There were scorched-black fields where villages had been burned to the ground. The train would continue down the tracks ten miles or so, and the next village would be bustling with shops, people, and flowers in window boxes, gracious living intact, as though the whole pathetic mess had never happened.
Speranza had been too exhausted to sleep. The war had given him another gift: permanent insomnia. He stood up, gripping the train’s luggage rack, and made his way to the sliding door. He opened it and stepped out onto the platform between the cars. He lit a final cigarette. The last miles of the journey home felt longer than the time he was away. Speranza barely felt the rumble of the train wheels as they sailed over the tracks. He was aware that most of the time he felt nothing. He had not wept much after the war, but the window boxes got to him. Life had gone on, but not his. Without Agnese, he walked the world like a ghost, and now he knew, they wept too.
Speranza had the clothes on his back and a rail pass back to Italy, a gift of the Americans. They had offered him a job in America. He politely declined. What good would that do him now? It was Agnese who had wanted to go to America. He would have followed her, of course, as was his habit. She made all the decisions; she was the architect of everything in his life that had worked.
Speranza’s feet ached when he stepped off the train in Treviso. He was pleased to see the buildings still standing and the black gondolas floating in the canals. Returning to the Veneto meant he could breathe and move in the place where he had met Agnese and been happy. He didn’t know what he would have done if they had leveled Treviso. It was the only proof he had that she had lived. Their romance began as they walked on the moss-covered streets of the city, along the pale blue canals. He would not return to the old shop or their apartment in Venezia. He knew it would break what was left of his heart.
As he walked through the streets of Treviso, Speranza did not recognize a single face and they did not know him. His world had the feeling of a graveyard now, nothing but stone markers and cold ground.
Speranza hitched a ride with a farmer to Godega.
The war had been a wily beast in Italy too; one side of the road, a house went untouched, and on the other side, for no reason other than bad luck, the Blackshirts had leveled the fences, barn, and farmhouse. It resembled the carnage of a tornado that blows through, there was no logic to the destruction. Speranza’s stomach churned.
The men rode in silence until they passed the Acocella farm. Once prosperous, the dairy farm was leveled flat, the ground was covered in black char where the fields had been burned.
“It’s been two years since the war ended. Why the smoke?” Speranza asked.
“That’s the old farmhouse. Old Antonio made wine in the basement. He built tunnels underground to get between the barn and house during the winter. When the Nazis burned it, the alcohol fed the underground fire. When the spring rains came, I thought for sure it would put the fire out. They’ve tried, but it appears to be an eternal flame.”
They chatted about the planting of the corn and wheat as though the German army hadn’t occupied towns from Treviso to Friuli. The man didn’t mention the prisoner of war camp, just forty miles north, which they could find if they kept driving.
“How is your farm?” Speranza asked the driver.
“We survived. For the first two years, we thought we were safe because somebody had to provide eggs and milk. The Germans had to eat.”
Speranza nodded. He remembered how the Germans ate. Sausages. Ox. Fresh bread. Kreplach stuffed with a paste of ground chicken and beef. They ate with glee like gluttons while their prisoners of war rejoiced when they added potato to the broth.
“They took the Cistone farm. But first, they had Signora make them a fine meal. They ate well and drank their best wine. The next morning, before they departed, they burned it to the ground. They even took their horse. Where were you?”
“Berlin.”
“In a factory?”
Speranza nodded.
“Lucky you survived.”
“Am I?” Speranza said dryly.
Speranza was lucky until he went to the camp and learned of Agnese’s fate. Up to that moment, he had been like his neighbor; he thought he had a chance.
The farmer stopped the truck. “Is this your farm?”
Romeo nodded. He offered the man money, but he wouldn’t take it.
The truck drove off. Romeo began to walk the road shaded by a grove of cypress trees on either side. He looked down at the stone markers he had placed at the entrance. Speranza 1924 was carved on the largest one, the year Romeo and Agnese Speranza purchased the property from the Perin family, who had picked up and sailed to America to do better and have more.
As Romeo walked down the familiar road, he noticed that from the bend to the house, flat fieldstones had been laid where there had only been dirt. He looked for his silo, the chicken loft, and the springhouse. All were intact. He wondered if his eyes deceived him. Was it a mirage?
The clapboard on the exterior was freshly whitewashed. The porch was swept. Was she here? Had Agnese escaped and made it home? His heart filled with anticipation. Speranza tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed the door open.
The three-room house was as Agnese had left it. Speranza called out for her. He walked to the kitchen. He looked around before opening a drawer. He slid a long kitchen knife up his sleeve. He brushed his hand across the dining table—no dust. He went to the window. A soft breeze ruffled the paisley curtains Agnese had made from fabric she had purchased at the bazaar in Venezia. He walked through the house. The bed was made with a coverlet and feather pillows. The bathroom he had installed indoors as a gift to his wife was scrubbed clean.
Romeo went outside and walked to the back of the house. Across the green field, the breeze carried the sound of laughter and conversation from the one-room guesthouse beyond the springhouse. He walked in the direction of the sound.
Emos the shoeblack was chopping wood by the fence. He looked up. Romeo raised his hand to wave. Emos went into the house from the back.