Page 23 of Daughter of Genoa
This was an older man. A man around my father’s age, with my father’s intelligent eyes and his greying hair and his frank, open expression. He wasn’t my father, of course, but he was so like him. He wassolike him.
‘Marta,’ Teglio said quietly. ‘Listen.’
I tore my eyes away from the man’s face. Teglio was looking at me, his gaze calm and steady. ‘This is a normal procedure,’ he said. ‘A standard safety check. I’m new at this forgery business, too, but I’ve spent a couple of decades flying aeroplanes, and that means I’m damn good at safety checks. I’d be long since dead if I weren’t. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. Now, I’ve already reviewed all these cards, so your job is to act as a second pair of eyes. The best way to do that – the only way – is to work methodically. Look at each detail in order, just once, with your complete attention. Then cross it off and move on. If you keep on going back over your own tracks, you’ll lose sight of what you’re doing and you’re far, far more likely to miss an error if one does crop up. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I understand.’
‘Good.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s a shock, isn’t it, when you first see the pictures. All those faces. Makes it suddenly very real.’
‘It does.’ It came out as a choked whisper. I looked away and bit my lip, fighting back the urge to ask him for a hug. To beg him to hold me just long enough to let me catch my breath, to give me a moment’s shelter from the horrible truths that were crowding in around us. I cleared my throat and reached for my pencil. ‘Do you want me to start again from the beginning?’
‘Take your time,’ he said, and his voice was so warm with understanding that I almost broke down, almost turned to him and held out my arms. ‘You don’t have to—’
‘I want to keep going. It’s better that I do.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Then no, you don’t need to start afresh. But make a mark against the last one you checked, and I’ll go back and look at those first ones again.’
Even with all my training, it took immense discipline to work as Teglio had instructed. I had to force myself not to double back and check this or that detail: to focus my whole concentration on just one item, and then move forward. But I did force myself, and with every new card it became a little more… no, not impersonal. This kind of work would never be impersonal. But every time I saw those eyes looking up at me, it got easier and easier to tell myself that this person needed me – was asking me, in fact – to be as calm and as methodical as I could be.
Finally, I checked the very last detail on the very last card and slid it towards Teglio, who applied the stamp and closed the ink pad with a firm click. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your help. You did a terrific job.’ He pushed back his chair and got to his feet, and I stood, too.
‘Thank you for the talk.’ My eyes were tired and sore; I rubbed them, making them worse. ‘I’m sorry you had to do that.’
‘Oh, believe me,’ Teglio said. ‘It was nothing compared to the talks I have to give myself.’
‘What, really?’
‘Truly. Like I say, I’m new at this, too.’ He looked sad all of a sudden, tired and in pain. In the background, Bernardo’s voice droned on in a steady, regular rhythm. Tonight’s New Testament reading was obviously a long one. Perhaps we had a few minutes, I thought. Perhaps if I held out my arms now, Teglio would come to me, let me comfort him. Perhaps.
‘Amen,’ Silvia’s voice rang out down the corridor, and Bernardo echoed her with a muted ‘Amen’.
‘That’s our time up,’ Teglio said. ‘But will you help me again? Or was it too much, all this?’
I thought of the faces I’d seen – the people he was helping. The people I could help. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t too much at all. I’m happy to do it.’
He smiled at me. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘I think we work rather well together.’
14
From then on, Massimo Teglio and I were a team. He listened to Silvia’s protestations and abandoned all talk of finding the stamp another home. Now he came to the house when he could manage it – most often after dinner, but sometimes just after lunch – and we’d sit side by side in the parlour or the kitchen, doing our shared work. I became used to acting as his second set of eyes. And gradually, I became used to seeing the faces – even familiar ones.
The first time that happened, it was a girl called Sara who had been one of my mother’s English students. I’d known her as a bright adolescent with a passion for Shakespeare and a gift for asking the most disconcerting questions. Now she was grown up, a young woman, but unmistakably herself. The sight was an unpleasant shock: a reminder of the desperate situation that she, and I, and Teglio, and so many others had to face. I lost all my hard-won composure in that moment; I had to clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself from crying out.
Teglio understood, of course. He always did. ‘Someone you know?’
I nodded, trying frantically to blink back the tears that were rising. I couldn’t live without his comfort any longer. I held out my other hand and he took it, clasping it firmly between both of his.
‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘This is really very good, do you see? It means she’s alive, and in Italy.’
‘Oh,’ I said, wiping my eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’
‘Well, now you will,’ he said. ‘In fact, that is exactly how youmustthink of it. Every person we manage to help is a victory. We cannot change our situation, but we can do our best to improve it. That is within our power, at least. You must remember that.’
I promised that I would, and we went back to our work. But there was something about the way he’d said it, the note of determination in his voice, that dwelt at the back of my mind. We finished that evening’s batch, and as he picked up his horn-rimmed glasses – ready to resume his Mr X persona – I found myself asking: ‘Where in the city would you go right now, if you could? If it were safe, I mean to say.’
