Playing With Fire (11 page)

“And you’ll be just as beautiful as you are tonight.”

She laughed. “Oh no, I’ll be fat from all our babies!”

“But every bit as beautiful.”

“You see? That’s how it could be for us. Growing old together. We mustn’t stop believing it, because someday…”

The shriek of air raid sirens suddenly pierced the night.

They both turned to the window and Laura pushed open the curtains. On the street below, neighbors were gathering to scan the sky for aircraft. Despite frequent air raid sirens, the city had never known an aerial attack, and Venetians had grown cavalier about the wails that regularly interrupted their sleep. Even if bombs were to fall, where, in this city built on water, were they expected to take shelter?

Laura called down from her darkened window: “Signore, is this just another drill?”

“With all these clouds and mist, it’s certainly not a night for an air raid!” the man yelled back. “A pilot wouldn’t be able to see ten feet in front of him.”

“Why are the sirens on?”

“Who knows?” He called out to a trio of men who stood stomping in the cold, their cigarettes glowing. “Have you heard any news?”

“Nothing on the radio. My wife is calling her sister in Mestre to see if she’s seen anything.”

Up and down the street more and more people emerged, bundled in coats and shawls, shouting questions over the unceasing racket. Instead of fear, what Lorenzo heard in their voices was puzzlement and excitement, and even a note of festivity, as if this were a party in the street to the tune of sirens.

The bedroom door suddenly creaked open and Professor Balboni slipped into the room. “Our visitor’s gone at last,” he whispered.

“Papa, what did he say? Why was he here?” asked Laura.

“Dear God, if what he said was true—the things he told me—”

“What things?”

“The SS will soon be going door-to-door, making arrests.” He looked at Lorenzo. “There’s no time left. You must disappear
tonight.
With these sirens going, with all the chaos in the streets, you might be able to slip away.”

“I need to go home. I need to tell them,” said Lorenzo, turning to the door.

Balboni caught him by the arm. “It’s too late to save them. Your family is on the list. They may already be headed to your house.”

“My sister is only fourteen years old! I can’t leave her behind!” Lorenzo pulled free and ran out of the room.

“Lorenzo, wait!” called Laura as she followed him down the stairs. At the front door, she grabbed his arm, pulled him to a halt. “Please listen to Papa!”

“I have to warn them. You know I do.”

“Papa, talk to him,” Laura pleaded as her father came down the stairs. “Tell him it’s too dangerous.”

Balboni gave a sad shake of the head. “I think he’s made his choice, and we can’t change his mind.” He looked at Lorenzo. “Keep to the shadows, boy. If you’re able to get your family out of Cannaregio, make for the monastery in Padua. They’ll give you sanctuary, until someone can take you to the border.” He grasped Lorenzo’s shoulders. “When this is all over, when Italy comes back to its senses, we’ll see you here again. And we’ll celebrate.”

Lorenzo turned to Laura. She had her hand pressed to her mouth, trying to hold back tears. He pulled her against him and felt her body shuddering with the effort not to cry. “Never stop believing in us,” he whispered.

“I won’t. Not ever.”

“Then it will happen.” He pressed his lips to hers and drank in one last taste of her. “We will
make
it happen.”

Out into the night he went, his scarf wrapped around his face to ward off any unwelcome stares. The air raid sirens continued their unceasing wails, as if the sky itself were shrieking in despair. Drawn out of their homes on this strange night, a small crowd had gathered in the Campo della Carità, hungry for news and trading rumors. Had this been a real air raid, Death would have found them out in the open, doomed by their own curiosity. But like every other night before it, no bombs fell on Venice, and those who lingered too long outside suffered only from cold hands and feet, and in the morning, from bleary-eyed regret that they had gone to bed so late.

No one saw the young man who slipped past them in the shadows.

