There is a feeling that rises in a loyal person when the object of their loyalty becomes itself disloyal. There can be physical manifestations: a certain lack of safety in the joints of the body, a nervousness underfoot. Insecurity is part of it, where that which has been relied on is no longer a friend. Mentality has its own nausea; dizziness; weak ankles which will turn and let you fall; a glass which slips from your hand; an angry roar which erupts at a small provocation which did not deserve such a response. In some cases these feelings are immediate, acknowledged, and pure. In others they are followed wherever they go by a phalanx of disbelief, unwillingness, reluctance, self-interest and blindness. Thus it was with Aldo. So complete was Aldo’s devotion that nothing the beloved could do would arrest it.
Dux Mea Lux. Right from the beginning. From the miseries of the war and the chaos that followed it to the gleaming streets of Littoria today; from the dangerous drunks and strikers and villains of 1919 to the tough, obedient, bodies phalanxes of men sweating over their wheelbarrows, long files of them, shifting Italian soil to make Italian fields for Italian families – he saw it every day. Every day. Human happiness and hard work. Systematising the rivers, clearing the ditches, dragging away load after load after load of underbrush, load after load of mud. Dig and dump, dig and dump. As with the land, so with the men, and as with the men so with the country. Redeemed, by work and by community. The symbolism of it filled him with joy: as with the earth, so with the hearts and the minds.
One man made all this happen. One man knocked us into shape.
Walking up the dusty lakeside road from Bracciano with a brown paper bag of peaches, he smiled. He was thinking about a glass of beer and how one day, all ditches will work effectively, all roads will be metalled, everyone will have a little car, and there will be no more donkeys in Rome … Controlling nature. Driving out the mosquitoes. No more malaria. No more need for anyone to eat acorns and frogs, and die young. Though actually he liked frog. Fried with a little lemon, delicious.
How lovely it was, in the cool of the evening, as the flies and the wasps disappeared; the stream singing alongside the road, the sky so high, just beginning to fade into violet. Exercise was itself a patriotic activity – but it was not for that that he walked. In his hardworking days, walking was what gave him his moment of peace, during which he would count his blessings and consider, though he would always deny being in any way a religious man, his mitzvahs.
Recently, he had been listing every reason the Duce had to love him, Aldo, personally.
My war service. a) I was a volunteer; I did not wait about, I was happy and proud to spill my Italian Jewish blood for Italy in the mountains and let me tell you, boy, the mountains were as hard as the trenches were where Tomaso’s kind-of papà lost his voice and his looks. We were fighting for the existence of our country. Il Duce understands that and he will never forget it. And, b) I was decorated. No, I’m not going to tell you what I did. The memory of my friends is good enough for me. They know, and that is enough. It was good enough for them, for my commanding officers. I didn’t desert. I got my bronze medal.
I enrolled as a Fascist in 1919. 1919!
I was there for the March on Rome. Of course I didn’t have to march very far – but I was there. They gave me the scarf.
My work – he greets me when I am in the group around him at work. He knows me. He said so. He said, ‘Hey, I know you. You still here? Good man. Good work.’
And how often am I there in the crowd outside Palazzo Venezia, listening to his magnificent speeches? He sees me – I know he does. He knows me, and what I have done. I have been there for the inauguration of every one of the new cities: Littoria, Sabaudia, Aprilia, Pontinia.
My children. Four is not so many, but they are good and strong, and they serve as they should. Nenna in her cape and beret!
Four children, four towns. Lovely symmetry! Perhaps we should have another, for Pomezia. He had never mentioned it to Susanna, but in his heart he wished they had named the children after the towns. Of course the timing was wrong. But Fernanda Littoria Elia Fiore. What a name! Marinella Pontinia … che bella.
Laying the miles of white concrete into the hard-won channels of the new canals; the network of new roads, cambered and tarmacked and water-resistant, lined with new trees; the acres of land growing wheat and corn and beets; the vineyards, the olive groves. Trees and fields, ditches and towns, piazzas and football pitches, town halls and post offices, schools and hospitals, Green of Paris sprayed all over against the malaria, and quinine all round. The six beautiful great pumping engines as big as aeroplanes.
So much work. So much achieved. And next year, Pomezia! So much still to do.
He tried to think of anything that was wrong. His feet ached a little in his boots: the toes that were mangled by the frostbite of 1917–18. But he hardly noticed that any more. What did boys know? The idea that you can build without a bit of destruction, some discipline and decision-making. Making frittata without breaking eggs. These children … The man though, the famous Riley … Well, it’s just as well he is English, and going home soon. Not the kind you want for a cousin. Not here, not now.
