Turn to Stone

by James W. Ziskin

  Unless the photographs weren’t his at all. Yes, I had decided to go, but I hated leaving questions unanswered. I could not abide unwashed dishes in the sink, a sloppily made bed, or newspapers strewn willy-nilly on the floor. Unfinished crossword puzzles drove me mad until I filled in the blanks. And so, though I’d decided to leave Bel Soggiorno and forget the soulless wretch of a man who roamed its halls, I wanted to know about his past sympathies. His feelings about the thugs who’d bullied their way to power, stripped citizenship and rights from the Jews of Italy, and led the country into a cowardly and disastrous war against the democracies of the world. So I asked him.

  “Last night, before you surprised Bernie and me in here,” I began with a voice hoarser than I’d expected. “Last night I saw something in here that upset me.”

  He frowned. “You didn’t appear to be upset when I found you in here. Quite the contrary.”

  As I was already lying about the timeline of when I’d become perturbed, I sidestepped his observation.

  “The photographs on the wall over there,” I said instead, indicating them with a nod. “The ones behind the chair.”

  He turned his head to the right and focused on the wall of the nook.

  “What about them?”

  “Why do you display them? Are those pictures of your wife’s late husband? Or are you a fascist yourself?”

  He seemed confused by my question, never mind by my barely concealed disgust.

  “My wife’s late husband?” he asked. “What nonsense are you saying? Are you unwell? Why would I have his photographs in my house?”

  “Because this was his house. You married his widow, didn’t you?”

  Now he laughed. The first time I’d seen him laugh. He muttered something I couldn’t make out, then addressed me with all the haughty indignation he could muster.

  “I don’t know where you got such an idea, but this is my house, Signorina Stone. It was my father’s house before me, and his before him. And since I have no children and no other close relatives, it will pass to Mariangela when I die. She is my sole heir.”

  Damn Bernie and his specious gossip. I surely blushed. But, just as soon, I regained my composure. The history of Bel Soggiorno’s ownership only proved I’d been right to judge Locanda.

  “Then those are your photographs?” I asked to accuse. “The ones of the Camicie Nere?”

  “If you put it that way, yes, I suppose they belong to me.” He paused to consider the pictures again. “That is to say, they belonged to my father. He hung them there, and I never thought to remove them.”

  “But why wouldn’t you take them down? After the war and the defeat? Why would you keep them there?”

  “Because, as I’ve just said, I didn’t think of it. I didn’t care either way. I still don’t care. Che importanza hanno queste cose? It’s history. I live in the present.”

  We sat in silence for a short time, long enough for Locanda to fish a cigarette from his vest pocket and light up.

  “Is that why you want to leave Bel Soggiorno?” he asked, his face mostly obscured by the curtain of blue cigarette smoke, irradiated by the sunlight behind him in the window.

  “Yes. I was raised to care about such things. In my home, ‘fascist,’ Camicie Nere,’ ‘Nazi,’ and ‘Braunhemden were foul words. Parolacce. We were taught to spit after we said them.”

  Locanda scoffed. “In my home they were paeans, worthy of anthems and hymns. We were raised in different eras, different countries, and different realities, you and I. You were a little Jewish girl in America with an assumed, Anglicized name. I was the scion of an industrialist. An authoritarian, a fascist ideologue.”

  “And that’s why I must leave.”

  “Do as you please, but I don’t understand your haste. You say you discovered the photographs last night in this room. At the time, your emotional turmoil seemed amorous, not ethical. So, if your conscience is so decided against staying in this house, why didn’t you leave last night? Or this morning?”

  His lingering, inquisitive stare triggered no small measure of paranoia in my mind. Was he on to me? Did he know I’d been snooping in the room again? But if he thought he was dealing with a faint-of-heart panicker, he was mistaken. I knew just how to wriggle out of this tight spot and drive him to distraction at the same time.

  “You’re right,” I said, smoothing my skirt over my knees. “I didn’t notice the photographs last night.”

  He smiled in triumph. “Then you admit you returned here to look through my belongings this morning?”

  “No,” I said, my chin jutting out in feigned defiance. “I returned here to retrieve an article of clothing I lost in my haste last night.”

