Tuscan Rose (32 page)

‘Spain?’ Rosa’s heart plummeted. She had been frightened for Luciano because of his anti-fascist activities in Italy. But the war in Spain was a bloodbath. ‘Spain?’ she repeated, feeling faint. ‘They are fighting for the Republic?’

‘Yes,’ said Orietta. ‘They left several months ago.’

Rosa thought she might be sick. The Spanish army, in league with the Church, landowners and Spanish fascists, had risen in revolt against the Republican government. Italy was supplying arms and troops to the battlefront to support the conservatives. Mussolini had ordered that any Italians fighting against their own country were to be shot if captured.

‘Have you heard anything from them?’ she asked.

Orietta shook her head.

Rosa swallowed. Everything was well beyond pamphlets now. The casualties amongst the Republicans in Spain were enormous.

‘You came here to pray for your brothers?’ she asked Orietta.

‘Yes, I come every day.’ Tears welled in Orietta’s eyes.

‘I light a candle for them every day too,’ said Rosa. ‘Let’s pray for them together now.’

When they had finished praying, the women made their way outside the cathedral. Rosa noticed her friend looked thin and drained. Orietta’s clothes, while clean, were worn. Life must be hard for her with her brothers away.

‘Listen,’ Orietta said, taking Rosa’s arm and walking with her. ‘You mustn’t be a stranger because you and Luciano parted. I have always understood. Since he was a child, Luciano was not like other boys. Some men are meant to be alone.’

Rosa was grateful to Orietta for breaking the ice on that subject. She had to fight back tears. ‘You and I were like sisters,’ she managed to say.

Orietta nodded and smiled. ‘We still can be. How is Sibilla? She must be a big girl now.’

Rosa was glad to have the diversion of talking about her children because hearing that Luciano was in Spain brought the reality of what was happening closer to her. She had a feeling that no matter how safe she tried to keep her family, Mussolini was about to bring calamity on Italy. The foreign press were referring to him as the ‘worst of all European dictators’. The Italians should have stopped Mussolini when they’d had the chance.

It was a sign of Antonio’s faith in Rosa that he didn’t shrink from her suggestion that Orietta should work for him in the shop. She would earn more money there than at the patisserie. Rosa was busy with the children and organising the household and couldn’t keep up with the catalogues or help with the sales as much as she used to do. Rosa didn’t know of many men who would have tolerated, let alone welcomed, the sister of their wife’s former lover. But Antonio was special that way.

‘She has everything sparkling,’ Antonio said when he came home for lunch with Orietta on her first day at the shop.

‘Already?’ Rosa said with a smile. ‘You have a lot of furniture this month.’

Orietta blushed. ‘I never knew there was so much to learn about tables and chairs but I am enjoying it.’

‘She is quick,’ Antonio told Rosa. ‘She already knows her Louis XVI from her Louis XV and her walnut from her mahogany.’

The day was warm and the children, along with Giuseppina, joined them on the terrace for their gnocchi and peppers filled with rice and thyme.

‘I’ll come back at six o’clock,’ Antonio told Rosa after lunch was finished. ‘You remembered we are having dinner at the Trevis’ home this evening?’

Rosa nodded. Of course she had. She had picked out her dress weeks earlier: it was in silver-lilac charmeuse with a bias-cut skirt and halter-neck. Her bag and shoes were silver lamé.

‘Who are the Trevis?’ asked Orietta, while Antonio was embracing the children before parting.

‘Alessandro Trevi and his wife, Tullia, are old friends of Antonio’s,’ Rosa explained. ‘I’ve met them before, at a party at the Uffizi gallery, but this is the first time I am visiting their home. Antonio says they have the most beautifully decorated apartment in Florence.’

‘I would say this one was rather stylish too,’ said Orietta walking towards the foyer with Rosa. ‘Louis XVI!’ she announced, patting the armchair in the hallway. ‘Showing a more restrained elegance than Louis XV-style furniture and with cleaner lines.’

Both women laughed.

Rosa was impressed by the Trevis’ apartment the moment she set eyes on its polished parquet floors, oriental carpets and majolica vases filled with calla lilies.

‘Now let me show you some of the things your husband talked me into buying,’ said Alessandro, leading Rosa to an ebony cabinet with pietra dura panels.

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Rosa.

Tullia grabbed Antonio’s arm. ‘So you understand why we love him so much!’

