The Italian Letters

by Linda Lambert

  “You’ll need to be careful,” said her mother. “As your dad observed, all hell could break loose.” It already had.

  Justine had decided to ignore the warning; after all, she’d been under surveillance for more than a year. She chose to respond to her mother’s comment on aplomb and authority. “I have been inspiring and emboldened, Mom, by the examples of audacious women I’ve had. Great-Grandmother Isabella, Mary of Nazareth, and you. Women of daring and clarity. Isabella’s secret life—in the ’20s—a dangerous time for a woman to engage in sensuous communion with an infamous author. All of these women made courageous choices and in doing so, found themselves.” She paused. “I assume you know I’ve read the letters.”

  “I do. I’m sorry I didn’t give them to you myself. You see . . .”

  “Yes?” Justine said empathically, gently, although she couldn’t imagine that her mother had a defensible reason for leaving her on the outside. “Why did you keep the letters a secret from me all of these years? From an anthropologist?”

  Lucrezia rose and walked to the refrigerator, took out a bottle of Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque, grabbed two small crystal glasses, and returned to the table. Slowly pouring the clear, effervescent liquid, she topped off both glasses, then reached in her pocket and pulled out two letters as thin as filo. “I’ll answer those questions after you look at these. Let’s go in by the fire. You’ll need to sit down.”

  Justine followed without a word. Champagne in one hand, letters in the other, she eased her sapphire dress above her knees and curled up on the floor. For several moments she gazed at the blazing fire as it shone in her crystal goblet, then set her glass down on the stone hearth. She began to read:

  Hotel Beau Rivage, Bandol, France, 18 September 1929

  My dearest Isabella,

  Your news fills me with a joy greater than I’ve ever known. I was sure the fates had decided that I would never have a child of my own. Undeserving. With little to offer another. Still, I’m afraid that I might have to leave fatherhood to your fine husband. Does he suspect? Surely not.

  This French doctor is as useless as the others. I overheard him tell Frieda that there was little chance of improvement. The air is damp here; all my strength goes to pulling in what oxygen I can. And writing what I can. I need you at my side, my darling, but know that is not possible. Even if you changed your mind and wanted to come to me, you shouldn’t travel with little Lawrence in your womb.

  I beg of you to consider these thoughts when raising our child. I wish him to have your lightness of spirit and innocence about the world rather than his father’s cynicism. Give him freedom and choices early, and love without suffocation. Let him spread his wings wide. Protect him from the life of a writer! Terrible lot. And science and politics . . . almost as bad. They steal away life’s mysteries. But I digress. I am excited beyond words by our good fortune. My one regret in this short life has been the absence of a child of my own. And now that my child will be given life by the woman I truly love—what more could I want?

  So, from me, a God-be-with-you. I have lived as vividly as I have written—and if I have left with you, dear woman, the seed of my deepest self, I die with gladness and fulfillment in my belly, worshiping the sun in yours. You have brought me a sense of peace that I have never known. How brief, yet how important, you have been to me. As if God said, “Wait!—there is someone you must meet.”

  A tear fell onto the letter. In spite of the fire, Justine shivered. “Grandma Laurence . . . she is?” At some level, she already knew.

  Her mother just nodded.

  “Miranda said there was word of a daughter. But I couldn’t quite believe—after all, none of his biographers wrote about it.” Justine turned back to the end of the letter.

  If you need anything, my love, remember you can trust Lady Brett. She is living at the ranch. Stay well, and carry my seed with care.

  I love you, David

  Justine held her breath. Muted light from the setting sun flooded into the room, and in the distance painted the Duomo with a golden helmet. She was cognizant only of her pounding heart. I’m the great-granddaughter of D.H. Lawrence. The great-granddaughter of D. H. Lawrence, she repeated to herself.

  “Frieda made it known that he wasn’t capable of consummating any relationship toward the end. Biographers believed the myth—after all, it was credible.”

  Justine grimaced, rebelling against being defined by others. “Tell me about Lady Brett.”