  The smile vanished. The cigarette he’d pinched between his lips for dramatic effect—a stab at intimidation or something of the sort—dipped like a pump jack. Only it didn’t rise again. A bit of ash dropped into his lap, and, once he’d recovered from the shock at my shameless confession, he leapt to his feet and furiously brushed off his trousers.

  His devotion to hedonism notwithstanding, Locanda was scandalized by and uncomfortable with the detour our conversation had taken. Still he managed to ask in a halting voice if I’d recovered what I’d lost.

  “The strange thing is that I couldn’t find it,” I said. “I looked everywhere.”

  He cleared his throat and retook his seat. “You were standing over there when I came in last night. Is it possible you lost it under the little table near the door?”

  “Under where?” I asked, switching to English.

  Right over his head. Despite his excellent English, my last salvo was perhaps a word too far. He never caught on. But I fancied I’d lit the fuse to his lust. His gaze ranged up and down my person in a manner it hadn’t done heretofore. Not even when he’d suggested I swim in the stream in puris naturalibus. Still, he wasn’t ready to proposition me.

  “I’m sure someone will find the article of clothing eventually,” he said, and stubbed out the cigarette he’d been smoking. “Are you truly decided on leaving?”

  “I don’t see how I could justify it to my conscience if I stayed.”

  “Do as you wish, signorina, but I am not a fascist. I never was. I performed my patriotic duty during the war and served in East Africa.”

  I was intrigued, even as I scolded myself for listening to him.

  “What did you do in the war?” I asked.

  “I flew biplanes,” he said with touch of red in his cheeks. “I was a trainer.”

  “The Air Force?”

  “Yes. The Regia Aeronautica.”

  “Biplanes? Really?”

  “That’s what we had. And they weren’t so bad. I was stationed in Ethiopia. We did all right at first. We had air superiority and good airfields. But then we ran out of fuel, and the British eventually got around to destroying nearly every craft we had. Within three months, we’d lost nearly half of our fleet. And eight months later, our last plane was destroyed.” He uttered a sad laugh. “Imagine an Air Force without aeroplanes. We surrendered. Best thing that could have happened to me.”

  “You didn’t fight to the last man?”

  “No,” he said as if that weren’t obvious. “I told you I had little passion for fascism. I was happy to lay down my arms and survive. And I learned English. Jolly well, too.” He added the last bit in English. Not quite up to BBC standards, but it wasn’t half bad.

  I pursed my lips and drew a sigh through my nose. His arguments were persuasive, but thoughts of my father and the rigid principles he and my like-minded mother had instilled in Elijah and me tugged at my sleeve. I could no more enjoy the hospitality of a man who lived in a villa housing a fascist shrine than I could play center for the New York Knickerbockers. It was a physical impossibility, even in light of Locanda’s defense of his own beliefs or—more accurately—lack thereof. His argument had softened my opinion of him, though I hated to admit that to myself. Why should I condone the moral bankruptcy of a man who refused to ta
ke a stand against an ideology that had oppressed its own people, including its Jews, revoked their citizenship, and legislated out of existence their rights to live and work in society? And then, for good measure, helped their Nazi overlords deport ten thousand of them to death camps in the East? How was I supposed to break bread with a man who felt no revulsion at a movement whose atrocities included the “Pacification” of Libya? Or the mustard gas and concentration camps of the Second Italo-Ethiopian war? And, of course, even as a young girl and in the years that followed, I remembered my father quoting our American president’s famous speech decrying Mussolini’s cowardly attack on France in her most desperate hour. “The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor” became a lesson against perfidy and dishonor and fascism for my brother and me.

  Max Locanda’s experience was different from mine to be sure. He was a grown man in May of 1940. An aviator in the Italian Air Force. I was a four-year-old girl with an Anglicized Jewish name, as he’d pointed out apropos of nothing. But with the knowledge and first-hand experience, how could he stomach such photographs in his house? How could he look upon them every day without revulsion, or at least regret?

