Train to Budapest (15 page)

‘Do you really think he knows nothing?’

‘I doubt it.’

17

One time Emanuele and Amara went on their bicycles in the direction of Monte Morello, stopping at the de’ Seppi spring. Babbo Sironi who dearly loved the hills and knew everything about making expeditions, had set them up. Their rucksacks contained two omelette paninis, a bottle of water, some alcohol for use as a disinfectant, some gauze and cotton and a little merbromin antiseptic. In another much smaller box were the glue and patches they needed for their unreliable locally made tyres. They also had some milk chocolate, two apples and a map of Tuscany.

They carried pumps on their bicycle frames in case their tyres went flat as they pedalled. And they did go flat very easily. Because they were made of material produced ‘by spitting’, as Papà Orenstein used to say. A man both pernickety and generous. He had already been married and the father of two children when he met the beautiful Thelma Fink, who played small parts in films. He left his wife and daughters to live with a woman ten years his junior. And Thelma, who had always claimed she never wanted to tie herself down for any reason and hoped to make acting a full-time career, suddenly changed her mind: she left the cinema without suffering any obvious distress and followed her husband to Florence where he owned a toy factory. There they took a beautiful villa surrounded by greenery in the Rifredi area and produced a son whom they called Immanuel, which means ‘God with us’, in Italian Emanuele. In those days cows and sheep grazed the park round Villa Lorenzi, and it was amid those ample pastures that the cherry tree grew, the tree where Emanuele and the little Amara would meet and fall in love.

Amara lived with her shoemaker father and her mother in a small house some three hundred metres from the gardens of the villa, at the junction of Via Incontri and Via Alderotti. An old farmhouse with an added toilet that stuck out from the first floor.

One May morning Amara had ventured into the garden of Villa Lorenzi, whose secret passages she knew by heart, and had settled under the cherry tree book in hand, reading and imagining things. She had no idea that anyone was hidden among the branches above her head watching her. Her mind was far away in a natural harbour somewhere in the south seas, where a pioneer ship had just dropped anchor in water as transparent as glass, and where the coast was apparently empty and hospitable, but in fact full of snares for the unwary. What was Captain D to do? His ship was damaged and he needed water for his sailors.

At that point a revolving bluish-green leaf shaped like a lance came twisting down and fell on the middle of her open book. She pushed it aside without a thought. But a few seconds later another leaf, dancing and turning, landed in the same place. She brushed that away too, with a gesture of impatience. She wanted to concentrate on the bay and the ship and on the problems of Captain D and his thirsty crew

So she continued reading, but a few minutes later something hard hit her on the neck. A little red cherry that bounced off her hair and fell near her left shoe. Finally she raised her eyes from the book and bending back her head looked up to see two legs with naked sunburned feet dangling from a branch, and above them the face of a child with a blond quiff and laughing eyes. It had been her first sight of Emanuele and from then on, whenever she thought of him, she always saw that image of the free and agile body of a small boy apparently suspended in thin air, his face surprised and happy, his eyes full of the joy of life.

