hour looking at the vast panorama of russet tiles, vegetable gardens and the distant countryside which extended beneath his feet, his continual presence became for the occupants of the floors beneath, to put it mildly, annoying and irksome. The cellars of the Josz house, all of which opened on to the garden, had been made over into secret prison cells in the era of the Black Brigade. About these, even after the Liberation, many sinister stories continued to circulate in the city. But now, under the probably treacherous surveillance of the guest in the tower, evidently they could no longer serve the purposes of secret and summary justice for which they had once been destined. With Geo Josz installed in that sort of observatory, and perhaps, as was attested by the light of the oil lamp which he kept lit from the first signs of dusk until dawn, vigilant at night also, now there was no chance of relaxing, not even for a moment. It must have been two or three o’clock in the morning after the evening when Geo Josz had appeared for the first time in Via Campofranco, when Nino Bottecchiari, who had stayed up working in his office until that time, had, as soon as he’d reached the street, raised his eyes to the tower. “Beware, all of you!” warned the light of the survivor suspended in mid-air against the starry sky. Bitterly reproaching himself for his culpable frivolity and acquiescence, but at the same time, like a good politician, preparing himself to confront a new reality, the young, future honorable gentleman, with a sigh, climbed on board the jeep.
But it also happened that, at the most unsuspected times of day, Geo soon began to appear on the stairs or down at the entrance, walking past the partisans permanently assembled there and wearing the usual minimal uniforms, clad in impeccable olive-colored gabardines which almost immediately had replaced the bearskin, leather jackets and tight, calf-hugging trousers they had when they arrived in Ferrara. He would slope off without greeting anyone, elegant, scrupulously shaved, with the rim of his brown felt hat on one side tilted down over his ice-cold eye. By the silence and unease provoked each time he appeared, from the outset he displayed his authority as the house-owner, too well brought up to argue but assured of his rights which his mere presence sufficed to assert and to remind the inconsiderate and defaulting tenant that enough was enough, he should clear out. The tenant shilly-shallies, pretends not to notice the steady protest of the proprietor, who for the moment is saying nothing, but the time is sure to arrive when he calls him to account for the ruined floors, the scratched walls and so on, so that month by month his position worsens, becomes ever more uncomfortable and precarious. It was late, the day after the 1948 elections, when much in Ferrara had already changed, or rather changed back to how it was before the war (the deputyship of the young Bottecchiari had by then triumphantly come about), when the ANPI decided to transfer its premises to the three rooms of the former Fascist headquarters on Viale Cavour, where since 1945 the local employment federation had established itself. Given the silent and implacable behavior of Geo Josz, this transfer already seemed more than a little unresponsive and tardy.
He hardly ever went out, as if to make sure that no one in the house should forget him even for a moment. Yet this didn’t stop him every now and then from being seen in Via Vignatagliata, where since September he had been granted permission that his father’s warehouse, in which the Jewish community had been piling the goods that had been stolen from Jewish houses during the Salò period and had remained for the most part ownerless, should be cleared “due to absolutely indispensable and urgent restoration work,” as he wrote in a letter, “and for the reopening of the business.” Or more rarely he might be seen along the Corso Giovecca—with the uncertain step of someone advancing into forbidden territory and whose mind is divided between the fear of unpleasant encounters and the bitter desire, perfectly contrary, to have them—taking the evening passeggiata which had been resumed in the city center, as lively and vibrant as ever; or else at the hour of the aperitif, at a table at the Caffè della Borsa in Corso Roma, sitting down abruptly, as he would always arrive out of breath and drenched with sweat. His attitude of ironical scorn—which soon enough had even prompted Uncle Daniele, so expansive and electrified by the atmosphere of those early post-war days, to give up on any conversation through the trapdoor to the granary above his head—hardly seemed to have discouraged the show of cordial salutations, the affectionate greetings of “Welcome back!” which now, after the initial uncertainty, began to rain in on him from all sides.
