Page 49 of Daughter of Genoa
Anna
What you did, Commendatore, was almost an act of genius. Having subjected Stefano to the full blast of your fury, you clearly realised that you couldn’t afford to do that again. You can vent your anger that way, but you can’t really hurt a man’s reputation unless you contrive to appear like the reasonable party to the rest of the world. And you wanted to hurt Stefano, like you wanted to hurt anyone who put you in the wrong.
So you did something very strategic. You phoned up Captain Pastorino, whom you knew socially and had very nearly managed to charm, and you explained in restrained and sorrowful tones that his son had come to you to plead for his wife’s job. You admired his husbandly loyalty, but – and it pained you to admit this – there could be simply no question of your employing me ever again. You didn’t want to go into details. It was all too sordid, but since he insisted on knowing… well, a couple of things had gone missing just recently. Blueprints, specifications. The kind of thing that would reap a nice sum of money from a rival shipyard, in Genoa or abroad. The kind of thing, come to think of it, that just might interest a foreign government.
Of course, you hadn’t wanted to involve the police: this was such a delicate matter, and you were mindful of my in-laws’ reputation. But if there was even the slightest possibility that I might have taken these things, to which I had easy and unmonitored access, then you couldn’t afford to take any chances by keeping me on. The Racial Laws had provided a useful occasion to dismiss me without anyone being forced to lose face, and so that is what you had done. You felt rather sorry for me, you said, heaping on the insinuations: the poor little Jewish girl with her disgraced father and her disreputable half-foreign family, all of them overseas – in a major shipbuilding city, as it happened – and no doubt struggling to live. But above all you felt sorry for the Pastorino family, and especially for Stefano, who was so trusting.
You couldn’t have picked a better audience for your lies. Captain Pastorino was extremely conscious of his family’s reputation, which rested so very much on his own: a reputation built on honesty, social respectability, and a strict adherence to the code of the gentleman seafarer. He’d been too honourable to kick up a public fuss when Stefano had chosen to marry me, though I’ll never know what he might have said about it in private. Perhaps if he’d been at all fond of me, as I naively thought he was, then he would have rejected your insinuations or at least questioned them. But it seems he was all too ready to believe the worst.
I didn’t make poor Vittorio suffer by describing the scenes that followed your telephone call. I said only that your strategy had worked. Stefano tried to defend me to his parents, but it came to nothing; the angrier he became and the more he defied his father, the worse the atmosphere grew, until I begged him to stop and let it blow over. But he didn’t listen to me then, either. Soon, my very existence as a member of the family had become a bone of contention; perhaps it always was. Stefano pleaded, his mother wavered, but Captain Pastorino stood firm: something had to be done about me. It almost didn’t matter whether I’d been filching trade secrets, although he clearly believed that I had. I was a liability by my very existence.
‘Making Stefano divorce me was out of the question,’ I said. ‘Abandonment, too. They were a good Catholic family. Stefano did ask whether they might not just send me to my parents in America – I’ll always love him for suggesting that. For a moment I thought they might actually agree, but no. That would only be a public admission that something was wrong. They couldn’t send me away.’ I had to take a breath as the memories threatened to overwhelm me. ‘But they could send him, at least for a while.’
‘Oh,’ Vittorio said, and now he took my hand in both of his.
‘There was a merchant ship leaving for Buenos Aires in a few weeks’ time. Stefano would go with it, follow in his father’s footsteps like his older brothers. The ship was theAntonio Montaldo,’ I said, and I hoped that he would recognise the name, because I couldn’t bring myself to tell the story.
Vittorio sucked in a sharp breath. He knew. Every Genoese knew, of course. TheMontaldohad never made it home. It had been sunk by night as it lay at anchor off the Spanish coast, torpedoed by an aircraft from the Condor Legion, Franco’s German-manned military corps, on suspicion of carrying supplies to the Republicans. A handful of crew had made it to shore, but the others…
‘I’m sorry, Marta,’ he said. ‘I’m so very sorry.’
