‘Until the Manifesto della razza in 1938, that is. That was when Mussolini’s Fascist government forbid Jewish children from attending schools. Mother taught my little brother and me at home, but in the forties the persecutions got worse. My father was forced to sell his business to Aryans at fire-sale prices, and we lost the gallery that had been in our family for three generations.’
The unfairness of it, the cruelty, stung me. ‘How awful,’ I said. ‘I heard about the persecutions in Nazi Germany, of course, but Italy?’
‘The racial laws took everyone by surprise,’ Izzy continued. ‘The Jewish community of Rome goes back to the second century BC when the Roman Empire had an alliance of sorts with Judea under the leadership of Judah Maccabeus.’ She shrugged. ‘I think the government wanted to prevent people like my father, who had quite a bit of money, from transferring it out of the country. Father continued working for a while – his work at the Vatican offered him some protection – but when the Germans occupied my country in 1943, they came looking for us.’
I’d forgotten my biscotti; my coffee had grown cold. ‘Good Lord.’
‘My mother spoke five different languages, Hannah. The Nazis said they wanted to employ her as a translator but that was a lie. Instead, they sent my parents to Risiera de San Sabba, a rice mill on the outskirts of Trieste, but it was really a concentration camp. From there, they were taken to Auschwitz.’
I swallowed hard and put down the biscotti I’d been nibbling, no longer particularly hungry for it.
Naddie reached out covered Izzy’s hand with her own. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘That was before the Nazis installed a crematorium at Risiera to save themselves the trouble of shipping undesirables out of the country,’ Izzy said bitterly. ‘I never saw my parents again. The Nazis took everything from us. Everything.’
I dabbed at my eyes with my napkin, trying to take in the enormity of it all. Like millions before me, I’d had a teary, gut-wrenching visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., but I’d never known anyone who had personally experienced the Holocaust. Those who had survived, like Izzy, were now in their eighties and nineties, and I hoped that testimonies like hers were being recorded before it was too late.
‘How did you and your brother escape the Nazis when they came for your parents?’ I asked after a few moments of respectful silence.
‘When rumors reached Rome that the Germans were coming, my parents sent Umberto and me to live with family friends in the country, the DeLucas, but even there we were not safe. One day, the German soldiers came looking, but the word had gotten around, so the DeLucas hid us under the floorboards under a bed.’
‘Someone had turned you in?’ Naddie asked.
‘Exactly. In those days, it was dangerous to put your trust in anybody. After the soldiers went away, the DeLucas quickly arranged shelter for us in a convent just outside of Rome. My father’s connections with the Vatican made that possible. If it weren’t for that …’ She shrugged.
‘I wore the habit of a novice,’ she continued. ‘The Nazis were watching the convent, I know, and soldiers knocked on the gates from time to time, but even the Nazis wouldn’t mess with the Reverend Mother Francesca Louise!’ She managed a smile. ‘Oh, she could be a terror!’
‘What was it like, living in the convent?’ Naddie asked.
‘What I remember most is being hungry. The nuns shared what food they had with us, but we were always hungry. And the flour had weevils in it.’
‘Ugh,’ I said.
Izzy’s mouth twitched. ‘Extra protein, Reverend Mother used to say.’
‘And your brother? What happened to Umberto?’ I asked.
‘He got typhus,’ she said simply. ‘He died.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, feeling lower than a snake for even bringing it up.
Izzy shrugged. ‘When the fever came, the nuns did everything they could for Umberto but there was no food, no medicine. I blame that on the Nazis, too.
‘Anyway, you can imagine how happy everyone was when the American soldiers came and Rome was liberated!’ She leaned forward over her coffee cup. ‘I stayed at the convent, though, because I had no place else to go.’
Filomena had sent a server out from the kitchen with a carafe of fresh coffee. I was already on a caffeine high but asked the young woman for a refill anyway.
