Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

SEPTEMBER 1943

That night, hours after her conversation in the garden with Luca, Giulia lay awake in her bed. The room felt warm even though the windows were open, and despite kicking off the quilt with her good foot and readjusting her pillow again and again, she couldn't get comfortable. The air seemed thick and heavy, making it hard to breathe. And although she tried to quiet her mind, she couldn't help picturing him. His elegant, patrician face, with those high cheekbones and angular jaw. His startlingly green eyes that narrowed as he observed her. His weathered skin and hint of a beard. His brown hair with those tousled curls above his forehead that fluttered enticingly in the breeze, making her want to reach out and stroke them back into place.

What was this all about? She'd never thought about a man like this before. The boys she'd known were people to have fun with. Even Vincenzo. She loved him as a friend. But when she thought about Luca, she felt a passion she didn't recognize. And lying here in bed, she began to see herself in a whole new way, too. Who was the silly person she'd been at the castle, who craved pretty clothes and luscious foods, whose idea of doing something daring was sneaking out of the castle to frolic with Vincenzo in the small back harbor? We're not put on this earth to think about our last triumphs. Our pretty past . Luca had said this as he grasped her wrist, his fingers slim but his grip firm. A part of her hated how he'd addressed her, as if he were scolding a child who didn't learn her math equations well enough. And yet his words, and his tone, made something rise up inside her. She wanted to be worthy of his attention. She wanted to be a serious person. To think about more than herself and her trifling, momentary pleasures. He made her ashamed of who she had been.

But at the same time, those pleasures—sailing on the water beside Vincenzo, feeling the seawater spray her face, scurrying back upstairs before Annalisa noticed she was gone—those pleasures were familiar and comfortable. They'd fit perfectly with who she was, and they'd kept her from falling apart these last few days. Like strong thread that held together the bodice, sleeves, and tulle of the wedding gown she'd given Annalisa to take to New York. How would she live, breathe, move, exist if she cut the thread that had made her who she was for so long? She couldn't reject the satisfaction of those pleasures, because she didn't know who she would be without them. Yet it seemed Luca was telling her to do just that. He was saying that it was okay to change. That she needed to change.

But could she trust him to value the person she would become? Could she be sure that she'd become someone good? Would she still recognize herself? Or would she lose herself completely by doing what he'd asked?

For the next few days, Giulia avoided Luca as best she could. She began sitting on the front porch in the mornings, instead of on the stone bench in the back garden, where he'd always found her. In the mornings after she'd had her session with Pietro—she was now studying diagrams he'd drawn, confirming that yes, the stairs curved that way, and no, the doorway to the secret stairs was on the opposite wall—she'd open the door to his study to make sure the living room was empty before she'd walk out. In the afternoons, she'd lead Marilene to the attic and lock the door, pretending it was Pietro and Cellina she didn't want to encounter. She explained to Marilene that they didn't want Marilene's parents to know what was going on; it would be a happy surprise when they saw the red dresses for the first time on Giulia's birthday.

At mealtimes, she made sure to take a seat next to Marilene, on the opposite side of the table to where Luca typically sat. She kept her eyes down when she felt him looking at her from across the table, and after the meal had ended, she stayed with Signora Brambilla in the kitchen to help with the dishes.

But even while she'd remain on alert as she sat down before each meal, she'd hold her breath and wait for Luca to arrive in the dining room. Marilene had mentioned on Giulia's first day that Luca occasionally had to travel, and Giulia lived in dread of the day when Luca's seat at the table would be empty. Life was lighter, the mood was easier, when he was around, jostling the little boys and promising them candy before heeding Cellina's plea that he let the boys be seated so that everyone could get on with the meal.

