“Fine,” Elisabetta said, defensive. “You keep the children away from the cats. No harm can come to these cats. They’re mine and Nonna’s.”
Nedda smirked. “She wasn’t your nonna.”
“She wasn’t yours, either. Sofia told me to expect one woman, a cousin. Your last names are all different.”
“Watch your step!” Martina raised her voice. “We could have you thrown into the street! We’ll tell Sofia!”
“Good luck,” Elisabetta shot back. “Sofia can’t run the restaurant without me, so she’ll never throw me out.”
“We’ll see about that!”
“Do it. But don’t let your children harm these cats.”
“Then get your ass upstairs! Stay out of our way, you bitch!”
“You stay out of mine.” Elisabetta headed for the stairs, upset.
“And you can’t use the kitchen anymore! You’re not allowed!”
“I eat at the restaurant anyway!” Elisabetta ran upstairs and locked her bedroom door, resolving that the cats would never go downstairs again. From now on, she would feed them and move their litter box to her room. She sat down on the bed, petting them and trying to calm down. All three listened to the clamor coming from downstairs.
Suddenly she remembered that there was a storage closet on the second floor, where Nonna kept her soup tureens that were too large for the breakfronts. Elisabetta couldn’t allow them to be sold off, too. She left the bedroom and hurried to the storage closet. She retrieved a tureen and carried it back to her bedroom, then returned to the storage closet again and again, until she had moved all of the tureens to safety.
When she was finished, she locked the bedroom door behind her and counted the beautiful tureens, which covered the floor. There were thirty-four, each with its matching lid and ladle. She scanned them with a loving eye, remembering how Nonna had shown her each one, educating her about its vintage and manufacturer. There was the ornate Capodimonte tureen, from an Italian manufacturer, with pink and yellow flowers and handles shaped like swans’ necks. An older majolica tureen with bright orange and green flowers, with fluted ridges in the bowl. A Haviland Limoges tureen, with pink flowers and gold-rimmed accents on the rim, handles, and pedestal. Nonna’s favorite was an authentic Minton of the Rococo Revival period, a rare pattern of blue and white flowers, its elegantly fluted lid filigreed with gold.
“Okay, let’s go,” Elisabetta said to the cats. She picked up one of the tureens and went to the small door on the far side of her bedroom, which led to a fire escape. It was on the back of the house and went to the rooftop, where she had a potted garden with herbs for the restaurant. The only access was through Elisabetta’s room, so nobody could go there but her and the cats. Rico and Gnocchi loved their private sanctuary and they walked up, their tails as straight as exclamation marks.
Elisabetta reached the rooftop and set the tureen down among the pots, then went back downstairs, retrieved another tureen, and brought it up. She worked until all of the tureens were on the rooftop, and when she finally finished, she exhaled with relief. The garden would be even more beautiful, because now it would feature Nonna’s tureens, planted in her memory.
Elisabetta felt her gaze travel upward into the dome of night sky, shaped like the underside of a tureen lid. She knew that Nonna was looking down on her, and Nonna understood that there was nothing more that Elisabetta could have done, except for rescuing thirty-four soup tureens and two cats.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Sandro
January 1942
Sandro stood outside the modest apartment house, on a residential backstreet in Ostiense in southwest Rome. Professor Tullio Levi-Civita had died in the house, just a few days ago. The professor had been sixty-eight years old, and a heart attack had taken his life. These days Sandro rarely left the Ghetto, but he had come after reading the death notice in the newspaper, published without any fanfare. Levi-Civita had received none of the memorials he deserved, the little man who was a giant in his field. Sandro wondered if anyone would ever even know of Levi-Civita, or if the Fascists would succeed in erasing him from history altogether.
An older woman dressed in fashionable clothes walked by, and when she glanced over, Sandro saw himself through her eyes, a thin young man with sunken cheeks, a worn muffler, and shabby clothes. He wondered if she could tell he was Jewish, for he felt his Jewishness now more than he ever had before, a paradoxical effect of the Race Laws.
It was a cold day, and Sandro wrapped his muffler closer, eyeing the house. He had followed Levi-Civita’s career, or what had been left of it, after the professors had been expelled. Levi-Civita hadn’t been permitted to teach anywhere, but Pope Pius XII had invited him to broadcast on the Vatican radio station, regarding new developments in science. Levi-Civita had become the first Jew ever to do so, but Sandro hadn’t been able to listen because he had been teaching.