“When you play, I hear my life lifting off your strings. I hear the long notes and the scales, the tears and the hours. I hear you and me, together in this room. I hear my father and the things he taught me that I passed on to you. I hear it all, and my life plays on, his life plays on, over and over, when you play.”
Eva set her instrument down and, with tears streaming down her face, knelt in front of her uncle and slid her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his thin chest. He embraced her gently, and they stayed in sorrowful silence, listening to the wind as it wailed a mournful strain not so different from the one Eva had composed, wondering if the wind would be the only witness, the only whisper, when the death in Austria came for them too.
10 August, 1939
Confession: I am nineteen years old, and I’ve been kissed many times. But I’ve never been kissed like that.
It felt like drowning but not needing to breathe. Like falling but never hitting the ground. Even now, my hands are shaking, and my heart is so swollen and fat it feels like it’s going to burst, or I’m going to burst. I want to cry. I want to laugh. I want to bury my head in my pillow and scream until I fall asleep, because maybe when I go to sleep I can relive it.
I can’t believe it happened, yet I think I’ve been waiting for it to happen for the last seven years, ever since I conned Angelo into kissing me the first time. I’ve been waiting for him for so long, and for a couple of hours tonight, in a little world that was only big enough for the two of us, he was mine.
But I don’t know if I will be able to keep him. I’m afraid when tomorrow comes, I’ll be waiting for him again.
Eva Rosselli
CHAPTER 4
GROSSETO
Angelo had been surprised when Camillo announced he was still taking the family to the beach house, considering the new set of Racial Laws that had been passed earlier that summer. But Camillo had made the reservation before the law was passed, and he stubbornly maintained that he had been renting that particular lodge from the same family for twenty years, and he would keep on renting it for twenty more. So that August, only months before the war broke out, they all boarded the train for Grosseto, confident in Camillo’s ability to make everything all right.
The first few days of Angelo’s planned five-day retreat were spent sleeping, eating, playing checkers, and debating everything and nothing, simply because Camillo and Augusto enjoyed discussion, and Angelo enjoyed listening to them argue. In the last few months they argued less, as Fascism had revealed itself and Augusto had been proven wrong. But they still found points of disagreement and seemed relieved that they had.
Eva walked a lot, her feet flirting with the surf, dancing in and out of the waves until she was wet and cold. Then she would lie on her big white towel and fall asleep in the sun until she was almost dry. Then she would repeat the process. Her porcelain skin had grown rosy and brown, making her look decidedly more Italian than Austrian. Her hair and eyes were dark, but her skin was unquestionably less olive than Angelo’s was. His skin turned smoky after an hour in the sun, and within a few days, he looked like he’d spent his life casting nets with the fishermen of Grosseto.
Umbrella-shaped maritime pines fringed the beaches, and one afternoon Angelo found himself stomping around in the cork-oak woodlands, where aristocratic families still hunted for wild boar, losing himself in the shade and the scents and the quiet. As the shadows grew longer, and his skin grew sticky with sweat, he tromped out of the woods and headed back toward the beach, eager for a quick swim in the cool, clear waters.
Clouds had rolled in, and the sky was no longer the guileless blue it had been earlier in the day. Still, even with rain threatening, Angelo shrugged out of his shirt, removed his shoe and his prosthetic, and hopped through the waves until he could immerse himself in the Tyrrhenian. Before too long, Eva was treading water beside him, and they kicked and splashed and floated on their backs until distant thunder rumbled and urged them back to the shore.
Rain was coming, but the air was still warm, and they toweled themselves off and let the heat dry their hair as they watched the storm move toward them.
“What’s that?” Eva inclined her head toward his pile of abandoned clothing and forest finds. He rarely saved anything, impatient with clutter and generally unsentimental, but he’d thought maybe his nonno would like that afternoon’s discovery.
“I found a quiver of black-and-white porcupine quills.”
“Hmm. Well, I saw some spotted pink flamingos in the lagoon,” Eva countered, her eyes on the water. She was smiling slightly, letting him in on the game.
“That’s nothing. I woke a barn owl and he dove at my head,” he shot back. “And I killed a wild pig with my bare hands. I thought about bringing him back for dinner, but then I remembered pigs aren’t kosher.”
Eva pursed her lips, clearly trying to come up with a better story.
“Well, I found this.” She handed him a shell, still completely intact, still hinged at the back. He took it and peered inside. The interior was smooth and empty, the life inside long gone.
“No pearl?”
“No. Just sand.”
“But the sand can become a pearl,” he offered, handing the shell back to her.
“The sand doesn’t really become a pearl, silly. It doesn’t become something else. It’s just hidden. The grain of sand is still there beneath the layers of nacre—”
“Nacre?” he interrupted. It wasn’t a word he’d heard before.
“The mineral substance that the oyster coats the grain of sand in.”
The mention of the oyster had its same old effect, and Eva’s eyes touched on his briefly before she glanced away. Another time it probably wouldn’t have registered. But here they were, sitting in roughly the same spot where they’d sat seven years before when the skies were clear and no storms threatened.
“You mean mother-of-pearl? How did you know that?”
“Babbo. He is a chemical engineer, Angelo. He knows the actual name of every substance known to man.”
“So the little irritant becomes a beautiful pearl.” He winked at Eva and tapped her nose.
“Are you calling me a little irritant?”
He laughed, unable to help himself. She had always made him laugh.
“Yes. I am. A beautiful irritant.”
“Keep it up, and I will steal your fake leg and you will have to hop back to the house.”
“You’re so heartless,” he said in mock horror.
“A heartless irritant.” She swiped at him and he blocked her easily, stealing her shell in the process.
Thunder belched through the sky once more, not nearly as polite and distant as it had been before. Eva and Angelo, still bickering good-naturedly, quickly dressed and gathered their few things. They weren’t quick enough, though, and with a solid crack, the swollen skies suddenly split above them. Rain peppered the sand, and Eva squealed. Angelo couldn’t run very well, and Eva wasn’t inclined to let him get drenched alone, so they looked around for immediate shelter.
Hand in hand they struggled across the sand toward the trees and the little fisherman’s shack that sat back from the shore. The lock was broken and the shack abandoned, though an old net and a rusty fishing pole still remained among the dust and the cobwebs.
Clothes clung to limbs, black hair to burnished cheeks, and they tumbled, laughing, into the shack, the damp walls and the earthy darkness making the space feel more like a medieval dungeon used for torture than a respite from the storm.
Eva picked up the pole in one hand and tossed Angelo the net, and within moments they were quarreling once more as they fenced, saying things like “En garde,” and “Feel my wrath,” and “Take that, fool!”
Eva made the mistake of lunging too deep and Angelo easily swiped her “sword” away.