‘And that was it.’ Even five years on, I could still relive the pain of the events. The news reports, the waiting and then, eventually, the telegram. Sitting on the floor of our little flat, my universe collapsing around me. ‘I was on my own,’ I managed to say.
‘Didn’t Stefano’s family look after you? They really should have,’ he said severely, ‘if they claimed to be good Catholics. They had a duty to you.’
‘No. They kept their distance, and I left them to it. After everything that had been said, I couldn’t pretend that we were just like any other family in mourning. But once… once, I asked his father for help.’ My cheeks were burning at the memory of it. ‘I’d been looking for a job for months, since your father dismissed me. But nobody would have me, not even in the sectors where I was allowed to work. I could pick up a bit of typing here and there, but it wasn’t enough – I was desperate. All I wanted was to get to my family, and I knew that would take months to arrange. I thought that perhaps, now Stefano was gone, Captain Pastorino might be willing to help if it meant that he could be rid of me. I begged him for work, references, anything that would get me through until I could go to America. I begged him to use his connections to get me a visa faster. It was humiliating,’ I said. ‘It was the most abasing thing I’ve ever done.’
‘And he wouldn’t help, I suppose,’ Vittorio said.
‘No, he wouldn’t, or not with that. He said he’d make sure I got some small amount of money from a seafarers’ charity he helped to administer. The way he said it, he made it sound like I’d actually asked for money. And I hadn’t. I’d have preferred any other kind of help, but he wasn’t prepared do anything that might tie his reputation up with mine. I would have to manage my affairs alone.’ He’d said rather more – about my character, my claims on the family, my relationship with his son, the very fact of my daring to come to him – but I didn’t want to inflict that on Vittorio, either. ‘And so I did manage alone, until you found me,’ I said. ‘That’s it. That’s all there is.’
Vittorio sat back, his hands slipping away from mine. He looked dreadful, exhausted and hollow-eyed. I knew even then that I’d done something terribly wrong. I should have kept it all to myself. I should have invented some plausible lie, or simply refused to talk at all. I should have told Massimo, if I had to tell someone. There were so many other, better, kinder options.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said now, and he shook his head.
‘Why should you be sorry, Marta? None of this was your fault. It was my father who…’ He trailed off and looked at the pile of cards next to him. ‘You know, I think you and Mr X should deal with these. If that’s all right.’
‘Of course it is. Father Vittorio—’
‘I need to go.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up, passing a hand over his face. ‘I’m sorry. And I’m very sorry indeed for what my father did to you. If you’d prefer not to work with me any more…’
‘No, I want to work with you,’ I said, indignation propelling me to my feet. ‘You’re a good man and you are my friend. How could I possibly blame you for your father’s actions? Or Stefano’s, orhisfather’s? Please come back and keep coming, so long as you want to – once you’re well again, I mean to say. I shall always be happy to see you. Truly I shall.’
Vittorio nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. Once I’m well. Thank you.’
*
When he’d gone, I went to my room, shut the door and sat on my bed. I hadn’t given Stefano more than a passing thought in the last months, I realised. Or even the commendatore. All those remembered arguments and scenes and betrayals – so fresh and so painful, for so long – had been eclipsed the moment the Germans arrived in Genoa, driven out of my head by the sheer urgency of survival. And now I had brought them back to life. I’d given them a new and horrible currency, all because poor Vittorio had happened to say something that reminded me of his father.
He had paused in the doorway as he left the kitchen. ‘You won’t tell anyone what we discussed, will you? Not because I’m ashamed, or feel bad,’ he added, looking away. ‘It simply isn’t relevant. If you really are happy to work together…’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Then it doesn’t matter, not one bit.’ He summoned a smile. ‘Goodbye for now, Marta. I shall see you soon.’
‘Good,’ I said, and gave him my best and brightest smile in return. ‘I’m glad. See you soon, Father Vittorio.’ But I couldn’t forget the look on his face just a few minutes before: that stark, hollow-eyed shock. Whether I’d meant to or not, I’d caused him tremendous pain. I vowed to find a way to make it up to him, just as soon as we got to see one another again; I only hoped he would let me.
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