“Matt-uh-zee,” one of the men called out in a singsong fashion. “Matt-uh-zee?” The mispronunciation of their family name told the Mattiuzzis that the mob did not know them. The floor above them shook violently as the looters trampled through the workroom. Their footfalls were so loud the Mattiuzzis believed they might come through the warped floor.
The Mattiuzzis froze, barely able to breathe. They heard laughter, which sent a chill through them.
“Smash the wheel,” one man said.
“Can’t get it to move,” another said.
“Take the papers.”
The ordinary sounds of the workroom, the hum of the wheel and the tinker of the tools, were replaced by an ugly overture of violence, the swing of wooden bats destroying their worktable. The looters picked up the tools the jeweler had staged and destroyed Mattiuzzi’s property with them too. Mattiuzzi felt the blows to his shop in his body as they smashed the window and shattered the glass in the picture frames and mirrors. They even swung at the lightbulbs overhead until nothing was left but wire.
“Go upstairs!” a man barked. “Make work of it!”
The apartment was his wife’s domain. She took her husband’s hand and gripped it as she imagined their feather beds ripped at the seams and the destruction of the wooden rocker her husband had made for her before Piccolo was born. She pictured the hand-carved spokes of the chair ripped from their sockets and the tongue-and-groove skis that curved the supports snapped in half. Ruined. Carolina thought of Gloriana’s room and her dollhouse. She had made her daughter a rag doll when she was little. “I have Fissay,” she whispered to her mother. Too old to play with dolls, Gloriana treasured her childhood toy because her mother had made it especially for her. The girl was not about to allow a group of thugs to destroy her mother’s handiwork.
More men poured into Mattiuzzi’s building, tramped up the stairs, only to return to the shop moments later, once again shaking the floor overhead. The family heard the footfalls cross from the back of the store to the front. They heard the tinkle of the bells over the front door as the mob left through the open frame. Mattiuzzi put his head in his hands. The front door of the shop had been a work of art, inlaid with the finest Scottish lead glass made in the mills of Edinburgh. They are destroying their own creations, Mattiuzzi thought.
After a few minutes of silence, certain they were gone, Piccolo whispered, “Let’s go up, Papa,” as he lit the oil lamp.
Mattiuzzi shook his head no, blew out the lamp, and looked up when the workroom floor creaked over their heads. Someone figured out where they were hiding.
More footsteps clomped through overhead as several men joined the man in the workroom.
In the basement, the Mattiuzzis dared not move. Soon the lingering footsteps crossed the workroom and followed the rest out the front door. They heard the jingle of the bells again as the door shook and the looters climbed through it.
“They’re gone,” his wife whispered.
“I’ll go look,” Piccolo said.
“We will not go upstairs until the sun comes up.”
“I’m afraid, Papa,” Gloriana whispered.
“Don’t worry. They’re cowards. They won’t show their faces in the light.”
“But, Papa . . .” Piccolo began.
“McTavish is coming for us at daybreak. If he says it’s safe, we go up. Not until then.”
The Mattiuzzi family settled in their hiding place.
Mattiuzzi’s father had been an immigrant who married a fellow Italian upon his arrival in Glasgow. Mattiuzzi felt indebted to Great Britain for the good life he enjoyed with his wife and children. The family had flourished in Glasgow. Proud Scots, Mattiuzzi had joined the British Army to serve in the Great War in France, fighting in the Battle of the Somme. They were active in community life. Carolina led the Thistle Sewing Circle, one of the oldest Scottish women’s clubs in town. His daughter had won an essay competition at her school, titled “Scotland for One and All.” His son, Piccolo, was in love with Margaret Mary McTavish, a family with a plaid whose father owned the emporium next door. It was Lester McTavish himself who had warned Mattiuzzi about the night of sticks and stones planned against the Italian Scots. He had heard about it after church in a gathering of Glaswegians. The merchant had hustled home that morning to warn his friend. There was not enough time to flee; instead, they quickly hatched a scheme. Now, they were living it.
Mattiuzzi lit the oil lamp. He thought of home. But it wasn’t the green hills of Bardi, Italy, covered in sunflowers that he pictured; it was the Highlands of Scotland, where he’d taken Piccolo to hike during the summer since he was a boy. Mattiuzzi had taught his son to fish in the same river where he had learned to fish as a boy. They camped in the open air and ate wild raspberries in the sun. The heather graced the hills, drenching them in blue. The air in the Highlands was the sweetest Mattiuzzi had ever breathed. But those mountains and the fruits of that river no longer belonged to him. The Scot in him wanted to fight back, while the Italian in him hoped to endure. Mattiuzzi was a man without a country, even though he had been willing to die for it. It was pure luck that he hadn’t died in combat, because the loyalty only went one way.