by Louisa Young
Something, or someone is wrong. Or the paper, or the scientists, or – someone has made a mistake.
‘So,’ Tom said, after the necessary silence.
‘Well,’ Nenna said. She felt the tightness in her voice. ‘But it’s not true, is it?’
‘No, it’s not true. There is one race: the human race. It comes in many varieties.’
‘Not that – I mean – I know it’s not true – I mean about – us. We have the same name we had in Israel. Our two names – Elia for the prophet from the Torah and Fiore for our family’s business – most people were in cloth, but we sold flowers. Famiglia Fiore. It’s not true that nothing has remained of us … we are here! Look!’ she cried. ‘I’m here!’ She was patting and poking at her forearm.
‘Of course you are,’ said Tom.
‘I’m a Giovane Fascista. I was a Piccola Italiana, and a Giovane Italiana,’ she said, too fast. ‘I was in the parades every term at school, in my little cloak and shoes. Very boring it was too. I was in the gym displays. You saw me! Pa was in the army! His blood won the Trentino! Now they say we are not Italian?’
‘Nenna,’ said Tom.
She could feel that that something peculiar was happening to her breath, as if it were running away from her, hurtling down a hill like feet about to trip—
‘Did my mother not give up her wedding ring on the Day of Faith? Didn’t she? There were fifty Jewish generals in the army during the war. The oldest and the youngest recipients of the Gold Medal – both Jews! Luigi Luzatti, Prime Minister of Italy, 1910 – Jewish! Ettore Ovazza, newspaper founder, a founding Fascist like Papà – Jewish! Ernesto Nathan, Mayor of Rome, 1907–1913 – Jewish! Seven Jews among the One Thousand who marched with Garibaldi! In 1922, two hundred and fifty Jews in the March on Rome!’
‘Nenna,’ Tom said.
‘I don’t understand. Why do they write that? That we are not Italian!’
‘That’s the kind of thing Fascists believe,’ Tom said.
‘That’s not true!’ she said. ‘The Duce has never been against Jews. He has a Jewish mistress! La Sarfatti! She was an inspiration of Fascism—’ She stopped herself.
What am I thinking!
She breathed, and felt the smile return to her face.
‘It is a mistake of course,’ she said. ‘They don’t mean us. They mean the foreign Jews. Of course not everyone who wants can be Italian. Papà will make sure. He will be making sure right now.’
Calm descended on her. Of course. Of course.
‘Nenna!’ he cried. ‘Does it say in the Manifesto that there are different types of Jew? Have you ever heard a Fascist say that? Nenna! Why would they care? Even if they knew? And Nenna – anyway – so what? It doesn’t matter what the Duce has always said. He is aligned with Herr Hitler now, and he is saying what Herr Hitler wants to hear. The Duce has agreed to go along with National Socialism. Do you understand that?’
She glanced up at him, and picked up her sewing.
‘Nenna – how could it possibly be all right just because it’s about other types of Jew?’
Her mouth was so tight she could hardly speak. Her jaw ached as she pushed the words out.
‘Papà will sort it out,’ she said. She shook out the cloth of the dress; ivy leaves in two shades of green, printed on pale yellow cotton. ‘And anyway, we would always choose being Italian over being Jewish.’
‘Nenna.’
She peered at the seam at the waistband where the skirt had come away.
Tom threw his hands in the air, and walked off.
She felt as if she had won. She put the dress down and went inside and again she threw up.
*
Tom was going into Bracciano with Riley, to watch the newsreels – or rather, the LUCE propaganda reels.
‘Come with us,’ he said to Nenna, charmingly, in front of everyone. She didn’t look at him, she just said no, very coolly, and went to her mother.
There was Herr Hitler on the silver screen, quickstepping along: the announcement said that the Fascist dagger dangling from his belt on little links of silver chain was a present from Mussolini. There was a clip again from his Italian visit in May, where he swore that the Alps would always be an insurmountable national border, and the band played ‘Deutschland Über Alles’ and ‘Giovinezza’ to a silent, serious crowd, and the floodlights shone on the sailors’ round white caps so they looked like so many full moons. Tom pulled softly at his lip in the dark, and felt the breath rise and fall in his chest.