Alessandro Trevi had white hair and vivid blue eyes. His wife, with her pointed nose and double chin, was not as handsome as her husband, but she was elegant and exquisitely dressed in a red chiffon evening gown.

Tullia glanced at Rosa’s chain with the cross and key. Rosa was wearing the diamond bracelet Antonio had given her for their wedding, but she was loath to go anywhere without her charms.

‘How unusual,’ said Tullia of Rosa’s jewellery. ‘Do they have a meaning?’

‘The key has been with me since birth,’ Rosa said. ‘It protects me.’

Rosa had thought she might be intimidated by the Trevis’ wealth, but instead she found herself fascinated by the apartment. It was much better than an art gallery because everything expressed the personalities of the owners. Many of the pieces had been collected by Alessandro and Tullia on their travels. When Rosa and Antonio were led to the drawing room to meet the other guests, Rosa’s attention was caught by the silk brocade sofas from China and an alabaster bust of a woman that Tullia informed her she had bought in Paris.

Tullia’s sister, Margherita, was a thinner version of her sibling. ‘Young people! How lovely!’ she exclaimed, standing up to greet Antonio and Rosa.

Rosa had not thought of herself as a young person for a long time, but she realised that age was relative. Margherita introduced her husband, a German by the name of Herbert Kauffmann, and his brother, Otto.

‘They are doctors,’ Tullia said with a merry laugh. ‘So if anybody chokes on the meatballs this evening they will be able to assist.’

The two Germans laughed but there was something uneasy about them. Rosa wondered if it was because they didn’t understand Tullia’s exuberant humour.

‘Well, I think it’s time we ate,’ Alessandro announced after the second round of drinks.

The dining room was equally impressive as the rest of the apartment, with a solid oak table and a view of the Duomo. Tullia guided her guests to their places.

‘Because you are the prettiest, I’m seating you next to my husband,’ she told Rosa.

For Rosa, the dinnerware was of more interest than the food. She admired the Haviland Limoges plates, hand-painted with leaves and berries, and the crystal glasses with the silver stems.

The conversation moved from the World Trade Fair, which was to take place in Paris the following year, to Amelia Earhart’s proposed crossing of the Pacific Ocean by aeroplane, to the Keeler polygraph.

‘But how does it work?’ Margherita asked Otto. ‘Can it really tell us if a person is lying?’

Otto dabbed his lips with his napkin before replying. ‘Well, you have a drum that rotates at a regular speed under some pens. Tubing is wrapped around the subject’s abdomen and chest to measure his rate and depth of breath. When the subject is questioned, the polygraph measures his physiological responses.’

‘How unnecessary!’ exclaimed Tullia. ‘I can always tell when Alessandro is lying. He goes red and sweaty and looks ridiculous.’

The gathering laughed at Alessandro’s expense. He blushed but took the embarrassment with good humour.

‘Are you looking forward to the Olympic Games?’ Antonio asked the Kauffmanns. ‘It must be exciting to have them in Berlin.’

‘We won’t see them,’ Herbert answered, looking away. ‘We will be here.’

The bitterness in Herbert’s voice surprised Rosa. Antonio had not meant to upset him. She changed the subject in an attempt to make things light again.

‘It’s nice that you are having an extended visit with your sister,’ she said to Margherita.

‘I’m afraid it’s for good,’ replied Margherita. ‘The laws passed by Hitler against Jews have made it impossible for us to continue to live in Berlin. Herbert and Otto can no longer treat Aryan patients.’

‘For years it has been my pride to save people and they have been grateful,’ said Otto. ‘But these laws have stripped us of everything, including our citizenship. It’s as if we are dirty outcasts.’

‘That’s terrible,’ Rosa said.

Alessandro sighed and put down his knife and fork. ‘The Germans used to be the most enlightened people in Europe: educated, tolerant, humane and reasonable. It’s as if some sort of evil has been unleashed in the country.’

‘The problem for me is not so much what the government did as how our friends reacted,’ said Margherita, her eyes misting over. ‘The women in my charity club stopped inviting me to functions; the grocer who I had visited every day for ten years put a sign in his window saying “No Jews”; German men who had been chivalrous suddenly pushed in front of me. I refuse to be reduced to a second-class citizen just to please the Nazis.’

Tullia turned to Antonio and Rosa. ‘I’ve heard that not all the Germans behave like that. Some of them tried to defy the new laws and continued to shop at Jewish stores and associate with their Jewish friends, but they have been so intimidated by the Nazis that they are now as terrified as the Jews are.’

