A Child Al Confino: The True Story of a Jewish Boy and His Mother in Mussolini's Italy (28 page)

“Here you are,” Don Pepe said, handing me an envelope. It was from Aunt Stefi. How many stamps! I was so excited.

I ran up the long, steep road all the way home and up the two flights of stairs. “
Mutti! Mutti!
From
Tante
Stefi. Look at all these stamps. Please be very careful. They're for me.” The envelope looked as though it was covered by a mass of different postage stamps.

“Oh, my God,” Mamma exclaimed. “Who knows how many weeks' wages this represents?”

I didn't quite understand what that meant, but, filled with anxiety to get to the stamps, I did not ask for an explanation. Mother, with shaking hands, was about to rip open the envelope.

“No, no, Mamma! Let me open it, please.” At that moment my only concern was to protect those precious stamps. With my penknife I carefully slit open the envelope, pulled out the enclosed two sheets and handed them to my mother.

I was too busy examining the stamps to realize how upset
Mutti
was. Holding one sheet in each hand, through the abundant tears, she told me what my aunt had written.

“Aunt Stefi and
Omama
are being sent to another labor camp in Poland. She says that there they will have more work for them.”

It would be their last letter. We never heard from them again.

The image of
Omama
's small figure in her black dress, the kind smile on her wrinkled face, the
sheytl
— Mother had explained the meaning of the wig — fused to the memory of her weekly visits when she had taught me how to play rummy. I remembered the times I had gone to her small, third-floor apartment on Ybbs Strasse in Vienna. My devoted Millie would walk with me there, down the Prater Strasse, past the amusement park. Somehow, although she had no telephone,
Omama
always knew when I was about to visit, for she never failed to prepare my favorite plum preserve.

Grandma would greet me at the door with a bright smile. “I have a surprise for you,” then she wrapped me in her wide-opened arms.

I was only five or six and always knew what the surprise was and where she hid it, but I played the game anyhow. “
Povedl?
” I asked. “Where is it?”

“Ah ha. If you can find it, you can have some.”
Omama
always hid it in the same place, down in the corner of a small cupboard under the kitchen window. Oh, how I loved the smell and taste of that plum preserve! In Ospedaletto I often asked
Mutti
to make me
povedl
.

“I can't,” she explained. “I need dried prunes for that and I can't find any in this
verstunkenes
place.”

One memory in particular gnawed and tormented me. I was not much more than five years old when
Omama
came to visit. My parents had gone out and I was in a bad mood. I refused to let her play with me and insisted she go home. Little did I care that it was Friday after sundown and my grandmother, in observation of the Sabbath, would not use public transportation but had to walk back home. Now, my greatest wish was to hold her close and tell her how sorry I was for having been so cruel that day.

Fate contrived another ironic twist. It allowed me only one possession as a memento of my beloved Aunt Stefi and my
Omama
: one stamp from that last envelope. A stamp with a large picture of Adolf Hitler.

A stamp bearing Hitler's image appeared on the envelope carrying the last letter from the author's grandmother and aunt, 1942.

In February 1942, Pietro received a special travel permit to visit his ailing mother in Sicily.

Pietro left immediately and returned two weeks later. Upon his return, he hired a horse-drawn cart to bring him from the Avellino train terminal. As the horse struggled around the last bend of the road, just before entering the village, I saw Pietro. I rushed to throw my arms around him, then ran back through the village to spread the news. “I have to tell Mamma!” I yelled as I ran away from him.

“Pietro is back! Pietro is back!” I shouted as I saw Mamma, then turned around and ran back.

By the time I got there, I saw the horse, visibly exhausted from the five-mile-long and difficult uphill labor, straining up the unforgiving incline. Pietro was walking alongside the carriage. The driver, using the whip on the defenseless horse, had jumped off the bench in the vain hope that lashing the animal from a shorter distance would produce some miraculous surge of energy. Instead with each blow, the struggling horse stumbled, losing more of what little strength it still possessed.

“Stop hitting it!” Pietro shouted.

The driver, with a mixed look of disbelief and annoyance, in a typical show of respect to his master, tapped the whip on the visor of his cap and, grasping the horse's metal bridle, walked on.

“Are you coming back to your room?” I asked.

Pietro hesitated. “Don't know just yet.”

Those words saddened me. I didn't want Pietro to go somewhere else. I idolized this man. His two-week absence made me aware of how much I missed him.

As the horse, forcefully exhaling from its wet nostrils, labored up and around the last curve before entering the main piazza, Pietro directed the driver to our building.

“You fooled me!” I said and my gloom vanished.

I looked at the horse. The sad eyes of the worn animal spoke a language I could not understand. I looked and thought: How could any human treat a living creature with such inhumanity?

Three years had passed since we had received my father's last letter. Poland had been overrun in 1939, and partitioned between Germany and Russia, only to become a battleground a few months later when Hitler decided to attack his former Russian ally. News from that front was sketchy at best and only related to military actions. About the civilians, caught in the turmoil of war, we heard nothing at all.

Soon after Pietro's return, Mother and I were alone in the kitchen.

“
Erichl
, sit,” she said. “I must tell you something.
Pupo
and I are in love with each other and I hope you can accept this.”

