From the Fifteenth District Read Online Free PDF Page B

wore boots and a brown fur coat like a kimono. Among the men were Carmela’s little brother and his employer. The employer, whose name was Lucio, walked slowly as far as the hedge.
    “How would you like to do some really important work for us?” cried Mrs. Unwin.
    Mr. Unwin would come out and look at his wife and go in the house again. He spoke gently to Carmela and the twins, but not often. There were now only two or three things he would eat – Carmela’s vegetable soup, Carmela’s rice and cheese, and French bread. Mrs. Unwin no longer spoke of the Marchesa as “Frances” and the chauffeur had given up coming round to the kitchen door. There was bad feeling over the lawsuit, which, as a civil case, could easily drag on for the next ten years. Then one day the digging ceased. The villa was boarded over. The Marchesa had taken her dogs to America, leaving everything, even the chauffeur, behind. Soon after Christmas, the garden began to bloom in waves of narcissi, anemones, irises, daffodils; then came the great white daisies and the mimosa; and then all the geraniums that had not been uprooted with the rosebushes flowered at once – white,salmon-pink, scarlet, peppermint-striped. The tide of color continued to run as long as the rains lasted. After that the flowers died off and the garden became a desert.
    Mrs. Unwin said the Marchesa had bolted like a frightened hare. She, though untitled, though poor, would now show confidence in Mussolini and his wish for peace by having a stone wall built round her property. Lucio was employed. Mrs. Unwin called him “a dear old rogue.” She was on tiptoe between headaches. The climate was right for her just now: no pollen. Darkness. Not too much sun. Long cold evenings. For a time she blossomed like the next-door garden, until she made a discovery that felled her again.
    She and Mr. Unwin together summoned Carmela; together they pointed to a fair-haired boy carrying stones. Mr. Unwin said, “Who is he?”
    “He is my brother,” Carmela said.
    “I have seen him before,” said Mr. Unwin.
    “He once visited me.”
    “But Carmela,” said Mr. Unwin, as always softly. “You knew that we were looking about for a stonemason. Your own brother was apprenticed to Lucio. You never said a word. Why, Carmela? It is the same thing as lying.”
    Mrs. Unwin’s voice had a different pitch: “You admit he is your brother?”
    “Yes.”
    “You heard me saying I needed someone for the walls?”
    “Yes.”
    “It means you don’t trust me.” All the joyous fever had left her. She was soon back in her brown kimono coat out on the terrace, ready to insult strangers again. There was only Lucio. No longer her “dear old rogue,” he spat in her direction andshook his fist and called her a name for which Carmela did not have the English.
    T he Italians began to expel foreign-born Jews. The Unwins were astonished to learn who some of them were: they had realized about the Blums and the Wiesels, for that was evident, but it was a shock to have to see Mrs. Teodoris and the Delaroses in another light, or to think of dear Dr. Chaffee as someone in trouble. The Unwins were proud that this had not taken place in their country – at least not since the Middle Ages – but it might not be desirable if all these good people were to go to England now. Miss Barnes had also said she hoped some other solution could be found. They were all of them certainly scrambling after visas, but were not likely to obtain any by marriage; the English sons and daughters had left for home.
    Carmela still went over to France every Friday. The frontier was open; there were buses and trains, though Dr. Chaffee and the others were prevented from using them. Sometimes little groups of foreign-born Jews were rounded up and sent across to France, where the French sent them back again, like the Marchesa’s shuttlecocks. Jews waiting to be expelled from France to Italy were kept in the grounds of the technical school for