By the time of their bicycle expedition they had already been friends for two years. Everyone knew how close they were and no one seemed to mind. Babbo Karl Orenstein loved the little girl with the sensible and kindly air, hoping she might for a while restrain his son from the dangers he seemed so determined to throw himself headlong into. Mamma Thelma smuggled chocolate into their rucksacks whenever they set off on an expedition outside the city. Babbo Amintore Sironi was probably more cautious. Even if Mamma Stefania urged him to leave them alone; they were two children who knew perfectly well how to look after themselves. Though they were afraid of nothing they were not reckless, they were fully aware of dangers and took care to avoid
them. But to Babbo Amintore they were too careless: ‘There are too many delinquents about; too many crooks ready to kill just for a bicycle.’ It was something they were all afraid of even if luckily so far nothing like that had happened near Rifredi. Lots of thefts yes, but no one would commit a crime just to steal a bicycle. The Orensteins were too rich to worry, protected in their villa by gardeners and guard dogs. But the Sironis, whose ancient hovel had nothing more substantial than a little wooden gate, were mistrustful, especially Amintore who as a shoemaker was used to judging people’s characters from their shoes. He was extremely perspicacious and usually right. If someone was very hard on his shoes it meant he was absent-minded and often tripped or stumbled, had no sense of orientation and was always bumping into things. If he wore his shoes down on one side it must mean he was a spy with a crooked walk who backed up against walls. And as for women, he knew everything about them from the way they consumed their heels and tightened their laces, and from the polish they chose to shine the uppers of a pair of shoes finished in red Chinese lacquer, for example, or green jade or Prussian blue. Sor Amintore, as they respectfully called him in the district, trusted nobody. He had a precise and astute way of looking at them, starting with their shoes then raising his eyes up their bodies. It was an inquisitorial look and not benevolent, but he did not make mistakes. He did not trust those Orensteins from Austria, a country so quick to adopt Nazism, which he hated because to him it was obscene. Yes, he did know they were Jews, but that was the reason he approved of his daughter associating with them. He had no use at all for the rich as such. Being rich proved they must have been thieves because no one gets rich by accident. Their children might have never stolen anything themselves, but they were still perforce the children of rich thieves; and if they had inherited from rich forbears, their status depended precisely on that, and what can the rich ever know about real life? Had they ever taken a pair of holed shoes in hand to resole them? Had they ever sniffed at a pair of bootees with their laces ripped out and soles worn down from endlessly walking the pavements? Nor did he trust that Emanuele who went everywhere in bare feet, like a Zulu in Africa, and ate and slept in trees; you could smell the stink of spoilt brat from miles away. Nor did he like his daughter Amara going around with that scamp scrumping cherries
from the highest branches and catching tadpoles among the stones of the Terzolle River. ‘He’s turning her into a wild thing,’ he would say to his wife, grumbling as he carefully hammered tiny nails into a shoe. He would grumble too about the poor quality of the leather available in these times of national economic self-reliance. ‘These people would palm off frogskin as calfskin,’ he would say, testing with his teeth a piece of pigskin that had cost him a fortune. His mouth was his best counsellor. His mouth and teeth could tell him what to expect from a particular piece of shoe leather.

Yet it was only in the Second World War, after he had been pensioned off wounded from Ethiopia, that Sironi had started earning real money as a shoe repairer. No one could any longer afford to buy new shoes so they all went to him for new soles and laces, to have old uppers reconstructed or to have worn discoloured leather dyed. So much work of this kind came his way that he eventually took on an assistant, whom he insisted on paying well, because that was how he had started himself and he had no wish to exploit others in the way that others had exploited him.

A large photograph hanging in the back room of the shop showed the whole Sironi family: grandfather Anacleto with his well-waxed moustaches with upturned points; father Amedeo Sironi, also a shoemaker, holding in his hands the instruments of his trade, a small hammer and metal anvil. The photo dated from 1910. Next to the father and son were uncles Angelo and Anacleto, also in leather aprons with rolled-up shirtsleeves and holding shoemaker’s knives. The very young Amintore was visible too, a small boy hiding behind the massive figure of his father. The photograph proclaimed the integrity and philosophy of the family: discipline, solidarity and loyalty to their trade, because that was how they saw it: theirs was an art of making and constructing, of understanding and repairing. They were faithful to a tradition of freedom and independent of everything and everyone. They nearly welcomed fascism in its heady first years when Mussolini seemed to be adopting socialist views, but when the reality became clear and the self-proclaimed socialist began associating first with the great industrialists and then with the Germans, they decided to oppose him, though cautiously because you can’t mess with thugs. Amintore had done everything possible to avoid being sent to Ethiopia to fight against Africans for an empire he didn’t believe
in. But he had to go all the same. And had come home wounded. After that he tried to keep as low a profile as possible. He and his whole family had kept themselves to themselves, not hiding their beliefs but not parading them either. None of them joined the fascist party, not obliged to since they were not public servants. A degree of detachment was permitted to the humble self-employed. So long as it did not lead to outright denunciation of pretensions of the regime. That would bring imprisonment. They maintained a careful balance, and kept their heads down. They never wore the fez or black shirt, or joined in rallies or parades.

On one occasion Uncle Anacleto, in the photograph next to grandfather Anacleto Sironi of the thick upturned moustaches, had been stopped when going into the shop by a group of fascists who asked him why he had not raised his arm in salute and cried ‘
eia eia alalà
’ when a car passed carrying a Party leader in uniform. Terrified, Anacleto had mumbled something. The gang grabbed him by the arms and kneed him in the back, forcing open his mouth to thrust in the neck of a bottle of castor oil. When he had swallowed the lot they left him, laughing as he ran to the toilet clasping his stomach. In fact he was lucky because often, always ten against one, they would beat people with sticks or iron knuckle-dusters, kicking their unfortunate victim till he fell gasping to the ground.

