Some Bitter Taste (20 page)

He said.'You’ll excuse my not getting up,’ and indicated a chair. ‘I’ve been expecting you. I thought, to tell you the truth, that you might have come before this.’

‘Thank you. I would have,’ said the marshal, settling into a big, cool leather chair, ‘but I was told that you were dead.’

‘Not yet,’ said the lawyer with a smile, ‘not quite yet.’ The smile faded. ‘But poor Sara, now. Dead without really having lived. It’s Sara you’ve come about, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s Sara,’ the marshal said, ‘and that’s the impression I got of her, too, though I didn’t know her at all well.’

‘You didn’t? I must say you surprise me. I understood you were a valued and trusted friend to our unfortunate Sara. You really do surprise me indeed.’

‘No, no …’ The marshal felt a bit embarrassed. He might have taken it as a compliment if he’d remembered to go and see her a bit sooner. If she weren’t dead. T only met her the once. She came to me not long before she died and told me she felt … well … threatened. I’m afraid she didn’t tell me much about her circumstances—in fact, nothing I could make any sense of at all. Sometimes you only realise when it’s too late that if you’d trusted somebody they might have helped you. She did say, though, that she had a lawyer and I advised her to talk to him … to you. I thought that you, knowing more about her, would be able to judge …’

‘Oh dear…’ D’Ancona rested his head in his right hand for a moment in silence. He sighed and looked up at the marshal, a searching look; searching, perhaps, for the source of Sara Hirsch’s absolute faith in this stranger. The marshal looked back at him, silent, troubled. At last the lawyer decided, You and I, marshal, should have met before this. Together … well, well … useless speculation.’

‘Yes. I’ve thought about it a lot. As I said, I only met her once. She expected a lot of me, by the sound of it, but you could be wrong about her trusting me, unless it was with hindsight. That does happen. When it’s too late we feel the goodwill, know we could have, should have spoken, trusted somebody more. Talking to you she maybe realised she could trust me but I’m here today because she didn’t. I know nothing about her. I don’t know why she died as she did, even though I’ve found the men responsible. I only know what was in two psychiatric reports, written by doctors she couldn’t or wouldn’t confide in, and what I found, or perhaps I should say didn’t find, in her apartment.’

‘I see.’ The lawyer fell silent, thinking this over, looking at his hands, which rested now on the desk. They were pale, shiny, the joints a little deformed, perhaps by arthritis, large pale age spots on the backs.

So, was this going to be a repetition of his conversation with Sara Hirsch, though without the tears? Well, he would ask no questions. If the man wanted to talk, he’d talk, but the marshal had wasted enough time as it was.

‘I can imagine,’ the lawyer said at last, ‘the difficulty Sara would have posed. She was afraid and she wanted your help, just as, when she lost her grip on life, on reality, she was afraid and needed psychiatric help, but she had a broader, more long-term agenda and so she wasn’t open, frank, in either case.’

‘And you? After all, she’s dead now.’

‘So whatever her agenda was I can tell you about it now? Yes. Yes … that’s true as far as it goes and I can certainly unravel some of the mysteries of Sara’s life for you.’

‘Some.’

‘I, too, Marshal, have an agenda, and a bigger, more global one than Sara’s, though they touch at some points.’

He was going to be as secretive as Sara. He would yield a few facts with no reasons, the marshal could see it coming.

‘Don’t consider yourself unreasonably disappointed.’

The marshal wasn’t having any of this. You said you expected me sooner and I told you I thought you were dead. I’m sorry to be blunt about this but you knew you weren’t. You also knew that Sara Hirsch was. You knew she’d been to see me. Her death was in the papers as a murder story. Why didn’t you come to see me?’

‘A reasonable question. I waited, watched …’

‘Murder investigations can’t wait. After forty-eight hours they’re cold.’

‘But it wasn’t, as I now understand it, a murder. Is that correct?’

‘Legally, no. Morally—’

‘Ah, morally … morally … there we are looking for what is good, true, rather than what is legally tenable. I can feel your resentment, your disapproval, even. You have a job to do, but I have mine and when you know what it is—and I will tell you—you’ll understand me. First, though, we must think of you. I know from Sara that you realised at once how the threats directed against her had to do with her apartment.

