A Child Al Confino: The True Story of a Jewish Boy and His Mother in Mussolini's Italy (15 page)

During a few minutes of silence, I glanced around the room. A jacket and cap hung from a nail on the wall not far from the pictures of Mussolini in full uniform, King Victor Emanuel, and the queen. A variety of round water stains made the dark wooden desk look out of place in a police station. A coffee shop would have been a more appropriate place for it.

The man, rubbing his eyes and yawning, lifted himself from his stretched position. Extending his hand to Mother, he introduced himself. “Maresciallo Marchetti. At your service.” He had placed more emphasis on his rank of
maresciallo
than on his own name.

“Please sit down.” He pointed to the lonely chair facing his desk. Before my mother could do so, he pulled out a handkerchief from his trousers and hastened around the desk to wipe the dust off the chair. The once-white handkerchief appeared to have seen much more use than washes, for the white appeared only in isolated spots.

Reading from the documents the
carabiniere
had handed him, the
maresciallo
moved calmly back to his desk and flopped into the dilapidated swivel chair. Only for a short moment, when attempting to read our name, did his body show the mind's concentration by stiffening upright. “Welcome to Ospedaletto d'Alpinolo, Signora … Lifaschutz,”

“The name is ‘Lifschütz,’” my mother corrected him politely.

“So sorry, Signora … Lif-sch-utz. If you ever need anything, I want you to know we are here at your service.”

“Thank you. That is very reassuring.” My mother said.

The
maresciallo
settled back and read from some worn sheets he had pulled from his desk drawer. These were the rules.

“I am embarrassed to have to read this to you. But orders are orders,” he said, I'm sure you understand. “You are not allowed to leave the hamlet's limits unless you ask for a permit. You must be in your home by twenty-two hours. We overlook it sometimes. You understand,
Signora
?” I thought I caught a wink in his eye.

“Do you think I could talk to you about these rules at some other time?” my mother asked. “We have not slept all night and we would like to find a place to stay.”

The man showed a genuine sympathy about our plight. Apologetically, he said, “Of course, of course.”

He opened the top drawer of his desk, replaced the sheets he was holding, then pulled out another slip of paper and handed it to Mother.

“What is this?” Mamma asked.

“A list of the families who have rooms to rent.”

My mother scanned the paper more than once. “I don't see addresses.”

“You won't need addresses, not in Ospedaletto. Just ask anyone and they'll direct you. I'll show you how to get to your first place.”

With some effort, for his girth was somewhat in the way, the man lifted himself from the chair and, bowing in respect, pointed his arm toward the door. He followed us out then, hurrying around Mother to walk ahead through the courtyard. “
Signora, posso?
” His hand extended, he helped my mother step over the high metal threshold and through the smaller door in the portico.

“
Signora
, watch out for the boys,” the
maresciallo
warned. “They may follow you. They may want to carry your luggage. You leave it here for now; once you find a place to stay, have a couple of boys pick them up.” Then, standing in the middle of the narrow road with his legs planted wide apart, he pointed us in the direction of the first house on the list.

In spite of the elevation and the time of year — it was only June and Ospedaletto was 2,200 feet above sea level — the summer heat was brutal: 35 degrees centigrade (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and salty sweat streamed down our faces. The dust combined to the steep incline of the gravel road and the oppressive heat made each step a strain.

At the first stop, an old woman dressed in black with a head scarf of the same fabric responded to our knock. She wore no shoes and her feet resembled the dirty feet I had seen on the boys outside the police station.

“The
maresciallo
told us you have a room for rent,” said Mother.

“Oh yes, yes. Come in. I have a beautiful, redecorated large room. Just beautiful.” She spoke in heavy dialect, difficult for me to understand.

As we entered, I passed by the old woman. What a smell! Behind her back, I pinched my nose and Mother almost cracked up. The woman, unaware of what I had done, ever so slightly pinched her own cheek with two fingers and gave them a partial twist.

“Forgive me,
Signora
. What did that mean?” Mother asked.

