CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY-THREE
Marco
June 1950
Marco stood in front of the bar, wearing an apron and a contented smile. The sun shone on a temperate morning, and customers had begun to make their way to the outside seating area for breakfast. He enjoyed running the bar, and he had already made a down payment on another location in Trastevere. He had changed the name of Bar GiroSport to Bar Terrizzi, and his dream was to own a string of Bar Terrizzis, which would cater to tifosi in his father’s memory. He was a son not only of Lazio, but of Beppe Terrizzi.
Marco turned out to be an excellent businessman, and soon they would have enough money to move to an apartment of their own. A doctor had diagnosed his reading problems as “word-blindness,” or dyslexia, a neurological condition that had nothing to do with innate intelligence. The diagnosis had made him feel better, and his reading skills were improving, as a result of exercises that the doctor had given him.
He glanced down at the riverbank below, where young Sandro and a group of his friends were playing on the bank of the Tiber. Sandro’s light brown hair brightened in the summertime, some strands turning as gold as the sun, and the boy stood out as the tallest and leanest in his class, built like a sharpened pencil, as his father had been.
Marco’s heart filled with peace, and his thoughts flowed freely. He had kept his vow to Sandro, loving Elisabetta with all his heart and little Sandro as his own. They were as close as any father and son, though he and Elisabetta hadn’t yet told Sandro about his paternity. They intended to do so, but Marco was leaving to her to decide when the time was right.
The war years had been devastating, and though those times were behind them, their memories were always with him. He thought every day of his father, of Aldo, of Sandro, of Massimo and Gemma, whose grave he had moved to the Jewish section. Rosa and David now lived in London with their two children, visiting Rome from time to time. His mother, who still worked in the kitchen, reveled in her grandchildren and kept alive the memory of those they had lost.
Massimo had never returned, and the horror of the Holocaust had been revealed to the world. The Ghetto Jews, who had been rounded up on the October 16, 1943 rastrellamento, had been sent to Auschwitz, and of the twelve hundred men, women, and children who had been deported that day, only sixteen had survived—fifteen men and one woman, Settimia Spizzichino. The Nazis had conducted subsequent roundups, but despite them, about ten thousand of Rome’s twelve thousand Jews had survived by hiding in the Vatican, monasteries, convents, and homes.
It had always bothered Marco that no globally watched trials, like those at Nuremberg, had been held to obtain justice for the murders of the Ghetto Jews. A military tribunal did try Lieutenant Colonel Kappler in Rome, and he received fifteen years in prison for his extortionate demand of gold from the Ghetto Jews. He was also sentenced to life in prison for another massacre he had ordered at the Ardeatine Caves. Marco had been surprised to learn that a regular visitor of Kappler’s in prison was Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, whom Kappler had tried so hard to murder. The monsignor and the Nazi came to know each other, and in time, Kappler converted to Roman Catholicism.
“Marco, you’re letting him play down there, by the river?” Elisabetta appeared at his side with a wry smile.
“Why not? We did.” Marco put an arm around her, holding her close. Today, she had on a dress he loved, one with yellow checks, and she was more beautiful than ever, since she was three months pregnant. They were both delighted that Sandro was going to have a little brother or sister, and Marco didn’t prefer either gender, as long as the baby liked bicycles.
“But how can you reach him, if something should happen?”
“Nothing will happen. Anyway I’ve been waiting for you to come down. I have a surprise.” Marco kissed her on the cheek, then turned to the brown bag beside him, retrieved the thick packet, and placed it on the stone wall. “I think this belongs to you.”
“My old manuscript? How funny!” Elisabetta smiled, running a hand over the title page. “A Talkative Girl. Where did you find it?”
“In the cellar, in one of the boxes from your old place. You told me you had written a book, but you never showed it to me.”
“It wasn’t very good.”
“I don’t believe that, and you used to talk about wanting to be a writer.”
“All young girls talk like that.” Elisabetta shrugged, but Marco saw temptation flicker through her lovely eyes.
“Don’t you think of writing, still?”