Page 10 of Daughter of Genoa
Teglio fell silent, and I realised with a jolt that he was watching me. I quickly put the card back into the envelope and laid it to one side. ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘And thank you for this.’
‘It’s nothing.’ His eyes were still fixed on me, his face impassive. ‘Signora Ricci, I have to ask you a few questions. I know it’s hard to trust a stranger, but I assure you that I’m not asking in order to pry. I need some basic information to do my work.’
‘Your work,’ I echoed.
‘Yes. I operate on a strictly need-to-know basis. But if there’s anyone else who needs help, or who can help me help you, then it’s important you tell me.’
‘That’s quite simple,’ I said. ‘There’s nobody.’
Teglio raised his eyebrows. He’d trimmed them back, I realised, the stubble growing in around the edges. Another attempt at disguise. ‘What, nobody at all?’
‘Nobody at all.’ I couldn’t look at him any more. I fixed my eyes on the knot of his tie – dark-blue patterned silk – and tried to fight back the tightness that was growing in my chest. ‘My parents and brother are safe. They’re in America with my aunt and uncle.’
‘I’m glad to hear they’re all right, but I’m sorry you didn’t get to go with them.’
‘Yes. Well, I stayed here with my husband. That was my choice. But then he died, so now it really is just me.’ The tears were threatening now, as they always did on the rare occasions I let myself think of Stefano. I blinked them away.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Teglio said. ‘I’m a widower myself – I know how it is.’ There was a terrible compassion in his voice. For a long moment we sat together in silence, and then he cleared his throat and said: ‘If I may ask, where were you living before? What part of town?’
‘Carignano, near Galliera Hospital.’
‘Right by the port? I didn’t think there was much left standing around there.’
‘Well, there isn’t now,’ I said, and blew my nose.
‘And did you have anyone to help you in Carignano? Or did you manage alone?’
‘I managed. I’m healthy, thrifty and good with a needle. I rarely needed anything, and when I did, I just got it myself.’ I didn’t mention the shopkeeper or the bank manager. There was no need.
‘Brave woman,’ Teglio said. ‘Living alone in Carignano, dodging the bombs and the Germans. You might find life here almost too quiet.’
‘I doubt that,’ I said. ‘I never want that kind of excitement again.’
He smiled properly for the first time then: a warm, eye-crinkling smile that made him look far less forbidding. ‘Still, nobody likes to be bored. I hear you’ve already been sorting out Bernardo’s accounts. Surely that can’t be your idea of fun?’
‘It is, actually,’ I said, and he laughed.
‘But that isn’t all you do, is it? Don’t you read, or draw, or embroider, or write poetry? I don’t write it myself, but I like to be around people who do. It makes me feel intellectual by association.’
‘I don’t write at all any more, I’m afraid – I got out of the habit, but I do like to read.’
‘Do you? Well, that’s capital,’ Teglio said. ‘It should be easy enough to find you some books.’
‘Really?’ The idea seemed wonderful to me, as miraculously welcome as that pristine ration card. ‘I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.’
‘You wouldn’t. Books are hardly shortage material. And I know very well that survival is about more than simply staying alive and intact. This is a dreadful life, signora Ricci, and if I can lighten it for you a little, then I shall.’ Teglio leaned forward. ‘So tell me what you like to read, and I’ll see what I can do about it.’
Perhaps it was because we were in the same situation, for all our differences. Perhaps it was his sudden kindness, or the promise of something to read, or the relief of discussing a safe topic. Whatever the case, I found myself talking to him as I might to a friend. I told him how my father loved Machiavelli and Dante and my mother loved Stevenson and Scott, but I preferred short, sleek, modern books, the kind you could fit in your pocket and take with you anywhere. I told him how I missed reading a murder mystery on the tram or a love story on a bench at the viewpoint of Spianata Castelletto, back in the days when I could take public transport and sit on any bench I liked.
I told him that I’d read Scott and Stevenson and Machiavelli and Dante, but that if I absolutely had to return to the great Scottish classics then it really ought to be Conan Doyle; and as for Machiavelli, I much preferred his comic plays to anything he’d written about statecraft or warfare. I told him that I’d read every paperback in my old flat a thousand times over, so that their familiarity became nauseating and the story meaningless; but I had loved them anyway, because each carried a memory of the first place I’d read it, and so I was sorry that they had all been destroyed. I carried on along these lines and all the time he listened intently, studying my face as if I were the only thing in the world to him.
When I finally came to a blushing, rather self-conscious stop, Teglio nodded gravely. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m definitely glad Father Vittorio found you. I have to go now, but I shall do my best to come back and bring you some reading matter.’
‘Thank you, Mr X.’ My outburst over, I was beginning to feel unsettled and vulnerable, like I’d shown some secret part of myself to this famous-but-unfamiliar man. And yet I hadn’t really told him anything, had I? I’d only talked about books.
‘It’s my great pleasure.’ He shrugged on his overcoat and opened the kitchen door. ‘Ah, Silvia,’ he said, hailing her as she approached along the corridor. ‘My apologies for the unannounced visit. I’ll come past again tomorrow, if that’s all right.’
‘Of course it is,’ Silvia said. ‘We’re always happy to see you, whether Bernardo shows it or not.’
