The House of David was burning in Venezia, but there was neither smoke nor fire.
The train on the first leg of their journey had seats, but upon transfer in Germany, the prisoners were loaded onto cattle cars. Agnese observed a passenger train moving slowly in the opposite direction, back to Venezia. Just three years earlier she and her husband had been on that train, after a holiday in Germany. Agnese could see the pressed white table linens through the windows of the dining car. There were silver flutes with a single pink rose in each window. On their side of the tracks, there was no music or fine dining; there was only fear, muffled weeping, whispered conversations, and hushed prayers. Speranza held his wife’s hand, which soothed him. He closed his eyes because the expressions of terror on the prisoners’ faces were too much for him to bear.
When the train pulled into Berlin, Nazi soldiers separated the women from the men. Agnese was stoic and pushed her husband’s hand away when he tried to hold it. She knew if the Nazis saw they were together, they would separate them to be cruel. They might have a chance to come out on the other side of this if they showed no connection to each other.
Speranza was called off the line by an officer, not a high-ranking one, but he had enough seniority to have acquired new boots. Speranza would not have noticed the boots, but Agnese did. Agnese’s mother had taught her to pay attention to a man’s shoes. A man’s shoes tell you everything about the person wearing them.
When Speranza looked at Agnese, she looked away, but she placed her hand on her heart so her husband knew that it belonged to him.
The Nazis shoved Speranza and four other men from the line into a car too small to accommodate them, throwing the men’s suitcases onto the back of another truck as though they were trash. The herding of her people into small spaces was not a function of a lack of planning on the part of the Fascisti and the Nazis, but a belief that the Speranzas and their fellow Juden were animals.
The Nazis pulled one more man off the line. He held on to his hat as they shoved the additional prisoner into the car with Speranza and the others. Agnese recognized him as an engineer from Firenze. He had wanted to understand the jewel movement of timepieces, and Speranza had shared all he knew while Agnese made them supper.
Agnese Speranza was relieved as she saw her husband drive away with the other men. He had a skill. They needed him. Romeo would live, and they would have to feed him so he could work. The thought brought her joy. She was happy for him. The nature of her love for her husband was to seek his happiness above her own. Agnese didn’t feel the prod of the baton to her ribs when she was shoved onto the next train, which would take her to Buchenwald.
CHAPTER 35
Home
SEPTEMBER 1945
Domenica yanked her daughter’s hair when she brushed it on the train from Lucca to Viareggio.
“Mama!” Matelda rubbed her scalp. “Too hard.”
“There was a knot.” Domenica gently rubbed the sore spot on her daughter’s scalp. “I’m sorry.”
Matelda McVicars was almost five years old. She thought, You should be sorry. You took me from the garden house I loved for a train ride where I threw up twice and couldn’t sleep.
“You’re going to love Viareggio. Wait until Carnevale. There are giant puppets and parades and bomboloni.”
Matelda didn’t want to hear about bomboloni when her stomach was weak. She wanted to call them doughnuts like they did in Glasgow. She didn’t want anything Italian, not even something sweet. She wanted the train to sprout wings like a bird and fly her back to Scotland.
Domenica took her daughter’s hands into her own. “What’s the matter, bella?”
“I don’t speak Italian very well, Mama. I’m not going to understand anybody. I want to speak English. I had good friends at Notre Dame. I miss Marnie and Hazel. Why couldn’t we stay there?”
“My family is here. Your family. Families have to stay together to be strong.”
The train pulled into the station at Viareggio. Matelda watched her mother kneel on the seat and look out the window. Her mother began to wave and smile; soon she was crying, but they weren’t sad tears. Matelda decided that anything that made her mother happy was more important than anything that made Matelda sad. She knelt on the seat across from her mother and looked out the window, hoping to find the wondrous village her mother saw, but there were no puppets or parades or gelato makers. It was raining harder than she had ever seen it pour in Scotland. Viareggio wasn’t pretty at all. It was dark and gray like a wet winter sock. How could her mother have left a place as green as the convent for a place so drab?
“What do you think, Matelda?”
“It’s beautiful, Mama. Che bella,” the girl lied.
Domenica pulled her daughter close. “You will use your Italian, and you’ll be surprised at how much you already know.”
Matelda rested her face in Domenica’s neck, where she found the familiar scent of vetiver and peaches. Her mother’s cheek was soft and her kisses reassured Matelda.
The porter helped her mother with their luggage. He looked at Domenica as men would do. It was always the same. The man was cowed by her mother’s beauty and wanted to be near it, so he would speak too loudly and make broad gestures to impress her. He would offer to do anything she needed. Her mother would endure the attention politely but not encourage it. Instead, she elevated them with her proper behavior. To that end, Domenica placed her gloved hand on top of the porter’s and disembarked the train in a ladylike fashion. The reaction of the crowd that had gathered to welcome them confirmed that her mother was someone special in this seaside town.