Page 41 of Daughter of Genoa
Fulvio snorts. ‘Don’t go all pious on me, Father. I only did what any man would do. The question is…’ He lowers his voice. ‘The question is, are you ready to talk about it now? Can you?’
‘I think I can,’ Vittorio says. ‘I think I’d better.’
25
Anna
Massimo came to the house that same evening. I’d been longing for him to appear. But once he and I were actually alone in the kitchen, I found myself looking down and away, trying not to meet his eye. I felt suddenly vulnerable, as exposed as if I were again half-naked in his arms. And above all I was afraid: afraid that he’d regret what we’d done, that our working relationship would have to end. That I’d fallen, finally and completely, in love with him when he hadn’t fallen in love with me.
He pulled up a chair next to me and handed me a little rectangular parcel. ‘Something for you. Not Conan Doyle, I’m afraid, but the best I could lay my hands on.’
Inside was a 1921 Italian paperback of Leblanc’sArsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar. Massimo couldn’t have known this, of course, but I adored the Arsène Lupin stories and had lost my own little collection when I’d lost my home. I looked at him now and he looked back at me with such pleasure, such evident affection that I couldn’t be afraid any more.
‘It’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘You can’t imagine. Thank you.’ I leaned over and kissed him, and he kissed me warmly back.
‘Come on,’ he said, and squeezed my hand. ‘The list is in there somewhere. Let’s get to work.’
*
Commendatore, I wonder if you could ever understand what I felt in that moment. In the five years since Stefano died, I hadn’t had anything that was truly mine. I didn’t have a job, or a family, or a lover, or any task ahead of me other than surviving: a task that was merely stressful and dull at first, but that became all-consuming when the Germans arrived. Even that little flat in Carignano wasn’t mine, any more than my room at Bernardo and Silvia’s was. But now I had two things that gave my life clarity and purpose. One was my work for the clandestine organisation I now know to call DELASEM. And the other was Massimo Teglio.
You’ll tell me, of course, that you also had a purpose in life. I was sick of hearing it by the end: the founding myth of Giovanni Battista Marinaio, the self-made man. How you’d built your business from nothing, forged a glorious family dynasty (or so you claimed), set a glowing example for generations to come. I became very good at pretending to listen when I worked for you.
I should have listened, really listened, because that same, self-aggrandising drivel you spouted over and over again wasn’t mere bluster. It was your creed. And so when you assured me in November 1938 that you would certainly keep me in my job – because the Racial Laws, as they stood, didn’t oblige the head of a private shipbuilding company to fire his Jewish employees – I shouldn’t have believed you even to the tentative extent that I did. I should have gone home that evening and told Stefano:Look, I’ve done my best, but my employment at Marinaio e Figli is over. Let’s cash in our savings, beg or borrow whatever else we need, and ask my parents now, right now, to help us get an American visa. If you’re so determined to finish your degree first, you can stay here and do that alone. I’m going to my family, to a country where I won’t be punished simply for having a Jewish father. I’ll see you there.
But I let myself be persuaded. By you, to some extent, Commendatore. Of course I didn’t believe that you really valued me as you claimed you did. I certainly didn’t believe your effusive nonsense about finding a way to keep me even if the law should change for the worse tomorrow. But I knew how much you relied on me in your day-to-day business, and I thought you might have just enough sense to value that; not to dismiss me until you were actually required to do so.
It was Stefano, though, who finally convinced me to keep up the compromise.We’re so close to our goal, he said,surely you can bear to suffer for a little while more? Just a little longer and we’ll have enough set aside to start our new life in America. A little longer and I shall have finished my studies, and then I can find work anywhere in the world. And my parents will be so proud, he said,when I land a brilliant job at New York Ship or the Brooklyn Navy Yard or Caddell. A job for life, a job to sustain both of us and our future children. Just think what a wonderful difference a few more weeks, a few more months can make.
It wasn’t the first time he’d made that speech. He’d given it in July, when the Manifesto of Race was published; in September, when Jews were excluded from the schools and universities; and on various other occasions, too, whenever I grew nervous about what might come next. With every repetition it lost some of its power, but I still loved and trusted him enough to go along with it. It seems incredible, but I loved him even more than I hated you. So on this occasion, too, I agreed to stay a little longer, although I really didn’t want to do any such thing. But those few more weeks, those few more months I promised to endure… they never materialised. It was a matter of days before you called me into your office and asked me to sit down.
You didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. ‘I’ve been thinking about our conversation,’ you said, fixing me with a fishy eye as if I were the one in the wrong. ‘About continuing your employment. And it’s simply impossible. It can’t be done.’
For a moment, I thought that I had lost my wits. I remembered asking you quite factually whether I would be let go, and I remembered you assuring me – puffing yourself up with the magnanimity of it all – that I would be kept on. And here you were, speaking to me as if I had somehow petitioned you to stay, and you had been weighing it up all that time.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I cannot keep you here,’ you explained, shaking your head at my stupidity. ‘It’s true that I could, in legal terms, since this is a private enterprise. But the fact is that my clients are important people. Respectable people. Some of them are very prominent in the Party. I cannot expect them to trust me if my own secretary, the person who handles all their most sensitive information, is a Jew.’
I couldn’t speak at first. I was used to bearing your insults, your changing moods and your endless caprices, but to hear that said – by you, by anyone – was viscerally shocking.
‘But there’s never been any such issue before,’ I said at last; and I knew exactly what you would say in reply, but something compelled me to make you say it. ‘It was all fine last week.’
‘Last week,’ you said with exaggerated patience, ‘you weren’t a Jew. Not in the eyes of the law.’
I fell silent; you took my silence as agreement. ‘I knew you’d understand,’ you said. ‘I have to protect my business, you see. These are difficult times, and I must think of my higher duty.’
My higher duty.I could have laughed; I almost did. ‘May I go now?’ I asked, and you waved a gracious hand and told me that I may. I went to my desk, stuffed my latest paperback into my handbag, took my coat and walked out.
Outside it was grey and cold and the rain was horizontal. I was angry at you, of course, but in a strange way I was also relieved. It was over. I couldn’t be made to keep going any more, because you had dismissed me – the decision was out of my hands. Once Stefano got home, I’d sit down with him and we’d work out what to do next. It wouldn’t be easy, but we loved each other. I was sure we’d find our way.
I didn’t know I was about to lose everything.
*
When the evening’s work was finished, Massimo reached for my hand. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘where shall we go? I should very much like to squire you around town, show you off to everyone. But where to start? That’s the question.’
‘Oh.’ For the first time, I couldn’t think of a single idea. All I could think about was his skin against mine, his thumb tracing gentle patterns in the hollow of my palm.