‘You were right. The visits, the anonymous communication, were intended to frighten her into leaving. She had the usufruct of that apartment and the one below it, as had her mother before her, as long as she remained resident in it.’

‘So if she left she lost her right to it?’

‘Exactly. Also the income from the third-floor flat, whose tenant was paid off before the pressure on Sara began. She was in difficulty without that income but she had no direct control. The building belongs to a trust.’

‘Was there a private contract, stipulating these terms, in her safe?’

‘There was.’

The lawyer was hesitating but the marshal would not be stopped now.

‘Was Jacob Roth Sara’s father?’

‘He was.’

‘But he never married her mother.’

‘No. He never married Ruth. Jacob had just gone to England on business in 1943 when the Germans occupied Florence. His father, Samuel, naturally afraid for his son’s future, advised him to stay there. He left Sara’s mother, Ruth, whose parents had sent her to the Roths in Florence for safety, already pregnant. She had told nobody. Who could she tell? Jacob was gone. Her parents had been taken away in Prague. Her survival depended on the Roths and they were now at risk from the occupying army. They saved her. They had her taken into a convent and baptised. They arranged an Italian passport for her through the Jewish community here. I myself had a hand in that. I was involved with the Delasem, in Via de’ Rustici, an organisation set up to help Jewish immigrants. In the shelter of the convent the child, Ruth, gave birth to a child, Sara. The Roths saved what they could: their son, Sara, Sara’s heritage—two valuable paintings which had arrived rolled up in her suitcase with some mementos of her family history—and the few pictures and objects of value they owned themselves, which we buried here in the garden at the back of my house. Having saved what they could, these good people were arrested by the gestapo and sent to Fossoli, from where Italian Jews were deported to Auschwitz.’

‘And you? You were here then?’

‘I was here. They came into this house as they did the others. There were sufficient objects of value to satisfy the exigencies of the officer in charge. They didn’t touch my wife. I was very fortunate.’

‘But…’

‘But?’

‘I’ve heard some of this already from the sisters in the convent, but what I can’t understand is why, after the 1938 race laws, any Jews who, like you, could afford to, didn’t flee.’

‘Marshal, we are Italians, you and I. We both know, through the jobs we do, that passing laws is one thing, enforcing them another. Nobody ever believed those laws were anything other than a sop to Hitler or that they would be seriously applied. And remember, too, that Italian Jews are first and foremost Italians. It’s not because we’ve been here for six centuries, which you could say of Jews in many other countries, but because Italy has only existed, politically speaking, for one and a half centuries, and we were instrumental in its creation. Being merchants, travelling freely and frequently, having contacts throughout the country and throughout Europe, who better to act as lines of communication, who more useful in bringing about the Risorgimento? And didn’t we then fight for our country in the First World War?’

‘I hadn’t thought … I suppose I’ve never had occasion to give it much thought. Even so, I know that in the thirties, what was happening in northern Europe was known here, through those same lines of communication. People like Ruth Hirsch, the people you helped through this organisation … why here? This was a country under Fascist rule.’

‘And one of the other things you’ve never had occasion to consider is that there were Jews here who supported the Fascist regime. That surprises you? It’s true. They considered themselves perfecdy safe and many of them were so. A lot of refugees, on the other hand, made this an intermediate stop, realised some of their assets, particularly those with artworks to sell, and moved on—to America if they could afford it.’

Why was it difficult to ask? Anyway it
was
difficult, and knowing the answer he was going to get didn’t make it any easier. D’Ancona evidendy understood.

‘You didn’t know Jacob Roth. He was a complicated man, a disappointed man, but he was not all bad.’

‘None of us are that. He made a fortune during the war.’ Not a question but a statement without a trace of expression in his voice or on his face.

‘He made a fortune, yes. Quite a substantial fortune. Those who fled took what they could carry. Jacob’s clients came, like little Ruth, with paintings rolled up in their suitcases. They sold them to Jacob and went on their way.’

‘He made a fortune buying valuable paintings at low prices from fleeing Jews and presumably sold them at a huge profit after the war?’

‘In any war there are those who make great profits, Marshal.’

