A Child Al Confino: The True Story of a Jewish Boy and His Mother in Mussolini's Italy (25 page)

“Is it all right if I go to the fellow from Argentina for my haircut?” I asked. With Mother's blessing, I went to the man's small room in a building across from the main church. Using gestures, since we did not speak the same language, I tried telling him what I wanted. He snipped a little here, a little there. He must have combed my hair more than twenty times. I waited for the trimmer that all barbers use but he never used one. Nor did he use a barber's razor. Instead, he pulled out a safety razor, which probably served to shave him in the morning. The only tools this barber owned were a comb and a pair of scissors. The second ringing of the steeple bells made me realize that for two hours I had squirmed on an uncomfortable wooden chair for a haircut, a task that the local barber, who had a padded chair, did in twenty minutes.

For two months I waited for my hair to fully recover from this man's many blunders. For weeks I was in tears each time I combed my hair, while Mother couldn't stop laughing whenever she looked at the botched job. Needless to say, in spite of my feeling sorry for the poor fellow, never again did I go to the barber from Argentina.

The two brothers from Czechoslovakia, Karel and Willy Weil, were eager to become part of the group and adapted quickly. They were personable young men, medium in height and slim. Willy, a bit heavier than his brother, was more reserved. Elegant in their slightly worn double-breasted suits, meticulously knotted ties, and breast-pocket handkerchiefs, they reminded me of my own father. Their refined demeanor played down the wear their fine clothes had suffered through the two years since leaving their homeland. I never learned why they had been deprived of their freedom since they never admitted to being Jewish.

In December of 1941, Pietro Russo rented the small room on our floor situated halfway between the kitchen and the outhouse hanging at the end of the corridor. Mother, in need of supplementing what money she was getting from the government, offered to cook for him.

“That is great. I could not have asked for anything better,” Signor Russo said.

Twice a day Mamma cooked for the three of us, and Pietro became a permanent and loving fixture in our kitchen. I enjoyed the mealtime political and literary conversations and casual Latin lessons Pietro brought to us. Being exposed to this intelligent man gave me the opportunity to start developing a political philosophy and to learn Italian literature and Latin in a pleasantly informal way.

I liked Pietro. In fact, I more than liked him. He was amiable and kind, and he brought poetry and the beauty of the spoken word into our lives. I envied his mastery at reciting Italian poetry from memory and his ability to make the passage fit the moment. The works of the illustrious Dante, Foscolo, Leopardi, Carducci, D'Annunzio, and the not-so-famous were all stored in his fertile mind and, though he had never composed poetry, his delivery of the works of others had the ring of heavenly lyrics to my ears. The pure beauty Pietro Russo possessed in his soul was missing in his physical appearance. Large in body, his hair reduced to a sparse strand on each temple, a round face accommodating a slightly slanted bulbous nose and a short neck, made somewhat shorter by an incipient double chin, all gave him a less-than-handsome appearance. Yet, when he looked at or spoke to you the sincerity in his eyes, the warmth of his voice, transformed him into a remarkably attractive human being.

Dottor Russo, as everyone called him out of respect, for he was not a doctor, had never been outside of Sicily but had skillfully blended the academic culture of a university graduate with the outdated thinking of his native town.

“What did your brothers and sisters study?” I asked.

“Well, I was the only one who went to the university.” He explained that local customs called for the youngest in the family to go on to higher learning while his seven brothers and sisters stayed home to care for the family farm and their widowed mother.

I was allowed to spend some nights in Pietro's room and was captivated by him reading to me. Mother seemed pleased to watch our affection for one another grow. “Do you like Pietro?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” I responded with impetuous enthusiasm. “I like him a lot. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing special.”

Whenever Mamma said “nothing special” that meant it was something extra special, so I started to look around without knowing what to look for. At times I even eavesdropped, trying to learn what was happening when the two of them were locked behind closed doors. But I learned nothing.

