Face/Mask Read Online Free PDF Page B

out the overhead exhaust pipe. The black smoke spread gradually upward into the damp air, bringing to mind dark stories Joe had heard in his youth.
    He remembered his uncle Silvio, sitting in an old armchair, an empty bottle of Barbaresco at his feet, telling little Giuseppe, in a voice made hoarse by weeping, about the black smoke that once poured out of the stacks at Risiera di San Sabba . The concentration camp had been built in the 1940’s, and had been the major industry in Trieste for three years.
    Silvio, who’d been a raw draftee just out of his teens, spent six months as a guard there until the Allies overran the camp in 1943. In later years he would tell his impressionable young nephew stories about working under the Nazis, seeing men and women gathered like herds of cattle, sent to a death which denied they had ever existed. Silvio’s descriptions of entire families, Jews, Slavs and who knew who else, walking quietly to their deaths, had terrified little Giuseppe, until he was certain that one day black-shirted Nazis would come and get him too. Until the sight of exhaust coming out of a garbage truck brought up horrible memories that weren’t even his own.
    Silvio had been haunted by his nightmares for over three decades. Eventually all the alcohol he consumed no longer provided the buffering fog he needed to get through each day. He took his life, sitting on that same old armchair that Giuseppe once imagined he lived in, with a Luger he’d brought home from the war.
    Joe’s thoughts snapped back to the present. His past was filled with as many dark memories as happy ones. He’d been spending too much time with only his thoughts for company since he’d moved to Montreal, still hesitant about wandering out alone in the huge metropolis.
    While Allen went to work and the boys attended school Teresa volunteered at the chest hospital each day. Joe understood that she needed this work to give herself a sense of purpose outside the confines of home, although he worried that she might be overwhelmed by all the suffering that she saw. Still, spending her days with an old man that she hardly knew anymore made no sense. But for a few hours each day, until the house filled up again with the noise of an active family, Joe was lonely.
    “ Basta! ” he said out loud. Since when did he feel so sorry for himself? He had much to be thankful for, and it was up to him to adapt to his new country. Just the other day Teresa had driven him to the local supermarket where he could buy what he needed to make their suppers, a task that he’d volunteered for soon after his arrival. The quality of the food was unimpressive, (he’d noticed that all the vegetables smelled like plastic) and the prices were exorbitant. Still, she’d explained to him, they were among the luckier families in town who could afford to eat whatever they pleased.
    He’d mentioned to her a man known as Tony the Butcher, whom he’d heard of through friends back home, but this had led to her warning him against buying food which didn’t have administration stamps. He had no idea if Tony’s food was stamped or not, only that the man’s cousins in Miramare had often bragged of his popularity with Montreal’s Italian population.
    Joe thought that in a few days, once he’d gotten his bearings a little more, and once this disgusting rain ended, he might head down to the area that was known as Little Italy, buy some decent groceries and surprise Teresa and her family with a truly delicious meal. From what he’d been told, Tony’s was also a place where he could while away an afternoon drinking espressos and discussing politics. And that wasn’t a bad way for an old man to spend his time.
    He was slightly in awe of how Teresa and her family treated the rain as a minor inconvenience that hardly slowed them down in their daily routines. But Joe hated the smell of sulphur which caused him to wear his air-mask even when it wasn’t an orange alert day. And the