“Well, how would I know?” he said.
“Because you do,” I said, looking at him.
He made a face, peevish. “Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t. Oh, Adam, what politics? Gianni didn’t have any politics. He just blew with the wind. We all did. The only party he ever cared about was the Maglione family. That was his politics.”
“His brother worked for the Germans.”
“Do you know that?”
I nodded. “And so did Gianni.”
He looked away, then put out his cigarette and picked up his hat from the table. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said finally. “But it’s got nothing to do with me.” He lifted a finger. “And it’s got nothing to do with you, either. Watch you don’t make a mess of things. All this huffing and puffing. Shall I tell you something? You will never understand this society. This isn’t even Italy. It’s Venice. Nothing has been real here since Napoleon. Nothing.”
“But it happened anyway. He worked for the Germans. He was killed. It happened.”
“Not where I live.” He stood, putting on his hat and looking out onto the square. “You see this? It’s like a jewel box. Beautiful. And nothing gets in.”
“And you’re the jewel, I suppose.”
He smiled. “You could do worse. Anyway, it’s what I like. Just the way it is. As far as I’m concerned, Paolo was a slow-witted boy who drove too fast. Gianni was a perfectly respectable man who gave the most boring Sunday lunches you can imagine. Once would do it. And that’s all. If they weren’t, I don’t want to hear it. Politics. Murk. You want to make everything murky. Well, I don’t. Not here.”
Gianni’s papers took no time at all. His businesses were all in the hands of managers, and Giulia, his heir, had already been to their offices, looking through the accounts.
“I thought it could be someone afraid of being caught. Everybody took a little during the war, to survive. But not enough to kill.”
How much was that? I wondered, but let it drop, not really interested in the businesses anyway. But the personal papers were disappointing too-a neat drawerful of bank statements and house accounts; another of official documents, birth, death, and accreditation, crowded with elaborate seals; some hospital paperwork; a few letters, none revealing; a small pile of receipts; a program from La Fenice; clipped articles from professional journals put aside for a rainy day. A blameless life, anybody’s.
We sat at the big mahogany desk in the library, a dark room that backed onto a side calle, away from the canal. Giulia had turned on the desk lamp, making the polished wood gleam. The house was as perfectly waxed and still as it had been after the funeral, maybe the way it would always be now, a convent quiet.
“But did he keep everything here?” I said, rummaging through the deep bottom drawer.
“Yes, I think so. And the albums over there on the shelf. Where I found the pictures for your mother. Maybe you should see the rest. What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. Him. People he knew.”
“There’s an address book,” she said, bringing it over.
For a few minutes we looked at it together, flipping pages. “That’s a patient, that one,” she said, and so, I assumed, were the others. And friends and dinner partners and tradesmen, all Italian. But what had I expected? Extension numbers at the Villa Raspelli? Checkmarks and combination letters, a coded secret life? I closed the book.
“Any diaries, anything like that?”
She shook her head. “No, only the Maglione books, from the old days.” She pointed to a shelf behind her, scrapbooks and odd-shaped journals, some bound in leather, others in gathered-together, yellowing folios. A few boxes, meant to look like books, for stacks of letters bound with ribbon. “They kept everything. For their history.”
“It must have stopped with him.” I closed the drawer.
“Well, my uncle did the notes. I remember him writing. My father was too busy for that.”
“But letters? There must be some letters. Your mother?”
“No. They never wrote. Or they’re gone.” She looked over at me. “Before-I never thought about it. They didn’t love each other. Maybe that’s why.”
We looked at the photo albums-stiffly posed grandparents, then the Maglione childhood, Gianni and Paolo in sailor suits, the usual. Then the book from which she must have got my mother’s pictures-sunny days on the Lido in wet wool bathing suits, groups lolling in front of changing cabanas.
“Which is your mother?”
“They didn’t meet till later. Look, Luca, before he became a priest.” A plump boy with a grin, years from piety. “I don’t know this one.” Standing next to Gianni.
“That’s my father,” I said.
“Oh.” She looked up at me. “Yes, I see it now. It’s strange, our parents together. Like the same family, but not the same.”
My father was squinting into the sun, but both of them were smiling. A day at the beach, a casual snapshot, no hint at all of anything to come, their lives twisted together.
“But where’s Paolo?”
“He was always taking the picture, I think,” she said, smiling. “No, here, the tennis one. My father didn’t like tennis, so maybe it was his turn with the camera.”
I took the picture out of the album and brought it nearer, looking at it closely. No hint here either-no Order of Rome, no politics, none of Bertie’s murk. He was standing against the net in tennis flannels and a white sweater with a chevron neck, his arm draped over the shoulder of another player, both of them holding their rackets at their hips.
“It’s sad to look at them,” Giulia said, moving away. “Everyone so happy. Does that make sense?”
I nodded. “What was he like?”
“Paolo? Uno vitaiolo. You know, always for the pleasure. Tennis. Those cars. Of course, when I was a child I thought this was wonderful. Another child, you know?”
“And then?”
“And then I wasn’t a child anymore.” She turned, facing me. “He was a Fascist. You’re surprised I say that? I know. Today, no Fascists. We were all in the resistance. I think we even believe it.”
“How do you mean, Fascist?”
“Fascist. He liked Mussolini. He liked the parades, dressing up, all of that. He was on committees-you know, they liked him because of his name. Of course no one listened to him, but it made him feel important to go to meetings. And after, the tennis. So not so serious-how could Paolo be serious? And then it’s the war, and everything’s serious. He’s too foolish to see what is happening to us, that it’s a catastrophe. He thinks the king will save us, make peace with the English king. Because he’s a king too. Imagine the foolishness of it. Well.”
“And after that?”
“After that, the Germans. And Paolo? He supports the Salo government, against the CLN, the partisans. It interests you, Italian politics?”
“It confuses me.”
“Yes,” she said. “But at the end it’s not difficult. If you’re with Salo, you’re with the Germans. So Paolo was too. Sometimes I think it was good that he died, before it was a disgrace to the family. Even for my father it was too much. Paolo was his brother, so that’s something sacred to him, but it wasn’t the same between them. The Germans, that’s something my father would never forgive.”
I looked over at her, expecting irony, but she seemed utterly sincere, guileless.
“They had a fight?”
“A distance. Maybe a fight, I don’t know. I was at school. And of course I wouldn’t speak to Paolo then. You know, the students, the way we felt-I was too angry with him. Maybe ashamed, too. My own family. So I didn’t speak.” She came back to the desk and looked down at the picture. “And then after he died, I remembered him like this. When he was so nice. My father too, I think. So quiet, days like that. You know, whatever he did, still a brother.”
“What about your father, his politics?”
She smiled. “Was he this, was he that? Nothing-he wanted to survive them. That’s what he used to tell me.