Afterwards, he stopped at the hotel and after some finagling with the night clerk, a moody youth with curious teeth and a flat cap sliding around on overpowering hair oil, was able to telephone London. Luckily it was Vernon, who liked Tom, who picked up the phone on the foreign desk. Vernon heard Tom out, and said he would see what he could do. Tom said he would file something in the meantime, and ring again the following afternoon.
Walking back, Tom said to Riley: ‘Is it going to be like Germany? Will people have to leave?’ and before Riley could answer he said: ‘Because we must help them. Even Aldo.’
Riley looked at him, and said: ‘Do you think there will be war?’
‘Do you?’ Tom answered, and he saw something pass over Riley’s grey eyes, a sadness, a ghost, an emptiness, a terror.
‘Riley?’ Tom said.
Riley flicked his gaze, and looked at Tom, and said, after a moment of thought: ‘Tom, forgive me, I’m going to be allegorical. You recall the Masaccio Virgin and Child in the National Gallery?’
Tom didn’t. ‘All right,’ said Riley. ‘Georges de la Tour. Caravaggio!’
These painters Tom could recall: the formidable chiaroscuro; deep recesses of shadow, gleaming points of clarity and light.
‘They use a single source of light,’ Riley said, ‘to throw everything into such deep relief.’
‘So?’ said Tom.
‘Fascists and Nazis have only one source of light.’
‘Oh!’ Tom cried in recognition. ‘Sunflowers!’
‘Exactly,’ Riley said. ‘Whereas normally we have all the strands of everything we’ve ever cared about casting different lights on human existence, and we operate by that complex light, with changing shadows, and things coming in and out of view, and subtlety, and nuance, and we work it out for ourselves, and it shifts as we go along … So when you accept a single light source and deny others – history, education, the experiences of other peoples, science – your light and dark become black and white. People do it in times of chaos. They think someone clear and strong will rescue them, and that they will not have to take responsibility for themselves.’
Tom had never heard so much from Riley. He breathed very gently, so as not to jar the moment.
‘It seems safer – the wrong, over there, and the right, here,’ Riley said. ‘But it can’t work. Because it’s not true.’
Tom thought: When you buy into something that takes over your conscience, your judgement, your vision, then you lose subtlety. And human nature is inclined to subtlety. And change. And chaos. So you lose your humanity.
‘… so yes,’ Riley was saying, ‘I do think there will be a war. And the irony of that is, that war itself throws everything into black and white. We’re us, they’re the enemy. It’s very refreshing. For a while.’
Tom was surprised. ‘Was that how it was for you?’ he dared to ask. ‘Before?’
‘On one level, yes. Once you had flung in your lot, it was very simple.’
‘Refreshing!’
‘All this bloody to-ing and fro-ing, all this moral fiddle faddle!’ Riley burst out.
‘But you can’t want …’ Tom said.
‘I don’t want any of what’s currently on offer,’ Riley said. ‘I want everyone to settle down, so we can get on with solving the problems we already have. Poverty and disease and injustice and so on. To be honest, I want a treacherous Nazi with a silver bullet for Herr Hitler.’
‘Would that be enough?’
Riley laughed his
restricted, harlequin laugh. ‘Evidently not,’ he said. ‘Evidently now we need a treacherous Italian Fascist too.’
‘I showed the latest – the racist manifesto – to Nenna,’ Tom said.
‘And did she understand it?’ Riley asked.
‘It’s clear enough.’
‘Well, that does for Nadine and me,’ said Riley. ‘Dear God. Just as well you’re not really our son, eh?’
Tom did not know what to say to that. Joking? About this?
‘Sorry,’ said Riley. ‘It helps, with a particular mix of the unbearable and the idiotic …’
He looked sorry. He looked, suddenly, terrible.
‘What Aldo said last night,’ Tom said, ‘that it’s a mistake – but it’s been confirmed, with names – yet there’s this silence. As a founding Fascist apparently he thinks he has some sway. Nenna of course says it’s a mistake, too, and even if it’s not, they don’t mean Jews like them, like her family. They mean foreign Jews.’
