The Girl From Venice

“They must have been. Even the pope is trying to help them now. If you’re a Jew waiting for the pope to help, it’s too late, my friend, too late. Drink up.”

  The wine was sour enough to make Cenzo’s eyes smart. For Nido, however, the liquor went down as smooth as silk. “When the Germans trashed your boat, you didn’t resist or do anything foolish?”

  “Not me.”

  “Good,” Nido said. “Because I heard that last week a certain fisherman from Pellestrina, who sounded a lot like you, and a fish vendor from Venice, who sounded a lot like your friend Eusebio Russo, went to the cinema and, during the newsreels, shouted obscenities every time Il Duce was on the screen. They say the two got the whole audience going. It was quite a scene. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

  Actually, Cenzo and Russo had been drunk and all they shouted at Il Duce was “idiota,” which hardly counted as an obscenity.

  “No,” said Cenzo. “I’ve declared myself an official coward. I intend to outlive this war and the next.”

  In the mural on the bar’s wall, Venice was a golden conch, the islands gilded limpets, and the Lido nothing but pipe shells. But without the Lido, would there be a Venice? Waves would roll in unhindered, flood the canals, and wash away the city that called itself La Serenissima: the Most Serene. What was Pellestrina? A mere cockle, a whelk. But without the fishermen of the Lido, what would Venetians eat?

  “Did you hear anything else about the raid?” asked Cenzo.

  “Well, they were after Jews, weren’t they? That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  A figure in Fascist black entered the bar.

  “I take it back,” Nido said. “Sometimes the devil does come here.”

  Squadron Leader Farina placed a satchel on the counter. Farina was the village’s leading Fascist, with a speculative eye that lit like a fly here, there, everywhere. He was accompanied by a pudgy boy in black shorts and a black ostrich plume hat.

  “Cenzo, you’re just the man I’m looking for. I’m signing you up,” Farina said.

  “For what?”

  “What we talked about. Closing ranks. Do you want the women of Pellestrina to be violated by bestial Americans? Could any Italian man stand for that? You, in particular, should want to defend the Italian home and hearth.”

  “You think this is a good time?” Cenzo asked.

  “It’s the perfect time,” Farina said. “You’re a decorated veteran, a man of respect, and our German comrades have the enemy running back to Russia.”

  “If they’re doing so well, why do they need me?”

  “That’s a defeatist attitude. Look at my son, a true Son of the She-Wolf.” The Son of the She-Wolf wiped his nose with his cuff. “Umberto is only eleven years old and already knows how to operate a machine gun.”

  “He must be like his old man.”

  Farina said, “My nose is twitching. It’s my sarcasm sniffer.”

  The squadron leader’s frown worked itself to a semblance of good humor. “Cenzo, if you don’t have the nerve to fight for your home, there are other ways to demonstrate your solidarity.” Farina unbuckled his satchel and took out a newspaper that he opened to a page of advertisements for toothpaste, lipstick, trusses, vacations in the Tyrol.

  “Take a look at this,” Farina said. “ ‘Be a guest worker in the Third Reich. Learn new skills. Learn German.’”

  “I already have a skill,” Cenzo said. “It’s called fishing.”

  “See, only a coward would say that.”

  “Besides, I understand German tourism is flourishing. More trains are leaving all the time.” Cenzo meant coffin trains. Both men knew it.

  “Is that today’s paper?” Nido interceded.

  “Today’s paper with an invitation from Germany.”

  Nido took the paper. “Good. What’s playing at the cinema? It used to be pictures of elegant people with white telephones and feather boas, artistes like Mary Pickford and Garbo. What kind of actresses do we have now? German Gusils, Gretels, Elsies.”

  Farina reclaimed the newspaper and put it in his satchel. “Don’t laugh. There will be a day of reckoning. Those who did not stand by Il Duce today will pay dearly tomorrow.” The squadron leader thrust out his chin and pointed to the sky. “A new generation will redeem Italy.”

  “Yes, yes,” Cenzo agreed. “In the meantime, I have a proposition.”

  “This should be rich.”

  “You know I’m a painter.”

  “An artist,” Nido said.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Cenzo said.

  “Don’t be modest. You have real talent,” Nido said.

  “Anyway,” Cenzo said, “in their grief, people come to me to paint an ex-voto, a picture of their loved one’s miraculous salvation or death, depending on the circumstances. You’ve seen them?”

  “Everyone has see them,” Farina said. “Get to the point.”

  “It’s a very touching, emotional scene. The stormy waves or a child falling from a height and, above, the Virgin hovering, a glowing redemptive figure.”

  “So?” Farina asked.

  “What if, instead of the Virgin, we had a different redemptive figure? I mean Il Duce.”

  “Instead of the Holy Virgin?”

  “Exactly. There are photographs of Il Duce in every school and home and public building, but this would take him to a new dimension. No child, not even a Son of the She-Wolf, could sleep soundly without the protection of a sacred Il Duce. I could paint him over the Virgin.”

  “It’s brilliant,” Nido said.