On this night of mist and chaos, Lorenzo made his way unnoticed across the bridge and through the neighborhood of San Polo. His greatest challenge lay ahead: how to move his family out of the city before daybreak. Could Mama make it all the way to Padua on foot? Should they send Marco and Pia ahead? If the family split up, how and where would they reunite?

He heard screams and the sound of shattering glass, and he darted for the shadows. Peering around the corner, he watched as a man and woman were dragged out of a house and forced to their knees in the street. Broken shards of glass rained from an upstairs window, followed by books and papers that tumbled down like wounded birds, to land in an ever-growing pile on the street. The kneeling woman sobbed and pleaded, but the air raid sirens drowned out her cries.

A match flame flickered to life in the darkness. Tossed onto the mound of papers, the flame quickly bloomed into an inferno.

Lorenzo backed away from the brightening firelight and darted down a different street to circle north, through Santa Croce. As he crossed the bridge into Cannaregio, he spied the hellish glow of another fire ahead.
My street. My house.

He sprinted around the corner to Calle del Forno and stared in horror at the bonfire roaring in the street, devouring a mound of books. Grandpapa’s books. Scattered across the cobblestones was a sea of broken glass, the shards reflecting the firelight like small pools of flame.

The door to his home was splintered wide open. He did not need to step inside to see the destruction within: the shattered crockery, the ripped curtains.

“They’re gone, Lorenzo!” a girl’s voice called out.

He spun around and saw his twelve-year-old neighbor Isabella watching him forlornly from across the street. “The police took them away. Then the Blackshirts came and set fire to everything. They were like crazy people. Why did they have to break the dishes? Papa told me to stay inside, but I saw it from my window. I saw the whole thing.”

“Where are they? Where is my family?”

“They’re at Marco Foscarini. Everyone is there.”

“Why were they taken to the school?”

“The policeman said they’re going to be sent to a work camp. He told Papa not to worry about them, because it will just be for a little while. When everything calms down, they’ll come back again. He said it will be like a holiday away from home. Papa says there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s just the way it has to be.”

Lorenzo looked down at the blackened ashes, all that remained of his grandfather Alberto’s prized library of music. In the shadowy periphery, a lone volume had survived the flames. He reached down to retrieve it, and the stench of smoke rose from the singed pages. It was Alberto’s collection of Gypsy melodies, tunes that Lorenzo had known since the cradle. The same tunes Pia hummed late at night when she combed her hair. He stood cradling the precious music book, worried about his sister, thinking how terrified she must be. He thought about his mother, with her aching knees and weak lungs. How would she survive hard labor in a work camp?

“Are you going with them, Lorenzo?” Isabella asked. “If you hurry, you can catch up and you’ll be together. It won’t be so bad at the camp. That’s what the policeman said.”

He looked up at the ruined windows of his home. If he left now, he could be well on his way to Padua by sunrise. From there he’d have to head northwest into the mountains, and across the Swiss border. It’s what Professor Balboni had urged him to do: Run. Forget his family and save himself.

And when the war is over,
he thought,
how can I face them again, knowing that I abandoned them to the miseries of a labor camp?
He imagined the look of betrayal in Pia’s eyes. That’s all he could think of; the look in his sister’s eyes.

“Lorenzo?”

“Thank you, Bella.” Gently he placed a hand on the girl’s head. “Stay well. Someday we’ll meet again.”

“Are you running away?”

“No.” He tucked the music book under his coat. “I’m going to find my family.”

It was Pia who spotted him. Over the din of wailing children and babies, he heard her shout his name and saw her arms frantically waving for his attention. So many people were crowded into the makeshift detention center at Collegio Marco Foscarini that he had to push past stunned old men rocking in despair, had to step over families who had simply collapsed on the floor in weary heaps.

Pia launched herself so joyously into his arms that he stumbled back from the force of her embrace. “I thought we’d never see you again! Marco said you ran away, but I knew you wouldn’t do that. I knew you wouldn’t leave us!”