“What?”

“What you did with your fingers on the cheek.” Mamma imitated the woman's gesture.

“Oh, that! It means
bono o bellissimo
.”

We walked through the kitchen into the short hallway and to an open door. “Here, just look at this.” She pointed to the room with the pride normally reserved for priceless family heirlooms.

I looked. None of her adjectives applied to that room, not unless '
beautiful
' referred to artwork created by the watermarks on the ceiling and “redecorated” alluded to the scores of cobwebs adorning each corner of the four walls.

Mother smiled at the old woman. “Oh, yes. This is a beautiful room.”

I couldn't believe she said that. That was a beautiful room? Was my mother losing her mind?

“I've had some important guests stay with me.”

“Oh, I can see why,” Mamma said. “We will be back.”

“You won't find anything this nice in Ospedaletto,” the woman called out as we were leaving.

Once out of the house, I asked, “Did you really think that was a beautiful room?”

“
Eyn stick dreck,
” Mother said.

“
Mutti
, you just called her a piece of dirt.”

“I had to tell her something.”

I felt so relieved hearing those words.
Mutti
had not lost her mind.

My mother showed the list to a woman sitting in front of her house. “Do you know where this lady lives?”

“Just up the street, the third house from the barber shop.”

Here also, an old woman, dressed in black and barefoot, showed us a room. “Oh, yes.
Il Signor maresciallo
knows I have the best room in town. I have a beautiful, large room that was just redecorated.” The room was clean. But as to beautiful, one needed a fertile imagination and as to redecorated, that must have happened many years before, maybe even before my mother was born. It began to look as if only old women dressed in black, barefoot and using the same adjectives, had rooms for rent in this village.

“Where is the bathroom?”

The woman hesitated. She looked puzzled by the request. “Oh, the toilet,” she corrected. She walked down the corridor, stopped, and turned her shrunken, stooped body. Her head was twisted as it peeked from under an arm. “Come with me.” Through the air, she formed a large semicircle with her hand.

At the far end of the dark hallway, overhanging the side of the building, was the toilet. The woman removed a piece of wood to allow the door to swing open by obeying the laws of gravity. I was behind my mother when the putrid smell escaped from an open hole in the cubicle's floor and made a violent collision with my nose. Mother took two steps backward, placed one hand over her nose and, depending which part of her face you saw, displayed a frown or a smile.

Then, with a grunt, she asked, “How much are you asking for the room?”

“Forty lire. And this is a real steal. Nobody will rent you a room for so little.”

Mother had already retraced some of her steps in the hallway, trying to distance herself from the horrible smell. “Oh, I know. You don't have to tell me. Everything is so expensive nowadays. I must decide and will let you know.”

“Maybe I can give you a small reduction,” the woman said.

Mamma pulled me by the hand and, rushing to escape the woman's body odor, we slipped outside. The old woman followed us and, just like the first woman, she called out in a mixture of local dialect and Italian, with a threatening ring, “You will find nothing like this in Ospedaletto!”

“I surely hope so,” Mother whispered.

“You're talking under your mustache,” I said.

Mutti
got a kick whenever I referred to the delicate, blond fuzz visible above her lip. She gave me a love tap on the head and we both 114 enjoyed a short laugh.

“I'm sure. The room is very beautiful,” she lied. “We will be back when we decide.”

Then, turning to me, she said in German, “I thought the stench was going to kill me.”

Having always lived in cities, moving to a small village had been an intriguing thought. But I was getting more discouraged by the minute. “I don't want to stay here. I want to go back to San Remo.”

“We can't go back,
Hasele.
We have to stay here. I don't like it either. Every one of these places stinks.”

I was about to ask why we had been sent here when Mother's words flashed through my head. “Because we're Jewish. Just because we're Jewish.”

We spent almost two hours covering the rental list. This had to be a conspiracy, I thought. From one house to the next, nothing changed. Every room had the same austere look, a wash basin on its own stand, a big crucifix over the bed's headboard, and an outhouse hanging from the side of the building. None of the houses had running water although, thank heaven, they did have electricity.