  These were the immediate reasons for my departure. Another was the unsettling draw this man exercised on me. On others. On everyone, it seemed to me. No, I wasn’t attracted to him in the same way I’d fallen for handsome men in the past. But his severe stare, the commanding presence, and piercing eyes provoked a vague worry in my mind. A worry that I might be susceptible to his powers of persuasion. Not necessarily sexual, but that was there as well. I just wanted to get away and never worry about ending up in his thrall.

  “Shall I call Achille to pack your bags?” he asked, calling me back to the present.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I checked my watch: half past noon. Achille had already lugged my bags down the stairs and was now resisting Bernie’s efforts to take his own valise to the car. I waited as they wrestled for the honor. The prospect of a guest carrying his own luggage offended the porter, and Bernie—never more egalitarian and, indeed, self-sufficiently American than in that moment—felt it his duty to bear his own burdens. I made my way down the stairs, intending to say goodbye to the other guests. They’d gathered on the terrazza outside the salone to smoke and gossip about the new arrival at Bel Soggiorno. Lunch was an hour away still. I greeted them from the doorway.

  “Why do you have your purse?” asked Lucio. “Going somewhere?”

  “Me ne vado,” I said. “I’ve come to say goodbye.”

  “Why are you leaving? We’re all enjoying a nice retreat from the modern world. You must stay.”

  I lied that I had previous commitments on my itinerary that I couldn’t avoid. We sat and chatted for a while, exchanged addresses and assurances to stay in touch. Lucio promised he’d visit me in Nuova Olanda and we’d get married. Or at least have a torrid love affair. Tato and Franco stood to the side and listened and smiled. Giuliana, however, looked positively alarmed. She sat beside me and, once Lucio had gone to retrieve his cigarettes from a table across the terrazza, grabbed my hand and asked in a low voice if I was leaving Florence.

  “Not for a few days,” I said. “Bernie and I are going back to Albergo Bardi.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. She let go of my hand and drew a breath.

  “I need to speak to you,” she whispered. “I’ll come see you at the hotel Monday when we get out of this prison.”

  “What is it? What do you want to tell me?” I asked, thinking Bel Soggiorno hardly qualified as a prison. It was idyllic, if you didn’t count the fascist ghosts.

  “Not here,” she said, just as Bernie appeared in the doorway of the salone.

  “Ready?” I asked him.

  “There may be a delay,” he said, and I caught sight of Locanda behind him. There were two more men beyond, inside the house.

  “Signore e signori, buongiorno,” announced the short, stocky man in a dark suit as he stepped outside. It was the police inspector, Peruzzi. He noticed Lucio in the corner of his eye. “Please, young man, put out that cigarette until I’ve finished. This won’t take long.”

  Lucio complied, though not without a sigh of exasperation.

  “Do you have news on Professor Bondinelli?” asked Franco, all serious and self-important, as if he were investigating the case along with Peruzzi.

  “Nothing new,” said the cop. “Except that we’ve released the body to the family. For the funeral.”

  Franco touched his forehead, an affected acknowledgement of what should have been obvious. “Of course, the girl. Has the funeral date been set?”

  Peruzzi scowled. “Professor Sannino, please stop asking questions for a moment. I’ve come here to inform you all of an important if unfortunate development.”

  Franco blushed, swallowed his tongue, and kept all subsequent queries to himself. We all waited for the news. I looked to Locanda in the doorway to the house. His stare was focused on my person, by all appearances intent on boring a hole clear through me. His regard flustered me, and before I’d realized it, I touched my chest as if to shield myself. The man standing beside him was Pellegrini, the young doctor who’d visited Veronica the night before.

  I turned back to Peruzzi and adjusted my seat in hopes of putting Giuliana between me and Locanda’s eyes.

  “I believe you met Dottor Pellegrini last night,” resumed the inspector. “He examined the patient, Veronica Leonetti, and has now arrived at a diagnosis. Doctor?” he said, inviting Pellegrini to come forward.

  “Grazie, ispettore,” he said, stepping outside. He cleared his throat.

  “Oddio,” whispered Giuliana in my ear. “It must be bad news for Veronica.”

  “I have consulted with the police,” said the doctor, “and given the gravity of the situation, we have decided to place this house under quarantine. At least for a couple of days, until we can be sure the contagion has been contained.”