  “Lady Brett was from a British royal family who idolized Lawrence. She followed him to Taos in hopes of joining in the establishment of an Utopian community.”

  “Which never came about . . .”

  “Right. She was a strange one. Nearly deaf, she carried around a big trumpet of a hearing device and dressed like a Wild West show performer. Frieda couldn’t stand her, but she was unwavering in her devotion to D.H.”

  “Umm,” was all Justine said before picking up the second envelope. Different from the first—different stationery, thinner, more frayed at the edges. Frieda had written one short line across the top of the yellowed newspaper clipping, posted from Ad Astra, Vence. It read: “I knew you and Lorenzo were close. Frieda.” Justine opened the article from Paris Match dated March 3, 1930. The headline read simply:

  Celebre auteur D.H. Lawrence meurt a Venise.

  “Famed author, D.H. Lawrence, dies in Vence, France.”

  Justine’s cry was soft, almost silent. “How long have you known? About Lawrence? About the letters?”

  “Since I was a young girl.”

  “But why reveal the information now?” Justine struggled not to sound accusatory, although she couldn’t help feeling that somehow she’d been denied a vital dimension of her identity, her self.

  “I tell you now because your father said you had the letters.” She chose not to say: Because of your performance today in the Vatican. “You’re a mature woman. It was time. It was time for me to break another promise in order to fulfill a more important one.”

  “Another promise?” Justine asked, staring at the last letter, rereading, “As if God said, ‘Wait!—there is someone you must meet.’” It was difficult to tear herself away from Isabella and her dangerous liaison. Then, settling back against the wall, she gave her full attention to her mother. “Tell me the whole story . . . tell me about Isabella.”

  “It’s a bit of a story.”

  “I have time.”

  Lucrezia sat down in the burgundy French provincial chair facing the fire and her daughter and held her stemmed glass in both hands. Although this moment had been a long time in coming, a scene she had rehearsed a thousand times, she searched for the right words. “As you now know, your Grandmother Laurence was named after David Herbert Lawrence.”

  Justine nodded.

  “It’s important for you to realize that our house was occupied during the war, first by Mussolini’s thugs, then by Germans . . .”

  “Prego said there were heavy boots. He’s still fearful.”

  “Fear of the Nazis never goes away. Nearly 9,000 Jews were transported out of Italy. It haunts you forever. When Laurence was twelve—that would have been 1942—she overheard what was probably a casual conversation.” Lucrezia’s voice trembled. “As mother told it, she would fold herself into those massive velvet drapes,” she pointed toward the northern wall of windows and the drapes, thinned by decades of dry cleaning, “and eavesdrop on the Nazis. On one occasion, there was a gathering of Italian Fascists and Nazis—Italy was still a member of the Axis powers. The topic of D.H. Lawrence came up, and a comment was made that he had been a frequent guest in the house. The renowned Italian archeologist, Massimo Pallottimo, was in the room . . .”

  “Pallottimo?? In the room? The Fascist archaeologist who denied the validity of D.H. Lawrence’s views in his introduction to Etruscan Places?”

  “. . . the very same. According to mother, Pallottimo commented, very deliberately to be sure, that there were rumors that Lawrence’s moth
er was Jewish. You’ll remember that the Fascists despised Lawrence because he had not portrayed the Etruscans as the majestic warrior forebears of the Romans. Your grandmother heard one of the officers say that Mussolini’s mission was to return Italy to the greatness of Rome, and to rid the country of undesirable races. This conversation terrified her.”

  “But why? Did she know of her real connection to D.H Lawrence?”

  “She did. Grandmother Isabella was distraught with guilt after grandfather died at the first battle of El Alamein at Mersa Matruh. Even though he was Egyptian, he’d managed to join the British troops in North Africa when Mussolini assured the Italian people that the fall of Egypt was imminent. So she chose to tell her daughter about her real father when she turned twelve. She must have felt very alone with her secret. And when she overhead the conversation, she mistakenly assumed that she was Jewish. She knew what that could mean. Jews were being exported from Italy on a daily basis.”

