Touching a handkerchief to her eyes, Rhoda barely articulated, “Poor Pug.”
“You were foolish to risk losing him. I can’t understand you, I think it was terribly stupid of you, but don’t do it again.” Pamela gathered up her purse. “You say all that’s over with.”
“Yes, yes. Absolutely and forever.”
“Good. You have a well-wisher who’s written your husband several anonymous letters about you and this man. If you have no better reason to straighten up, there’s one.”
“Oh, God,” Rhoda groaned. “What did the letters say?”
“Guess!” It was a scornful snap. In a softer tone Pamela said, “I’m sorry to hurt you in your bereavement, but I don’t want you hurting him any more. That’s why I’ve talked to you. I’ll send the speech text to you by messenger. Our plane leaves in a couple of hours.”
“Will you promise never to see my husband any more?”
Ugly lines strained Pamela’s face. She contemplated Rhoda’s proffered hand — lean, long, wrinkled, strong-fingered — then glared at her. “That’s impossible! The future can’t be controlled. But I’m out of your way now, rest assured of that.” She looked around at the youngsters, drying themselves and giggling on the pool’s edge, and her manner turned gentle. “This has been a bizarre conversation, hasn’t it? A wartime conversation.”
“I’m STUNNED,” Rhoda said.
They both got up.
“One more thing,” Pamela said. “I met your son Warren only once, in Hawaii just before the battle. There was a strange light about him, Mrs. Henry. It wasn’t my imagination, my father sensed it too. He was almost godlike. You’ve had an appalling loss. But you have two other wonderful children. I hope you and your husband will console each other, and in time be happy again.” With a quick feline movement Pamela kissed Rhoda’s cheek and hastened out of the garden.
Rhoda walked to a lounge chair in the sun and fell into it, half out of her senses with surprise. When had Pug mentioned Pamela Tudsbury in his letters? From London in the summer of 1940; from Moscow late in 1941; and then just lately, from Hawaii. Of course, the father and daughter had been in and out of Washington, too. In a letter about the party at the Moana before the battle, Pug had remarked on “the Tudsbury girl’s” sickly appearance, due to dysentery.
Poor Pug! Camouflage? An effort to stamp out romantic stirrings in his own inhibited heart?
As in a crystal ball, Rhoda saw pictures in the sparkling blue bowl of the now-deserted swimming pool: Pug and Pamela together in those far-off places, not making love, perhaps not even kissing, but just being together, day after day, evening after evening, thousands of miles from home. The bitter knowing smile on the face of this woman was a picture of Eve with something on Adam. Pamela Tudsbury had told a good story, she thought, but old Pug couldn’t have been quite the holy Joe she made him out. Rhoda knew better. The kind of passion that burned in Pamela Tudsbury did not kindle of itself. Pug had in some way, oblique or direct, wooed the girl. Perhaps indeed he had kept it platonic, so as to have his highminded cake and eat it; or perhaps they had slept together. It was hard to tell. As for the truthful look in Pamela’s eyes, Rhoda knew all about truthful looks.
The anonymous letters were horrible to think about. What nasty biddy had done that? Nevertheless, the gap between her guilty self and her husband was narrower than she had dreamed, after all. She was jealous of Pamela, and scared of her; and Pug’s desirability had shot up. She felt a warm unaccustomed stir of erotic longing for the taciturn old dog. The girl’s renunciation meant little, of course. Pug had sent Pamela packing as she intended to do to Palmer Kirby. What had really gone on between them she might never know. It was a nice tactical problem, whether she should ever ask him.
With a start in her chair, Rhoda Henry realized she had forgotten for a little while that Warren was dead.
34
IOUIS stood fretting noisily in his crib, rattling the side bars. Siena in the summer was a bakeoven, and he took heat badly, his disposition becoming as rough and sore as the rashes that mottled him from head to toe. A diaper and a thin white shirt lay ready on the bureau top. He would probably howl when Natalie clothed him for the bus ride, so she was leaving that for last. As she tightened the suitcase straps, the sweat starting from this effort, Aaron looked in. “The car will be here in half an hour, my dear.”
“I know. I’m ready.”