His mother and father crowded in to embrace him as well, wrapping him in a smothering tangle of arms. Only when they finally released him did his brother, Marco, come forward to give him a firm clap on the back.

“We had no idea where you went,” said Marco.

“I was at the Balbonis’ house when I heard the air raid sirens.”

“It was all a ruse,” Marco said bitterly. “They used the sirens to take us by surprise. No one could hear what was going on. And we still have no news of Grandpapa. There are rumors that they even raided his nursing home.” Marco glanced at their mother, who had sunk onto a bench, clutching her coat tighter. He said softly: “They pulled her straight out of bed. Didn’t even let her get properly dressed. We grabbed what we could before they dragged us onto the street.”

“I saw the house,” said Lorenzo. “The Blackshirts broke every window, burned every book. It’s happening all over the city.”

“And you had a chance to escape? Why the hell didn’t you run? You could be on your way to the border!”

“What about Pia? Mama? We’re a family, Marco. We have to stay together.”

“How long do you think you’ll last in a labor camp? How long do you think
they’ll
last?”

“Quiet. You’ll scare Pia.”

“I’m
not
scared,” said Pia. “Not now that we’re all together.” She took Lorenzo’s hand. “Come, look at what I did. You’ll be so pleased.”

“What?”

“When I heard them banging on the door, I ran straight to your room. I kept it under my coat, so they wouldn’t see it.” She pulled him over to the bench where their mother was sitting and reached underneath.

He looked down at what Pia was holding and for a moment he couldn’t speak, he was so moved by what his sister had done for him. Inside the violin case, La Dianora was still snug and safe in her velvet cradle. He touched the varnished wood, and even in that chilly room, it felt warm to his fingertips, as alive as flesh.

Through tears, he looked at his sister. “Thank you.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Thank you, darling Pia.”

“I knew you’d come back for it. I knew you’d come back for
us
.”

“And here I am.” Right where he needed to be.

He woke up the next morning to the sound of crying children.

Stiff from sleeping on the floor, Lorenzo groaned as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. The light that shone in through the assembly hall’s filthy windows tinted every face in the room a cold, drab gray. Nearby, an exhausted woman was trying to hush her fretting infant. An old man rocked back and forth, babbling words that only he could understand. Everywhere Lorenzo looked, he saw slumped shoulders and stunned faces, many of whom he recognized. There were the Perlmutters, who had the daughter with the cleft lip, and the Sanguinettis, whose fourteen-year-old son had once been Lorenzo’s violin student, until the boy’s singular lack of interest put an end to the lessons. There were the Polaccos, who owned the tailor shop, and Mr. Berger, who was once bank president, and old Mrs. Ravenna, who always seemed to argue with Mama whenever they met in the square. Whether young or old, scholars or laborers, they had all been reduced to this same state of misery.

“When will they bring us food?” Mrs. Perlmutter wailed. “My children are hungry!”

“We’re all hungry,” a man retorted.

“You can go without food. The children can’t.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“That’s all you can think about, is it? Yourself and no one else?”

Mr. Perlmutter placed a calming hand on his wife’s arm. “This doesn’t help anyone. Please, let it go.” He smiled at their children. “Don’t you worry. They’ll bring us something to eat soon.”

“When, Papa?”

“By lunchtime, I’m certain of it. You’ll see.”

But lunchtime came and went, and so did dinnertime. No food appeared that day, or the next. They had only water to drink from the bathroom tap.

At night, the hungry wails of the children kept Lorenzo awake.

Curled up on the floor next to Pia and Marco, he closed his eyes and tried not to think about food, but how could he not? He remembered the meals he’d enjoyed at Professor Balboni’s table: the clearest, brightest consommés he’d ever tasted. Crisp fish from the lagoon, so tiny that he had eaten them bones and all. He thought of cakes and wines and the heady smells of a roasting chicken.

His sister moaned in her sleep, pursued by hunger into her dreams.