  “My god.” Justine’s face tightened with the pain the young girl must have felt. She trembled.

  Lucrezia gazed at her daughter, appreciating her capacity for empathy, compassion. “Mother told me the story when I was fourteen. That would have been 1966. She was still frightened. She showed me the letters and made me promise never to tell anyone.”

  “Not even your own daughter.”

  “At fourteen, I had little sense of the future or what such a promise would mean. I would have told you, probably soon, but I’m just as glad that you found the letters yourself.”

  “So am I.” Their eyes met with warmth and closeness. Secrets keep us apart. Secrets have kept us apart. Justine finally asked, “Why didn’t the family leave Italy? After all, they weren’t Italian.”

  Lucrezia shifted her eyes to the fire, took a sip of her champagne. “I know that seems reasonable now, but Egypt was dangerous then, and Grandfather believed his homeland would soon fall to the Nazis. That Alexandria—and probably Cairo—would soon be under siege. Here, at least, they were allowed to stay in a wing of their own home.”

  Justine was silent for several moments. Her eyes flooded with a mixture of affection and sorrow for her mother, for she knew that living with secrets whittles away at the soul. She rose and walked to her mother’s chair, kneeling beside her, taking her hand. “The photo of Isabella on your bureau—she looks so sad, as though all spirit had been drained from her.”

  “The one in the fur stole?”

  Justine nodded.

  “It was taken in 1930.”

  “The year Lawrence died and Isabella was born,” said Justine. “Almost more than one can bear.” She imagined what it must have been like for Isabella to be in the arms of her husband while bearing another man’s child. “Living with a lie day in and day out could twist anyone into an unrecognizable person—being careful about what she said, how she felt, her expressions of affection for her husband.”

  “The woman in the photo tells the story doesn’t she? Of grief and shame and remorse.”

  “Yes.” Justine stared back into the fire. Grief and shame and remorse, she repeated to herself. Yet Isabella also knew pleasure and joy. She’d been swept away by a grand passion. And she’d been given a daughter, a legacy of her trust in love.

  She voiced her thoughts to her mother. Then, “Can such a love balance out the pain she was to feel later? I doubt that she regretted her affair with Lawrence.”

  “I’m certain that she didn’t regret it. After all, it was so much more than sexual, which I doubt was very satisfying, given his weakened condition. Their relationship was spiritual and intellectual. She felt acknowledged as a woman. Someone worthy of being consulted and included in the pivotal decisions of his life. Lawrence’s life.”

  Justine wiped the moisture from her eyes and smiled. The great-granddaughter of D.H. Lawrence. What will this mean to me? How am I different because of this heritage? “Where is he? My great-grandfather?”

  “His ashes are buried in a chapel on his ranch, on the side of Lobo Mountain,” said her mother. “A few miles north of Taos, New Mexico.”

  Where he wanted to be. From the pyramids to Italy’s Tufo Mountains to Lobo.

  The journey continues . . .

  Introducing the third novel in The Justine Trilogy . . .

  A RAPTURE OF RAVENS: AWAKENING IN TAOS PROLOGUE

  I will never forget one thing. In Winter time, when you go to Wounded Knee, never dig deep into the snow. All you will do is find the blood left by your family before me. Think only of them and say, it is a good day to die!

  —Tashunkala (Little Horse), SihaSapa Lakota

  FEBRUARY 3, 2011

  JUSTINE STOOD AT THE FROSTED WINDOW in flannel pajamas, an Indian blanket wrapped around her like a cocoon, curtains drawn to reveal an island of lights on the Taos campus of the University of New Mexico, a half-mile away. A shooting comet disappeared into a palette of stars, a mere sliver of moon hung in the western sky. Barely 4:30 a.m.; she hadn’t slept since Amir’s 2:30 call. In another hour, the mantle of snow on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains would turn pink in the early morning light.

  Revolution Day all over again. She held her steaming coffee cup with both hands, the noise of the television in the background. Without turning, she listened to the sounds of men and women flooding into Tahrir Square in Cairo. It was Wednesday.

