From the Fifteenth District (5 page)

“
W
hat
is
all this talk?” said Mrs. Unwin. “Miss Lewis is full of it. Have you seen anything around the frontier, Carmela?”

“No, never,” she said.

“I’m sure it is the Padre’s doing,” said Mrs. Unwin. “He preached about tolerance once too often. It worked the Italians up.” She repeated to her husband Miss Barnes’s opinion, which was that Mussolini did not know what was going on.

I
n March the wind blew as it had in the autumn. The east wind seemed to have a dark color to it. Twice on the same March night, Carmela was wakened by the beating of waves. At the market, people seemed to be picking their feet out of something grey and adhesive – their own shadows. The Italians began to change; even the clerks in the post office were cheeky with foreigners now. Mrs. Unwin believed the Padre was to blame. She went to listen to his Lenten sermons, and of course caught him out. He preached five Lenten messages, and with each the season advanced and the sea became light, then deep blue, and the Marchesa’s garden brighter and sweeter-smelling. As he had in the autumn, the Padre started off carefully, choosing as his subjects patience, abstinence, and kindness. So far so good, said Mrs. Unwin. But the fourth
sermon was on courage, the fifth on tyranny, on Palm Sunday he spoke about justice, and on Good Friday he took his text from Job: “Behold I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.” On Easter Sunday he mentioned Hitler by name.

Mrs. Unwin looked up the Good Friday text and found at the top of the page “Job complaineth of his friends’ cruelty.” She read it out to her husband, adding, “That was meant for me.”

“Why you?”

“Because I have hit, and where I hit I hit hard,” she cried.

“What have you been up to?” His voice rose as much as ever it could or would. He noticed Carmela and fell silent.

Late in May, Mrs. Unwin won her case against the Marchesa. There was no precedent for the speed of the decision. Mr. Unwin thought the courts were bored with the case, but his wife took it to mean compensation for the Unwins’ having not run away. All the datura branches overhanging the Unwins’ garden were to be lopped off, and if Mrs. Unwin’s headaches persisted the tree was to be cut down. The Unwins hired a man to do the pruning, but it was a small triumph, for the Marchesa was not there to watch.

The night before the man arrived to prune the tree, a warship sent playful searchlights over the hills and the town. The shore was lit as if with strings of yellow lanterns. The scent of the datura rose in the air like a bonfire. Mrs. Unwin suddenly said, “Oh, what does it matter now?” Perhaps it was not the datura that was responsible after all. But in the morning, when the man came with an axe and a saw, he would not be dismissed. He said, “You sent for me and I am here.” Carmela had never seen him before. He told her she had no business to be working for foreigners and that soon there
would be none left. He hacked a hole through the hedge and began to saw at the base of the datura.

“That’s not our property!” Mrs. Unwin cried.

The man said, “You hired me and I am here,” and kept on sawing.

On the road where the chauffeur had walked the Marchesa’s dogs, a convoy of army lorries moved like crabs on the floor of the sea.

T
he frontier was tightened on both sides for Jews – even those who were not refugees. Some of the refugees set off for Monaco by fishing boat; there was a rumor that from Monaco no one was turned back to Italy. They paid sums of money to local fishermen, who smuggled them along the coast by night and very often left them stranded on a French beach, and the game of battledore and shuttlecock began again. Carmela heard that one woman flung herself over the edge of the bridge into the gorge with the dried riverbed at the bottom that marked the line between Italy and France. Lucio gave up being a stonemason and bought a part interest in a fishing boat. He took Carmela’s brother along.

Carmela’s mother was given notice that the hotel where she worked was to close. She sent a message to Carmela telling her to stay where she was for as long as the Unwins could keep her, for at home they would be sorely in need of money now. Carmela’s brother was perhaps earning something with the boat traffic of Jews, but how long could it last? And what was the little boy’s share?