  “What contagion?” I asked, risking Peruzzi’s censure.

  “Rosolia,” said Pellegrini.

  My Italian let me down. “Rosolia?” I asked. “What’s that?”

  The doctor had no idea how to translate, nor did Peruzzi. Everyone looked to Bernie.

  “Rubella,” he said. “German measles.”

  “What does that mean for us?” demanded Lucio.

  Peruzzi repeated the good doctor’s prescription: temporary quarantine. Lucio fairly shook with rage, or perhaps shock, and then he retrieved his stubbed-out cigarette from the ashtray and relit it.

  “I’ll smoke whether you like it or not,” he told the cop. “Go ahead, arrest me. Your objections to smoking are not law.”

  Peruzzi rolled his eyes but said nothing.

  “Quarantine?” I asked. “For everyone? Even the people who arrived an hour ago?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said.

  “Even for the people who were about to leave,” said Locanda, again unsettling me with his gaze.

  “Yes. No one is to leave the property. That means all of you and the staff and the girl and her guardian. The Spanish lady.”

  “Dio mio,” said Franco. “She rode on my Vespa yesterday. She put her arms around my waist because she said I drove too fast. Am I going to be sick?”

  Pellegrini mugged ignorance. “Perhaps,” he said. “Unless you’ve already had rosolia. Have you already had rosolia?”

  “Non lo so,” said Franco in desperation.

  “I had rosolia when I was seven,” I said, aiming a glare at Locanda. Had I? I was fairly sure. “So may I leave?”

  “Me too,” said Bernie. “I was eight or nine.”

  Pellegrini nodded. “Of course, signori. If you can provide a certificate from your physician, you are free to leave.”

  My current physician was Fred Peruso, who was also a good pal and the county coroner back in New Holland. But I wasn’t going to tell the young doctor that. “My family physician is in New York,” I lied. “And he died f
ifteen years ago.” That part was true, but I was aiming for an exemption, and I figured he might be swayed if I placed enough hurdles in the way of obtaining a certificate.

  Bernie’s prospects were equally unlikely. For one thing it was the weekend. For another we were four thousand miles from home. It would take at least a day or two to get confirmation from the US, and that was if he would accept a telegram or telex. In English. If he actually wanted a certificate, we’d need at least two weeks by mail to prove our cases.

  And we weren’t the only ones troubled by the sentence. Tato and Giuliana slumped in their chairs, looking miserable, and muttering what a disaster this was. Between puffs on his crooked cigarette, Lucio was spitting a geyser of new, more colorful parolacce under his breath. The object of his rancor was clearly the policeman, at least until he’d exhausted his bile. Then, turning to the doctor for new inspiration, he produced fresh oaths that, I had to admit, demanded respect for their remarkable creativity if not propriety. But he’d saved his best work for last: to wit, Veronica, the Typhoid Mary of our jolly throng. Had she been present and heard his words, she surely would have suffered a seizure and collapsed in a convulsive, insensate heap of self-soiling, thumb-sucking stupor. Good thing she was up in my room—now hers alone—enjoying a nap and snacking on the chocolates I’d intended to take home for my editor, Charlie Reese.

  As we sat there on the terrazza, all wondering what the next few days or weeks held in store for us, Vicky strolled in from the garden.

  Upon noticing the dour expressions on our faces, she asked in English what was going on. Locanda waved her over and explained quietly in her ear.

  “What? I’ve got to stay here? With your boring friends?”

  And, with that, Vicky supplanted Veronica at the top of Lucio’s list of people he’d rather kick than kiss. She’d also ensured an empty seat on either side of her at dinner. Locanda told her rather rudely to go to her room.

  “Here’s what you can expect if you contract rosolia,” said Pellegrini once Vicky had flown off on her broom. “The symptoms are often mild. But if they are not, you’ll experience low-grade fever, rash, and itching. Headache, swollen glands, and general malaise are common. These will pass in a matter of three days. But as many as half of infected subjects suffer no symptoms at all. So don’t worry and enjoy Signor Locanda’s hospitality.”