‘This is where Bruno Milanesi comes into the story,’ Izzy said after the server had returned to the kitchen. ‘Bruno, he was a corporal with the U.S. 5th Army. The army had taken over a scuola secondaria that was near the convent and, even though the war was over, food was still scarce. My Bruno – only he wasn’t my Bruno then, of course – comes over with fresh eggs. He says in broken Italian – he didn’t speak good Italian at all, being an American boy – that he works in the kitchen, and would we like some eggs?’ Izzy rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, those were the most delicious eggs I had ever tasted! Bruno brought us eggs and cheese and sometimes apples. Later, when I got to know him better, I found out he was trading the cigarettes in his rations for food. He’d bring us the used coffee grounds, too. So wasteful, the U.S. Army. The nuns could always squeeze some more coffee out of those grounds! “Practically fresh,” Reverend Mother used to say.
‘One day, Bruno comes to the Reverend Mother and tells her he wants to marry me. There weren’t many Italian boys left, and I think the nuns saw it as an opportunity to get rid of me!’ For the first time that afternoon, Izzy laughed. ‘Bruno and I had fallen in love, of course, but I was only fourteen and too young to marry. Luckily one of the nuns had a brother who got me false papers. He was a printer who had helped hundreds of Jews escape the Germans. I didn’t have a passport, but this man provided a birth certificate for me that said I was born in 1928, not 1930. We used the certificate to get a passport saying I was sixteen so that we could get married and I could go back to the United States with Bruno as a war bride. I had to go for blood tests at the Red Cross, and present that certificate and other documentation to his captain in order to get permission to marry.’
‘What kind of papers did they want?’ Naddie wondered.
‘Some of the soldiers had what you would call “a wife in every port.” The army wanted to make sure Bruno wasn’t already married! But I knew he was an honest boy because he took my picture to send to his mother in Boston so she would know what her new daughter-in-law was going to look like.’ She laughed again. ‘I often wonder what she thought, Bruno’s mother, of Bruno’s “Little Bella”. I was a tiny speck of a thing back then, you can imagine, after so long with so little to eat. We had rations, like half a pound of bread a day, but if that’s all you have to eat it’s not much. I weighed ninety-eight pounds.
‘Then, we found out that Bruno was being shipped to Germany, and then back to America to be discharged, and the army doesn’t give a hoot that he has a fiancée in Italy. So I was thinking I’d never see him again. But, life goes on. I got a job working part-time in an alimentari. Then, one day months later, Reverend Mother came with a letter from Bruno. He’d gotten a two-week furlough.’ Izzy looked from me to Naddie and back again. ‘Everything was destroyed by the war, you understand. Everything. There was no electricity, no telephone, no railroad. It was very cold that winter, but Bruno hitchhiked from Monte Castello, where the army was helping the Brazillians push back the Germans, all the way to Rome! We got married right away. I didn’t even have time to rent a wedding dress. The next day we walked to the Red Cross where he signed me up as a GI wife so that I could get benefits, and then he had to leave and I didn’t see him again for almost a year. I got his letters, though. Every week he wrote me, although I’d get the letters in batches.
‘But then, time passed and I hadn’t heard from Bruno for several months. I was worried he’d forgotten about me when the Red Cross sent a letter telling me to go to a certain hotel where I would wait with other GI brides for a boat to take us to America. There were maybe five hundred war brides and over one hundred children all crowded toge
ther on that ship. Some of us were seasick for the whole ten days, but all the hardships flew straight out of my mind when we sailed into New York harbor and I saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time. I stood on the deck and bawled my eyes out.’
I scrabbled in my handbag, looking for a tissue. ‘Now you’ve made me cry,’ I sniffed, then blew my nose.
‘Bruno was there to meet me, and his mother, too. She was a wonderful woman! She’d sent me a dress to wear for my “homecoming.” Other than that, I really brought nothing with me.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Except for …’
We waited expectantly, but she didn’t finish the sentence. ‘Except for what?’ Naddie prodded.
‘Before Abba was forced to sell, he saved one thing. It’s a portrait of me, painted when I was around four, holding my kitten, Merlino.’
I was astonished. ‘How on earth did you get the painting out of Italy?’