Carmela heard from someone in the local market that all foreigners were to be interned – even Miss Barnes. She gave a hint about it, because her own situation depended on the Unwins’ now. Mrs. Unwin scolded Carmela for spreading rumors. That very day, the Unwins’ mimeograph machine was seized and carried away, though whether for debts or politics Carmela could not be sure. Along with the machine the provincial police confiscated a pile of tracts that had been ordered by the British Legion and had to do with a garden party on the twenty-fourth of May, the birthday of Queen Victoria. The deepest official suspicion now surrounded this celebration, although in the past the Italian military commander of the region had always attended with his wife and daughters. Then the printing shop was suddenly padlocked and sealed. Mr. Unwin was obliged to go to the police station and explain that he had paid his taxes and had not printed anything that was illegal or opposed to Mussolini. While he was away, a carload of civil guards arrived and pounded on the door.

“They don’t even speak good Italian,” said Mrs. Unwin. “Here, Carmela – find out what they want.” But they were Calabrians and quite foreign to Carmela, in spite of her Sicilian grandmother. She told Mrs. Unwin she did not know what they were saying, either. At the same time, she decided to ask for her wages. She had not been paid after the first three months.

Mr. Unwin returned from the police station, but nothing was said in front of Carmela. The frontier was now closed to everyone. Carmela would never go shopping on the French side again. When she mentioned her wages Mrs. Unwin said, “But Carmela, you seemed so fond of the children!”

Early one afternoon, Mrs. Unwin burst into the kitchen. Her hair was wild, as if she had been pulling at it. She said, “It
has happened, Carmela. Can you understand? Can you understand the horror of our situation? We can’t get any money from England, and we can’t draw anything out of the bank here. You must go home now, back to your family. We are leaving for England, on a coal boat. I am leaving with the children. Mr. Unwin will try to come later. You must go home now, today. Why are you crying?” she said, and now she really did tug her hair. “We’ll pay you in full and with interest when it is all over.”

Carmela had her head down on the kitchen table. Pains like wings pressed on her shoulders until her sobs tore them apart.

“Why are you crying?” said Mrs. Unwin again. “Nothing can happen to you. You’ll be thankful to have the money after Mussolini has lost his war.” She patted the child between her fragile shoulders. “And yet, how can he lose, eh? Even I don’t see how. Perhaps we’ll all laugh – oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. Carmela, please. Don’t alarm the children.”

For the last time in her life, Carmela went into the room she had shared with a ghost and a demon. She knew that her mother would never believe her story and that she would beat her. “Goodbye, little girls,” she said, though they were out of earshot. In this way she took leave without alarming them. She packed and went back to the kitchen, for want of knowing where to go. All this had happened while Carmela was clearing away after lunch. The larder was still unlocked. She took a loaf of bread and cut it in three pieces and hid the pieces in her case. Many years later, it came to her that in lieu of wages she should have taken a stone from the leather box. Only fear would have kept her from doing it, if she had thought of it. For the last time, she looked out over the Marchesa’s shuttered villa. It had already been looted twice. Each time, the police
had come and walked around and gone away again. The deep pit of the unfinished bomb shelter was used by all the neighborhood as a dump for unwanted litters of kittens. The chauffeur had prowled for a bit, himself something of a cat, and then he vanished, too.

When Mrs. Unwin searched Carmela’s case – Carmela expected that; everyone did it with servants – she found the bread, looked at it without understanding, and closed the lid. Carmela waited to be told more. Mrs. Unwin kissed her forehead and said, “Best of luck. We are all going to need it. The children will miss you.”

Now that the worst was over, Mr. Unwin appeared on the scene; he would drive Carmela as far as the Nervia Valley bus stop. He could not take her all the way home, because he had only so much petrol, and because of everything else he had to do before evening. This was without any doubt the worst day of the Unwins’ lives.

“Is it wise of you to drive about so openly?” said his wife.

“You don’t expect to hide and cringe? As long as I am free I shall use my freedom.”

“So you said to me years ago,” said his wife. This time Carmela did not consider the meaning of her smile. It had lost its importance.

Mr. Unwin carried Carmela’s case to the car and stowed it in the luggage compartment. She sat up front in Mrs. Unwin’s usual place. Mr. Unwin explained again that he would drive as far as the Nervia Valley road, where she could then continue by bus. He did not ask if there was any connection to Castel Vittorio or, should there be one, its frequency. They drove down the hill where Carmela had walked to the local market that first day. Most of the beautiful villas were abandoned now,
which made them look incomplete. The Marchesa’s word came back to her: “Hideous.” They passed Dr. Chaffee’s clinic and turned off on the sea road. Here was the stop where Carmela had waited for a bus to the frontier every Friday – every Friday of her life, it seemed. There was the café with the pale-blue awning. Only one person, a man, sat underneath it today.