‘And does she think that makes it all right?’
‘I bloody hope not!’ Tom said. Then, ‘No, I don’t believe she does. I believe she’s parroting her upbringing. And beginning to doubt. I’m working on her! As a result of which, she’s not talking to me. And the irony is, there’s so few Jews in Italy anyway.’
*
Back in the kitchen, getting water to clean his mouth, Riley felt flummoxed. Founding Fascist? He thought. Not just going-along-with-it Fascists. They’re real Fascists. Hundred per cent think-it’s-all-marvellous Fascists.
Nadine was at the stove with a coffee pot. He looked across at her, and before he could stop himself he said, ‘I wish you’d told me earlier.’
Nadine looked bewildered.
‘That this family is Fascist,’ he said. ‘All this.’ He gestured into the room, the whole thing.
There was a pause before she said, ‘I do too. I’m sorry. You see, but you don’t see, and then it’s too late.’
She doesn’t realise, he thought. She doesn’t see … He lit a cigarette and accepted a tiny chicory coffee. If I were them I would take my entire family somewhere else. America or Australia or Britain. Right now.
‘Where’s Aldo anyway?’ Nadine was asking.
‘In Rome,’ said Riley, ‘no doubt bending Mussolini’s ear about the comparative merits of different kinds of Jews.’
‘Six hundred and thirteen,’ Nadine said.
‘What?’
‘Different types of Jew,’ she said. ‘The image of the pomegranate: six hundred and thirteen seeds yet we are all one fruit.’
He smiled. ‘How do you know that?’
‘I have no idea!’ she said. ‘It’s one of those things I’ve always known. My mother must have told me. Oh! Yes – it’s the number of mitzvah. The Commandments, in the Torah.’
‘Was Jacqueline concerned with the Torah?’
‘Not in the least. But I suppose she learned it when she was young.’
Nadine had that look of loss on her face that meant sorrow not for Jacqueline’s death, but for not having had her properly in life.
‘One fruit,’ Riley said. ‘It’s nice.’
They were silent for a moment.
‘But if they don’t see the risks,’ she said, ‘or don’t believe in them, what can anyone do?’
‘Keep talking,’ he said.
Chapter Fifteen
Bracciano, Summer 1938
There is a feeling that rises in a loyal person when the object of their loyalty becomes itself disloyal. There can be physical manifestations: a certain lack of safety in the joints of the body, a nervousness underfoot. Insecurity is part of it, where that which has been relied on is no longer a friend. Mentality has its own nausea; dizziness; weak ankles which will turn and let you fall; a glass which slips from your hand; an angry roar which erupts at a small provocation which did not deserve such a response. In some cases these feelings are immediate, acknowledged, and pure. In others they are followed wherever they go by a phalanx of disbelief, unwillingness, reluctance, self-interest and blindness. Thus it was with Aldo. So complete was Aldo’s devotion that nothing the beloved could do would arrest it.
Dux Mea Lux. Right from the beginning. From the miseries of the war and the chaos that followed it to the gleaming streets of Littoria today; from the dangerous drunks and strikers and villains of 1919 to the tough, obedient, bodies phalanxes of men sweating over their wheelbarrows, long files of them, shifting Italian soil to make Italian fields for Italian families – he saw it every day. Every day. Human happiness and hard work. Systematising the rivers, clearing the ditches, dragging away load after load after load of underbrush, load after load of mud. Dig and dump, dig and dump. As with the land, so with the men, and as with the men so with the country. Redeemed, by work and by community. The symbolism of it filled him with joy: as with the earth, so with the hearts and the minds.
One man made all this happen. One man knocked us into shape.
Walking up the dusty lakeside road from Bracciano with a brown paper bag of peaches, he smiled. He was thinking about a glass of beer and how one day, all ditches will work effectively, all roads will be metalled, everyone will have a little car, and there will be no more donkeys in Rome … Controlling nature. Driving out the mosquitoes. No more malaria. No more need for anyone to eat acorns and frogs, and die young. Though actually he liked frog. Fried with a little lemon, delicious.