In an old blue beret and a shabby gray suit he looked like any Italian bus passenger. Natalie had wondered whether to caution him about his usual flamboyant travelling clothes. He was showing good sense, happily, starting out. He glanced up at the mildewy ceiling with its peeling frescoed cherubs. “The whole place has certainly gone to seed. I hadn’t really noticed until now.” Gesturing at the open window and the distant cathedral, he added as he left, “But you won’t soon have another view like this from your bedroom, will you?”
To Natalie the departure was not yet real. How often had she left this godforsaken Tuscan villa for good; how often had she seen once again, with sinking heart, the old gate with the wrought-iron peacock, the cracking yellow stucco garden wall, the red-tiled tower Byron had slept I in! How lightly she had first set foot here in 1939, expecting to stay two or three months while she tried to recapture Leslie Slote; what a quicksand it had proved! Memories of her very first night in this room were haunting her — the musty smell of the satin-draped four-poster bed, the rat noisily gnawing in the wall, the crashing thunderstorm, lightning-lit Siena luridly framed in the open window like El Greco’s Toledo.
Last-minute doubts were assailing her. Were they doing the right thing? They had just about settled down to a bearable house-arrest existence. Except for Werner Beck, nobody was bothering them. There was milk for the baby — goat’s milk, but he thrived on it — and enough food. The Monte di Paschi bankers, aware of Aaron’s wealth in New York, would not let them lack for money. All true. But she had acted out of instinct after that last meeting with Beck, and now the die was cast. Aaron had been handling Beck quite suavely since then, sending him outlines for broadcasts, flattering him by accepting his suggestions, and at last wheedling official permission to get away from Siena’s heat, in a week or two by the sea, as guests of the Sacerdotes in their Follonica beach house.
The straps on the two suitcases were secure. One was full of Louis’s stuff, the other contained her barest necessities. Rabinovitz’s instructions were stark: “no baggage you can’t handle yourself walking twenty miles with the baby.“ Since getting his message Natalie had been walking six miles a day. Her feet had blistered, then healed in calluses, and she felt very fit. What a shock when Castelnuovo had offered her the rolled-up cigarette paper with a magnifying glass! “Just like the cinema, eh?” he had said. Now was the time to get rid of that paper. She took it from her purse, and unrolled it on her palm.
dear natalie happy you are coming tell uncle travel very light you take no baggage you can’t handle yourself walking twenty miles with the baby i care for your baby and i care for you it will be all right love
The tiny words, barely discernible to the naked eye, stirred her yet. No letter had come from Byron in months. She had read to tatters the few she possessed. Her memories of Byron were as unchanging and repetitious as old home movies. Her life and his had been unfolding apart for the last two years and she was not even sure he was alive. His last letters that the Red Cross had forwarded — written from Albany, a tiny town in southwest Australia, months ago — suggested that combat was changing him; he sounded nothing like the lighthearted young dandy who had bewitched her. The news that Castelnuovo was in touch with Rabinovitz, and the cigarette-paper message, had thrown her in a turmoil that persisted, though common sense told her there was nothing in the Palestinian’s words but Jewish kindness.
It was hard to give up the paper, but rolling it in a tiny ball, she flooded it down the bathtub drain. She dressed the baby; then she took a last look around at the big frilly candy box of a room, and star
ed long at the big bed in which for years she had not known a man’s arms around her, only empty teasing dreams and fantasies.
“Come on, Louis,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
There were no farewells to the servants. Aaron was leaving closets full of clothes, a whole untouched library, and stacked folders of the Luther book drafts on his desk. Natalie had given the maid and the gardeners orders for work to be finished when she returned in two weeks. But servants are wise, Italian servants especially. The cook, the maid, and the two gardeners were lined up at the iron gate. Their good-byes were cheery but their eyes were solemn and their manners fumbling. The cook gave the baby a stick of candy, and as they drove off she cried.
At the wheel of Sacerdote’s car was the surly son who was remaining in Siena, and — so his family suspected — taking Catholic instruction because of his Christian girl. The anti-Jewish laws forbade conversions, but in Siena Fascist edicts were often ignored. In a light open shirt, his hair thick and unruly, a cigarette hanging from a corner of his downturned mouth, the youth wordlessly drove them to the almost deserted Piazza del Campo, and left them there.
