Page 4 of Daughter of Genoa (Escape to Tuscany)

And then there was the sound of a door opening and closing, of footsteps on the stairs.

Vittorio all but leapt to his feet. The typographer got up with a grunt of satisfaction and decanted the warm cat into my lap, where it lay and blinked up at me with trusting green eyes.

The softness of it was almost a shock. I stroked its ears and a low purr started up in its throat.

‘I see you’ve met Tiberio,’ a female voice said. A stout woman, with a rosy complexion and silver hair like her husband’s, but without the accent.

‘No names,’ the typographer said.

The woman turned a look on him: half-loving, half-irritated. ‘I hardly think,’ she said, ‘that it matters if she knows what the cat is called. So what’s happening here? Has our Jesuit friend been out picking up young ladies?’

‘Very funny,’ Vittorio said, sitting down again. ‘Signora,’ he asked me, ‘may I tell my friends what happened?’

I nodded and kept on stroking Tiberio’s ears while Vittorio told the typographer and his wife about the English bomb, and the suspicious neighbour, and how I had nowhere to be.

‘Oh, the poor soul,’ the typographer’s wife said. ‘What a dreadful thing to happen.’ She sat down across from me and leaned forward. ‘Dear, I’m going to have to ask you some questions. Not to be nosy, you understand. I want to be able to help you – we all do. All right?’

‘All right,’ I said.

‘Now, is there something we can call you? A first name? A nickname?’

‘Marta.’

‘Very well. Now, Marta, do you have family here in the city? Relatives, friends? Anyone?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m all alone.’ And I burst into tears.

*

Everyone was splendid. It was as if they worked to a well-rehearsed routine.

The two men vanished: Vittorio went to ‘put a few things in order,’ and the typographer, whom I’d come to know as Bernardo, went downstairs to open the shop.

The woman, whose name I’d learn was Silvia, sat down beside me and put an arm around me while I cried.

And I did cry, like I hadn’t since I was a little girl.

I sobbed and sobbed, running my hands compulsively over Tiberio’s fur while he squirmed and purred and butted his head into the crook of my arm.

Once I finally managed to come to a stop, Silvia gave me a handkerchief, a big blue checked one.

‘It’s one of my husband’s,’ she said as I mopped my face and blew my nose.

‘Ladies’ handkerchiefs don’t quite do the job in this kind of situation.

Now, I’m going to be very honest with you, Marta, because there’s no point in being otherwise. ’

I nodded.

She sighed. ‘I’d like to tell you that you’re safe now, but I can’t promise that.

You know that very well yourself. I can only promise that you’ll be much safer here than you were on your own.

So if you would like, you can stay here, and we’ll all do our best for you.

And if you’re thinking you’ll have to pay your way, you can forget that right now.

A few old clothes, an extra place at table – that’s nothing to us, and I shall be very offended if you protest, so don’t you try. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ I said. I was too exhausted, to dazed even to wonder if she meant it or not. She patted my arm.

‘Poor thing, you look like you want a rest. Come on. Let’s get you settled in.’

Silvia stood, and the cat Tiberio jumped down from my lap and wound his way around her legs. I followed her out and along the corridor.

‘Your room is next to the bathroom. That’s important for a few reasons. Ah, thank you,’ she said as Vittorio came hurrying towards us, clutching an enamel jug. ‘Hot water. Good idea. That man should have been a hotelier.’

Silvia led me to the end of the corridor, where two doors stood ajar.

She opened the first door: a bathroom with a big white tub and brass fittings, far nicer than anything I’d seen before.

‘My father had all this put in,’ Silvia explained.

‘The business was doing rather better back then. Anyway, you’re welcome to use the bath once a week, as we do.

Now, here is the most important feature.

’ She opened a small cupboard that stood at floor level next to the window and gestured for me to look inside.

A sturdy metal ring had been fixed to the wall behind, and attached to it was a coil of knotted rope: a sort of escape ladder.

It was then, I believe, that I tentatively began to trust my new hosts.

‘A friend gave us the idea,’ Silvia said.

‘If the Germans come, or the Fascists, then you must climb out of the window and down into the courtyard.’ She pulled aside the net curtain and pointed across the narrow paved area to the building opposite.

‘See that house? The custodian is a member of our church. You must go straight to the back door and ring three times and he’ll let you in. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ I said again.

‘Good. And now let’s get you set up in your room.’ Silvia went out into the corridor and opened the other door, motioning me through. ‘Just look what a job Father Vittorio has done with the bed. They train them well, the Jesuits.’

I looked. It was a small room but high-ceilinged, with plain white walls.

In one corner was an iron-framed bed with a neat sprigged cover and two pillows, and it was immaculately made.

On the wall above its head, where a cross might have been, there was a small oil painting of a jug of flowers.

A blue-and-white woven rug covered part of the tiled floor, and there was a wooden chest of drawers and a washstand, with a white towel hanging up next to it and a pink tablet of soap on a dish.

But best of all was the window. The shutters stood open, letting in light and air.

It was all a world away from my chaotic, dark little flat in Carignano with my books and my clothes and my sewing things, all gone now.

Silvia had read my mind, or perhaps my face.

‘You can soak up the sun all you please. Nobody overlooks you on that side. Just pull the curtains when you don’t want the light – don’t go leaning out the window to get to the shutters.

And here he is,’ she said brightly, as Vittorio came back in with the jug of hot water.

‘Now, Marta, you have a good rest and when you’re ready, we shall have something to eat.

Sleep well, dear.’ And she and Vittorio went out, closing the door behind them.

I was exhausted. I wanted to lie down more than anything, but for a moment I just sat on the bed, looked at my feet and tried to make sense of it all.

I knew that anyone who helped a Jew – or even a ‘ Mischling of the first degree,’ as the Germans would define me: in the eyes of the Fascists I was a ‘full Jew’ on account of my foreign-born mother – was subject to the same treatment as the Jews themselves.

Everyone knew that; you couldn’t avoid knowing, for there were posters on every street corner warning you of it.

The kind bank manager, the friendly shopkeeper, anyone who saw that I kept to myself and who knew that I must be afraid of something, and yet who chose to look the other way…

if the smallest of their actions had come to the attention of the Gestapo, or the Fascist police, they would have been arrested and taken away.

I didn’t yet know what was done to those who were taken away, like Rabbi Pacifici, and my mother’s friend Giuditta and her daughters Lea and Laura, who had been my playmates.

But I had garnered enough information to know that they had been sent out of Italy and that they had not returned.

I could not believe that these two gruff and practical people I’d never met before had decided, not only to defy the law, but to take me into their home and all of that risk along with me. I couldn’t understand. I could only wonder at it.

After a while, need overcame wonder. I drew the flower-sprigged curtains, undressed and washed with the still-hot water and the geranium-scented soap, and then I lay down in that neat white bed and let myself begin to drift off.

After a few moments, the door softly opened and shut, and Tiberio jumped up on the bed with an enquiring chirp.

I opened my arms and he curled against me, starting up a deep rumbling purr that blotted out all else and lulled me into sleep.

My last conscious thought was that signora Pittaluga would never exploit me again.