  Farina hardly knew whether to breathe. This was the kind of conversation that could get a man shot. Or promoted. In slow motion, he grabbed Umberto and steered him out the door. As soon as the father and son were gone, Nido whistled and said, “Thin ice, my friend, very thin ice. Remember, even a worm has teeth.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m too old to bother with. Besides, if they ever shut down this bar, there would be a genuine rebellion. Stay for a minute. I have another Primo story for you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Some friends and I went to New York to help Primo train for his big fight with Max Baer. It turned out we were almost pallbearers. Primo was knocked down eleven times and each time we told him, ‘Stay down!’ He was just an ‘Ugly Mug from Udine’ but he had heart.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “I’m telling you to stay down.”

  From the bar, Cenzo went to his mother’s house. For him not to visit his mother and, incidentally, deliver his laundry would have caused comment.

  Sofia Vianello was up on the roof, hanging sheets to dry, when he arrived. She was a small woman dressed in black. In fact, all the women of Pellestrina wore black, because they had all lost a husband or a brother or a son. All the men in the village had black armbands sewn onto their jacket sleeves.

  He was a week early and at his sudden appearance she expected the worst. “What happened? Has something happened to the boat?”

  “Nothing. I tore my nets.”

  “On what?”

  “I don’t know. Something underwater.”

  “Hugo never tore his nets.”

  “My brother was perfect.”

  “I’ll tell Celestina you’re here.”

  “Please don’t bother her. I’m only going to be here for a second.”

  “No bother. She will be upset if she doesn’t see you.” His mother leaned from the roof and shouted to the house next door, “Celestina! Guess who’s here!”

  “Don’t. I have to be going.”

  “Nonsense. You have to eat something before you go. Celestina!”

  He heard footsteps on the stairs and someone battling through the sheets.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” his mother asked.

  Celes
tina was. Even in mourning, everything about her was heaving and buxom, with a healthy olive complexion and long, black stockings that begged to be unrolled. It was customary in the village for an unmarried man to marry the widow of his brother, in this case Hugo, a deed that seemed overdue. Celestina certainly seemed willing, and yet, Cenzo was numb to her attractions.

  “Are you all right? Did something happen?” Celestina asked.

  “Nothing. I was just telling my mother there was a little problem with the nets. I knew if someone saw me on the dock and told her that she would worry.”

  “He was hoping to see you,” his mother told Celestina.

  “No,” Celestina protested. “There are lots of girls in Pellestrina.”

  “Only one like you. Isn’t that right, Cenzo?”

  “I think he only came to have his laundry done.” Although Celestina laughed, a note of panic crept in. As she had said, there were many girls in Pellestrina, and few marriageable men, and Cenzo, the prime candidate, was mysteriously elusive.

  “I could use something to eat,” he said. “And maybe some food to take back to the boat.”

  “I made minestrone,” Celestina said, and retreated down the stairs.

  She laid a bowl of soup and a slab of bread on the kitchen table.

  “I’m going to leave now. I know that you and your mother want to talk.”

  While Cenzo ate, Sofia’s gaze zeroed in.

  “What’s the matter with you? First you lose your own woman. Now you spurn your brother’s? You’re lucky to have a second chance.”

  “This is good soup. Where did you get the beans?”

  “Forget the beans. Think of the family.”

  “I support our family. I’m not as rich as some, but I help.”

  “I don’t mean money. She’s too young to be alone. If it comes to that, Innocenzo, you’re too young to be without a woman.”

  “You and I have a deal. I will marry when the war is over. I thought we agreed to that.”

  “That’s when I thought the war was almost over. Before Il Duce, may he roast in hell, and Hitler, may they roast together, decided to fight on. It’s been more than four years now. This war may never end.”

  “Celestina is a beautiful woman. If someone else proposes to her in the meantime, I won’t stand in their way.”

  “You’re impossible. Name one flaw in Celestina.”

  “I can’t. She could make a sausage stand up and whistle.”

  “That’s because she always does the right thing. She’s not one of those women who suddenly change their mind and pop up or disappear. You’ve had the last of that sort, I hope.”

  He was ashamed of the way he treated Celestina, but the more she tried to please, the more distant he became. It was her predictability that kept him at arm’s length. There wasn’t a word she said or a gesture she made that he couldn’t anticipate. He could live with that for a day, but could he stand a lifetime of deadness, when every touch of the hand or batting of the eyelashes was mechanical? It wasn’t anything he could blame her for. She was sincere and that should have been enough.

  Cenzo mopped up the last of his soup with bread and pushed back his chair. “I have to get back to the boat. But there is one other thing. Do you have any extra blankets?”

  “Now, why would you need extra blankets? You have a bed right here.”

  “Never mind, I’ll sleep in the cold.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  He was impossible. A coward and cuckold. A shipwreck.

  5

  He climbed the ladder and found the girl huddled in a corner of the shack with a boning knife in her hand.

  “Food.” He opened a duffel bag and brought out sacks filled with sausage, dried peas, dried beans, dried fish, biscuits, olive oil, and wine. “Not bad, huh? And fried polenta. I know that you like that.”