He was glad to be away from Rome. There had been a scene at Di Veroli’s shop. A silence when he entered. A couple of the younger men giving him looks, and old Seta – not Seta next door, his brother – Daniele’s father – who was clearly in a mood about something, said: ‘Oh, look, here he comes. Hey, Aldo – tell me – you say you’re not a Jew, and the Duce says you’re not an Italian – so what are you going to be now? Have you thought about it? Got many choices?’ Aldo had laughed, of course, and gone to embrace the old fool, but Seta said ‘It’s not funny—’ like a toad falling, and the men around let a curtain of chill circle them, so that Aldo had had to leave making a ‘well you’re all crazy’ gesture which actually, as he ducked back out into the sunshine, made him feel a little ill.
So he was glad out here with his family, away from all that. That pessimism, that expectation of oppression. His father had warned him about it: a Jewish thing, how we hold ourselves down with it … Don’t fall for it! Be the man to break free of it. Yes, better to walk and swim and see these lovely trees, Susanna making her own ricotta with the farm women, the great copper over the open fire, the little baskets of white curds put out to cool. Better to bring home the eels in a bucket; take the boys out to shoot, play sedid sediola with Marinella, rocking her even faster on his knees, pretending to throw her out of the window.
*
Aldo swaggered in just in time for dinner, smiling. Nenna ran to him like a worried dog scenting salvation before he could even put the peaches down. He flung his strong arm over her shoulder.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, surprised by her sudden warmth. ‘What is it, bambina?’ Her face flooded with the fresh pinkness of relief.
‘I saw the newspaper, Papà,’ she cried.
‘Were you worried?’ Aldo said. ‘There’s no need! Oh, come here.’ He put the bag down on the table, and wrapped his arms around her, all love, all fatherness, glad to have the opportunity with this big girl who so seldom now came to him blinking for comfort. ‘Some fools are saying it came from Minculpop, that the Duce approved it. Well that can’t be true, can it? I have written to him, and his reply will explain everything. He’ll write back soon. I’ve been telephoning too. Everyone knows it’s a nonsense, some little stupidity. Fascism is unity, tesoro, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Collective and equal? For the Slovenian and the Arab, the Jew and the Libyan, the Sicilian and the Venetian – all of us equal in the Empire?’
He was crooning to her now, and looking over her head to Susanna, sharing his reassurance.
‘The Duce has always said so,’ he murmured. ‘He will knock this on the head. It’s just a stupid insult, a mistake. It means nothing.’ He smelt her clean hair, and his heart was full of her, his first-born lovely girl. For what had he suffered, if not to keep this girl safe?
‘I said to him – do you want to know what I wrote?’ She nodded. ‘I wrote that of course I do not doubt him in any way, indeed that it’s my very faith in him that causes me to believe that he himself would want to calm your foolish fears! Because the Duce is as another father to you – all wise, all loving. Like me! So, we know he will write back! But we know too that he is a very busy man.’
Susanna was clattering, cutting onions, casting them into the warm oil, their fragrance rising. The boys were arguing about who would lay the table; Tom was collecting the plates, the bread, the salt. On the wireless, Louis Armstrong finished singing ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’. ‘And that was the ever-popular Italian musician Luigi Fortebraccia,’ said the announcer, blandly.
‘What?’ said Tom, in sudden, harsh disbelief.
‘What?’ said Susanna, to Tom.
‘Did you hear that?’ Tom said. ‘“Luigi Fortebraccia”? He’s certainly not Italian. He’s an American negro. It’s Louis Armstrong. A black American negro.’
Nenna looked up from her father’s shoulder and stared at Tom.
‘It’s a mistake, Masino,’ Aldo said kindly. ‘It’s all just a mistake.’
For a moment Tom looked as if he was going to throw the pile of plates, or swear, or—
‘Isn’t it just,’ Tom said, and walked out to the terrace, his back rod-straight.
Aldo looked from his wife to his daughter and shrugged and made a face: crazy boy!
*
It was Susanna who decided that the English had longer to stay at Bracciano. ‘Please don’t go,’ she said to Nadine. ‘I am happy to see you again.’ There was something in her voice – what, a strain? The very slightest echo of strain? – that made Nadine stop for a moment.
‘What is it, Susanna?’ she said – but neither her minimal Italian nor Susanna’s few words of English was enough. The very spareness of Susanna’s communication though gave it a force. Please don’t go. It could be courtesy; it could be desperation. Nadine smiled and said, ‘Shall I get Nenna to translate?’ with a gesture towards outside, but Susanna shook her head. ‘Non è niente,’ she said, which Nadine knew to mean ‘It’s nothing.’ Though, literally, she thought, it translates as ‘It’s not nothing.’ Hm.