At that moment I was more focused on how uncomfortable my mother looked uttering those words than on the words themselves. It was obvious that Mamma and Pietro were more than just good friends, but to be in love? Was Papa dead? He had to be dead. Otherwise, how could she fall in love with another man? My parents were still married and my mother could not be in love with someone else. My
Mutti
would not do that. Not unless she knew something she did not want to share with me.

I was afraid to ask. I trembled. I thought of Pietro. Oh, how I loved this man. I was also sure he cared for me and by now I knew him better than my own father. But I longed for my papa and didn't want to accept that Mother could marry another man. She had not mentioned marriage. What else did it mean when a man and a woman are in love? Pietro was not Jewish. Did my mother realize that? Papa would come back one day. I was sure of that. I wanted to scream all these thoughts so
Mutti
would know how I felt. Then, suddenly I realized what mattered most at that moment: Pietro loved me and he was there to show it.

Mother sat silently waiting for my reaction, but all she got was a blank stare.

Pietro Russo and Eric's mother in 1942.

Keeping Myself Occupied

M
other, seconded by Pietro, discouraged me from going to the billiards room where I had been losing my money. So, more to comply with Pietro's wishes than my mother's and to keep myself occupied, I stopped by the shop of one of the town's two cabinetmakers. Enrico, short of stature as well as temper, his curly hair untidy, his face most days unshaven, worked out of a small shop on the street level only a few paces from the church. He lived upstairs with his widowed mother and a younger sister.

His workshop resembled a storage shed — disorganized, with jumbles of remnants everywhere. A good look around his shop made me realize that Enrico saved everything. Old cabinets and planks of old lumber covered by thick dust, lay stacked against the back of the store. The walls were covered with hanging tools, sheets of paper, and even an old useless chair. The workspace was so reduced by all that clutter that it was impossible to build furniture in there. But, as I soon learned, Enrico had it all worked out, Italian style.

During the warmer weather, he moved his activity outside on the street. Since hardly any traffic ever came through the center of the village, blocking the road was not a concern. In the morning, on a well-abused blanket, he would place a furniture piece, only to bring it back inside at midday. Work never started before ten and between the time the item was laid out and the lunch hour, Enrico had just three hours to devote to his craftsmanship. That is, provided no one stopped by to chat or take him to the
caffé
for a much-needed espresso. The same routine he repeated in the afternoon. Watching this busy activity for the first time, I figured that more time was spent on getting ready to do the work than doing the work itself.

Enrico made only bedroom furniture and of only one style. He made the large items in the warmer weather when he could work outside, while the small pieces, such as night tables, were left for the colder days, when he could work inside.

Since the workshop was small, clients had to accept delivery as each piece was completed and because most of the furniture was made for newlyweds, getting married in Ospedaletto d'Alpinolo included strategizing when to place the order.

Enrico used only hand tools.

“How come you don't use an electric saw?” I asked. “The other cabinetmaker in town has one.”

“Costs too much and I can do it better my way,” he replied. “The old methods are still best.”

Enrico sawed, planed, and drilled everything by hand. Even the lumber he purchased was not milled. He preferred to cut it himself. He had a thirteen-year-old boy, Pasquale, who, for the privilege of learning a trade, worked for no pay. For Pasquale learning was not easy, for each time he made a mistake or was slow to respond to instructions, Enrico tended to hit him rather than show him what to do.

“You idiot! You'll never amount to anything.
Si na bestia
!” Enrico would scream, calling him an animal and hurling a chunk of wood at the boy.

Three times I stopped by the shop before I dared to stick my head inside. Enrico walked up to me. “Do you want to give me a hand?” he asked. I wanted to, indeed and was eager to learn woodworking, but I was intimidated by the way the cabinetmaker abused his helper.

“I'm not sure. What do you need?”

“I need to cut this plank down,” he said, pointing to a thick trunk of tree, bark and all.

With trepidation, using a feeble excuse in case I wanted to leave early, I said, “I have very little time today.”

I helped Enrico cut several thin, uneven planks. Standing on opposite sides, we pulled and pushed a large saw, scraping its toothed blade back and forth against the hunk of lumber firmly clamped to the bench. The steady rhythm of the serrated blade cutting into the resisting wood produced a pleasant pitch that made the five-hour tedious labor a bit more tolerable. By the time I left the shop in late afternoon, I was covered with the delicious-smelling sawdust. Thus it was that I became Enrico's second apprentice. Back I went the next day, anxious to learn but still somewhat hesitant.

“Come in! Come in!
Buon giorno
! What's your name?”

“My name is also Enrico.”

Without asking, he handed me a heavy plane made of a solid block of wood with a metal blade. I had seen him sharpen it with meticulous care the day before.

“Know how to use this?” he asked.

“Not really.”

He took the plane from me, gave me a short course on how to use it by digging into a scrap piece, then handed the tool back. The tone of voice he used with me differed greatly from the one he used to yell at Pasquale. “When you tire, you tell me,” he said.

For the remainder of the day, except for going home for lunch, Pasquale and I took turns letting the curved blade dig out the hard chestnut plank Enrico and I had sliced the day before. Thirteen hours we worked, when we added the sawing to the planning, to bring the board down to Enrico's desired thickness. It was arduous labor with little reward, since it was hard to see any progress we made from hour to hour.