I dreamed my old dream last night, the dream I’ve been having since I was nine years old, the one I don’t understand but that seems to understand me. As always, it is dark in the dream, but the darkness is crowded. I can’t see anything but the flash of moonlight through the small window high up on the wall and the slats that ring the darkness on all sides. I am moving, and I am scared.
I know I must reach the window, and suddenly my fingers are clutching at the ledge beneath the small opening, and the toes of my shoes are shoved into the slats that I’ve used as a ladder to reach it.
“If you jump they will punish us.” Hands grab at my clothes, and I shake them off, kicking desperately.
“They will kill us!” a woman wails below me.
“You must think of the rest of us!”
“You will die if you jump,” someone else hisses, and the consensus grows around me. But I can’t listen.
My head fits through the opening, and the air against my face is like water. Like life. A waterfall of cold hope. I open my mouth and gulp it in, unable to quench the thirst clawing at my throat, yet I’m fortified by it anyway.
I force my shoulders through the window, clinging to everything and nothing, wiggling to free myself, and I’m suddenly hanging, headfirst, over a world that is racing and clattering, yet I can still hear my heart pounding in my chest.
Then I’m falling.
Eva Rosselli
CHAPTER 2
ITALY
Her father woke her, saying her name and shaking her fiercely, rescuing her from her dream.
“Eva! Eva!” He was afraid. She could hear it. And his fear made her afraid too. She opened her heavy lids and looked at him, and his face melted into relief.
“Eva! You scared me!” His voice broke, and he gathered her up, her tangled covers between them, his arms circling her back. His neck smelled like sandalwood and tobacco, and the comfort she drew from the scent made her limp and drowsy.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not sure exactly why she needed to be sorry. She’d been asleep. That was all.
“No, mia cara. I should have known. When you were small you would sleep so deeply, Fabia would lay her head against your chest to make sure you were breathing. I suppose I forgot.”
After a few moments, he let her go, and she slumped back against her pillows.
“I was dreaming,” she said.
“Good dreams?”
“No.” It hadn’t been a good dream. “The same old dream. The one I’ve told you about before.”
“Ahh. Did you jump this time?”
“Yes. I suppose I did. But not with my legs. With my whole body. I fell. Through the window. I let myself fall. Then I woke up.”
“In dreams, we always wake up when we’re falling. We always wake up before we land,” her father soothed.
“That’s good. Because landing will be very painful. Landing might kill me,” she whispered.
“Then why are you jumping . . . in the dream? Why do you always want to jump?” her father asked.
“Because if I don’t, I will die for sure.” It was the truth. And in the dream she knew it. Jump or die.
Her father patted her cheek like she was eight instead of eighteen, almost nineteen, and she grabbed his hand and kissed his palm. He closed his hand over the kiss, the way he used to do when she was little.
He was almost to the door when she asked him, “Did I scream? Did I scream and wake you?”
“You screamed, but you didn’t wake me. I was already awake.” It was three in the morning, and she noticed suddenly how old her father looked. It scared her, worse even than the dream.
“Are you okay, Babbo?” she asked fearfully.
“Sono felice se tu sei felice.” I’m happy if you’re happy. It was what he always said.
“I’m happy.” She smiled at him affectionately.
“Then all is well in my world.” Again, what he always said. He switched off her lamp, and her room was bathed in darkness. But he hovered at the door.
“I love you, Eva.” His voice sounded strange, like he was crying, but she could no longer see his face.
“I love you too, Babbo.”
Eva’s father, Camillo Rosselli, knew what was coming. He thought he had sheltered his daughter from it, or maybe she was just Italian enough, young enough, na?ve enough, that she completely missed the gathering storm and thought only of dancing in the rain. Most of her friends had no idea she was Jewish. Eva didn’t remember she was Jewish most of the time. She had no sense of being different. She’d noticed the cartoons mocking the Jews, the occasional derogatory sign, and the articles in Santino’s papers. Those things always infuriated her father. But it just seemed like politics to Eva, and politics in Italy was for the politicians, not the people—the people mostly shrugged and went about their lives.
Sure, she’d heard Camillo arguing with his brother, Augusto. But they argued constantly. They had argued at least once a week for Eva’s entire life.
“Jews are the pure blood of Italy. The synagogue preceded the church,” Augusto would say.
“This is true,” Camillo would answer heatedly and pour more wine.
“We lost friends and family in the Great War. All in the defense of our country, Camillo. Surely that counts for something.”
Camillo would nod and sip, sip and nod.
“I trust the Fascists more than the Communists,” Augusto would add.
“I see no reason to trust either,” Camillo would retort.
And that is where Augusto and Camillo would not see eye to eye, and they would spend the evening smoking, sipping, and arguing about Il Duce and the Blackshirts versus the Bolsheviks.
“No freedom-loving Jew can support an ideology that uses force and intimidation to gain followers.” Camillo would point a long finger at his younger brother.
“But, Camillo, at least they don’t seek to take our religion from us. The Fascists are as disdainful of Catholic conservatism as we are. It’s about nationalism. Revolution, even.”
“Revolution rarely helps the Jew.” Augusto would groan loudly and throw up his hands in disgust. “When was the last time you went to temple, eh, Camillo? You are more Italian than you are Jewish. Does Eva even know our prayers? Did you even realize today is Shabbat?”
Camillo would shift guiltily in his seat, but his answer was always the same. “I know it is Shabbat, and of course Eva knows the prayers! I am a Jew. I will always be a Jew. Eva is a Jew. She will always be a Jew. Not because we go to the synagogue. Not because we observe holidays. It is our heritage. It is who we are, who we will always be.”
Lately, they had talked more and more about the growing anti-Semitism in the reports on the radio and in the newspapers. Camillo’s brother-in-law, Felix Adler, with his clipped German-Austrian accent, so different from the rising and falling, rolling Italian the rest of the family spoke, had even threatened to leave Italy when the Manifesto della Razza had been published in the newspapers last July, causing an uproar that ruined August. The family had vacationed on Maremma, just like they did every year, escaping the heat of the city for the seashore. But the Manifesto of Race had come along with them and occupied their thoughts and hijacked their happiness.
“Mussolini is building a case against us. He is saying we Jews haven’t served our country well. It is our fault that wages are low and taxes are high. It is our fault that housing is limited, food is scarce, and schools are crowded. It is because of the Jews that there are no jobs and crime rates are soaring, you know,” Camillo had said, shaking his head in disgust.