She spoke to Riley about it later.
‘Well, they’re all over the place, the lot of them,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she sees things her blinkered husband doesn’t.’
‘Might you talk to her?’ Nadine suggested, knowing as she did that—
Riley looked at her. Really?
She didn’t know. Perhaps it was niente.
When Aldo saw them he started bellowing: ‘So glad you are staying long; stay a long time! Whenever you like!’
‘He’s some kind of monster, isn’t he?’ Riley whispered to Nadine.
She gave him a look.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
*
The announcement a few days later, that Mussolini was absolutely behind the new racial manifesto made Tom’s heart leap. Now, he thought. This is the moment.
But it had no effect whatsoever on Aldo’s thoughts. He continued seamlessly: ‘Well, he doesn’t mean us, the Italian Jews. He means the foreign Jews. Certainly he doesn’t mean those of us who were Fascists from the beginning, from the March on Rome. These journalists!’ he cried, cheerfully. ‘No sense of detail, no knowledge of history … And you seem to think,’ he told Riley, ‘that because something is said, something will happen! Ah, such touching faith. So literal, the English. Nothing is happening! This isn’t Germany – all right, we can get the railways into shape but that doesn’t mean people will follow rules. Let me tell you about the viper invasion. Years ago – you remember, Susanna? Nenna? – there were suddenly vipers everywhere, a plague, so the mayor promised five lire for every dead viper that was brought in – and half the neighbourhood set up viper farms overnight. Fellow at Trevignano built a new bar out of vipers. The contadino is furbo and so is everybody else. Why would they waste their time with this? The Italian Fascist has better things to do than start to hate his neighbour … He has too much pride. Tomaso, do you see anybody doing anything about any of these declarations? No. So please,’ and he dropped his voice to a whisper, ‘will you stop scaring Nenna? I need to go to work and not come back to scenes of hysteria. This Jew has an appointment with the government to finish off another city.’
Aldo didn’t know what they did all day while he was working. Ate lots of food that he paid for, he hoped. In the evenings they all drank wine and played scopa, and at Ferragosto they all went to the festa. The fireworks were superb that year; Aldo bought nut brittle, sharp and sweet in the mouth, for everyone.
‘This is a Christian celebration, isn’t it?’ Tom said, as the Holy Mother of God lurched through the streets on her gold platform, on the shoulders of her agricultural devotees.
‘The assumption of the Virgin Mary to heaven,’ Aldo said, and wondered why Tom seemed amused.
*
After Ferragosto, after the shooting stars of San Lorenzo started filling the night sky, they all returned to Rome, and it was time for the English to go back to London. Most of the farewells were fond, no declarations were made, and there had been no actual fights in the past week, so Aldo was happy. Only one thing was said which annoyed him.
The English were in their car, ready to leave, and Nadine leaned forward out of the window like a queen on a balcony, and said, with gentle formality, to Aldo and to Susanna: ‘We wanted to say – all of us – that if you find you would like to come to London at all, for whatever reason, please come. Se vuoi venite a Londra.’ She wanted Susanna to understand. ‘We would love to be your hosts and help you.’
Well that’s sweet of her, Aldo thought, and he said, cheerfully, ‘Ah, but with this war everyone’s so sure of, how will that ever be?’
‘I mean,’ Nadine said, ‘If, because of the war … As Jews.’
‘AAOOW!’ he cried, a great big mock-furious noise. ‘Not you too! I thought you were the sensible one, my sister! Of course we will visit you one day soon, and we will go to Brighton and complain about your horrible English sea and bad food. Now go on – time to leave before I cry. Tomaso, get in, vai!’
‘Oh, I’m not going,’ Tom said. ‘I’m staying here for a while. Unfinished business.’
They all stared at him.
‘You are so jammy,’ said Kitty, peering out of the window behind Nadine. ‘Bye!’
Aldo made a special sympathetic face for her, clicked his heels and gave her a Roman salute – at which a complete chill fell over the group hanging out of the windows. Kitty’s hand twitched – but she did not make the salute back. Nadine gave a rather ghastly smile. Riley in the driver’s seat barked a bitter laugh, and looked at Aldo, a true look, eye to eye, and pulled out.
‘My friends,’ Aldo said, smiling.
‘Arrivederci!’ called Nadine, her hand out of the window, waving, and he saw that her face was white as bone, suddenly.
‘Aldo!’ she yelled, leaning out, her hat in peril – ‘Aldo! Arrivederci! I mean it!’