How lovely it was, in the cool of the evening, as the flies and the wasps disappeared; the stream singing alongside the road, the sky so high, just beginning to fade into violet. Exercise was itself a patriotic activity – but it was not for that that he walked. In his hardworking days, walking was what gave him his moment of peace, during which he would count his blessings and consider, though he would always deny being in any way a religious man, his mitzvahs.
Recently, he had been listing every reason the Duce had to love him, Aldo, personally.
My war service. a) I was a volunteer; I did not wait about, I was happy and proud to spill my Italian Jewish blood for Italy in the mountains and let me tell you, boy, the mountains were as hard as the trenches were where Tomaso’s kind-of papà lost his voice and his looks. We were fighting for the existence of our country. Il Duce understands that and he will never forget it. And, b) I was decorated. No, I’m not going to tell you what I did. The memory of my friends is good enough for me. They know, and that is enough. It was good enough for them, for my commanding officers. I didn’t desert. I got my bronze medal.
I enrolled as a Fascist in 1919. 1919!
I was there for the March on Rome. Of course I didn’t have to march very far – but I was there. They gave me the scarf.
My work – he greets me when I am in the group around him at work. He knows me. He said so. He said, ‘Hey, I know you. You still here? Good man. Good work.’
And how often am I there in the crowd outside Palazzo Venezia, listening to his magnificent speeches? He sees me – I know he does. He knows me, and what I have done. I have been there for the inauguration of every one of the new cities: Littoria, Sabaudia, Aprilia, Pontinia.
My children. Four is not so many, but they are good and strong, and they serve as they should. Nenna in her cape and beret!
Four children, four towns. Lovely symmetry! Perhaps we should have another, for Pomezia. He had never mentioned it to Susanna, but in his heart he wished they had named the children after the towns. Of course the timing was wrong. But Fernanda Littoria Elia Fiore. What a name! Marinella Pontinia … che bella.
Laying the miles of white concrete into the hard-won channels of the new canals; the network of new roads, cambered and tarmacked and water-resistant, lined with new trees; the acres of land growing wheat and corn and beets; the vineyards, the olive groves. Trees and fields, ditches and towns, piazzas and football pitches, town halls and post offices, schools and hospitals, Green of Paris sprayed all over against the malaria, and quinine all round. The six beautiful great pumping engines as big as a
eroplanes.
So much work. So much achieved. And next year, Pomezia! So much still to do.
He tried to think of anything that was wrong. His feet ached a little in his boots: the toes that were mangled by the frostbite of 1917–18. But he hardly noticed that any more. What did boys know? The idea that you can build without a bit of destruction, some discipline and decision-making. Making frittata without breaking eggs. These children … The man though, the famous Riley … Well, it’s just as well he is English, and going home soon. Not the kind you want for a cousin. Not here, not now.
He was glad to be away from Rome. There had been a scene at Di Veroli’s shop. A silence when he entered. A couple of the younger men giving him looks, and old Seta – not Seta next door, his brother – Daniele’s father – who was clearly in a mood about something, said: ‘Oh, look, here he comes. Hey, Aldo – tell me – you say you’re not a Jew, and the Duce says you’re not an Italian – so what are you going to be now? Have you thought about it? Got many choices?’ Aldo had laughed, of course, and gone to embrace the old fool, but Seta said ‘It’s not funny—’ like a toad falling, and the men around let a curtain of chill circle them, so that Aldo had had to leave making a ‘well you’re all crazy’ gesture which actually, as he ducked back out into the sunshine, made him feel a little ill.
So he was glad out here with his family, away from all that. That pessimism, that expectation of oppression. His father had warned him about it: a Jewish thing, how we hold ourselves down with it … Don’t fall for it! Be the man to break free of it. Yes, better to walk and swim and see these lovely trees, Susanna making her own ricotta with the farm women, the great copper over the open fire, the little baskets of white curds put out to cool. Better to bring home the eels in a bucket; take the boys out to shoot, play sedid sediola with Marinella, rocking her even faster on his knees, pretending to throw her out of the window.
*
Aldo swaggered in just in time for dinner, smiling. Nenna ran to him like a worried dog scenting salvation before he could even put the peaches down. He flung his strong arm over her shoulder.