Rosa caught the apprehension in Tullia’s voice. ‘Could what happened in Germany happen here?’ she asked.

Antonio was not a Jew by the Nazi definition of race, which classified someone as Jewish if they had three Jewish grandparents or practised the religion. But Rosa still felt afraid.

‘Mussolini may be many things,’ said Alessandro. ‘But, thank God, he is not anti-Semitic. We are safe.’

After the dessert dishes had been cleared away, Alessandro rose from the table. ‘What we need to do now is leave this gloomy talk behind,’ he said. He smiled at Rosa and Antonio. ‘I have something to show you that will impress you both, I’m sure: Antonio because of its structural beauty; and Rosa, because you are a musician.’

Alessandro and Tullia led the guests to the music room, which was as sumptuous as the rest of the apartment, with a gold Persian carpet and Savonarola armchairs with ruby red upholstery. Rosa’s eye was immediately taken by the centrepiece of the room: an ebony Bösendorfer piano.

‘Franz Liszt said the Bösendorfer was one of the only pianos capable of withstanding his energetic
fortissimo,’
said Alessandro.

Tullia laughed. ‘It’s crazy that we spent so much money on something no-one in our family can play. But it was too wonderful to pass by.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Antonio, opening the fallboard. The piano was sleek and unadorned. The only embellishments were the scrolled fretwork music desk and the decorative vine pattern on the inside of the fallboard. ‘What do you think, Rosa?’ he said, laying his hand on her back.

Rosa barely heard him. Her mind was spinning.
The piano suited her style perfectly: dramatic, rich and full-bodied.
She remembered the Marchese’s tears when his sister’s piano had been taken away. While there could be several Bösendorfers in Florence, Rosa knew from the tingling in her hands and toes that this one had been Nerezza’s.

‘It’s been tuned and cleaned up,’ said Alessandro, eyeing Rosa. ‘Would you like to play something for us? The Englishman I bought it from played it for me but I wouldn’t mind to hear how it sounds in this room.’

Rosa was trembling from head to foot. She wasn’t sure if she could play. ‘It’s far too elegant an instrument for my poor talents,’ she protested.

‘Nonsense,’ said Alessandro, pulling out the piano bench for her to sit on. ‘By all reports you are most accomplished.’

The bench matched the piano in its simple elegance. Rosa pulled it closer to the instrument. She was surprised to find it heavy to move. She hadn’t played the piano as often as she would have liked since the twins’ arrival, so decided to play Chopin’s Nocturne No 2 in E-Flat Major, which she knew very well by memory and wasn’t too demanding for her out-of-practice fingers. She hoped the piece would suit the piano and the room.

Antonio and the others sat down to listen.

Rosa had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach when she touched the keyboard—a queasiness like that she had
experienced in the first months of pregnancy. She looked down at her hands and saw that they were not her own. The narrow palms and elongated fingers were the same but Rosa had not worn rings since the Day of Faith. Now on her right hand she saw a silver rose-cut diamond ring and on the left there was a gold locket ring and wedding band. Suddenly, as if in a dream, Rosa felt herself drawn away from the piano. Another woman sat in her place. Rosa knew who she was, although she was even more beautiful than she had imagined. Nerezza’s dark skin was flushed and a spray of curls fell from her upswept hair and rested against her long, swan-like neck. She was fuller-figured than was currently the fashion but she was lovely. The vision faded and Rosa found herself back at the keyboard, playing the last line of the Nocturne. When she finished, she was out of breath and bathed in a perspiration.

The appreciative gathering clapped.
‘Brava! Brava!’

‘So wonderful, we are indeed privileged,’ said Alessandro.

Otto was smiling for the first time since the discussion about the Jews in Germany. ‘Chopin himself could not have played it better,’ he said.

Antonio sent Rosa a quizzical look. ‘You have always been an accomplished pianist,’ he whispered, ‘but that was the best you’ve ever played.’

Tullia and Margherita both praised Rosa, and she did her best to respond with good manners. But she was shaken. This vision was not like those she had experienced before. She had seen animals and people, even the King of Italy, but none of those visions had inhabited her body the way Nerezza had. What did it mean?

Rosa stood up and moved the stool back again. She noticed the music drawer under the seat. There was something in it that was making the seat heavier than it should be.