Page 40 of Daughter of Genoa (Escape to Tuscany)

Anna

By the time Massimo arrived that evening, I still hadn’t managed to calm my nerves.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Vittorio’s stricken expression.

What good had it done to unburden myself?

What could it possibly change, other than hurting him and altering our friendship forever?

I felt wretched, and I wished I could throw myself into Massimo’s arms and tell him everything.

But I’d promised Vittorio I wouldn’t say anything about what we’d discussed.

If I could do nothing else for him, I could do that.

Massimo noticed, of course. He drew his chair up to mine and took my hands in his. ‘Anna, what’s wrong? Is something worrying you?’

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Well, it’s everything. All the usual things.’

‘My poor darling,’ he said. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

I looked up into his kind, clever face and wondered just what he’d heard about me when he checked me out all those weeks ago.

Of course he’d found out who I was: what I’d married into, all the compromises I’d made.

But did he know what I was accused of and know – or guess – that I was innocent?

Or did he know only that I’d been dismissed on account of the Racial Laws, and by a man he found thoroughly obnoxious?

I suddenly felt that I had to find out. I was trying to formulate some way to approach the question when I realised that he was talking.

‘…you’ll need your real identity papers, of course. I know you lost them in the bombardment. But don’t worry, we can make you a new set. I’ve brought the blank form with me, and my man at the questura will—’

‘My real papers?’ I asked. ‘What do I need those for?’

‘At the Swiss border. That’s the agreement: if you can show your legal identity papers with your status as a Jew, you’ll be accepted as a refugee.

And that’s a guaranteed acceptance, thanks to my contacts in the Red Cross.

They won’t find some spurious reason to turn you away, like they do to so many others.

Of course, the price for all this assurance is that you have to travel while carrying both documents, and that’s a risk in itself.

But the lady who’ll be escorting you is completely trustworthy, and she’s done this many times before.

That at least should be…’ His brow furrowed. ‘You’re not following me, are you?’

‘I’m not,’ I said, though my mind and heart were racing. Switzerland . It rose up before me like a vision, rich and free and peaceful. ‘It’s a lot to take in – I’m sorry. Please can you tell me again from the beginning?’

‘Of course,’ he said, and he started to explain.

Since taking over DELASEM, he’d established a safe escape route between Genoa and Switzerland.

A lawyer friend of his had a sympathetic client, a rich lady whose Swiss estate spanned the Italian border.

This lady and her maid would come down to Genoa on separate trains, and each would take three or perhaps four people back with her.

Then the new arrivals would apply for refuge through Massimo’s contacts, who had been warned of their coming.

It was a slow and cautious way of working, and it meant only a handful of people could be moved at one time.

But it was better and infinitely safer than taking your chances at the border; or entrusting yourself to some unknown guide, who might extort a large fee only to sell you out, or kill you, or simply abandon you along the way.

‘There’s huge demand,’ Massimo said. ‘You can imagine. We have entire families who need to escape, people coming to Genoa from all over to get on one of these trains. But sometimes…’ He was holding my hands tight.

‘Sometimes, rarely, it happens that a place frees up – that I can fit in an extra person, someone who’s alone.

I’ve been waiting to find a place for you, and now I finally have.

All being well, you can leave next week. ’

‘Next week,’ I echoed. ‘How long have you been…’

‘For weeks now, since I first heard about you. I’m very sorry I didn’t tell you before. It would have been cruel to give you hope unless I was certain that I could make it come about. And I wasn’t at all sure that I could. I could only prepare to seize the chance if it should arise.’

‘That’s why you asked about my papers,’ I said. ‘Back when we first met.’

Massimo nodded. ‘I know this must be strange for you – it’s strange for me, too.

I didn’t know you, or what you would mean to me.

I just saw a young woman who was surviving alone.

If we’d never got to know one another, if I’d never come to feel about you as I do, then I’d still have kept on looking for that spare place and I’d still have offered it to you the instant it came up.

I always wanted you to be safe. I hope you know that. ’

‘But I am safe,’ I said. Switzerland had already lost its shine.

I didn’t want to leave Massimo, to stop the work we’d been doing and abandon the people I could help.

In that moment, all I wanted was to stay in Genoa with him.

I had my work and I had my love, and in everything else I could take my chances.

‘I’m safe here. You said it yourself, the Waldensians—’

‘No, my darling, you’re not safe, not completely. Perhaps you feel safe, and that isn’t the same at all. In fact, it can be very dangerous.’

‘But—’

‘Please,’ he said, with an intensity that startled me. ‘Please, Anna, I’m giving you a way out. You must take it. I can’t lose someone dear to me, not again, not so soon. Don’t put me through it.’

*

This time, I was the one listening as the story spilled out. ‘Did you ever wonder why I stayed in Genoa?’ Massimo asked, studying my face. ‘Didn’t that strike you as strange?’

‘Of course I did,’ I said. ‘It was the first thing I wondered when I saw you.’

‘But you didn’t ask me.’

‘No. I tried to put it out of my mind.’ I’d tried, but I hadn’t always succeeded. In those first weeks, when I’d loved him without wanting to, I’d sometimes lain awake tormenting myself with the idea that he’d stayed on account of someone else.

‘And you were quite right,’ he said. ‘Need to know, and so on. But I think perhaps I ought to tell you now.’ He took a deep breath. ‘When the synagogue was raided,’ he began, ‘I was alone. My wife had died the year before. I’d sent our daughter—’

‘You have a daughter?’

‘Yes. She went to my in-laws in Rapallo at first – they’re Catholic, and so is she, technically – she’s elsewhere now, but she’s being kept safe. It’s all right,’ he cut across me before I could respond. ‘I live with it. I have to.’