Sometimes as she watched him take his place at the table opposite her and accept a glass of wine and his plate of food, she'd let her eyes linger on his face, glowing gold from the tall candles in their crystal candlesticks. And one evening, as the rain clattered down on the roof, and she watched him unfold his napkin and place it on his lap, her mind drifted, and she wondered what would have happened if they'd met back in her hometown. If he'd grown up near her, if he'd come to her father's shop with trousers to be hemmed or repaired, or a button or zipper to be replaced. Would he have noticed her? Would she have noticed him?

Because she'd ignored so much back then. She'd never want to focus on the dirty looks that some would cast at her father on the street, or the loss of some customers who didn't want to step into his store, the way his eyes became sunken and red as he contemplated his business records at night. The changes in his customers' attitudes had been gradual, as they lived in a small town far removed from much of the ugliness that Jews in other cities were facing. She'd heard of Mussolini and the Fascists and Hitler and the racial laws, but in their small town, the rules governing where Jews could live, work, or go to school seemed more theoretical than actual. Her father was Jewish—she knew that the same way she knew he was short, wore glasses, had graying hair, had a sick heart. It was… a characteristic, an element of his background, an interesting point of separation from her mother: she was rich, he was poor; she was privileged, he was a tradesman; she was from the city, he was from the country; he was Jewish, she was not.

But now, she saw that his Jewishness was more than pretty stories and poetry that resonated with her and her sisters. It meant something greater. Luca had said it to her: We're put here to think about what we can do next. What we must do next .

From across the dinner table, Luca looked up, and their eyes met, as they had that night while Pietro read from the storybook. His body froze, yet his green eyes were yearning. Whatever she was feeling about him, he was feeling it, too. They were in the path of a storm, as fierce as the one sending pounding rain down right now, making the roof and windows rattle as the large raindrops fell. And they were both powerless to push the storm elsewhere.

The next morning Giulia went downstairs to work on the front patio, carrying her basket with variously sized needles, spools of thread, and pieces of the still-unfinished dresses. Walking was easy now, as her foot no longer required bandaging. The dresses were coming along, too, Marilene's with cap sleeves and a high collar trimmed with lace, hers with bell-shaped sleeves and a shawl collar, both with full skirts reminiscent of the sweeping dresses the women would wear at those magnificent dances at the castle. She still remembered that gorgeous scene as she and her sisters snuck toward the castle on their first night on the island. They'd heard the orchestra playing as they sat in Vincenzo's boat and approached the shore, and they'd seen the dancers through the tall, open windows, their figures lit by gigantic chandeliers. They all seemed to float on air, the women twirling and swaying in their partners' arms. Setting her basket on the iron porch chair, she closed her eyes and swayed in the rain-scented breeze. One-two-three, one-two-three she counted as she tilted her head in time with the waltz playing in her mind.

Was it Brahms or Liszt? She couldn't remember. She had known before. She had learned so much in those five weeks at the castle. Names of composers and sculptors and philosophers and painters, titles of paintings and waltzes and symphonies and books. Facts she'd learned so easily because she'd loved the life she'd found there. The life that was hers, as a niece of Patricio Parissi. But now everything she'd grasped with delight was fading away. The castle was becoming a dream, the kind of dream you'd swear was real until the moment you fully awoke. The kind of dream that made you yearn to go back to sleep and reclaim all that beauty…

"Good morning," came a voice from the edge of the patio. She blinked, startled that Luca was coming up the steps, a steaming cup in each hand. "I'm sorry I surprised you. I brought you coffee. Or what substitutes for coffee. Have you developed a taste for it yet?"

Her cheeks grew hot. Still standing, she rifled in the basket as though searching for a particular spool of thread. "Yes, it's… perfectly fine," she told him. "Thank yo u, I'm just going to do my work… now…"

"I see." He put the cups down on the small nearby table, then slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and tilted his head. "I'm afraid maybe I have something to apologize for. Because I get the impression you've been avoiding me."

She lifted her eyes. "No. No…"

"You haven't been where you usually spend your mornings, in the back garden," he said. "I fear I've said something or done something to make you uncomfortable. We are a small group here. It is impossible to hide. It's better to be direct."