  “Why did you take so long? I thought maybe you were turning me over to the Germans.”

  “How can you say something like that?”

  “Most people would.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t. I told you, I had to act like it was a normal day. Normally, after some crazy SS officer tears up my gear, I have to go to the dock for repairs. When people see me on the dock, they expect me to go to the bar of my friend Nido, and I certainly can’t visit him without seeing my mother.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. So relax. I thought of an old friend who can help.” He put out his hand but she would not surrender the knife. Drying out had brought about some changes. Her hair had become a black mass of curls and her eyes brimmed with burning accusation.

  “Isn’t that good of you,” she said. “You left me here in this hovel while you spent the day drinking with your friends.”

  “It’s not a hovel.”

  “To the untrained eye it is.”

  “I told you, I have to act normally. First, I’m going to eat. Eat, fish, sleep, eat, fish, sleep. That’s a fisherman’s life.”

  “But—”

  “Like I said, I’ll try. See, I brought blankets from home and I bought you a shirt and pants more your size.” He offered them as a gift.

  She regarded them with disdain.

  He said, “You may have noticed that Pellestrina is not a fashion center.”

  “Turn around.”

  “Why? Oh.” He did as ordered while she changed. She had barely escaped with her life. He wanted to be fair and understanding, but he couldn’t help but notice that items in the shack—boots, hat, footlocker—had shifted. “You’ve been looking around.”

  “No I wasn’t.”

  “Did you stay away from the windows?”

  “Those aren’t windows, they’re peepholes. Nobody saw me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  There were a lot of things he could tell the girl not to do, like whistle on deck or ship an oar the wrong way round, but she would be gone soon enough and he was not teaching any classes on fishing or seamanship. He had no curiosity as to her history or family, likes or dislikes. She was from Venice and he was from Pellestrina, which was like saying they were not only from opposite sides of the lagoon but from different worlds. When she spoke she had an elegantly lazy Venetian accent. When he spoke, consonants disappeared. He decided she looked exactly like what she was, a girl in the costume of a fisherman. She would fool nobody.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eighteen.”

  “Really?” He looked at her with curiosity. She was a little bird whose eyes could light a room.

  “Staring is rude,” she said.

  “Sorry. We don’t have that many people resurrected at this end of the lagoon.”

  “I doubt you have many people at this end of the lagoon at all.”

  No, not a bird. She was like a hedgehog ready to bristle at the slightest touch.

  She devoured a sandwich of ham and provolone and drank half a liter of water. When she was finished he asked, “So you know the Lido?”

  “Of course. I’ve been coming here all my life.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  “Everything. We have a house in Venice and a cabana on the Lido. We always went to the Excelsior Hotel and the casino.”

  That was what he thought. She didn’t know the lagoon, its marshes, or its fishing villages. She probably couldn’t find Pellestrina on a map.

  “What was your plan? Where were you headed?”

  “My father said to go south until I found the American army.”

  “Well, a lot of people have been waiting for the Americans. What would you do if you found them?”

  “I’d tell them who I am.”

  “Who are you?”

  She didn’t say.

  “So you would find the Americans. Do you speak English?”

  “O
bviously. Why else would I try to find them?”

  “Anything else?”

  “French.”

  “You seem educated. Your family must be well-off. French here, cabanas there.”

  She sat up stiffly. “I can pay you later. What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything from you. You think I’m doing this for money? You know, you are very insulting.”

  “I don’t want to owe you.”

  “Well, you do. You owe me your life. What’s your life worth?” Aha, he had scored one palpable hit with that and brought a tear to her eye. Instantly, he regretted it. But she was a moving target, one moment a Joan of Arc, the next moment a vulnerable girl. “I heard that last night the Nazis rounded up Jews hiding in the hospital on San Clemente. Was that you? Were your father and mother with you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? The SS officer even knew your name was Giulia.”

  She shrugged.

  “Okay, you win. I get more information from a dead German than from you and you expect me to risk my neck. I’ll do it, but just to get rid of you.”

  “It’s a common enough name around the world. Have you ever been off the island?”

  “Yes.”

  He had Mussolini to thank for that. The war in Africa had demanded all sorts of skills. Men who had only fished or pushed a plow learned how to fire artillery or drive a tank. Or, if their tank was hit by enemy fire, how to turn from a human being into a can of jellied fat.

  In Ethiopia, Cenzo had piloted a reconnaissance plane. It was like being the thumb of God to drop a round out of the sky onto some black heathens. Cenzo drew the line, however, at poison gas. He and his copilot should have been shot for refusing to follow orders, although what was the difference between blowing up some poor bastard with TNT and burning him alive with gas? As punishment, they were given the duty of bulldozing dead natives into mass graves and given dishonorable discharges that they considered superior to campaign medals.

  She asked, “So you thought of someone in Venice or the Lido who can help?”

  “Maybe.” He wasn’t going to divulge his old copilot’s name, but the man was a regular Garibaldi, the kind of larger-than-life hero who a girl could pin her hopes on.