Augusto would scoff. He was always more optimistic than his older brother. “The only newspapers that are printing things like that are those trying to get government money. They spew the nonsense and cozy up to the Fascist powers that be. Nobody believes it. Italians know better.”
“But Italians are allowing it. It is being tolerated. Whether our friends like it or not, it is being tolerated. We Jews are tolerating it! We are not so long out of the ghetto that we have grown a sense of righteous indignation. We hope that the worst won’t happen, all the while expecting that it will, so when it does, we aren’t surprised. You know, Augusto, someone leaned some old rusted gates against the wall across from the café on Via San Giana where I drink my coffee every morning. There was a sign on them. It said, ‘Put the Jews Back in the Ghetto.’ It’s been there for over a week. No one has taken it down. I didn’t take it down,” he had added in a shamed murmur.
“The king will put a stop to it. Mark my words,” Augusto pushed back.
“King Emmanuel will do what Mussolini tells him to do,” Camillo had predicted with finality.
Eva had heard it all, but they were all old men to Eva. Camillo, Augusto, Mussolini, and the king. Old men who talked too much. And she was a young woman who was not inclined to listen.
On September 5, 1938, a week after returning from the seashore, a new law, authored by the Fascists and signed by the king, declared that Jews could no longer send their children to public or private Italian schools or be employed in any capacity in any Italian school from kindergarten to university. It was the first of many laws to come.
Eva had finished secondary school the spring before, and instead of applying to university, she decided to explore her options. Camillo had warned her not to wait to apply, but she had dragged her feet. She just wanted to play music for a while. She was a member of the Orchestra della Toscana and had been for two years, and she was the youngest violinist ever to win first chair. Plus, she had three boyfriends who kept her very busy—a Jewish boy who played the cello, a Catholic boy who played hard to get, and a Firenze policeman who looked handsome in his uniform and loved to dance. She was juggling them all with no plans to stop any time soon. She was young, beautiful, and life was good. So she didn’t apply. And suddenly that door was closed to her.
The morning after the bad dream, Eva awoke to a different sort of nightmare. When she walked into the kitchen looking for breakfast, Santino was sitting in his regular spot at the scarred table where Fabia served his coffee—she said the dining room was for Camillo and Eva—and he was reading from La Stampa, a national newspaper he read every week from cover to cover. Three other papers were stacked beneath it, and every so often he ran his hand down his face, from eyebrows to chin, saying “mio Dio” like he couldn’t believe what he was reading. Fabia was crying.
“What’s wrong, Nonna?” Eva asked, going to her side immediately. Her thoughts rushed to Angelo, the way they always did, worried that something had happened to him.
“There are new laws, Eva,” Santino said grimly. He tapped the page of newsprint he was holding. “More laws. Against the ebrei. The Jews.”
“Where will we go?” Fabia asked Eva. “We don’t want to leave you.”
Eva could only shake her head in confusion. She took the paper from Santino, knowing he had a spare, and began to read.
Fabia was crying because it had suddenly become illegal for non-Jews to work in Jewish homes. She and Santino were Catholic. According to La Stampa, the new Racial Laws prohibited Jews from owning homes, property, or businesses above a certain value. Jewish-owned businesses couldn’t employ more than one hundred people, and they had to be managed by non-Jews. Camillo’s glass factory, Ostrica, had more than five hundred workers. His father had started the company, and Camillo had gotten a chemical engineering degree so he could be the best glassmaker possible, and he had made it hugely profitable. But none of that mattered now.
Not only could Jewish teachers not teach at the schools and universities, but no textbooks written by Jewish authors were allowed in Italian schools. Jews and non-Jews were no longer permitted to marry. Jews could not be legal guardians of non-Jews.
Camillo’s father, Alberto Rosselli, had been born in the ghetto. It had only been sixty-eight years since the Jews in Italy had been freed and given the full rights of Italian citizens. And those rights had been taken away again. Now Jews couldn’t hold political office. They couldn’t serve in the military. Foreign Jews weren’t allowed in Italy at all, which meant Felix Adler, Camillo’s brother-in-law, had four months to leave, and going back to Austria was no longer an option.
Eva read the list over and over, examining the language, the details. Then she read it again, not able to fully comprehend what was happening, what had already happened.
Uncle Augusto, Aunt Bianca, Claudia, and Levi came over, and the family all talked in varying tones of incredulity, until they lapsed into nervous silence as the day wore on. Augusto could only scratch his head. “Why does this keep happening? Why the Jews? It is always the Jews!”
Camillo told Santino and Fabia that there were ways around the laws, and he would think of something. He told everyone not to worry, but for the first time in Eva’s life, she didn’t believe him.
By late afternoon, Eva couldn’t stand the black mood in the villa and grabbed her hat and her pocketbook and walked to the seminary. It had been three years since she’d visited Angelo there.
In the beginning, Fabia and Eva would visit Angelo at the seminary almost every day. It made the transition easier for him, and they would walk to the trattoria and have a gelato or play a game of checkers in the piazza in his hour of free time. Padre Sebastiano, the director of the seminary, was indulgent with Angelo, giving him certain allowances due to his circumstances and regular donations from Camillo. Fabia would crochet, Angelo and Eva would talk and laugh, and Angelo would be fortified until they came again.
Slowly but surely, Angelo shed his little-boy-lost persona and became a true Italian seminarian, blending in with all the other boys who attended school with the goal of becoming Catholic priests. But when he turned fifteen, Angelo told Eva to stop waiting outside for him. He said it was frowned upon and the other boys teased him. Eva had laughed and said, “But we are family!”
He had looked at her then, his mouth pursed like he wanted to say something. He had waited until Fabia’s attention was elsewhere.
“What, Angelo?” Eva huffed, her hands on her hips.
“You and I are not related, Eva.”
“But we are family, Angelo!” She was hurt by his rejection, but he was unyielding, the way only Angelo could be.
“You are too beautiful, and I am too attached to you. And you are not my sister or my cousin or anything close,” he repeated firmly, almost as if the truth of it made him sad. “The other boys think you are beautiful too. And they like to say things about you. And me. So I need you to stop coming here.”
Things had changed between them after that. Eva stopped waiting outside the gate for him, and even though the seminary was only five blocks away from the villa they both called home, she only saw him on school holidays or on the weekends when he missed his grandparents. They still talked and laughed when they were together, and she still played the violin for him, but things had definitely changed.
She needed him now, though. She needed to talk to him, to tell him her world was falling apart. Their world. For their worlds were intertwined by their families, whether Angelo wanted to claim her or not.
She walked down the street, finding herself looking at the familiar buildings and people of her neighborhood through new eyes. No one acted any differently. No one stared at her or pointed a finger at her, yelling, “Ebreia! Jew!”