Izzy smiled. ‘Abba carefully removed it from the frame, wrapped it in a special canvas, and my mother sewed it into the lining of my suitcase. The painting’s hanging in my living room now. I’ll show it to you sometime.’
‘I’d love to see it,’ I said.
‘It’s lovely,’ Naddie said. ‘I never knew its history. Fascinating.’ Turning to Izzy, she asked, ‘Is the painting valuable?’
Izzy shrugged. ‘It’s priceless to me, of course. I remember sitting for the artist, a flamboyant and rather scary woman named Clotilde Padovano. In the early part of the twentieth century, she was very much in demand as a portrait painter to the well-to-do. I don’t follow such things closely, but I read in the Times that one of her portraits was recently sold at auction in New York for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.’
I whistled.
‘I’ll never part with mine, of course,’ she said.
‘Nor would I, if it were mine,’ I said. ‘Not even if I were reduced to selling umbrellas on street corners.’
Izzy laughed then picked up her handbag, preparing to go. As we got up to join her, I turned to Izzy again. ‘Izzy, I have a rude question.’
‘Yes?’
‘For lunch just now, you had calamari. Isn’t squid a non-kosher food, treif?’
Izzy laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘I learned a long time ago, Hannah, that it is never safe to be Jewish. Maybe it was the years of living on the edge of being found out. Maybe it was the hours of kneeling on the cold floor of the convent at matins and prime. But, after I married Bruno, I converted. I’ve been a practicing Catholic ever since.’
I accompanied my friends to the entrance of Blackwalnut Hall, hugged them both goodbye then headed off in the direction of the parking lot to collect my car.
As I rounded the corner of the building I noticed two men squared off on the concrete apron outside the service entrance to the kitchen, looking for all the world like boxing bears. One had to be Raniero Buccho; nobody else at Calvert Colony had hair that impossibly blond. From his black-and-white uniform and the argument I’d overheard earlier, I guessed the other was probably the hapless kitchen staffer. I was too far away to hear what the men were saying, but from the way Raniero’s arms were flailing about I could tell he was giving the other guy a sizable piece of his mind. Raniero’s adversary stood his ground, his chin thrust forward, unflappably defiant. Curiosity aroused, I briefly considered moving to within earshot of the pair, but when I checked my watch I knew I had to hustle. I was due to pick up my granddaughter, Chloe, from her ballet lesson at three, and if I didn’t hurry I’d be late.
It was none of my business anyway, I thought as I climbed into my ancient LeBaron and slotted the key into the ignition. Raniero had a short fuse, no doubt about that. He was as likely to clobber someone over a dropped serving platter or a misplaced twist of lemon peel as he would, say, over a diner’s complaint about finding a hair in the vichyssoise. Besides, I thought, as I pulled out of the parking lot and into the drive, the other guy seemed to be giving as good as he got. I smiled. Poor Raniero.
SEVEN
‘As early as 1998, researchers were reporting that music could serve as an important tool for decreasing aggressive behavior in Alzheimer’s sufferers. In 2004, another paper suggested that memory for familiar music might remain intact in some dementia patients. “Music of the right kind,” neurologist Oliver Sacks said in a 2007 interview, “can serve to orient and anchor a patient when almost nothing else can. The past, which is not recoverable in any other way, is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity.”’
Anne Arundel Health Matters magazine, Spring, 2012.
Early the following morning I was soaking in a bathtub full of lavender bubbles when Naddie called and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Become a volunteer in the memory unit and Calvert Colony would provide me with lunch. Free. All I’d have to do is help some of the residents with their individual iPods, take walks with some and read stories to others.
Since Paul was still in the process of circumnavigating Long Island, the prospect of Raniero’s cooking was a lot more appealing than what I’d planned for myself that day, namely sliced tomatoes and a carton of Stouffers macaroni and cheese, which still lay rock solid in the freezer compartment of my fridge.
Besides, it wasn’t exactly a hardship. Visiting Blackwalnut Hall was like checking into the Hyatt Regency. In fact, when I reported to the lounge for duty later that morning, an attractive man dressed in high prep – khakis, a navy sports jacket and a button-down oxford shirt with a red tie – sat coaxing sixties and seventies tunes out of the Steinway grand.