Siena had never been lively; now it scarcely seemed inhabited. The few vending stalls in the broad plaza stood empty and untended. Later, if a truckload of vegetables or fish came up from the coast there might be some buying and selling, but not much; rationing controlled everything down to garlic and onions. The long shadow of the Palazzo Pubblico tower oozed along the hot pavement, and mechanically the few gossipers moved with it, like toy figures on a huge sundial. Natalie and Aaron sat outside the one open café, drinking imitation orange soda with a metallic taste. She remembered the roaring mob of the Palio filling this amphitheatre of Renaissance palazzos, the rainbow parade of the contrade, the wild horse race: all stopped, all gone! Years of her life had melted away in this town bypassed by history. That Aaron had chosen to settle here was bizarre; that she had shared his exile was an aberration beyond fathoming.
The car came back, and the young man grumbled at them that the bus was about to leave. They had avoided waiting at the station because of the police. The permit to visit Follonica was an extraordinary document originating in Rome; the less they exposed it the better. At the station the bus driver impatiently waved them inside, and off they went under the eyes of a yawning policeman.
The bus chugged out through the high town wall and bumped down a narrow dirt road, heading west. The Sacerdotes, though dressed modestly, sat with the dignity of rich proprietors, their expressions abstracted and sad, and as in the faces of many old couples, very much alike. Louis fell asleep in Natalie’s lap. Through the open windows of the bus sweet farmland odors swept in, mixed with the strangely pleasant gasogene fumes from the charcoal burner, like the scent of a wood fire. Miriam chattered happily to her mother, while her father stared out at the passing scenery. Grand panoramas of mountaintop villages, green hillside farms, and terraced vineyards opened up at every turn of the road. The bus ground down past Volterra in a steepening descent, and ended its run in Massa Marittima, a tiny old hilltop town quiet as Siena, its old gray stones shimmering in noon glare.
Here in the little square the futility of the Mussolini regime struck Natalie anew, in the contrast of the garish hollow victory posters and the old weathered façades of the church and town hall. Italy was too weary, too wise, too charming to play the armed bully. It had all been a showy fake and a waste. Unfortunately, the Germans had imitated the bloodthirsty charade with heavy Teutonic seriousness and run amuck with it; so Natalie tiredly thought, as she trudged to the railroad station holding the limp baby and one suitcase; Aaron was carrying the other, and one for himself.
A small narrow-gauge train tweeted into the station, and the conductor punched tickets with scarcely a glance at the passengers’ faces. Nobody checked their papers either in the station or on the train. In all Massa Marittima they had seen only one policeman, dozing against his propped bicycle. Awake again, Louis looked out with mild interest at the farmers on the slopes, at the grazing sheep and cattle, and at the ugly gashes of mines in the hillsides, with their great brown rubbish heaps, tall conveyor belts, and rough wooden trestles and towers. The train wound around a rocky bend and there far below the Mediterranean glittered. Natalie caught her breath. Off on the hazy horizon she could see dots and humps of islands, their escape route to Lisbon.
The Sacerdotes’ summer home in Follonica was a boxlike stucco house right on the beach, painted blue. Across the road a public park full of high old shade trees and wide-spreading palms gave exceptional privacy. Inside the boarded-up house all was stifling hot darkness and dank stale smells until Castelnuovo and his wife took down storm shutters and opened windows to a sea breeze. Natalie put Louis to bed in a crib that had once been Miriam’s, and Sacerdote took her and Aaron to the small carabinieri station. The sleepy-eyed police chief, looking very impressed at the permit document from Rome, made the necessary stampings and notations, and stood up to shake hands with them. He had a brother in Newark, he said, a florist who made good money. Italy had no real quarrel with America. It was the Germans. What could you do with the damned Germans?
A week passed. No word came from Rabinovitz. Natalie sank into animal enjoyment of the beach as an anodyne for her mounting anxiety. As for Louis, playing in the sand with Miriam all day, and now and then getting dipped in the sea, he took on color and shed his rashes and his crankiness. On a Sabbath evening they were sitting down at the candle-lit table when the doorbell rang and a grimy man with a bluish three-day beard came in. His name was Frankenthal, he said, and he came from Avram Rabinovitz. His manner was matter-of-fact, tired, and abrupt until the Sacerdotes asked him to stay for dinner. Then he took off a ragged cap and looked pleasanter and slightly abashed. Pointing to the candles on the dining table he said, “Sabato? I have not seen that since my grandmother died.”