She didn't know what to say, so stayed silent.

"Giulia?" he finally said, his voice almost a whisper.

"No, you haven't done anything wrong," she said. He was right, it was not a large house, and there were so few of them. Calmness and steadiness were needed. It was wrong of her to create problems for this family by letting her emotions overtake her. "I've been thinking a lot. About my life. My sisters."

"I know," he said. "I don't suppose this is the way you planned to celebrate your eighteenth birthday."

She laughed sadly. As though her birthday was anything worth thinking about. Birthdays only mattered to children.

"What would it have been like?" he asked.

She sighed and looked skyward. "As frivolous and ridiculously elaborate as you would have expected," she told him. "Signora Russo was planning to bake a rum-soaked lemon cake, five tiers. With the richest buttercream frosting and a chocolate shell covering the whole thing. And there would have been sparklers sending out bursts of white-gold light, so bright you had to squint to see it. And I was making the most stunning dress. Amber with tiny amethysts and rubies attached to the skirt."

She looked down. "I know you think it's silly. And we were fools to bury our heads in the sand the way we did. And maybe my sisters and I were the biggest fools, for not taking even a moment to think about who we were and what was happening to our people, all over Europe. But that's how we lived."

He walked closer. "I was wrong to make you feel I was judging you."

"No. We were childish, loving the luxury as we did, my sisters and I," she said, her voice trembling. "But it wasn't only about the nice things. It was about our little family and what we meant to each other. I know I can't go back. I understand what you said, that we're not put on this earth… what was it? Not put on this earth to think about our pretty past. But if it makes a person happy… I mean, it meant a lot to my father, to remember reciting that poem to my mother. ‘Wherever you go, I will go.' And it helped him, to remember that she told him the same thing. That kept him going all those years without her."

She looked Luca straight in the eyes now, the memory of her father giving her the confidence to stand up for herself. Because she was standing up for her father and her sisters, too.

Luca's expression was soft. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I went too far. It's a serious time. But we can all use comfort, too, I suppose?—"

"No, it's more than comfort," she said. She reached into the basket on the chair and pulled out the unfinished sleeve of Marilene's dress. "This isn't merely a piece of clothing for a silly birthday party. What you don't see is that clothing… fabrics… matter."

"Oh?" He put the basket on the ground and then gestured to the chair. When she sat, he sat on the adjacent one.

"It's art," she said, leaning forward and holding the sleeve out toward him. "My mother fell in love with my papa because of his way with garments. His hands. Oh, she'd met so many rich men with soft hands, long fingers. But he wasn't like that. His hands were callused. His fingernails were short. His fingers were stubby, his eyesight was bad. Even as a young man, his back was hunched from working so many hours. But he was lovely. I was young but I remember my mother telling us so."

"And what made her think that?" His eyes were wide and engaged. She felt strong now, as though she was the one with a life lesson to offer.

"Because he was ," she said. "She loved to go to the workroom and watch him. The way he could do the smallest things and have such an impact. He could make anything longer, shorter, wider, fancier. So detail-oriented, so focused, so intent on… on creating things. That was how he showed her who he was. That was how he showed love. I felt it every day of my life. When he stroked your cheek, his roughened fingers were so full of love that the touch lingered long after he was on to something else."

"That's beautiful," Luca said.

"It was," she told him, consumed now with this chance to reveal what was tucked so deeply inside her heart. "One night my little sister, Emilia, was quite sick. And he made her a silky pillowcase and a soft blanket. I'd never seen someone look as peaceful as she did when she slept that night. And she got better. Oh, I know it wasn't the bedding that cured her. But it felt like it was. It felt like he knew how to do magic.

"And that's what people don't understand—the things we make from simple cloth… they hold the magic of the person who made them. Before my sisters and I went to Parissi Island, I made my father a pillow from my mother's favorite blouse, which I had kept in my dresser drawer. The night we left, I brought it into my father's room and tucked it under his head while he slept. I cried as I saw his body relax, his head resting so sweetly on it. Maybe it smelled like her. I was so taken by that. Even in his sleep, he could sense her."

