Devotion

by Louisa Young

  He was damned if he was going to explain it to them. He smiled, and stood, while they murmured, glancing up at him from time to time.

  They requested that he let them know, should he move.

  ‘But of course,’ said Tom. ‘Thank you so much.’ He was due in Palermo anyway. He closed the door, and he was breathing shallow.

  Someone has told them to find me, he thought, because I am, on some level, a foreign Jew.

  It was a very nasty feeling.

  I’m a free-born Englishman, he thought. This is the twentieth century. And if I were a foreign Jew it would still be the twentieth century.

  He had in his English mouth a nebulous aftertaste, the ghost of a possible future, a parallel universe swerving perilously near. They just want to know who I am, and where I am. They’re not going to do anything bad to me … And as he said to himself, of course not, that’s nonsense, he heard the words in Aldo’s voice, and he felt Aldo’s excuse: they don’t mean me. And he felt his own argument back: so that makes it all right, does it?

  And Nenna had said that. Even if it’s not us, it’s someone.

  Bertolini’s uncle.

  Tom had done nothing to merit ill treatment by the Fascists.

  Perhaps it’s time I did.

  *

  The following day a letter arrived from the university, saying that as he was of the Hebraic race under the new laws the post provisionally offered to him was no longer available.

  Even me! he thought. Neither Jewish nor Italian, but I am on some list somewhere.

  And with that he realised that after all it was he who was going to have to leave.

  But without them? Without her?

  No.

  *

  He tracked down Bertolini.

  ‘What can I do?’ he asked. ‘Is there anyone who can use me?’ And Bertolini said, sympathetically but decisively, no. ‘You’re too tall, you’re too blond, you’re too English. You’re too visible. Your family are founding Fascists.’

  ‘But,’ said Tom.

  ‘You’re known,’ said Bertolini. ‘And anyway, I don’t know anyone. And don’t go round acting like a fool. The wrong people will hear you and the right people will see your idiocy.’

  I should go home, Tom thought. My own country could use me.

  Or I should shoot him. Provoke a crisis and let the detritus fall where it will.

  He thought, for a second: Come on war, hurry up. Let’s get on with it.

  *

  He went to see Johnny at the Consulate.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Of course I’m with you. I’ll stay away, but I need us to be friends. And I’m taking her with me. Is that fair? Tell me, how can an Italian citizen – well, a revoked citizen – come to Britain?’

  Johnny, relieved, was full of information until he ascertained that the revoked Italian citizen in question was not herself inclined to go.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Can you give me a certificate or a formal letter saying I’m not Jewish? Because they’ve got it into their heads that I am.’

  ‘Tom,’ said Johnny. ‘Calm down.’

  *

  Mid-December, on a dingy morning of a type he would never have imagined happening to Rome, Tom went back to the island and banged on the door.

  Susanna answered.

  ‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he said. He said ‘addio’ – ‘to God’ – not ‘arrivederci’ – till we meet again. He stood in the hall, thin and pale. ‘And I wanted to say, to say formally, for the third time: Please come with me. If you say you will come, I will stay, and I will arrange it. I’ll do everything I can. The boys,’ he said. ‘Marinella. Aldo too.’

  Susanna kissed him on both cheeks, and breathed out a little sigh through her nose. ‘Buon viaggio,’ she said. ‘Aldo will never agree!’ as if it were a little joke, Aldo and his little ways … ‘Next summer by the lake!’ she said, in English, their old end-of-holiday greeting, and his eyes filled with tears.

  Nenna came down behind her, a dark figure on the white marble stairs. She reached for her coat from the hook behind the door.

  ‘I’ll come with you to the station,’ she said. He looked at her in wonder, picked up his suitcase, and said, a wild and stupid gesture, ‘Bring your passport. We can get you a ticket at the station, and clothes in London.’

  ‘Masino,’ she said, cautioning, and shook her head. But they walked out together, across the bridge and into the old Ghetto. It was both cold and warm; odd slithery weather. He could smell her coat: lanital.