After our third stop, the prospect of finding a room we would have the courage to rent had greatly dimmed. “Even in my own backward little
shtetl
, Nadworna, we didn't live like this,” Mother said. “Our servants had better rooms.”

We asked a woman on the road if she knew of some place in town with running water. There was only one house that had running water and she directed us to the Dello Russo residence.

We retraced our steps and, despite the steep incline, quickened our pace. A house with running water! We were anxious to test our luck and see if the people would rent us a room. By now our nostrils were stuffy with the fine dust that our steps raised. We trudged by the police station and reached the top of the narrow road. There, to the left, we saw what we guessed to be the house. The freestanding three-story stone building, encircled by an elaborate wrought iron fence, faced the village's large piazza and the municipal garden. Its appearance was palatial compared to the houses we had seen so far.

At the rich-looking massive portal, I lifted the heavy metal knocker and let it drop against its plate. It made a hollow sound as if only emptiness lay behind. Soon I heard the rusty sound of a key turning in the lock and the squeaking of the oil-hungry hinges. A young, barefoot girl pulled open the heavy door and greeted us. The entrance opened into a long stone archway, then into a courtyard. Mother asked to see the lady of the house.

“
Venite
,” the girl said, inviting us to enter. “
Un minuto
,
Signora
,” she added before leaving us standing.

In one glance, Mother took in the whole floor. “This is nice!” she whispered to me. “Oh, Erich, I hope they will rent us a room.”

A woman in an untidy house dress and with disheveled hair came down the stairway to greet us. Wearing house slippers that only partially concealed her dirty feet, she looked better than the women we had seen earlier. She did not wear black and that was a pleasant change. With her outstretched hand that had accumulated dirt under her fingernails, she welcomed us in good Italian.

“
S'accomodi, Signora
,” she said, using the popular expression for “make yourself comfortable.” Then she shook hands with us both.

A broad smile on her face, she made a useless gesture at fixing her unkempt hair. Then, running her hands down her skirt to try to either smooth out the wrinkles or wipe away the grease spots, she added, “Please forgive the way I look. I didn't expect company. How can I help you?”

“We just arrived this afternoon and I have come to see if you would rent us a room. I understand you have running water. Is that true?”

“Oh sure, sure. We do have running water and a vacant room. We have never rented it, but I can show it to you.”

We climbed two flights of the circular marble staircase. The gold leaf-decorated plaster on the domelike ceiling lent, in spite of the many cobwebs, an air of elegance. Through the open doors I could see the large, well furnished rooms. “Could we see the bathroom?” Mamma asked.

“
Il bagno
?” The woman repeated, as though puzzled by the request.

At least she did not call it a toilet, which was a good sign

“Of course, but don't you want to see the room?” I realized my mother had already decided she did not need to see the actual room. This was a royal palace compared to anything else we had seen in the village. “I'm sure it will be just fine. Your home is so elegant. We had an elegant home once. It just seems so long ago.”

At the top of the stairway the woman led us down a long, well-lit hallway, where at the far end she opened a door. “Here you are,
Signora
.”

Mamma's face brightened. For the first time in more than twenty-four hours, she was looking at a modern bathroom. Bidet, wash basin, toilet, and bathtub. They were all there. Even I rejoiced at that sight.

But what was that black stuff filling the tub to the rim? Coal! Optimism turned to incredulity. “What is coal doing in the tub?” Mother asked.

“Oh, nobody takes a bath. Too expensive, you know. All that water and you have to pay to heat it. So it's a good place to store the coal.” The woman had a strange glee on her face, perhaps expecting Mother to recognize her cleverness for having put dead space to a practical use.

As we walked down the stairs,
Mutti
was silent. I could tell how disillusioned she was. At the foyer my mother thanked the lady and shook hands with her.

“I would certainly love to rent from you, Signora Dello Russo. How much are you asking for one room?”

“I will have to speak to my husband and will let you know,” the woman said.