Iris flipped the sketchbook shut and looked around for the waiter. Before she could find him, a shadow fell over the table. She glanced up just as one of the Blackshirts snatched the sketchbook from her lap.
“Hey!” She lunged after the book and fell right out of the chair. In an instant she was up again, but the man was already ripping the pages from the book, two at a time, flinging them into the air. The white leaves fluttered and scattered and littered the sidewalk. Iris yelled, Stop, you can’t do that, somebody help, but the other people in the café glanced over their shoulders and turned swiftly away, and the passersby pretended not to notice anything at all, although they took care not to step on any of the drawings.
A door clicked open somewhere above her, and the noise echoed down the stairs.
“Iris? Is that you?”
Iris stuffed the handkerchief back in her pocketbook and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”
Ruth’s footsteps clattered down the stairs. Iris couldn’t find the strength to rise. Ruth whipped around the second-floor landing and paused.
“Oh, pumpkin! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Ruth hurried down the rest of the stairs and sat down next to Iris. “That bastard. I oughta knock his lights out.”
“It’s not—it’s not— It’s my sketchbook!”
“What happened? Did you leave it on a bus somewhere?”
Iris told her sister about the Blackshirts and the café, about all the charcoal drawings fluttering in the air to land on the dirty floor and the sidewalk, about all the people who pretended not to notice, who wouldn’t help, even the waiter. How the two men had left, jeering at her, and disappeared down the street.
Ruth took a handkerchief from her pocket. “Here.”
“And I’m pretty sure they didn’t pay, either!” Iris said, blowing her nose.
“Fascist pigs.”
“I g-gathered up the pages, but they’re all d-dirty and torn and just ruined.”
Ruth gathered Iris in her arms and spoke soothingly into her hair. “Another week and we’ll be gone from here. No more goddamn wars and Blackshirts. I’ll take you home and everything will be all right again.”
Iris leaned her face into Ruth’s shoulder, which smelled of cigarettes and some kind of perfume. Her throat hurt, not because of crying but because of everything she couldn’t say to her own twin sister—the whole story—how she didn’t want to leave, she couldn’t leave, she could not possibly leave one-half of her entire heart in Rome and continue to exist—it was a medical impossibility. The incalculably precious moments of Tivoli laid against her present despair. All those pages torn from her sketchbook, containing everything that was beautiful inside her.
The next evening, the eighth of June, Harry arrived at their apartment for dinner. He was exhausted. Feed me, Harry begged, and Ruth poured out the drinks while Iris dressed a chicken and scraped together vegetables for a salad. Harry sucked every particle of meat from the bones and sat back on the sofa with a bottle of gin. Ruth asked what was up, was it really as bad as people were saying?
“Worse,” said Harry. “They’ll be in Paris in a week.”
“What about Dunkirk?” Iris asked. “The poor English soldiers.”
“They got as many out as they could. It’s a miracle, really. Paris is next. There’s nothing to keep the Nazis out.”
“Poor Paris.”
Harry looked destroyed. His shirt hung from his bones. His cheeks were hollow, his skin pale and impoverished. Even his hair looked tarnished. Iris couldn’t believe her eyes. Harry, the stalwart older brother, their protector from the vicissitudes of life, the man of the house! She wanted to cook him another chicken and watch him eat it. She wanted to comfort him, to hold him in her arms like a child. She wanted to ask him about Sasha. Was Sasha as ruined as Harry? As overworked and underfed and underloved?
“What about Italy?” Ruth asked.
“Any day now.” Harry straightened and reached for the bottle to refill his glass. They’d been drinking it neat, not even bothering with tonic water. “Maybe before you leave. Say, that’s lucky you bought your tickets already. Order’s going out to evacuate.”
“Evacuate?” Iris cried.
“That’s right. Soon as Mussolini declares war, the order goes out from the embassy. All Americans out, no exceptions, except embassy staff.”
“Can’t we stay and volunteer or something?” said Iris.
Harry gaped at her. “Volunteer for what? The Italian Red Cross? Help out the Fascists?”
“Maybe you’ve got a position available at the embassy for me.”
“Iris, don’t be stupid,” said Ruth. “We’re leaving next week. It’s all settled.”
“It’s not settled. I never agreed to go. You went out and bought that ticket without even asking me.”
“I don’t need to ask. We’re going home, that’s all. Christ. What don’t you understand about evacuate?”
“They can’t make us go if we don’t want to. There’s no law. Is there?” Iris looked at Harry.
Harry lit a cigarette and shrugged. “No law against being an idiot that I heard of.”
“Anyway, Italy’s not going to war against us. America’s still neutral, last I checked.”
Ruth shot from her chair and marched to the kitchen.
“What’s all this about?” Harry said.
“Oh, it’s just Ruth. She’s in a big fat hurry to go home, for some reason. I don’t get it.”
Harry spoke slowly. “Well, she’s not wrong, is she? I mean, why the hell are you so determined to stay?”
“I just like Italy, that’s all.”
“But Italy’s going to war, pumpkin. You don’t understand what that means. A country at war, it’s not a place for tourists.”
“Don’t speak to me like I’m a child, Harry.”
Ruth marched back out of the kitchen and planted her hands on her hips. Her face was all lit up. “You’re acting like a child! Like an idiot child! What, you just like Italy? What about how I picked you up off the stairs yesterday, blubbering like a baby because some crummy Blackshirts ripped up a few of your goddamn drawings?”
“Hold on,” said Harry. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing! I shouldn’t’ve been drawing the two of them like that.”
“It wasn’t nothing. You were scared as a wee rabbit, Iris, and if a couple of Blackshirts can scare you like that, you won’t last a week once the soldiers start with the rape and plunder.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous—”
“For God’s sake, Iris,” Harry said, topping up his drink, “just go home with Ruth! Rome’s not going anywhere. What’s keeping you here?”
“I’ll tell you what’s keeping her. Some fellow.”
Harry almost dropped the gin bottle. “Are you kidding me?”
“Ask her, if you don’t believe me.”
“Iris? What the hell’s going on?”
Iris set her glass on the floor, walked across the room, picked up her pocketbook from the coat stand, and walked out the door. As she left, she heard Harry’s plaintive voice posing some question to Ruth.