The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany(76)

The guards would interrogate him at the border, harass him, and demand to know where he’d been. Of course in the end they would allow him to return to the insular world of East Germany. “Their mission is to keep people inside,” he explained, “not turn them away.”

Because who in their right mind would choose to return to the East?

“I will contact you once I am safely back in Radebeul.”

“You will have letters waiting when you arrive,” I promised.

“Wait until you receive my first letter.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Then you can write to me every day of the week.”

“But why must I wait?”

“The authorities open and censor the mail—sometimes they destroy it altogether. If they intercept a letter from you, they will know I have tried to escape. They will make me pay for this when I try to reenter.”

I shuddered, trying not to think of my husband being beaten by East German guards.

He took a small knife from his pocket and stood on a chair. Above our bedroom door, he carved a simple sentence.

We chose love.

PF & EK

We stood back and read the words. I fell into his arms, wishing I could die there.



* * *





I could have begged him to stay. He would have, I know this with my entire heart. But as he once told me, no person should have to choose between blood and water.

For the first time in my life, I was alone. My train left at four, giving me time to pack up the tiny apartment. But I couldn’t muster the energy. I wandered aimlessly around the simple flat, as if I’d been hollowed out, as if the very soul had been shucked from my chest.

I’d promised Rico I would return to Trespiano, but the thought of the cold stone farmhouse, my papà’s temper, made me weary. It’s possible I would be forgiven in time. But my parents’ forgiveness would come with a price. I would be expected to leave, to go to America with Rosa and marry Ignacio. And that was unthinkable. I was already married, bound for life, to a man I loved with my entire soul.

The hours passed. I didn’t pack—I couldn’t. I decided to wait one more day before returning home. I felt a little less alone in our sweet apartment, where Rico’s shirt still hung in the closet, where his toothbrush stood next to mine in a cup beside the sink, where I could sleep beneath the same tattered quilt we had shared.

Another day passed. Then a third. The trip back home loomed before me like a smoke-filled forest, one I’d soon have to enter. Dread set in. Then strength. By the end of the week, I’d made a decision. I would not return to the farm. I would not, could not, leave this little place above the bakery, the only place that had ever truly felt like home.

But Rico thought I was returning to Trespiano. And I’d agreed to wait until he was safely home before writing to him. He would be sending letters to Papà’s address. I wrote to Rosa and asked her to forward the letters from Rico that would surely come.

Within a week, I’d taken on a second job. In the mornings I made bread in the bakery downstairs, and now, in the evenings, I worked in the kitchen of a pizzeria a short walk away. Two paychecks, however meager, would provide enough money to scrape by.

Each day, I prayed for Rico’s safety, begged God to keep him healthy, to give him strength and courage. A month passed. Every morning, after my shift at the bakery, I hurried to the post office, my silly heart thrumming with hope that I might find a letter, forwarded from home. Instead, I found letters from Rosa, page after page, pouring out her heart to me, telling of the chasm she sensed between her and Alberto. She was convinced she didn’t deserve him, that he would one day leave her. She would wake at night crying, terrified Alberto would abandon her. And when she turned to him for comfort, he did not know how to give it. He called her silly, which only made her feel worse. She shared her fears with Mamma, who assured her that things would be fine as soon as she was with child. And then, at the end of each heartbreaking letter, she would add, Still nothing from Rico.

I sensed a change in my sister, a bitter obsession brewing. She had turned inward, consumed by her inability to make Alberto love her.

In my darkest hours, I wondered if love even existed. Was it possible we were both doomed to an agony of the heart, a longing to recapture something that was never ours to begin with?



* * *





In the dreary month of February, despair set in. I felt no sunshine. Laughter was a foreign sound. I spent my few hours of free time writing letters, begging Rico to return. Letters I knew I could not send. I filled pages, pouring out all my misery, admitting to him that I wasn’t as brave as I’d pretended to be. Nor as selfless. I needed him. It didn’t matter that his family did, too. I needed him more.

Each day was a monotonous grind, twenty-four hours of nothingness. I washed dishes at the pizzeria until midnight, and rose at four to bake bread downstairs at Piacenti’s Bakery. Exhaustion set in. From two in the afternoon until six, I lay on the bed in our tiny room, staring at the words Rico had carved above the door, desperate for sleep. But the bright sunshine stalked me. The four walls that once held laughter and passion became an oven, stealing my slumber. Sounds from the street paraded through the open windows—girls gossiping in front of the bakery, a woman’s pealing laughter. Sounds of a person I once was.

My lips were cracked. My mouth tasted like cardboard. I couldn’t keep anything down, not even water. One day, after hearing me vomit in the bathroom, my boss at the pizzeria sent me home early. It was nine o’clock, the streets already dark. In my mind, bad men were stalking me. Shadows that I was certain were wolves lurked in doorways. Faster. I had to move faster. But my feet were weighted in concrete. I could barely move. I made it to our building before collapsing in the stairwell.