While I waited along with Naddie for a woman named Elaine Broering to escort me into the memory unit, I couldn’t resist singing along, echoing the responses in ‘The Candy Man’ along with most of the residents sitting around me. Two of the singers were the pair of lovebirds I’d seen sitting at the piano the previous week, sharing their love of Stephen Foster favorites with the other residents.
Halfway through the next selection, where a couple of members of our intrepid gang of backup singers got irretrievably stuck on ‘Sgt Pepper’s lonely, Sgt Pepper’s lonely, Sgt Pepper’s lonely, Sgt Pepper’s lonely …’ with no indication that they’d ever reach the ‘Hearts Club Band’ part of the song, I noticed a young man pacing nervously in front of the reception desk. He wore a shiny blue suit that stood out like a neon sign among the more casually attired seniors around him. He carried a bouquet of flowers, too, their stems wrapped in the familiar green tissue paper of a local supermarket chain. He also looked vaguely familiar.
‘Hold the phone! Isn’t that …’ Naddie began, but for me, the penny had already dropped. The last time I’d seen that dude, he’d been showing off his tats on a video chat with Christie McSpadden.
‘Apparently Dickie-boy isn’t in Afghanistan anymore,’ I said. ‘I think I better go telephone Angie.’
I excused myself and slipped out onto the front porch. At first I thought Angie wasn’t going to answer. After four rings my call switched over to her answerphone, but she picked up mid-message with a breathless, ‘Hello.’ Then: ‘You got me down in the basement doing laundry,’ Angie said after I’d identified myself. ‘What’s up?’
‘Thought you’d want to know that Dickie-boy has come to call.’
Silence stretched out for several long seconds before Angie exploded, ‘Shit! He’s not in Kandahar. No wonder she’s been so concerned over her appearance lately. I should have picked up on that. What should I do, Hannah?’
‘Tell you what, I’ll keep an eye on him while you get yourself over here.’ I watched through the leaded glass on the door while Richard Whatever-his-name-was signed in on the little computer screen at reception. ‘Your mother-in-law hasn’t shown up yet. But Angie,’ I continued, ‘the guy’s got flowers.’
‘Of course he does. And probably a box of chocolate-covered cherries, too.’
‘How soon can you get over here?’
‘I’m on my way.’
‘What if he plans to tak
e Christie out?’ I asked.
‘Well, we can’t stop her. Calvert Colony isn’t a prison camp, and she still has a car and a valid driver’s license, although I wish like hell she wouldn’t drive.’
‘I just watched the guy sign in. Would an ax murderer do that?’ I paused to collect my thoughts. ‘Tell you what,’ I volunteered, Nancy Drew to the rescue, ‘if they leave, I’ll try to follow. We can keep in touch by cell phone, OK?’
Angie agreed and cut the connection.
I rejoined Naddie. We had reached the final verse of ‘I Got a Crush on You, Sweetie Pie’ when Christie finally appeared, gliding down the grand staircase like Loretta Young. Loretta would have been wearing a designer ball gown and masses of jewels, but Christie looked smart in a surprisingly age-appropriate blue-checked shirtwaist dress and a pair of black-and-white spectator flats. She’d even dug a chunky gold chain necklace out of her jewelry box, with a pair of matching earrings.
Clearly, Richard’s visit was no surprise.
He recognized her at once, took several quick steps forward and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek. The flowers were handed over. I wasn’t close enough to hear what the two were saying over the exuberant, off-key singing that was filling the lobby, but their body language was clear enough. Christie pressed her hand against her breast. For me? How sweet! Then enveloped him in a hug.
Oh, it’s nothing. He accepted the hug a bit stiffly, or so it seemed to me.
Christie handed the bouquet to the receptionist – would you put these in water for me, please? – took Richard’s arm and dragged him over to a loveseat by the fireplace. Never mind that Edith was already sitting there, reading. With an imperial wave, Christie promptly dispatched the poor woman – afghan, paperback, teacup and all – so that she and Richard could sit down on it.
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