  ‘Nenna,’ he said. ‘Did you read about the attacks in Germany and Austria? Now that Mussolini is aping Hitler he is moving faster than Hitler did. He has legislated against you having a life at all. Your father …’

  ‘… is a fine man,’ she said, quite quietly.

  ‘But he is wrong about this,’ Tom said. ‘In fact he is wrong about almost everything in the wider world. And you are old enough to look at the wider world, Nenna. It’s not just about the fact that he loves you and you love him.’

  She stopped for a moment, on the corner before Piazza Mattei. The stone tortoises and the fountain glowed and played for all the world as if it were a sunny day in summer long ago.

  ‘I feel,’ she said, ‘that I have grown in a garden where I was planted, a beautiful garden, and that you want me to climb up and look over the garden wall.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I do. Because you are growing anyway and will see over soon enough, and even if you didn’t, those walls are coming down. Or—’ He was about to go off on another image, something biblical, expulsion from the Garden of Eden …

  There was no need. She knew. It was in her face, her eyes. He looked at her, properly. Her cheeks were thinner, her eyes darker. Her mouth held a shape he had never seen before.

  He was terribly, terribly relieved.

  ‘Then come,’ he said. ‘Please.’ His eyes caught hers, and held them. It seemed years since they had actually looked at each other.

  ‘I know he is fair, and kind, and good,’ she said. ‘I understand about everything, and yet. And yet.’

  She was crying, of course. He thought: she loves him the way I love Riley. Imagine if Riley fell to pieces before my eyes … The thought made him feel weak.

  ‘I am very afraid,’ she said softly.

  He stopped her, and folded her in his arms. How often must she have looked the truth in the face and turned from it, intelligent girl that she is. Tom had ignored the truth himself, and been able to avoid it just by staying away from them. I’ve been a coward, he thought. I’ve let her down.

  He had always known that he would never be as strong as Riley; as brave as him, either on the battlefield or in the life that followed it. No one could be. He used to assume he would never get a chance to be – but now all that looked different. And right now, his arms full of a weeping girl, he felt strong.

  ‘I have been dreaming about him,’ she was saying. ‘I see him wearing a golden shield, a woven armour, chain mail, glowing and shining, and then through it starts flakes of rust, a corroded spot, here or there, something eating at the fabric from inside. I want to touch it but I can’t touch it in case there is worse beneath, like a rotten wall beneath rotten paper. If I touch it this armour will fall apart, and the body behind it will be rotten.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said.

  ‘I always thought,’ she went on, ‘it is right to put yourself with the strong, to support the government. Certainly when you have a family! If he hadn’t, how would he have worked, and earned a living? Only a – a fool would go against society.’

  ‘It depends on the society,’ he said, and she looked up at him, and said quietly: ‘How is England?’

  ‘We have elections,’ he said. ‘People laugh at Fascists in the street. There are all kinds of things wrong but you can say what you want about anything.’

  ‘Masino,’ she said. ‘I can’t talk about this to anybody.’

  And that, said on the public street unde
r the sky, iron wheels rattling over cobbles, a policeman’s whistle, was to him like a horse’s kick of reality. She can’t. She really can’t.

  There was a silence, in which he willed her to continue. ‘You can talk to me,’ he said.

  ‘You’re leaving,’ she said.

  ‘So come with me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘It will be more difficult later on,’ he said.

  She shook her head and gave a weak laugh. ‘Oh, I can’t leave my family. Never mind my father – my mother! And the boys – and Marinella!’ ‘If you come, perhaps they would be more likely to follow you,’ he said, seeing even as he said it how the suggestion sank under the might of its own unlikelines. Anyway, ‘Nenna didn’t even acknowledge it.’ ‘Everything will be all right. She cried. Attesismo!’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Waiting,’ she said. ‘A Roman speciality. A Jewish one too.’

  ‘You can’t!’ he cried.

  ‘Oh, I must,’ she said. ‘Go on. You’ll miss your train.’