“
Ha
llo,” said Mr. Unwin. He braked suddenly and got out of the car. “Fond of ices, Padre?” he said.

“I’ve spent two nights talking to the police,” said the clergyman. “I very much want to be seen.”

“You, too, eh?” Mr. Unwin said. He seemed to forget how much he still had to do before evening, and that he and the Padre had ever disagreed about tolerance or Hitler or dipping the flag. “Come along, Carmela,” he called over his shoulder. “These young things are always hungry,” he said lightly, as though Carmela had been eating him out of house and home.

“My party,” said the Padre. Mr. Unwin did not contradict. There they were, police or not, war or not. It was one of the astonishing things that Carmela remembered later on. When an ice was brought and set before her she was afraid to eat it. First, it was too beautiful – pistachio, vanilla, tangerine, three colors in a long-stemmed silver dish that sat in turn upon a lace napkin and a glass plate. Carmela was further given cold water in a tall frosted glass, a long-handled delicate spoon with a flat bowl, and yet another plate containing three overlapping wafer biscuits. Her tears had weakened her; it was almost with sadness that she touched the spoon.

“I won’t have it said that I ran away,” said the clergyman. “One almost
would
like to run. I wasn’t prepared for anonymous – letters.” The soft complexion that was like a girl’s
flushed. Carmela noticed that he had not shaved; she could not have imagined him bearded.

“Anonymous letters to the police?” said Mr. Unwin. “And in English?”

“First one. Then there were others.”

“In
English?”

“Oh, in English. They’d got the schoolmaster to translate them.”

“Not even to my worst enemy –” Mr. Unwin began.

“No, I’m sure of that. But if I have inspired hatred, then I’ve failed. Some of the letters came to me. I never spoke of them. When there was no reaction then – I suppose it must have been interesting to try the police.”

“Those you had – were they by hand?” said Mr. Unwin. “Let me see one. I shan’t read it.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve destroyed them.”

Carmela looked across at the houses on which work had been suspended for more than a year – a monument to Mr. Unwin’s qualifications as an investor of funds, she now understood; behind them was the sea that no longer could frighten her. She let a spoonful of pistachio melt in her mouth and swallowed regretfully.

“Of course you know the story,” said Mr. Unwin. “You have heard the gossip.”

“I don’t listen to gossip,” said the clergyman. They had no use for each other, and might never meet again. Carmela sensed that, if Mr. Unwin did not. “Nothing needs to be explained. What matters is, how we all come out of it. I’ve been told I may leave. My instructions
are
to leave. Hang them. They can intern me or do whatever they like. I won’t have them believing that we can be bullied.”

Mr. Unwin was speaking quietly; their words overlapped. He was going to explain, even if it was to no purpose now, whether the clergyman had any use for him or not. “…  When we did finally marry we were so far apart that she hardly had a claim. I made her see a neurologist. He asked her if she was afraid of me.” The lines of age around his eyes made him seem furtive. He had the look of someone impartial, but stubborn, too. “Having children was supposed to be good. To remove the guilt. To make her live in the present.” They had come here, where there was a famous clinic and an excellent doctor – poor Dr. Chaffee. Gone now. Between her second breakdown and the birth of the twins, somewhere in that cleared-out period, they married. The Church of England did not always allow it. Old Ted Stonehouse had been lenient. For years they’d had nothing but holidays, a holiday life, always with the puritan belief that they would have to pay up. They had paid, he assured the younger man, for a look at their past – a wrecked past, a crippling accident. At times, he could see the debris along the road – a woman’s shoe, a charred map. And they married, and had the twins, and the holiday came to an end. And she was beginning to be odd, cruel, drinking stuff out of teacups. She kept away from the babies. Was afraid of herself. Knew she was cruel. Cruel to her own great-uncle. Never once looked at his grave. Mr. Unwin had been to the grave not long ago, had stung his hands on nettles.