Page 15 of Daughter of Genoa
‘So what do you think?’ Mr X asks. ‘Will you help me – or, rather, Marta?’
It’s a genuine question, Vittorio can tell. Because what Mr X doesn’t understand, being a layman, is that there’s no point in asking. It doesn’t matter that Vittoriolikes‘running here and there’, shepherding people from point to point, delivering ration cards and money and moral support. It doesn’t matter that he dearly wants to keep watch over every soul that’s been entrusted to him; that he resents the idea of giving them over to someone else, someone who won’t know them like he does. Cardinal Boetto has endowed don Francesco with the power of decision. Don Francesco has decided, and Vittorio must obey.
‘Of course I will,’ he says.
Mr X breaks into a broad smile. ‘Good man!’ he exclaims, and gives Vittorio a clap on the shoulder, startling him so that he narrowly avoids a coughing fit. ‘Thank you, Father Vittorio. I really do appreciate it. And thank you, don Francesco, for sparing him.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ don Francesco says, and gets to his feet. ‘Then I shall brief Father Vittorio, and you can get on. Good day for now.’
He shakes Mr X’s hand; Mr X shakes Vittorio’s, gathers up his hat and coat and goes out. Don Francesco sits back down, and Vittorio sits too, feeling gloomier and gloomier.
‘Remind me,’ don Francesco says. ‘The Tipografia Guichard is somewhere off via Assarotti, isn’t it? Via…’
‘Via degli Armeni,’ Vittorio supplies.
‘Right.’ Don Francesco rifles around in one of the desk drawers and brings out a map of Genoa, which he unfolds and spreads out between them. His finger follows the long curve of via degli Armeni. ‘Yes, here, I see. Now, if I recall, you’ve placed one family in that empty flat in via Durazzo, haven’t you? Then you have a couple just off piazza Manin, another near Corvetto… I think that if you could continue to keep an eye on those, plus any new arrivals – let’s say as far as Brignole – rather hilly territory, of course, but at least it’s all close by… What?’ he asks as he looks up and catches Vittorio’s eye. ‘You didn’t think I was going to take away all your duties? Send you away to make identity cards for Mr X and wash my hands of you entirely?’
Vittorio looks down. He’s too embarrassed to admit that this is exactly what he thought. ‘Well…’
‘Father Vittorio, really,’ don Francesco says, and the lack of reproach in his voice is somehow worse than any reproach could be. ‘Even if I could do that, I wouldn’t – and let us be honest here, I can’t. I rely on you, and so does His Eminence. But you aren’t well. I know you aren’t well, not yet, and so I want to lighten the strain until you’re back on form again. Do you understand now?’
‘Yes,’ Vittorio says. ‘Thank you.’ He feels irrationally as if he’s been reprieved.
‘So you’ll keep on looking after your charges in this area here.’ Don Francesco traces an invisible triangle: Corvetto-Manin-Brignole. ‘And for the rest, I think don Giuseppe and Sister Assunta should be able to manage between them. We shall set up a proper handover, of course. But if you could just remind me for now roughly how many there are, and whereabouts they’re currently living, that would be a great help.’
He turns the map around so that it faces Vittorio. And there is Genoa, spread out before him: that thin, staggered strip of a city wedged in between the mountains and the sea. The line of the seafront is changed now, fretted and eroded by repeated bombing. Churches, palaces, theatres and monuments lie in ruins, but here on the map they survive as neat little symbols. And scattered around this now-imagined city are the people he looks after – the people he loves, with that fierce but dispassionate love that surpasses all sentimental attachment. Here’s the orphaned boy who now lives with a big, chaotic family just off piazza del Carmine. Here’s the mother sheltering with her two grown daughters in a flat in via di Vallechiara. In via Balbi, near the university, is the doctor’s widow from Vienna who talks to him about Spinoza; not far from her, in vico della Pace, the young Czech couple with the toddler he keeps supplied with scrap paper and pencil stubs. He’s taken to collecting those wherever he can find them, assembling a stash for his next visit – except that there won’t be a next visit, and his throat is irrationally tight.
‘May I have a pencil?’ he asks don Francesco now. ‘It’s probably easier if I mark the locations. We can erase them afterwards.’
‘Help yourself.’ Don Francesco pushes a tin towards him, and he takes one: a brand-new pencil, shiny and beautiful. If Vittorio must give up visiting the Czechs, he resolves, he’ll ask don Francesco to set aside a whole tin of pencils just for them.
Vittorio looks again at the city as it was: still beautiful, still intact. He says a silent prayer for everyone he loves, and then he squares his shoulders and gets to work.
10
Anna
I didn’t doze off until it must have been near daybreak, and I didn’t wake until Tiberio pawed at my face, demanding to be let out. I opened the door and he ran off down the corridor. Then I washed and dressed as quickly as I could and went to the kitchen. Silvia was sitting by the stove, darning a sock. She set her work aside and got to her feet.
‘Oh, good, you’re up at last. Did you sleep well? Quick, let’s have our breakfast before Father Vittorio arrives. I expect he’ll be here any moment.’
I was staring at the forms on the kitchen table. A neat stack with Giovanni Episcopo’s card sitting on top. Teglio’s list lay next to it, along with two pens and an inkwell. ‘Is that…?’
‘Yes, yes. Sit down, Marta, that’s a good girl. I just don’t feel right about eating in front of him.’ Silvia was sawing at the loaf of greyish bread that sat on the counter. ‘Not when he’s fasting. And I know he is, for all he’d never say anything,’ she went on darkly. ‘I smelled it on him the other day. That nasty rotten-fruit smell, ugh!’
‘He’s fasting? But it isn’t Lent any more, is it?’ A memory came back to me: lying in bed in my old flat, listening to the bells peal and peal and peal for Easter Sunday. Days, weeks ago now.
‘Doesn’t have to be Lent. It’s all part of their discipline. He’s probably doing penance for some minor sin.’ She put two slices of bread in front of me with an indignant flourish. ‘As if a man like him could ever want punishing. Honestly!’
We ate and drank in haste, and had the kitchen cleaned up by the time Vittorio arrived, carrying a black bag rather like the sort doctors use. I imagined him going from house to house with it, doing whatever priests do at the bedsides of the dying. As he took off his cloak and folded it over the back of a chair, I found myself watching him. He looked a little paler, it was true, but all I could smell on him was a faint odour of carbolic soap.
‘Ready to get started?’ His voice was constricted. He took out his handkerchief, turned away and coughed into it – that same dry, wheezing cough I’d heard before. It seemed to go on and on.
Silvia sprang into action. ‘For heaven’s sake, Father, sit down. Do you want tea? Water? Brandy? Tea would be best,’ she said firmly. ‘Heat loosens the chest. And you know my tea – it’s practically medicine.’
Vittorio nodded, his hand pressed to his chest. ‘Tea, then,’ he managed to say. ‘Thank you.’
‘Quite right.’ Silvia poured out a cup of tisane and then somehow, without touching him, managed to hustle Vittorio into her own abandoned chair by the stove. ‘There are cigarettes in the drawer nearest you. I have a couple of things to sort out with Bernardo before you start on the papers, anyway. Marta, will you help?’