  ‘But—’ he said, and

  ‘Oh—’

  And the law of not missing the train came bearing down on them; the obligatory continuation of normality, and they had to say goodbye, so they did, because heaven forbid that anyone miss a train trying to turn the life of someone they love in a different direction, he thought, as he turned away and walked along the platform – and then turned back, in one movement, a swerving realisation that for Christ’s sake he had his own capacity to do what he wanted, what he thought was right. We’re all sleepwalking, he thought, wake up! WAKE UP! – and he walked back, back down the platform, back on to the concourse, back out the tall stone entrance and across the road to where the tram he knew she would be taking would stop. She was standing there in the street, small and alone.

  ‘Nenna,’ he said, and put his hand on her arm.

  ‘I thought you’d gone!’

  ‘There’s one thing,’ he said.

  She smiled at him, confused, and in itself there was something loverlike about that. But I am not in love with her …

  ‘Marry me,’ he said.

  She turned her head sideways, mistrustful.

  ‘You don’t love me,’ she said.

  ‘I—’ he said. ‘It will help, later on. When I come back for you. It will give us a claim on you. And Marinella. When you change your mind.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You’re changing it already,’ he said. ‘Can’t you see?’

  She wouldn’t acknowledge it.

  ‘And I do love you,’ he said.

  ‘Not like a man and a woman,’ she said.

  Does she want me to? Is that what she’s asking? Should I – Can I?

  She’s a fish on the line, I mustn’t scare her away—

  ‘We don’t have to be like a man and a woman,’ he said. ‘But where can we find an official to give us a certificate to say we are brother and sister? And that I am sworn to you? Nenna,’ and here he held up his finger, with the fine white scar on it. ‘Look,’ he said. She smiled and held up her own.

  ‘Come what may,’ he said, ‘and that’s all very well but it won’t wash with any border police or Blackshirts.’

  He gave her a moment. Then he said: ‘All right?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. ‘If you insist. Though I think it’s mad. I think.’

  *

  From a café he rang Johnny, who was willing to try to ease the issuing of a copy of Tom’s birth certificate and a nulla osta – a declaration that there was no legal impediment to Tom’s marrying. ‘But they won’t marry you, old man,’ he said. ‘Not if she’s Jewish.’

  ‘That’s why I’m asking you,’ Tom said. ‘It’s only because she’s Jewish that I need to marry her.’ He knew that he had left it too late; that the web he wanted Nenna to escape had already quietly slipped into place around them.

  ‘Welcome to modern Europe,’ said Carmichael, and Tom thought damn I’m a fool, and again Herschel Greenszpan spun across his mind, younger than him, driven mad.

  ‘But they think I’m Jewish,’ he said. ‘I’m on some list – the police came round. Give me a letter saying I am Jewish, and we’ll marry on that.’

  ‘Last time I saw you you wanted a letter saying you weren’t Jewish,’ Johnny said. ‘Make up your mind!’

  ‘Or, as I’m British, couldn’t we marry under British law? Couldn’t the ambassador marry us?’

  ‘I’ve a feeling there’s a limit to how many lies the Embassy can issue on your behalf,’ Johnny said.

  ‘So let’s just work out which one would be most effective, and stick to that,’ said Tom. ‘Eh?’ He leaned in to the receiver. ‘Johnny,’ he said. ‘She’s changing her mind. She doesn’t fully understand what is happening. I am afraid for her safety in this country. It’s my cousin.

  ‘I did work out that it’s your cousin, old man. I’m not a complete nit. And you understand that if you take her to England and there is a war, sooner or later she’d probably be interned for being Italian?’

  Tom shook his head. Every way you look …

  ‘Could Father Harkness help? At All Saints?’

  ‘It’s a Christian church!’ Johnny said. ‘She’d have to convert. Which I suppose is rather exactly not the point. And it would still need to be under someone’s law.’

  ‘But if we can’t have a religious marriage in either religion then we must have a civil marriage and a civil marriage by Italian law has to be by Italian law.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it would have to be by British law.’

  ‘I’ll see what we can do,’ Johnny said.

  Before he rang off, Tom asked, ‘Is there much of this sort of thing?’

  Johnny said, ‘You’re the first!’