‘I understand,’ I said, but my head was spinning. Massimo, my Massimo, was not just a grieving husband but a father, with a daughter he missed and who must miss him. I couldn’t imagine his pain. I squeezed his fingers and he squeezed mine back.

‘The rest of my family had left town,’ he went on.

‘My mother and father, my sisters and brothers with their own families. They were scattered around in various places. I know this is a lot to take in all at once, when I’ve been so tight-lipped up to now.

’ He grimaced. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you. In any other circumstances…’

‘I know. It’s good practice. The less you tell me—’

‘Exactly so. Well, my family were more or less safe up to that point. But now the Germans had their names from the synagogue records, I knew it would be easier to hunt them down – and they would be hunted, there was no question of that. I found a way to write to all of them and tell them to run, to take new names and find new places to hide, places where nobody knew them. And they all did, except one: my little sister Margherita. She and her husband Achille and their children were staying at a hotel in Montecatini. The address was in the records,’ he went on, growing heated.

‘They needed to leave right away. Right away. There wasn’t any time to waste. ’

‘You mean they didn’t…’ I had to take a breath myself now. ‘They didn’t leave?’

‘Not immediately,’ Massimo said. ‘They hid with friends nearby for a couple of days, and on the third day… I can scarcely believe it. They went back . Just to pack up their things. Achille stayed with their friends – he thought it was men the Germans were after, men they could draft. But the others, Margherita and Lia and Claudio, they were at the hotel when the Fascists came looking.’

‘Oh, Massimo.’ I was filled with horror: for them, for him.

‘When Achille came back in the morning and found them gone, he turned himself in.’ His voice was bleak.

‘He couldn’t have done otherwise. He couldn’t have lived with it.

The news reached me and I was frantic. I didn’t want to leave Genoa until I knew for certain what had happened to Margherita and her family.

I knew that there were people at the Curia who were helping Jews – I had friends who had friends there – I went to ask them to help me.

I managed to talk to a priest who told me that he could find something out and report back the very next day.

I was overcome,’ he said. ‘I cried out: “But this is a miracle!” And he looked at me, this serious little priest with his funny round spectacles, and he said that the miracle, the real miracle, would be if my loved ones ever came back to me. He knew something, Anna. I swear they all do, him and the archbishop and maybe even Father Vittorio. They know more than we do about what the Germans are up to, though they’ll never say it. ’

He hung his head, and for a moment we were both silent.

‘There was news when I went back,’ he said quietly at last. ‘Margherita, Achille and the children had been taken to Florence and put on a train heading for the Brenner Pass. My darling, you have to go,’ he said, and he looked up now and fixed me with haunted eyes.

‘You want to stay and keep working, I know. And I want to keep you – I want you with me day and night, but you must go. You must.’

‘But what about you? Won’t you come to Switzerland, too?

’ It was a desperate hope, because I knew him, just as he knew me.

But I still had to try. ‘I shan’t go,’ I said.

‘I shan’t go anywhere unless you go with me, and bring your daughter.

I’m quite serious. If you want to save me, then you’ll have to save yourself and her as well. ’

‘My daughter is safe where she is,’ Massimo said, ‘and that’s well away from me. And I have to stay in Genoa. I’m bound up in all this, and I have been since the first day I went to the Curia. Too many people depend on me now. You ought to understand that.’

‘No, Massimo, I don’t understand. You’ve told me yourself that you have all these high-up contacts: in the questura, the Red Cross, the church.

And some of them value you especially, because you were once valued by a man they admire.

You’ve persuaded them to help others, but you won’t ask them to help you .

And why shouldn’t you? You’re in far greater danger than any of them. ’

‘You know that isn’t true. The Germans—’

‘…will treat anyone as a Jew who helps a Jew. I know that. And I know they’re all taking risks, but we’re not talking about ordinary people here, like Silvia and Bernardo.

These are powerful men who have their own protectors, institutions, networks they can hide behind.

You don’t have any of that, so you have to start protecting yourself.

It’s foolish not to do so, but it’s more than that.

It’s morally and ethically wrong,’ I said, with all the conviction I could summon.

‘It’s unforgivable, and I won’t forgive you. ’

Massimo shook his head. He was so composed, so sad, that my heart ached because I knew that I had lost. ‘Everything you say is perfectly true. If you don’t want to forgive me, then I shan’t ask you to.

But I still don’t know what happened to Margherita, or whether I might ever get her back, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t leave until I do.

Besides, nobody does anything properly unless I’m around to run things – people mean well, but that isn’t enough, and you know it.

Mistakes end up being made, and those are infinitely costly.

’ He reached out and touched my face, ran his thumb across my cheek.

‘My work will be harder without your help, darling Anna. I trust you as I can trust very few people in this world. But in another way, it will be so much simpler. I know how that sounds,’ he said as I closed my eyes and stifled a wave of pain.

‘I do know. But it’s easier if I have only myself to worry about.

And I can keep going if I know that you are safe – that if I survive, and if this ends, then I shall get to see you again one day.

Please don’t deny me that one assurance. ’

It was unarguable, all of it. And I’d turned down a lifeline once before, the one my mother had offered; I knew, deep down, that I mustn’t do that again. ‘Then I’ll go,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to, you’re right, but I’ll go. Thank you. Thank you for helping me.’

Massimo pulled me into his arms. ‘Oh, thank God.’ The catch in his voice made my throat hurt. ‘I love you. In case you hadn’t gathered,’ he added with a shaky half-laugh, and pressed his lips to my cheek.

‘I love you, too,’ I said. And I clung to him, as though he might be torn from me at any moment.