Magda snatched it from Chiara’s fingers and barked. “Yes! That’s it!”
“Oh, good. I wish you had mentioned it sooner. Or that I remembered it when you said you lost an amulet. I think of amulets as stones or shells.”
“It’s probably an error in translation from German. Regardless, thank you.”
“Glad I could help. What is it anyway?”
Magda shot a glowering stare at Chiara, who held up her hands, “Okay, okay, I don’t mean to pry. It’s unusual, that’s all.”
Twitching her hair back over her shoulder, Magda mumbled, “My mother gave it to me as a child.”
“Ah, so it has sentimental value.”
Magda shuddered before guffawing, “Ha! No, not at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.”
With that, Magda dropped coins in the copper plate, turned on her heel, and, leaving her cappuccino untasted, walked with stately purpose out the door. Chiara watched as the door closing behind Magda spurred her steps, and she fairly flew down the street, away from Bar Birbo.
Magda turned left out of Bar Birbo, tears clouding her vision. She didn’t know where she was going, she just knew she had to move, to escape the images crowding her head.
But the voices only got louder the farther she got from Chiara’s gentle bewilderment.
“Magda! You idiot! What will the Gestapo say when they see you here with your hair all untidy like a Jew!”
“Magda! What is this I hear about you whispering during the prayer for our Führer at school? Didn’t you think for a moment of the shame you were bringing on your family?”
“Magda! You don’t need second helpings, you fat cow!”
Her mother’s voice chased her down the street, her father added the icy undertone.
“Magda, get in here. I heard about you speaking to a Jew on the street outside the bakery.”
“Magda, if only you had never been born. Then I wouldn’t have this shame of a daughter who is an idiot.”
The cries threatened to erupt out of her, she had to get home, she had to get home! She couldn’t shame herself by collapsing in the street. Furiously, Magda wiped her eyes and gulped for breath. Where was she? Where was she? Ah, in the piazza. Stop! Think! She ordered herself. Turn right, then at the end of the alley, a left and then she could rush to her door. Magda narrowly avoided banging into Luciano sitting on the bench. “Scusi. Entschuldigen sie.”
Luciano looked up. “Hey! What the—Magda?” His voice wavered with drink.
“Leave me alone!”
Luciano pressed down on his cane to reach out to Magda, but she batted away his arm as she hurried away. He plopped back onto the bench and tried to corral his blurry thoughts into order. What was the matter with Magda?
Meanwhile, Magda stumbled over a loose cobblestone dashing down the alley, then careened around the corner.
Her hand curled tightly around the amulet, until she could feel the cold metal biting into her skin, a familiar sensation which helped clear her mind. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” she chanted under her breath.
Her parents were dead. Long dead. Buried in a Nazi graveyard somewhere in Germany. They couldn’t hurt her anymore.
But those voices lacerated her soul. She had to quiet the voices. They had only haunted her when she thought about the box under her bed. Now they were unleashed, and more clamorous than ever.
Fumbling, Magda removed her key from her pocket and stabbed the lock several times before she was able to pop it open and rush inside. As if chased, Magda pivoted around the door and slammed it shut with all her weight, turning the lock.
She sighed.
But who was she keeping out?
The voices, the voices were still with her. Taunting her. The voices jeered while Magda sank to the floor, head on her knees, and sobbed.
Luciano continued to sit, planted, long after Magda’s back receded down the alley. He tried in vain to process her hunched posture. Even his sluggish brain registered her shape as uncharacteristic. She wasn’t a pleasant person to interact with, but she had admirable posture—erect and confident. Imperious, at times.
An hour later, his mind kept returning to the puzzle that was Magda, running sloppily, practically falling into the rosebushes.
Another hour later, and the clawing hunger was stronger than the remaining drink in his brain. He needed to move, but exhaustion settled like a mantle over his body. His mind was still stuck on Magda.
A far off feeling within him flickered in sympathy. She was clearly cowed by pain. And pain was something Luciano understood. His eyes welled with tears at the thought of so much pain in the world. This world that was so evil, that delighted in tormenting those with open hearts. Though frankly, he’d never before considered Magda someone with an open heart.
Luciano tipped his face into the sun, which aggravated those easy tears. The numbness was wearing off. He needed more wine. He’d move in a minute, he just needed to see if she appeared, so he could watch her from a distance. No, she wasn’t his beloved daughter, but something about her slid into a place within him. It’s what kept him coming back to this bench, to see her crossing the piazza, her eyes wary and her shoulders curved inward. Yes, one thing she shared with Giulia was a lack of comfort with her space in this world. A lack of surety. He wondered where that had come from in Giulia. He and his wife had doted on her as a child, a teenager, a woman. They could never believe they made something so precious. He blamed Massimo for turning his daughter into a walking apology.
In any case, though seeing Massimo’s new wife grated against the wound in his heart, he also felt compelled to seek her out, to seek out this pain, again and again. He found himself saving the bulk of his wine for the late afternoons, so that he could have the