‘But he was a Jew!’

‘And so must be among the righteous? And are all Germans wicked?’

‘No, no … that would be ridiculous. There are good and bad people everywhere. No …’

‘But it’s easier for you to conceive of innocent Germans than of guilty Jews?’

‘I … yes. If you mean am I shocked by what Jacob Roth did, yes.’

‘Then, Marshal, you are a racist. Look, to be a victim is a tragic misfortune: it is not a virtue, a virtue which by some magical form of osmosis becomes an attribute of every member of the race. This is central to what I am trying to do. That is, it’s my greatest problem. The emotional immaturity which will not allow Jacob Roth’s sins to be as normal as any other man’s. For me, Jacob Roth did a great wrong. For you, a Jew did a great wrong. We cannot easily understand each other. Consequently, I shall tell you only what is relevant to Sara’s death whilst assuring you that Jacob did nothing that was illegal.’

The lawyer paused and bent to reach into the desk cupboard to his right. He seemed to be struggling.

‘Can I help you?’

‘No. It’s just a bit cumbersome.’ He managed to lift an oblong cardboard box onto the desk. ‘These are the things Sara’s attackers were looking for. The things you are looking for, too, I think. She brought them here for safekeeping, according to her, on your advice.’

‘On my advice … Well, she did right. It’s what I would have advised had I known then that they existed.’

‘She really told you nothing? You might help me with the lid. It’s close fitting … save my standing … thank you. Perhaps you’re surprised to find the contents so unexciting.’

‘No, no. I knew something about these things from a little girl, a neighbour’s child. She was shown some photographs that she described to me.’

‘Here.’

Then the marshal really was surprised. He was holding the photograph he had so wanted to see, the one of Sara’s parents, Jacob and a very young Ruth. It was just as the child had described it, though she hadn’t noticed, looking at the old-fashioned clothes and the mournful browns of the faded print, that Jacob was not only tall but very good-looking. Ruth, was thin and gawky, though her big dark eyes and fine features promised beauty. What was unexpected was that whereas he had thought of a snapshot preserved in a bit of tissue or an envelope, this photograph was an enlargement. It was framed, too, in a Florentine frame of the sort sold in Piazza Pitti. There was no mistaking that marbling.

‘She didn’t always keep this hidden, I see.’

‘No, indeed. Ruth always kept that photograph in her drawing room. It was the only one of them together, you see. Sara hid it because of recent events. The ones in the envelope were always in the safe for obvious reasons.’

It was a stiff card envelope and large black-and-white photos carefully wrapped in tissue paper.

‘The flowers.’

It was D’Ancona who was surprised now. ‘She showed someone these pictures? Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure, yes. To the same little girl. Everybody confides in someone, and a stranger, or at least a person not involved in our lives, is often the safest bet. Will you tell me about the flowers?’

‘I think I must. As you say, we all confide in someone. But I must ask for your assurance that what I tell you goes no further.’

The marshal stared at him. ‘I can’t give you that. You know I can’t.’

‘But the men you arrested know nothing of this.’

‘Or anything else. They did what they were told to do. By Rinaldi.’

‘Ah, yes. Rinaldi.’

“You know him?’

‘I knew him when he was a shop boy, working for Samuel and Naomi Roth. He has been very fortunate. The Roths befriended him when he was orphaned of his father during the war. He lived with his mother, who rented the first floor where I imagine he still lives. Jacob let him take over the business, said he had taste …’

‘It was Rinaldi who told me you were dead. Does he know how Jacob made his money?’

‘He knows something of Jacob’s life but not that. He was a child in the thirties. Rinaldi is a problem and he certainly has something to answer for as regards Sara’s distressing end, but if you will be patient with me I know we’ll find a solution. Shall we first consider the painting? As I said before, Ruth arrived from Prague with two of them. They were her future. Her father trusted the Roths with them and the Roths in turn entrusted them to me before they were deported. They lay for some years, along with other pictures bought by Jacob and a few valuable pieces from the shop, in a safe buried in the garden here. When Jacob returned he took everything away. One of Ruth’s paintings he sold for her then. A donation was later made to the convent which had sheltered Ruth and little Sara. The rest of the money was invested for their support.’