“As soon as possible. You understand. We don’t want to lose more business or get in trouble with the carabinieri.” The man shrugged like it couldn’t be helped. “Eh, what else can we do?”
“We will leave in the morning, then,” Camillo said stiffly.
The old woman looked at her husband and her husband looked back at Camillo. “It would be better if you left tonight, Signore.”
The silence on the veranda felt like standing in front of a blazing furnace.
“It is a full day’s trip back to Florence, and we have people in our party who are getting on in years,” Camillo said softly but firmly. “We were just about to sit down to a late lunch and we will need to gather our things. We will leave in the morning.”
The woman reached out and yanked the envelope from his hands.
“Then we will need this to cover our losses,” she snapped. “And don’t blame us if the carabinieri show up and throw you out. They won’t be as nice as we have been.”
The old man looked at his wife, his face reflecting the shock that Eva felt. The woman had grown hostile with very little provocation.
“I’m sure tomorrow will be fine,” the old man said, backing off the veranda, his hat in his hands. “Come now, Guida,” he commanded his wife. His wife turned away, but she didn’t return the envelope.
When Angelo finally showed up and heard the news from his sobbing grandmother, he left the house again, slamming the front door with wall-trembling force. He’d stormed off to the manager’s cottage only to come back a half hour later looking shaken and sick. No one asked him how the conversation had gone.
He was as silent as the rest of them as they dined on Fabia’s fried sardines, green salad, and tomatoes. From the frozen expressions and weary eyes all around the table, one would think the crucifixion was at hand and not simply the last supper. Eva didn’t think anyone would appreciate her attempt at levity, and kept her Catholic wordplay to herself.
They packed their things in an embarrassed stupor and retired early, none of them wanting to talk about the aborted holiday. The next morning, they left the house as clean and tidy as they’d found it, and climbed into the hired cars that would take them and their luggage to the train station in Grosseto.
Eva didn’t want to look back, but as they pulled away, she found herself turning in her seat to see the house disappear around the bend. They wouldn’t be coming back to Maremma Beach. There would be no more white-sand vacations and fresh fish from the market in Grosseto. There would be no more stolen kisses. Of that she was almost as certain. Those things were only memories now, and the memories had been tainted.
15 August, 1939
Confession: I am afraid of rejection.
A rejected infant will often die, even if its basic needs are met. A rejected child will spend his whole life trying to please everyone else, and never please himself. A rejected woman will often cheat, just to feel desirable. A rejected man will rarely try again, no matter how lonely he is. A rejected people will convince themselves they deserve it, if only to make sense of a senseless world.
I’m convinced there is nothing worse for the human heart than rejection, but over the past year, I have grown accustomed to it. I expect it. Accept it. Roll with it, instead of against it. I hate this about myself, and sometimes I wonder where the old Eva has gone, the girl who had fire, the girl who secretly believed she could do anything, be anything, and love anyone. Then I remember. She was rejected.
Eva Rosselli
CHAPTER 5
ROME
Angelo wasn’t expected back at the seminary for three more days, and he used the first two to visit with Monsignor Luciano in Rome. He confessed his feelings for Eva, told him of the intimacy they’d shared, and he asked him for counsel and absolution. The monsignor gave both, but he didn’t hide his dismay very well.
“There is no future in this, my son.”
Angelo thought about Eva, her bright smile and laughing eyes, the way her mouth had felt beneath his. She loved him. He loved her. Surely, there was a future in that. But Monsignor Luciano continued, as if he heard the doubt in Angelo’s silence.
“Even if you didn’t become a priest . . . she is a Jew, Angelo.”
“Yes, she is.”
“You can’t marry a Jew.”
“Because of the laws?”
“Yes. But that isn’t what I’m referring to. You are Catholic. You can’t marry her because she isn’t a believer.”
“She believes in God.” Angelo felt the sting of affront, a desire to defend, even as he recognized what his mentor was saying to him.
“Which God?” Monsignor Luciano pressed. “Certainly not Jesus.”
“Do you really think God is a God of conditions, Monsignor?” Angelo found himself arguing. “Maybe the only condition is love. Love for him, for each other. She doesn’t reject Jesus. She just doesn’t know him,” Angelo tried to explain.
“And are you confident that you could help her come to know him?” Monsignor Luciano probed.
Angelo thought about that for a moment before coming to a conclusion. “I don’t know, Father. But even if she accepted Jesus as her savior, I don’t think she would be baptized.”
“Why?”
“Because she is . . . Jewish.” Angelo threw up his hands, frustrated by his inability to find a better explanation. “It is her heritage. It is her history. It is more than religion. It is who she is. Who her father is. Who her ancestors were.”
“But it is not who you are,” Monsignor Luciano said quietly, folding his hands and looking at Angelo.
Angelo reared back, almost as if he’d been slapped. He turned away from the monsignor, not wanting him to see the reaction his words caused.
It was not who he was.
That was the crux of the matter. He was not Jewish. He’d been raised and loved by Jewish people, but he was not one of them. The hurt and rejection he had felt when his mother died and his father left him in Italy reared its scaly head and burned him all over again.
The church is the best place for you, Angelo. You won’t be a burden. His father’s final words to his son. He was older and wiser now, and he could rationalize his father’s decision and his grandparents’ desires for him, but the feelings, the insecurity, had never gone away.
“You know what is best, Angelo. You know what is right. Now you must go forward and not look back,” the monsignor said, and Angelo could only nod. The church was the best place for him. Deep down, he believed it. Angelo didn’t belong with Eva. It was not who he was.
Angelo spent his final day of vacation back in Florence with Eva, trying to find a way to tell her nothing had changed and nothing could change. He took her to all his favorite places, trying to share his feelings, to explain what drove him. Instead, he ended up sounding like a tour guide in a city she already knew and loved.
She was quiet, and he could feel her depression. The art and the architecture didn’t feed her spirit the way it fed his. He tried harder, pointing out a fresco there, a statue here, telling her what he loved and what he appreciated, so she could appreciate it too, and little by little her face relaxed and her smile came back as the art came to life.
The only thing he wanted to show her inside the Palazzo del Bargello, amid the sprawling expanse of some of the world’s greatest art, was Donatello’s statue of young Saint George, shield in hand, eyes facing a threat no one else could see.
“Padre Sebastiano brought a group of us here about two years after I came to Italy. This one statue changed everything for me. I couldn’t look at anything else. The rest of the group moved on, but I couldn’t move. Another priest saw me staring at the statue, and he told me the story of San Giorgio and the dragon.”
He relayed the tale that had moved him, altered his thinking, and redirected his life. As he talked, Eva’s eyes were fixed on the sculpture, like she could almost imagine how he had looked, standing there all those years ago, a boy who wanted to be a saint.