Luca sighed. "Giulia, those are beautiful memories," he said. "But I still believe they are a luxury no different from the jewels on your birthday dress at the castle. They are fine, except when it's time to follow your head. To be strategic."

"But you're not being strategic," she told him.

His back stiffened. "I'm not?"

"You are following your heart, too. You are so angry. You are mad that your father was killed."

"Don't I have a right to be?"

"Of course you do."

"But feelings don't change things. Action does." He looked down and shook his head. "I am not as unfeeling as you think. You are right that I'm angry, but I feel more than that. I am sad, too. I miss my father, same as you miss yours."

"Tell me about him," she said.

"No. I can't think about him. It's too hard?—"

"Please. I'd like to know. Same as you wanted to know about mine."

He sighed, then began, speaking softly. "He was kind and he was even-tempered and he was idealistic. He wanted to be a newspaper editor because he thought words could matter. He loved my mother, and he loved my sisters and me."

He chuckled. "And he loved American baseball. I don't know why, I don't know how he even learned about it, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Hank Greenberg—do you know these names? To him, they were heroes. Men who believed they could win, men who had hope even when things looked bleak. ‘An American baseball game has nine innings'—that's what he would say, as if to tell us there was lots of time to do things. Even though my sisters and I didn't even know what an inning was.

"He took things in stride, my father did. He had a sister living in Portugal when he got word that she'd died. He knew she was sick but hadn't realized the end was so near. ‘I thought I'd get to see her one more time,' he told us that evening. That's it. No tears, no anger. Just a moment to be sad. The next day he went back to work. And a week later, they killed him in the street and left him there to rot. The rats had started to eat his face by the time my neighbor found him and brought him home."

"I'm so sorry," she said softly, feeling bad that she had made him think of something so awful.

"How does a son go on from that?" he said, his voice growing passionate. "How do you decide it's all okay? How do you… how did you put it, that Jewish saying? How do you choose life?"

"I don't know," she said. "I just know… I'm so sorry."

"But we do choose life, in our way," he told her. "We choose what we want to come next."

She nodded, thinking about that saying, that plea: Choose life . She remembered the night she and her sisters arrived in Anzalea, the town where they met Vincenzo and asked him to take them to the island. There'd been a storm the day before and the water was too choppy for his rowboat, so they agreed to wait in Anzalea until the sea settled. There was a carnival in town that week, and one evening, Vincenzo brought them there. They rode on a Ferris wheel and ate cotton candy and danced under the stars to the music of a polka band. On that night, she would have sworn she was choosing life.

But now she saw there were many ways to do exactly that.

"Giulia," Luca said. "Teach me about sewing."

"What?" she said. She looked up to see him grinning.

"Teach me to sew. I want to learn what this magic is."

"You don't learn the magic right away. It takes time."

"Then there's no time to lose, is there?"

She looked at him for a moment, then laughed and reached for a scrap of red fabric. She folded it in half and pulled a threaded needle from the pincushion in her basket. "Try this," she said, starting him off on a simple seam. "In and out. Feel the fabric so you can learn to work with it, not against it. Listen to its story. That's the trick."

"Listen to it, huh?" he said with a laugh. "Okay. If that's what it takes…"

"You're good at it," she told him as he started to sew. "Your fingers are long. My father's were short. And still, he could feel?—"

She halted, suddenly spying Pietro on the bottom step leading up to the patio. She didn't know how long he'd been there. But he looked furious.

"It's time for breakfast," he said flatly.

She nodded and took the fabric back from Luca, then tucked it and the threaded needle inside her basket. The uneasiness she'd been feeling came back to her. And she knew that Pietro was aware of it. Aware that something unpredictable and dangerous was happening.

The storm she'd been anticipating seemed even closer.