He was a dock worker in Piombino, the iron-ore shipping port north of Follonica, he told them as he ate. His father too had worked on the docks. His grandfather had been a Hebrew scholar, but the family had dropped all that. He himself knew nothing but that he was a Jew. Once the children were put to bed he got down to business. The news was bad. The Turkish freighter that had been running refugees illegally from Corsica to Lisbon had lost its British navicert, and could not transit Gibraltar. That route was finished.
Still, they were to go on to Corsica via Elba as planned. Rabinovitz was arranging to bring them from Corsica to Marseilles, where most of the rescue agencies operated. Several routes existed for going on from Marseilles to Palestine or Lisbon. That was Rabinovitz’s message. But Frankenthal told them of a more direct way to get to Marseilles. Vessels carrying iron ore from the mines of Elba and Massa Marittima for transshipment to the Ruhr made the run from Piombino every week or so. The British navy did not bother the ore boats. He knew a captain who would take them straight to Marseilles for five hundred dollars a passenger.
They were still at the table, drinking chicory by the light of the waning candles. Jastrow said drily, “I sailed from New York to Paris for five hundred dollars, first class.”
“Professore, that was peacetime. The other way, God knows how long you’ll be stuck in Elba or in Corsica. On the boat you’ll sleep in beds, a direct trip, three days, the children safe.”
He left to catch the last bus for Piombino, saying he would telephone in a day or two for their decision. “Take the ore boat,” were his parting (words.
Jastrow spoke first, with acid amusement, when he was gone. “If we do take the ore boat, this fellow will get a fat cut of our money.”
“Do you trust him?” Natalie asked Castelnuovo.
“Well, I know he comes from Rabinovitz.”
“How do you communicate with Avram?”
“Cables about innocuous matters. Otherwise, messengers like this fellow. Why?”
“I’m thinking of just going back to Siena.”
Sacerdote said to his son-in-law, putting his arm around h
is frightened-looking wife, “She’s right. You said we would go to Lisbon and never set foot in France.”
“Yes, Papa, and now that has changed,” Castelnuovo said with exaggerated forbearance, “and so, we’re having a little chat.”
Natalie turned to Jastrow. “When I went to meet Byron in Lisbon, the Vichy police pulled me off the train to check my papers. They were in order, luckily. My spine went icy when they asked whether I was a Jew.” She turned to Castelnuovo. “What recourse would we have now in France, Jews travelling illegally? Suppose they jail us? I could become separated from Louis!”
“Avram will arrange transit visas for us,” said Castelnuovo. “Papers can always be had.”
“Fake papers, you mean,” said Sacerdote.
“Papers that will pass.”
Jastrow said, “Let’s not be faint-hearted. We have set out. I confess I never liked the island jumping plan. As long as we’re going to Marseilles, I say let’s take the ore boat. One big bribe, one comfortable trip, that’s my notion.”
Castelnuovo made an impatient gesture with both hands. “Now look, I already knew all about the ore boats. They dock in a maximum security area of Marseilles, behind a high fence with French military patrols, and German inspectors from the Armistice Commission. The captain cares nothing about you. It’s just your money. If any danger arises to him — pauf! — his neck comes first. Going through the islands, we’ll be in the hands of people Rabinovitz knows.”
“I imagine my wife and I will go back,” Sacerdote said very solemnly to Jastrow. “We must still talk it over, of course. But our son is there, you know.” The old woman was sniffling into a handkerchief.
Jastrow quickly said, “It’s natural. It’s your home. For us it’s safer to go on.”
The old couple went upstairs. Jastrow and Castelnuovo debated some more about the ore boat. Castelnuovo hated to trust his family’s lives, he said, to a bribed Italian. The price could jump in mid-passage; the man could take the money and fail to perform; he could in fact sell them out. Resistance people stood for something more than an itching palm.