They stepped out from the entrances of the shops next to the warehouse, hands outstretched with the air of people ready for any moral or material sacrifice, or crossed the Corso Giovecca, despite its breadth, and with excessive, histrionic gestures threw their arms round his neck; or they leaped out from the Caffè della Borsa, still immersed in that same subversive half-darkness of the depths in which once, every day at one o’clock, had issued the radio announcements of military defeats (announcements that had barely reached the bike of the boy Geo in the days when he would speed past . . .), to sit by his side under the yellow awning, which was inadequate protection not only against the blinding glare but also against the dust which the wind swept up in broad whirls from the ruins of the nearby quarter of San Romano. He had been at Buchenwald and—the only one—had returned, after having suffered who knows what torments of body and soul, after having witnessed who knows what horrors. So they were there, at his service, all ears to hear him. He recounted; and they—also to show their contrition at having been so slow to recognize him—would never tire of hearing him, willing even to renounce the lunch to which, tolling twice, the Castle clock above was calling them. While they displayed, almost in testimony of their good faith and in support of the evolution that their ideas had undergone in those terrible, formative years, th
e rough canvas trousers, the partisan desert jackets with rolled-up sleeves, open collars without a trace of tie, feet slipped without socks into shoes and sandals resolutely unpolished, and, of course, beards—there wasn’t one of them without a beard—it was as if they were all saying in unison: “You’ve changed, don’t you see? You’ve become a man, by God, and fat as well! But see—we too have changed, time has passed for us too . . .” And they were undoubtedly sincere in exhibiting themselves for the examination and judgement of Geo, and sincere in being pained by his inflexible rejection of their overtures. Just as sincere, in its way, was the conviction held, at least in part, by everyone in the city, even those who had most to fear from the present and most to doubt from the future, the conviction that, for good or bad, from now on there was going to begin a new era, incomparably better than that other one which, like a long sleep filled with atrocious nightmares, was ebbing away in their blood.
As regards Uncle Daniele, who for three months had been living on his wits without knowing each morning where he would be sleeping that night, the suffocating cubbyhole in the tower had at once seemed, to his incurable optimism, a marvellous acquisition. No one was more convinced than he that with the end of the war had begun the glad era of democracy and of universal brotherhood.
“Now at last one can breathe freely!” he had ventured the first night that he’d come into possession of his little cell. He spoke these words, supine on a horsehair mattress, with his hands gripped behind his neck.
“Now at last one can breathe freely, aah!” he had repeated more loudly.
And then: “Doesn’t it seem to you, Geo,” he had continued, “that the atmosphere in the city is different, really different than before? It can’t be denied. Only freedom can produce such miracles! As for me, I’m really convinced . . .”
What Daniele Josz was really convinced about, however, must have seemed of quite dubious interest, as the only reply Geo vouchsafed to the impassioned apostrophes of his uncle from the opening of the little staircase was either a “Hmm!” or a “Really?”, which hardly inspired further utterance. “What on earth will he do?” the old man asked himself, growing silent, while his eyes turned toward the ceiling to follow the slapping back and forth of a pair of indefatigable slippers. And for a short while at least he abstained from further comment.
It seemed inconceivable to him that Geo did not share his enthusiasms.
Having fled from Ferrara during the days of the armistice, he had spent more than a year hidden in an obscure village in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, looked after by peasants. Up there, after the death of his wife, who, poor thing, had had to be buried under a false name in the little graveyard, he had joined up with a small band of partisans, assuming the role of political commissar—a circumstance which would soon allow him to be among those suntanned and bearded men who, perched on top of a truck, would be the first to enter liberated Ferrara. What unforgettable days those were! What joy it had been for him once again to be in the city, half in ruins it’s true, almost unrecognizable, but utterly cleared of all the Fascists of every kind, the early enrolled as well as the late! What a pleasure to once again be able to sit at a table in the Caffè della Borsa (a place where no sooner had he arrived than he had chosen it as the premises for resuming his old, modest insurance business) without any threatening look to chase him away, but rather finding himself the center of a general sympathy! But Geo?—he wondered. Was it possible that Geo felt nothing of what he himself had felt some months before? Was it possible that having descended into hell and by some miracle returned, he should feel no impulse beyond that of motionlessly reliving the past, as witnessed by the frightening series of photographs of his dead—Angelo and Luce, his parents, and Pietruccio, his little brother who was just ten years old—which one day when he had stealthily slunk up to the big room he had found decorating all four of its walls? And finally, was it possible that the only beard in the whole city that Geo found bearable was that of the old Fascist Geremia Tabet, his father’s brother-in-law, so esteemed by the regime that he managed to keep on frequenting even the Merchants’ Club, at least every now and then, for at least two years after 1938? The night after the day of Geo’s reappearance, he, Daniele Josz, with profound unease, had had to follow him to the Tabet house, in Vicolo Mozzo Roversella, where before then he had never dreamed of setting foot. And then, wasn’t it shocking that Geo, when the old Fascist stuck his nose out of a first-floor window, had let forth a shrill cry, ridiculously, hysterically, almost wildly impassioned? And what was that cry for? What did it mean? Did it mean perhaps that Geo, despite Buchenwald and the extermination of all his closest family, had become what his father, poor Angelo, had continued being in all ingenuousness till the very end, even perhaps up till the threshold of the gas chamber: a “patriot,” as he frequently loved to declare himself with such stalwart pride?