There was another reason why Amintore Sironi was worried by this friendship between the rich son of a Jewish family and a humble shoemaker’s daughter. It wasn’t just the class difference; he believed on principle that mixtures of rank never led to anything good. What could the rich know about love and marriage? Even when they seemed kind and friendly, deep down they were still arrogant and self-satisfied. They believed their cursed money made them superior. He knew them, and he knew their shoes. And it wasn’t just a matter of money, but of religion too. The Sironis weren’t practising Catholics, but that was their cultural background. The Orensteins seemed not to be especially religious, but their outlook on life was certainly Jewish. What would they have done if Amara had had a son, would they have circumcised him? The very idea was more than he could take. Which was why he grumbled when she disappeared for days on end with her Emanuele.

18

That day Amara and Emanuele had headed on their bicycles for Monte Morello, despite Babbo Amintore’s misgivings. They passed a yelling lorry-load of fascists returning from some nearby demonstration. The hotheads took no notice of the two children on bicycles. Perhaps they had already let off steam in some workingmen’s club by attacking workers peacefully playing bowls, or youngsters heading for work without the compulsory fascist badge on their jackets. They knew there was an atmosphere of resistance among the factories of Rifredi. It was said that was where you’d find those treacherous communists who were planning to take over everyone’s house and allotment and even the women’s buckles and the men’s best clothes in order to nationalise them and this was not acceptable, which was why people had to be beaten up or dosed with castor oil. Fascism would bring a glorious imperial future, everybody must be clear about that. And anyone who wasn’t had to be spineless, or a dangerous Jew or homosexual pervert or still worse, a Bolshevik. So the fascists threw themselves on such people in the name of their country and of the great Leader of the nation who spoke to them once a week on the radio in his fierce masculine voice from the balcony in Piazza Venezia in Rome.

Many young women were attracted to these young men with their flags and raised arms who leapt with such agility onto their lorries shouting ‘
eia eia alalà
’ and winking at the pretty girls they met on their way and as they sang in resonant voices ‘To arms! To arms! The vanguard to arms! The fascists’ revenge!’ They were always ready for a fight, laughing at everything and shouting ‘What the hell do I care!’ whenever anyone accused them of being domineering and unjust.

Amara had a cousin called Gigliola, also a shoemaker’s daughter, who was so in love with one of these thugs that she was always
begging him to let her join his gang on their ‘punitive expeditions’. But they would tease her: ‘A woman coming with us? We’re not ladies’ men off to the drawing room, you know!’ And when she insisted, they yelled in her face, ‘Let’s see your balls then!’ and since Gigliola Sironi obviously couldn’t produce any balls to order she was always left behind. She would run furiously after the lorry shouting ‘Damn you, you’ll be sorry for this!’ No one knew whether they were supposed to be sorry they’d left her behind, or whether she was warning them that one day they would have to appear before God to account for what they had done with their clubs and their handcuffs, their flags with skulls on and their bottles of castor oil.

Gigliola often went to see Amara and battered her ears with the praises of Cosimo and his gang. To her they were a company of young gods with tanned faces and shining eyes full of hatred for the enemy, ready to punish sinners: does not the Archangel Michael use his sword to kill a dragon? And does not the Archangel Gabriel send fire and snow to strike down his enemies? Amara did not share this exalted view of these thugs her eighteen-year-old cousin Gigliola admired as avengers from heaven. To Amara they seemed nothing more than penniless boys who had learned no trade and whose way of venting their resentment on the world lay in trampling on the weakest. ‘They pick fights and justify it politically,’ said her father Amintore, angrily hammering nails into shoes. In the family, cousin Gigliola was dismissed as an unfortunate woman who used love to justify the violent behaviour of ruffians. Whenever she could she would go dancing with them, or to bathe with them in the Arno taking panini for everyone, or accompany them to church to ask for a blessing after some particularly ferocious action, or march with them while they sang the praises of the Duce, or motorcycle up and down the avenues with her arms clasped round the waist of her beloved Cosimo and her cheek pressed against his back. One evening when they had drunk more than usual the whole gang nearly raped her; they had been teasing her because she ‘was afraid of nothing and wanted to help beat up the workers herself as if she had balls.’ Luckily for her, Cosimo as their leader stopped them, not out of consideration for her but because she belonged to him so no one else could touch her.