He wrapped his arm around her and whispered: “Hush, Pia, I’m here. Everything will be fine.” She curled up against him and settled back to sleep, but he could not.

He was wide awake when the first sack came tumbling through the open window.

It nearly landed on the head of a sleeping woman. She startled awake and cried out in the darkness: “Now they’re trying to kill us! Trying to crush our heads while we sleep!”

A second sack dropped into the room and something rolled out, rumbling across the floor.

“Who’s throwing things at us? Why are they doing this?”

Lorenzo climbed onto the bench and peered out of the high window. He saw two shadowy figures crouched below, one of them about to swing yet a third sack up and over the high sill into the room.

“Hey, you!” Lorenzo called out. “What are you doing?”

One of the figures looked up. The moon was full and under its stark illumination, he saw the face of an elderly woman dressed all in black. She placed a finger to her lips in a plea for silence, then she and her companion scurried from the building and slipped away into the darkness.

“Apples!” a woman called out in delight. “There are apples here!”

Someone lit a candle, and by its meager glow they saw the bounty that had spilled from the sacks. Loaves of bread. Wedges of cheese wrapped in newspapers. A cloth bag of boiled potatoes.

“First feed the children!” a woman pleaded. “The children!”

But people were already scooping up the food, desperate for some small scrap before it all vanished. Apples disappeared into pockets. Two women clawed at each other, fighting for a packet of cheese. A man crammed a potato into his mouth, greedily devouring it before anyone could snatch it from him.

Marco dove into the melee and emerged a moment later clutching half a loaf of bread, all he could salvage for their family. They huddled together guarding their treasure as Marco tore the bread into five pieces and handed a portion to each. It was tough as leather, at least a day old, but to Lorenzo it was as welcome as the tenderest of cakes. He savored each bite, eyes closed in pleasure as he let the morsels dissolve into yeasty sweetness on his tongue. He thought of all the other bread he’d eaten in his life and how thoughtlessly he’d chewed it without really tasting, because bread was like air, something you took for granted, the unsung staple at every meal.

As he licked the last crumbs from his fingers, he noticed that his father had not touched his own portion, but was merely staring down at the bread in his hands.

“Papa, eat,” Lorenzo said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“How can you not be hungry? You haven’t eaten in two days!”

“I don’t want it.” His father held out the bread to Lorenzo. “Here. It’s for you and Pia and Marco.”

“Don’t be crazy, Papa,” said Marco. “You need to eat.”

Bruno shook his head. “This is my fault, it’s all my fault. I should have listened to you, Marco, and to Professor Balboni. We should have left Italy months ago. Stubborn old fool, that’s what I am!” The bread fell to the floor and he dropped his face in his hands. He rocked forward, body shuddering with sobs. Never before had Lorenzo seen him cry. Could this broken man really be his father, who always insisted he knew what was best for the family? Who stubbornly kept the luthier shop open for business six days a week, even as the clientele dwindled away? What fortitude it must have taken for Bruno to hide his doubts these five years, to bear the full burden of every decision, good or bad. And this is where his choices had led them. Lorenzo was so shocked by the sight of his father crumbling that he didn’t know what to say or do.

But Mama did. She wrapped her generous arms around her husband and pulled his face against her shoulder. “No, no, Bruno, this is not your fault,” she murmured. “I couldn’t abandon Papa. I didn’t want to leave, either, so it’s my fault, too. We made the choice together.”

“And now we suffer together.”

“It won’t be forever. And really, how terrible could it be in the camp? I’m not afraid to work, and I know you aren’t. You have always worked so hard. What’s important is that we’re together, isn’t that right?” She stroked back the thinning wisps of his hair and kissed the top of his head. “Isn’t it?”

Lorenzo could not remember the last time he’d seen his parents kiss or embrace. At home they always seemed like separate planets moving in their own orbits, circling close but never touching. He could not imagine them ever burning for each other, the way he burned for Laura, but here they were, clinging like lovers. Did he ever really know his parents?