I did notice changes in my mother. She looked happier, eager to do things she had been reluctant to do before. She was more meticulous in her dress, though it was hard to detect since she had always dressed well. She stopped smoking. Old enough to understand about the relationship between a man and woman, I thought of my father and was unwilling to accept that a romance was blossoming right before my eyes.

Pietro did not pretend to be a cook, but on a few occasions, he insisted on introducing us to some native Sicilian dishes, such as lemon or orange soup, roasted sardines, or cooked intestines. I had watched him prepare the soups, ate them, and found them interesting. Now, watching his long, well-manicured fingers rinse the long tubular strands of a chicken's intestines disgusted me. “What are you doing with that?” I asked.

“You'll see. After I wash them, I'll wrap them over parsley and garlic and make a soup. It's delicious. You'll see.”

It reminded me of the tripe or oysters of San Remo. I watched Mother, anxious to see if she would try it.

“Mamma, what do you think? Will you eat it?”

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I said, will you eat it?”

Mother ate it and so did I.

“Well, what do you think?” Pietro asked.

“It's very good.” I replied.

“I think the cook deserves a kiss,” Mamma said.

On her serene and lovely face I saw a glow I had seen only when she looked at me. She exuded a new youthfulness, making her look younger than her forty years.

Pietro did not look as surprised as I was by Mother's remark. “Is it all right with you?” he asked.

What could I say? Embarrassed, I ignored both his remark and her suggestion. Mother leaned over and kissed me, then turned and shared a long kiss with Pietro. They kissed on the mouth and, bashful, I turned my head while all along my eyes kept trying to steal a glance at the two of them.

I had never been close to a man and a woman when they kissed. My parents had never kissed like that in front of me. My thoughts turned into bedlam. What did this mean? Was my mother loving another man? If so, what about my papa?

Mother and Pietro spent much time together, and I found myself going to bed alone while they remained in the kitchen even after the lights went out. As hard as I tried, many times I could not stay awake long enough to hear my mother go to bed.

The weather, especially harsh that year, kept us inside most of those shortened days, and I learned much about this gentle man. Pietro spoke about his family with great warmth. The love this thirty-two-year-old man expressed for his mother and siblings was contagious, and I prayed I would never lose the same feelings for my own parents.

Weather permitting, Mamma and Pietro ventured out some afternoons to play bridge at the Howells'. On the days they did not, they taught me the finer points of the game. I cherished our time together.

“
De gustibus non disputandum est
.” This was Pietro's philosophical comment, prompted by Mother's disapproval of his brown tie and gray suit.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means you cannot argue about taste. It's Latin,” Pietro replied.

Another time, when we were talking about our stay in Ospedaletto, he recited a long passage from Dante's
Inferno
, which began: “
Perdete ogni speranza
/
O voi che entrate
. /
Queste parole di colore oscure.
…”

Afterward, I sat immobile, staring at the man who had uttered those words, reveling in the music he had created. Only when Pietro broke the spell with a smile was I able to speak. “When did you learn all this?”

“When I went to high school.”

“And you still remember it?”

“All beautiful things are worth remembering.” he said

That evening, as we prepared to retire, my mother dropped a bomb into my lap. “
Enricuccio,
would you like to sleep with Mamma and Pietro tonight?”

I couldn't have been more shocked if the whole ceiling had fallen on me. What did that mean? No other man, except for Papa, had ever slept with us or even in our home. Even in Vienna, I had never slept with my parents. Now Mamma was going to allow Pietro to sleep in the same bed? I had trouble understanding and didn't know what to answer. The more I thought about it, the less I knew what to say. In the end, but after a long pause, guessing there was nothing wrong with all of us sleeping together and that it could even be fun, I replied, “Sure.”

“Only on one condition,” Mamma added. “This has to stay between us. Do you understand?”

No, I couldn't understand why I had to keep this a secret, but nodded my head in assent.

After that first night, Pietro slept in my mother's bed many times, although I was never asked to sleep with them again.

