“Good. Let them think you approve of them.” There was a knock at the door.
Agnese quickly blew out the Shabbos candles and moved the small candelabra to the windowsill. The last thing they needed was a stranger observing them as they practiced their faith. Agnese nodded. Speranza answered the door.
“Goffredo!” Speranza was relieved to see his friend in the doorway. “Come in.”
Goffredo’s eyes followed the tendrils of smoke that remained in the air from the Shabbos candles. Agnese waved her hand through the air to clear it. “Thank you for the chicken. Won’t you join us?”
“Grazie, but I can’t. I came here to tell you that your paperwork at the passport office was kicked upstairs.”
“This is good news!” Agnese clasped her hands together in gratitude.
“No, it means they won’t let you travel. I tried to pull your paperwork, saying it was a mistake, but they caught it and flagged you.”
“But they’re issuing passports!” Speranza insisted.
“Not anymore.”
“What do you recommend we do?”
“You could go to your farm.”
“I believe the city is safer,” Speranza said.
“But it isn’t.”
“How much time do we have?”
“The morning. I wanted you to know what I heard. What I saw. They don’t follow the law. You’re good people, but the world has gone mad.”
“But the good people haven’t gone mad, have they?”
“Forgive me; I tried. I am not in charge.”
Speranza opened the door so Goffredo could leave. He looked left and right before slipping down the dark street. Speranza closed the door behind him. “What do you think that was all about?”
“He had papers in his coat pocket. He’s just the messenger.”
“What do you want to do, Agnese?”
She didn’t answer her husband. She needed to think.
* * *
Agnese spent the night packing her most precious possessions away. She hid the silver under the floorboards and placed her china in a basket hidden deep in her closet. She packed a bag for her husband and one for herself. She bathed, washed her hair, and put on her best dress as the sun came up. She made breakfast. Agnese lifted the pan of steamed milk off the stove and poured it into the bowl with the espresso. She put out the heels of the challah bread to dunk into it. Speranza sat down at the table.
“We’re going to take the car and drive to the mountains,” Agnese announced.
“But, Aggie, they won’t let us buy gas. If they stop us, we’ll be put in jail.”
“The trains are too risky. I have plenty of money. We will bribe our way across Italy until we get to the Cabrellis’,” she schemed.
Speranza did not argue with her. They drank their hot milk and espresso and ate the day-old bread in silence. When they were finished, Agnese asked, “Are you ready?”
They went through their home a final time. Agnese quickly straightened the bathroom and bedroom. Speranza carried their suitcases to the door. Agnese joined him in the kitchen.
“Why are you locking the cupboard, my love?” Speranza asked his wife.
“Because I always do.”
Speranza closed the shutters on the window overlooking the canal and swung the latch, locking them shut.
“Why are you closing the shutters on the windows?”
“Because I always do.” Speranza took his wife into his arms and held her close. “Maybe we’ll be lucky. Maybe when we return, everything will be in place, including the mice. Where is your ring?” He kissed her hand.
“I gave it to Signora Potenza.”
“She’ll hold it for you until we return.”
“She said she would.”
There was a loud pounding on the door. “Ebrei” was followed by more pounding. “Ebrei!” the men shouted.
Agnese looked at the locked window to escape. Speranza thought about climbing to the roof, where he and Aggie could jump from one rooftop to the next until they reached the aqueduct. Instead he did the thing he had done since he was a boy in school. Speranza faced the bully head-on and opened the door.
Two young Blackshirts stood on the stoop of their home, facing the Speranzas through the sights of their gun barrels. They were teenagers, sixteen, seventeen years old at the most. Speranza did not recognize the boys as Venetians. When they spoke, Speranza detected a Bari dialect from the south. They’re recruiting from afar, he thought to himself. They’re already short of troops. That’s a good sign.
The Blackshirts yanked Speranza out into the street, even though he offered no resistance. Agnese said nothing and followed her husband with their suitcases, one for each of them. She looked up and saw the familiar faces of her neighbors in the windows on the street where they had lived for thirty years. They had shared sugar and flour and their lives, but now they did not acknowledge Agnese. She did not expect them to; she did not acknowledge them either.
Agnese and Speranza were herded onto a transport truck, a military vehicle, with a tarp roof. There was no place to sit. The bench around the perimeter of the cargo bed was also overflowing with people. There was not enough room for two more passengers, but the group shifted to accommodate them anyway.
The Blackshirts lifted and slammed the rear gate shut and locked it, trapping the Speranzas inside with the others. The soldiers jumped on the sideboards of the truck as it moved through the piazza to collect more of their fellow citizens.