Free The Italian Romance by Joanne Carroll

nodded.
    â€˜He was a good man,’ Jacob said. He turned around and sat on the wide windowsill. He looked at his shoes.
    â€˜Poor Susanna,’ Sonia said. ‘Was she all right?’
    â€˜Poor darling,’ Rachel said. She sighed, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’
    Her father said, ‘Ah, she was terribly upset, wasn’t she, my dear? Poor child. They should have married a few months ago, as they’d intended. But then he got hooked up with all this business. Too late now.’
    â€˜Too late,’ Rachel said. ‘Take life when it comes, that’s what you learn.’ She tapped the sheets of music against her thighs to straighten them.
    Jacob said again, ‘He was a good man.’
    â€˜I just don’t know who he thought he was fighting,’ the older man said. His face was creased in struggle with this incomprehensible problem.
    Rachel held up a finger to her lips. ‘Ssh, Primo, ssh,’ she said.
    He lowered his voice obediently. ‘We’re all Italians, aren’t we? Why turn on each other?’
    Sonia looked at Jacob. She was not unintelligent. But she had long ceased to wonder at the world and its doings, and now she could not understand it at all. Her brother raised his brows, just like their mother, and turned his back on them to examine the snail or the troupe of ants or whatever was causing such intrigue outside the window. She’d felt safe in this house, always. And always her father’s presence, his deep voice and his smell of cigar and cologne, had given her all she needed to rid the world of demons. But not today. And she didn’t know why.
    Her mother said, ‘The Americans and the British are coming. That will put the cat among the pigeons.’ She half-rose to straighten her skirt. ‘Mark my words.’
    â€˜Mark your words?’ Primo said. ‘Mark your words? What do you mean by that? You’ll have to stop listening to all this gossip, Rachel. I told you.’
    â€˜Well, you may call it idle gossip but everyone else seems to know it’s a well known fact what these Germans are doing to Jews. Everyone knows.’ She displayed her palms to the air, astonished at her husband’s recalcitrance. It was a game they played.
    Primo looked at Sonia. A smile of conspiracy brightened his eyes, and he nodded his head in the direction of his wife, shrugged his shoulders. Sonia was supposed to smile in return. But her gaze was restless. She looked at Jacob’s back, at the cold marble fireplace. She thought she heard something. ‘Is that the boys?’ she asked. She walked to the door.
    â€˜Sit down, Sonia, sit down. You’re making me seasick,’ her father said to her.
    Suddenly Jacob said, ‘All right, then, why did you ask us to come over? What’s worrying you, if you’re so unworried about ... everything?’ He seemed to run out of steam at the end, unused to speaking with disrespect to his father. ‘Sorry, Papa, but I amworried for my wife and my children. Sonia’s all right, she’s a Christian and her son’s a Christian, and her husband is Italian.’
    â€˜As are you,’ Primo said.
    â€˜I don’t mean to disregard you, Son,’ Jacob said. His own big, dark eyes looked at her with fear that he’d gone too far with her, too.
    â€˜No, no,’ she said. She wanted to walk down to the kitchen, to ensure for herself that the boys were ensconced around the kitchen table, with huge plates of steaming pasta and sauce in front of them.
    Jacob continued, ‘But it’s true, Papa, you know it. She’s safe because of Francesco. My wife and my son and my daughters...’ He raised his hands to his head. ‘What might happen?’
    â€˜Oh, enough!’ Primo clapped, just once. ‘This is what I mean. Listening to gossip, ridiculous gossip.’ He cast a glance at his wife which was meant to cut the feet from under her. She did indeed