There was a change in the air. I did not know what was going on, but I knew something was not the same. There was much talk I did not understand. Even Mother's friends spoke in languages I knew but using words I could not grasp. My whole world seemed to have left me behind, somewhat alone and incapable of finding out from anyone what was happening.

Winter's cold lured me into the billiards hall where I was sure I could earn some spending money by capitalizing on what I had learned in San Remo. What an awakening it was when I found out that almost anyone in that hall could separate me easily from what little money I had saved. Only the afternoon lunch break, when the parlor shut down between one and three, slowed down my losing process.

“Why not read a book? Since you've been going to the billiards room, you have done nothing else,” Mother exploded.

“I like to play billiards.”

Mother was angry. “You'll become a gambler, just like your father.” Then, losing control over herself, added, “
Eyn curten spieler!”
making reference to my father's habit of playing cards.

Little did I know about my dad, nor had I ever seen him play cards. I adored my mother. She represented everything to me, yet her remarks about my father enraged me. “He was no gambler!” I shouted.

“Yeah. What would you know? While he gambled our money away, I sat home and worried where the next meal was coming from.”

“I don't believe you!” I slammed the door and dashed down the stairs to the floor below.

Mother ran after me and, despite our twenty-nine-year age difference, proved to be fast enough to catch up. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me back upstairs.

“Don't you ever slam the door again! Do you understand?” Her hand found my unsuspecting face, the physical hurt overshadowing what had anguished me moments before.

“I hate you when you criticize Papa. When he comes back, I'll go live with him,” I shouted, trying, without success, to hold back the tears.

“Let me tell you something. If your father had not been such a gambler, maybe today we would be together and free.”

“You didn't want to go to Poland, so he had to go by himself!”

“Stop shouting!” Mother screamed. She waited for her directive to sink in. Then in a normal tone, she continued, “You are right. I didn't want to go to Poland. Who knows what the Germans would have done to us by now? We would probably be dead. At least here we are safe from the Nazis. And did it ever occur to you that maybe your papa didn't want to go to France with us?”

No, that had never occurred to me. “What do you know about the Germans and what they would have done to us?” I asked.

“I know, I know.” But Mamma never said more.

The thought that had we gone to Poland we could now be dead sent a screaming chill down my spine. Perhaps she knew something and didn't want to share it with me. Yes, it was better we had not gone to Poland. But even the thought of death didn't stop my resentment at that moment, and I told her so.

“
A kholeriye oyf dir
,” I shouted, wishing that a plague should befall her.

When I realized the meaning of the Yiddish words, I pleaded with her to forgive me. She did so in her usual loving fashion. That night I added a line to my regular bedtime prayer. After praying to keep Papa,
Omama
, Aunt Stefi, and everyone else in our family healthy and safe, I added, “Please forgive me for upsetting my mother so often.”

The events and uncertainties of the last three years were having an impact on us. Mother's nerves snapped at the slightest provocation and we ended in an argument and judging from some of the things I said, my emotional state was none too good either. I was feeling the strain of the uncertainty in our lives.

On the nights I had trouble falling asleep, my imagination roamed in the darkened room. I sensed my father's long-missed embrace and recalled that sparkle of joy in his eyes. Then my mind inhaled
Omama
's scent as she stood by her open door and I felt the kisses her weak lips poured over my small face. I also tasted the homemade pickles my grandmother in Lwow stored in a cabinet on the cold stairwell, felt the softness of
Opapa
's gray beard, and wondered if all this would ever be true again.

During the first winter in Ospedaletto, to alleviate the boredom, I learned to knit, sew, and use Dora's sewing machine. I also built a pair of wooden skis. The only time I had seen skis was in the park in Vienna and then only from a distance, thus what I made was a poor excuse for skis. They did have slightly bent tips, the only resemblance to the real thing. I cannot claim to have skied but only strapped the wood creations onto my feet and made an attempt at sliding about. I was thrilled. What anyone else thought of my skis was really unimportant. What mattered most to me was that I was the only person in the village who possessed a pair.