“Who’s there?” had asked the hesitant, worried voice above.
“It’s me, Uncle Geremia, it’s Geo!”
They were standing below in front of the big closed door of the Tabet house. It was ten o’clock at night and one could hardly see a thing down in the alley. Geo’s strangled cry, Daniele Josz recalled, had taken him by surprise, pushing him into a state of extreme confusion. What should he do? What could he say? But there was no time to consider. The big door had opened and Geo, having rapidly entered, was already striding up the dark stairs. He needed to run after him, at least try to reach him.
He managed to do so only at the second staircase, where, to make things worse, before the opened doorway to the apartment, Geremia Tabet himself stood waiting. With the light from inside at his back, the old Fascist, in slippers and pyjamas, was staring at the two of them, perplexed but not dumbfounded, having resumed his habitual calm.
He had stopped at the edge of the landing, half-hidden in the shadow. When he had seen Geo, who, by contrast, had kept advancing and abruptly clasped his uncle in a frenetic embrace, the latter suddenly felt himself again to be the poor relative whom all of them (his brother-in-law Angelo perfectly in agreement about this along with his wife’s family) had always kept at a distance mainly because of his political convictions. No, no, Daniele said to himself at this point—not even on this occasion was he going to enter that home. Turning his back, he would have walked away. But, instead, what did he do? Instead, like the idiot he was, he had done the opposite. At his final reckoning, he had thought, poor Luce, Geo’s mother, was a Tabet. Who can tell—perhaps it was the memory of his mother, Geremia’s sister, that kept Geo from treating the nasty Fascist of the family with the coldness that type of character deserved? Natural enough in the circumstances, after the first affectionate greetings had been exhausted, it wouldn’t be surprising that the boy should collect himself and reestablish the right distance . . .
But in this he was to be sadly disappointed. For the rest of the visit, which lasted late into the night (as it seemed that Geo couldn’t bring himself to leave), he had had to witness, seated in a corner of the small dining room, shows of affection and intimacy that were little short of disgusting.
It was as if by instinct that between the two of them a binding agreement had been established, to which, before they went to bed, the others in the house also quickly conformed (Tani, the wife, so aged and wasted away! and the three children, Alda, Gilberta and Romano, all of them, as usual, hanging on the lips of their respective consort or parent . . .). The pact proposed by Geremia was the following: that Geo should not even hint indirectly at the political past of his uncle, and he, on his side, should abstain from asking his nephew to recount what he had seen and suffered in that Germany where even he, Geremia Tabet, unless there were proof to the contrary—this too should be remembered by all those who now thought they might confront him with minor errors in his youth, some merely-human mistake of political choice made in times so distant as to now seem almost mythical—had himself lost a sister, a brother-in-law and a much-loved nephew. And that was indisputable: the la
st three years had been terrible. For everyone. Still, things being as they were, a sense of balance and discretion should prevail over every other impulse—the past is past, and it’s futile to dig it all up again! Better look to the future. And as to the future, what did it have in store? Geremia had asked at a certain point—assuming the grave but benevolent tone of a paterfamilias who can look into the distance and make out many things there—what kind of plans did Geo himself have? If he was considering, just to suppose, reopening his father’s business—a most noble aspiration that he personally could only approve of, and it was worth remembering the Via Vignatagliata warehouse, that at least, was still there—then all to the good. Of course he wouldn’t fail to help secure the indispensable support of some bank or other. But apart from this, if in the meantime, since the Via Campofranco house was still occupied by the “Reds,” Geo wanted to stay for a while there with them, they could always no trouble at all, find a place to set up a camp bed, no trouble at all.
It was right then, at the words “camp bed,” Daniele Josz recalled, that he had raised his head, focusing all the attention of which he was capable. What was happening? he asked himself. He wanted to understand. He needed to understand.
Streaming with sweat, despite being in pyjamas, Geremia Tabet sat on one side of the big, black dining table, and once more doubtful, perplexed, with the end of his finger worrying at his little pointed grey beard (cut in the classic style of the Fascist squads, which he alone among the old Fascists of Ferrara had had the temerity, the untimeliness or perhaps, who knows, even the shrewdness, to conserve in its proper dimensions). It was on that grey pointed beard and that fat hand which prodded it, that Geo, while he smilingly declined the offer with a shake of his head, fixed his blue eyes with a fanatical stubbornness.