  All Amir had said before the line went dead was, “I love you, Justine. It could be today. Then I’ll be home . . .” It could be today, which could only mean one thing: Mubarak was expected to step down. The revolution would achieve its goal: the end to a brutal thirty-year dictatorship. Justine felt a tension in her gut—Can it be so easy? Can Mubarak be brought down in less than two weeks? Perhaps, but not likely.

  The possibilities were promising, yet she was gripped by deeply unsettling fears for Amir, his leadership role with the youth of Egypt placing him at great risk of being arrested. And she knew what that meant. The turmoil in the Middle East was unprecedented, clearly, so, perhaps none of the old rules applied. This is a new game, in a new world bursting from the ground up, a popular revolution quickened by social media. But then what? She knew that if Mubarak were removed, Egyptians would still have the military and Brotherhood, since no one else was organized. Perhaps with Amir’s help, those who led the January 25th revolution would form themselves into a focused political movement. Perhaps.

  Justine gripped the blanket more firmly around her chilled body and returned to the kitchen for the last dregs of coffee. On the couch, she curled her stockinged feet under her and stared at the screen. Tahrir Square was crowded with thousands chanting, “Down with Mubarak,” arms flailing in the air, placards in Arabic demanding the president’s resignation. The crowd throbbed like a singular heart beating in concert.

  Her vision was captured by a familiar-looking figure in the throng. While the images were nearly indistinct, she recognized his gait, his posture, even his profile. Amir! She smiled involuntarily to see that he was wearing the Kokopelli scarf she’d given him for Christmas. It must be Amir. She couldn’t be wrong, could she? He was facing west, toward the burned-out Hilton, leaning into a small group of four or five men.

  From the edge of the screen, like the meteor, men rode swiftly into sight on sturdy Arabian horses and lanky camels, clubs swinging above their heads, then coming down to strike indiscriminately into the swarm of young people.

  Suddenly, one of the camel riders rode in Amir’s direction, charging with intent, as though he knew his target. Amir didn’t see him coming. Justine jumped to her feet, spilling her coffee, turning over the coffee table. “Amir! Amir!” She was with him in the middle of the grassy square, screaming, warning him. Two men in the crowd pointed frantically and raced to pull the hoodlum from his camel, but too late. The club crashed against Amir’s head. She imagined blood spurting into the electrified air. As the rider lifted his club for a second blow, he was pulled from his camel and beaten into the ground.

  Bloody Wednesday had begun.

>   ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author and her husband, Morgan, in Vitero, Italy

  IN THE CAIRO CODEX, I acknowledged the challenge of writing about a culture that is not my own. In writing The Italian Letters, I received the assistance of Italian friends who generously shared insights, personal perceptions, and scientific expertise. They helped me to understand the essence of being Italian, and without their expertise, this novel could not have been written. Even so, I am but a stranger in their beautiful land.

  I wish to thank these many friends. The Baroness Miranda Taxis and her husband, the Baron William Taxis, made available their voices, beautiful estate, Il Pero, and sensitive feedback. Guido Barbujani, professor of biology at the University of Ferrara, lent his expertise on the Etruscans and mitochondrial DNA, as well as his editing expertise as a novelist. Marco De Marco, Director of the Etruscan Museo in Fiesole, provided insights into the Etruscan afterlife as well as photographs of the Zona Archeologica and the town of Fiesole. Francesca Boitani, Director of Il Museo e Villa Giulia in Rome, was the first to share her expertise on the history of the Etruscans. Guido De’ Medici taught the marvelous cooking class at Badia a Coltibuono. Paule Beauchef Beretta of Veii, Italy, shared her intimate knowledge of Rome. Delmo Della Dora is an Italian-American friend who provided linguistic research, editing, and language additions, while appearing as a retired linguist from the University of Bologna. Robert Blackburn, friend, villain, and gentle critic, continued his misadventures that began in The Cairo Codex. All of these individuals lent their personas as fictionalized characters in this novel.