  *

  Down by the yellow river, Tom leaned and waited for her.

  ‘It’s going to take a little longer than I thought,’ he told her. ‘Christmas is getting in the way. And there’s the Banns …’

  ‘Banns?’

  ‘Pubblicazioni di matrimonio,’ he said. Today’s new phrase, and one he wished he’d never heard. Twenty-one days! He was terrified she would change her mind. He’d thought – what, that he could just buy a few bottles of good prosecco for the officials, and five white roses from the Sicilian on the bridge?

  Yes, he’d thought something along those lines.

  *

  The day before Christmas Eve, Johnny said he could manage the nulla osta and a copy of Tom’s birth certificate, ‘some time in the New Year’. ‘But we can’t give you anything saying you’re Jewish because A, you’re not, and B, HMG doesn’t see a chap’s religion as their business any more, so there’s nothing we issue which would have it on,’ he said. ‘You could apply for Italian citizenship and say you’re a Jew, but I don’t imagine that’s the route you have in mind, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘And anyway they’re revoking Jewish citizenships, not handing them out.’

  ‘If you could find a ship’s captain who’s also a judge or a registrar you could marry at sea. But I’ve asked around and there doesn’t seem to be such a person in Rome just now.’

  ‘No,’ said Tom.

  ‘So if you lied to the vicar you could have at least a religious marriage – Rev Harkness is a nice fellow, and I very much doubt he can tell a Roman Jew from a Roman Gentile on sight. Would Nenna pretend to be Christian? It still wouldn’t be legal, but it would be something, and you could formalise it later at home. But we can’t pull off British law in Italy, I’m afraid.’

  It’s such a simple thing, Tom was thinking. I just want to get married.

  ‘But look, don’t lose heart. I’m intrigued by this now – I’m sure there’s a way. Of course if you could get her to come to England …’

  Tom laughed, but not.

  It couldn’t be done, and even if it could it couldn’t be done quickly, and even if it were done, it would mean nothing under It
alian law.

  *

  Tom bought two bottles of good prosecco anyway, and five white roses from the Sicilian on the bridge. He took one of the former to Johnny in thanks for his efforts and got invited to Christmas lunch, and the latter to Nenna, who he met in a café behind Piazza Navona.

  ‘We can only marry in England,’ he said. ‘We’ve looked and looked for a way. Can’t be done.’ He found that he felt ashamed of himself. He had wanted to be able to act on this marvellous noble whim, and for England to offer a wonderful swift manly solution to this rising chaos.

  ‘So we can’t be married,’ she said, holding the roses and looking sad. For a moment it seemed absurd. Tom and Nenna! They had never wanted to marry anyway. Their decision had been purely circumstantial, and yet here they were, minding.

  He glanced down at her. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and it seemed far from sufficient comment. ‘Johnny’s still looking into it,’ he said, rather hurriedly, ‘but – if you came, if you would just come to England—’

  ‘Do you want us to be married?’ she said.

  ‘I want you to be safe,’ he said.

  ‘But you’re not in love with me or anything?’ she asked, looking at him, straight and serious.

  ‘No! Lord no,’ he said, automatically. And felt confused. Because—

  Jesus, am I lying?

  ‘You’re not in love with me, are you?’ he said. He was smiling. We’re talking about love!

  ‘No,’ she said brightly. ‘I love you but I’m not in love with you,’ and at that they nodded, serious, believing profoundly in that great artificial distinction so important to the very young. They caught eyes, each trying to look more sensible than the other, then suddenly found that they were terribly embarrassed, and looked away.

  ‘But I wanted to be sure,’ she said, ‘because—’ and she smiled again, and then held something out to him. A piece of paper, folded.

  He opened it out and read it. It told him that on September 1, 1938, the marriage had taken place between Thomas Ellington Locke of London, British citizen, and Fernanda Fabia Elia Fiore of Rome, Italian citizen, at the Comune of Santa Ippolita in Puglia. It was stamped and signed and sealed and reeked of officialdom. And it was post-dated.

  ‘Puglia!’ he exclaimed.