She found herself just outside the San Frediano gate on Viale Ludovico Ariosto, standing at the entrance to the old Jewish cemetery. Her mother wasn’t buried there. Her Rosselli grandparents weren’t buried there either. The old cemetery had closed in 1880, almost sixty years ago, long before they died.
The tall cypress trees that lined the path leading from the entrance made her feel safe. They always had. Her father had brought her there once, long ago, and showed her where his maternal great-grandparents were buried. They were Nathans, and he was proud of the name. He said Nathan was a Jewish name with an impressive history. Sadly, Eva didn’t remember it. But she loved the cemetery and had come back alone many times, setting her smooth stones on those Nathan headstones, vowing each time to ask Camillo more about her ancestors. But she never did. Very few stones decorated these headstones now. Sixty years was a long time to carry memories and leave pebbles in their place.
She had no stones with her today. No pebbles or pretty rocks. No weight in her pockets and far too much heaviness in her heart. The timeworn headstones reminded her of a mismatched chess set—some stones were fat and curved, others tall and ornate, but most were short and tottering, like ancient pawns. Eva liked to imagine the shape of the markers was a caricature of the person buried there, and she took pride in the royal stature of her ancestors’ monuments. She wove her way to the far corner, to the little bench that someone had erected long ago to sit with long-dead loved ones. Angelo followed, still silent, but he’d pulled off his hat, as if wearing it among the graves was sacrilegious. It was ironic, she thought. Jewish men covered their heads—signifying themselves beneath God—for prayer and religious rituals, but she didn’t tell Angelo.
“What is this place, Eva?” he asked, sitting beside her carefully, his hands in his lap, his hat in his hands, his cane leaning on the bench between them. Eva fought the urge to knock it down. She was tired of things that came between them.
“It’s an old Jewish cemetery.” She kicked at the blanket of fallen leaves and untended grass at her feet and upended a little rock. Leaning down, she retrieved it, brushed the dirt from its surface, and shined it between her palms. Then she stood and placed it on the base of the oldest Nathan headstone and sat back down next to Angelo. He reached for her hand and turned it over so he could see her palm.
“Why did you do that?” Angelo took out his handkerchief and started gently removing the grime from her hands. His tenderness wiped away her anger too. Eva’s lips trembled, and she wanted to lay her head against his shoulder and cry out all her fear and confusion.
“Eva?” he prodded softly, when her answer never came. She swallowed back the feelings in her throat and tried to speak. Her voice was low, barely a whisper, when she finally responded.
“The story Babbo told me is that in ancient times it wasn’t common to mark graves with a headstone or any kind of marker. Jews did it, but they did it to avoid inadvertently stepping or bending over a grave and desecrating it or becoming impure from the body beneath the ground. I don’t know, exactly. It’s a mitzvah.” Eva shrugged, a uniquely Italian shrug that said, “I don’t know, but knowing isn’t very important.”
“What’s a mitzvah?”
“Something—a holy act or tradition—that elevates the mundane to the divine.” Again, the shrug. “So before the days of headstones and markers, every person who walked by the grave added a rock, building it up, so the monument became permanent. I guess eventually someone thought of adding a bigger rock with a name or birth date, so people would know who was buried there. And now? Now we do it as a sign of remembrance.”
“Something that elevates the mundane to the divine,” Angelo murmured. “That’s beautiful.” He was done with her hands, and he gently returned them to her lap, ever respectful, ever careful. Eva didn’t want her hands back. She needed Angelo to hold them tightly, to grip them in his and tell her everything was going to be all right. The emotion swelled again, and her thoughts were so loud, so insistent, that she pressed a trembling hand to her forehead so they wouldn’t escape. But the devastation of the day had peeled back her defenses, and she found herself blurting out all the things she shouldn’t say.
“I thought I would marry you someday, Angelo. Do you know that? I wanted to marry you. But that can’t happen now, can it?”
He gasped but didn’t answer. She finally made herself look at him, and his blue eyes clung to hers. There was awareness there—her words shocked him, but her feelings didn’t.
“That was never going to happen, Eva. In one year, I will be able to receive the Holy Orders, and I will become a priest. I am going to be a priest, Eva. My path is set,” he said firmly, but there was tension in the set of his lips, and the hand he raised to her cheek shook slightly. She pulled away in disgust, brushing at his hand like he was a persistent fly. Her feelings kept bouncing back and forth between tenderness and outrage.
“No. It can’t happen because I’m a Jew. And it’s now against the law for Catholics to marry Jews. It’s against the law for me to love you, Angelo. It should make it so much easier for you now.”
“What are you talking about, Eva?” Angelo kept his voice neutral, soft, like he was trying to calm a fretful child. But she wasn’t a child, as Angelo was well aware.
“I’ve seen the way you look at me, Angelo. You want to be a priest, but you love me.”
“Eva!” The word was like a whip, and Eva flinched. “You can’t say things like that.” He stood abruptly, his cane gripped in his hands. “We have to go. It will be dark soon, and after a day like today, your father will wonder where you’ve gone.”
Eva stood, but she wasn’t finished. “Babbo says so many boys become priests because of family pressures. Because they can get an education they may otherwise not get. He worried that you were forced into the seminary because your father and your grandparents wanted you to go and because you never felt like you had a home.”
“It wasn’t like that for me, Eva. You know that. You know being a priest is what I want.”
“But you were a child.” Her voice was hesitant. “How could you have known what it would cost?”
“It has cost me very little compared to what it has given me.” His eyes were so clear, so guileless, yet so fierce, that it was all she could do to hold his gaze.
“God makes me strong. He gives me courage. He gives me peace. He gives me purpose.” His voice was filled with conviction.
“And he can’t give you those things unless you’re a priest?” Eva asked sadly.
“No. No, Eva. I don’t think he can. Not in the same way.” He held out his arm—a peace offering—and Eva slipped her hand through it, letting him lead her out of the cemetery. They picked their way among the graves, and Eva was suddenly glad for his arm. Her anger and despair had boiled over and left her cold and weak, tired. She numbly placed one foot in front of the other until Angelo spoke again.
“I would have been a soldier. A pilot. If I’d been born with two good legs, I would have been a pilot. I’ve dreamed of flying since I could walk. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t run like the other boys. You don’t need to run if you can fly. Now, with war in the air and Mussolini passing these insane laws, I’m grateful for my bad leg. I’m grateful I won’t have to drop bombs and fight for things I don’t believe in.”
“Is the Catholic Church the only thing you believe in?”
Angelo sighed. “Eva, I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”
“Do you believe in people? Do you believe in me?” Her voice was tired; she really wasn’t trying to fight. Not anymore. Fighting with Angelo was like kicking a wall—she only ended up hurting herself.
“I put my faith in God. Not people,” he said softly, stubbornly, and Eva wanted to slap him.
“But God works through people. Doesn’t he?” Eva insisted.