The Good Left Undone(113)

“Eva would like that. Is there any place you’d like to go on holiday? Anyplace I can take you?” Emos asked. “The beach at Rimini? I can drive you to Viareggio.”

“There’s no place I want to go, but there are places I don’t ever want to see again.”

“Venezia?” Emos asked.

“Berlin. There were four of us in a small office. An architect, a professor, a mathematician, and me, the stonecutter. We slept in that office, worked there, and took our meals there. We made timepieces. Jewel movement.”

“For whom? The consorts of the generals? The wives?”

“For the bombs. I try not to think about where the bombs with my timers landed, how many people they killed, and how many homes were destroyed. But knowing the Nazis, they hit their targets more often than not. So, as I cut the stones, I justified the job by telling myself I was building time itself, which would bring me one second closer to seeing Agnese again. Of course, like any of the promises made in Germany at that time, it was nothing but a con. You cannot buy time when it has been stolen from you.”



* * *





The rooster crowed the next morning at dawn as it sat aloft the coop on Speranza’s farm. Emos had already milked the cow, skimmed the cream, and set the clean bucket in the cool stream of the springhouse. He walked toward his house and the breakfast Eva was preparing for him when he felt an ache in his chest and stopped. He placed his hand on his heart and meditated. Soon the pain lifted. He looked over to the main house and was surprised to see that all the lights were on inside. Speranza was good about saving electricity, so the sight of the house ablaze with light from every window concerned Emos.

He walked to the main house and pushed the front door open. He stepped inside and found Speranza slumped over in his chair, over a book that rested in his lap. Emos rushed to his side. “Signore, Signore.” Emos tried to wake him, but it was no use. Speranza was gone.

Emos gently lifted the book out of Speranza’s lap and left it on the side table open to the page he had been reading. Emos went into the bedroom and grabbed the blanket off the bed. He lifted Speranza onto the sofa and laid him out straight on the cushions. He gently covered the finest man he had ever known with the blanket, now a shroud.

The shoeblack, now a keen and successful farmer who sold milk, butter, and cream in Treviso, sat down next to the body. He lifted the book off the table. On the endpaper was a book plate that read, Return to Agnese Speranza. Emos’s eyes fell on the last words Speranza had read before he died.

I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure.

A fine show. The trick is to play in it and look at it at the same time.

. . . The more kinds of people you see, the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they’re not pleasant things. That’s living . . .

Emos moved the bookmark so he would not forget the passage from Edna Ferber’s novel So Big. He had not been present for Speranza’s final breath and last words, but at least he had the comfort of knowing the words his friend had been reading when the moment came. It was then that Emos knelt before Speranza’s body and called on God in His heaven to welcome the good man home.

Eva appeared in the door. She joined her husband and knelt beside him in prayer.

Emos dug a grave in the field above the farm within twenty-four hours of Speranza’s death, as was the Jewish custom. Eva and the children covered the soft black earth with branches of fresh cypress, until there was nothing but green.

Emos set the stone he had cut himself and looked up to the sky. “Signore, I am no artisan, but I hope this pleases you.”

ROMEO SPERANZA

Husband of Agnese

Stonecutter of Venezia

1889–1956





CHAPTER 37


Home


NOW


Anina pushed Matelda’s wheelchair on the boardwalk; it creaked over the slats. Olimpio walked beside them. The ocean breeze wafted over them as the sun warmed the village in tangerine light.

“I don’t think that the sky and the sea have ever looked the same twice in my lifetime,” Matelda commented. “There’s always something new.”

“Are you warm enough?” Olimpio asked.

“I have more blankets on me than my mama used on the tubs to raise the Easter bread.” The memory of kneading the dough, placing it in tubs, and covering it with baker’s paper followed by layers of blankets, where it would rest in a sunny window until the dough rose, was inseparable in Matelda’s mind from the memories of her mother, Domenica. “I still miss my mother. Isn’t it funny? You forget plenty, but never your mother.”

“Maybe that’s all you need to remember,” Olimpio said quietly, remembering his own mother, Marianna.

“Did your mother like me? You can tell me now. They’re all gone,” Matelda teased her husband.

“My mother thought you were a fine girl.” Olimpio caressed Matelda’s hair. “She thought you were blunt, but she appreciated your honesty. Most of the time.”

“I’ll bet she did.”

“Nonna, do you want some water?”

“Please, Anina. I am up to my gills with water.”

Anina’s face fell. Matelda changed her tone. “But there’s something to all the guzzling. I’m improving.”