Scegli prima un capitolo o un punto di partenza per la voce. Il testo accessibile è disponibile qui sotto; per i PDF l’edizione impaginata conserva pagine e immagini dell’originale.
17
For a moment the woman said nothing.
Then she shifted the shopping bag to her other hand.
“There used to be people around here who remembered everything,” she said. “Now there are fewer of them.”
“Do you know anyone I could ask?”
The woman studied her again, this time with curiosity rather than suspicion.
“Try the little stationery shop near the church. The owner kept it after his father died. His family has been in this neighborhood longer than I have.”
“Thank you.”
Alessia had already turned when the woman spoke again.
“Signorina?”
She looked back.
“People hid many things during the war. Not only from soldiers.”
Alessia felt the words settle somewhere beneath her ribs.
“From whom?”
The woma n gave a small shrug.
“Sometimes from their own families.”
The stationery shop was narrow and cool, its walls crowded with notebooks, pens, old postcards and shelves that seemed to have been built for another century.
Behind the counter sat an elderly man reading a newspaper.
18
Alessia placed a photocopy of the envelope in front of him. She had left the original safely at home.
He adjusted his glasses.
“1943,” he said.
“Yes.”
His finger moved over the address.
“This house belonged to more than one family over the years.”
“Do you recognize the handwriting?”
He shook his head. “No. But I recognize the way the address is written. People did not always put names on letters they wanted delivered quietly.”
Alessia leaned closer. “Quietly?”
“A boy might give it to a cousin. A girl might trust a neighbor. During the war, the post was not the only way a letter travelled.”
He looked at her over his glasses.
“Especially a love letter.”
Alessia took the locket from her bag.
“Have you ever seen this?”
The man's expression did not change at first.
Then his eyes narrowed.
He did not reach for it.
“Where did you get that?”
The question came too quickly.
19
Alessia's heartbeat changed.
“It belonged to my grandmother.”
He looked again at the tiny portrait inside.
“Are you sure?”
“It was hidden with her letters.”
The old man closed the newspaper.
For several seconds the sounds from the street seemed unusually loud.
“I cannot tell you who he is,” he finally said.
Alessia heard the difference immediately.
Not I don't know.
I cannot t ell you.
“Why not?”
He pushed the photocopy back toward her.
“Because old stories are rarely owned by only one family.”
“Then you do know something.”
He stood and moved toward a shelf behind him.
For a moment Alessia thought he intended to end the conversa tion. Instead, he took down a thin cardboard box and opened it on the counter.
Inside were old postcards and photographs of the neighborhood.
He searched slowly until he found one showing a small piazza and a church facade darkened by age.
“This church?” A lessia asked.
20
He nodded.
“The bells could be heard from your grandmother's street.”
Alessia stared at the photograph.
Tomorrow, after the bells.
Her skin prickled.
“What happened there?”
The man closed the box.
“If you want the truth, don't begin with what happened.”
“Where should I begin?”
His gaze dropped to the locket.
“With who was forbidden to love whom.”
Outside, the midday light struck the stone so brightly that Alessia had to narrow her eyes.
She stood beneath the church bells with the photograph in her hand.
The letters had led her to an address.
The address had led her here.
And for the first time, someone other than her grandmother's silence had confirmed that there was a story to find.
Alessia looked up at the bell tower.
She no longer wondered w hether the past had been hidden.
She wondered who had needed it to stay hidden.
21
PART II
LOVE IN TURMOIL
CHAPTER FOUR
THE STORM OF WAR Palermo, July 1943
The first explosion came before dawn.
The windows shook hard enough to wake the entire house, and a glass fell from the kitchen shelf and shattered on the floor.
She was already awake.
For weeks, sleep had come in fragments. Rumours moved faster than certainty: ships seen offshore, aircraft overhead, soldiers passing through, families preparing bundles in case they had to leave with no warning.
She crossed the dark room barefoot and reached the shutters just as another distant blast rolled across Palermo.
Her mother called her name from the corridor.
“Away from the window.”
She stepped back.
On the chair beside her bed lay a folded piece of paper she had read so often that she knew every line by heart.
Do not believe that I left because I stopped loving you.
She pressed the letter against her chest.
He had been gone twelve days.
22
No one in the family knew where he was. More precisely, no one admitted knowing.
Her father had forbidden his name inside the house.
That had not stopped her from thinking it.
Another explosion sounded, closer this time.
The family moved downstairs, carrying blankets, water and the few things they considered impossible to abandon. In the stairwell, neighbors whispered prayers. A child began to cry.
War had changed the meaning of ordinary objects. A loaf of bread became security. A candle became preparation. A knock at the door becam e fear.
And a letter became proof that someone still existed.
Hours later, when the immediate danger had passed, she slipped outside.
The city looked wounded.
Dust hung in the air. Shutters were broken. People stood in doorways calling names and exchanging news. Somewhere a church bell rang, irregular and urgent.
She should have gone back.
Instead, she walked toward the small piazza.
Toward the place where she had once told him she was not afraid.
He was not there.
Of course he was not there.
Still, she wai ted.
Five minutes.
23
Ten.
Then she saw a boy crossing the square.
He could not have been more than fourteen. He approached without greeting and held out an envelope.
“For you.”
Her breath caught.
“Who gave you this?”
The boy shook his head. “I was told not to say.”
Before she could ask anything else, he disappeared into the street.
Her hands trembled as she opened the envelope.
The message inside contained only a few lines.
I cannot come to the church again. They are watching us. If I stay, I put you in danger. If I leave, I may lose you. I do not know which is worse.
She closed her eyes.
At the bottom of the page was the same unfinished - looking signature that time would later blur almost completely.
But in 1943 she knew exactly whose hand had written it.
She knew the sound of his laugh. The way he lowered his voice when he spoke to her in public. The way he had once touched her wrist beneath a table because even holding hands had been too dangerous under her father's gaze. She remembered, too, the one spr ing night when fear had briefly fallen away and they had believed the future belonged entirely to them.
She also knew why her family would never accept him.
It was not only war.
24
It was a promise made years before on her behalf.
A marriage discussed between families as though affection were something that could be arranged after the fact.
Her father called it security.
She called it a life chosen by someone else.
A sudden noise made her turn.
Across the piazza, two men stood beneath an archway.
One of them w as watching her.
She folded the letter quickly and slipped it inside her dress.
The man did not move.
She began walking.
Not toward home.
Toward the sea.
The streets narrowed around her. She kept her pace steady even when fear told her to run.
At the water front the Mediterranean was almost offensively beautiful, bright beneath a sky that carried war toward the island.
She stopped only when she was certain no one had followed.
Then she took the locket from beneath her collar.
His photograph was inside.
“You promised,” she whispered.
The wind lifted strands of hair across her face.
25
She remembered the last evening they had stood together near the church. He had told her that if the war separated them, she must not confuse absence with abandonment.
“And you must not confuse obedience with love,” she had answered.
He had smiled then, but there had been sadness in it.
Now the words frightened her.
Because the war was no longer approaching Sicily.
It had arrived.
And somewhere between the bombs, her father's plans, and the man she loved, she understood that soon she would be forced to choose.
What she did not yet know was that someone else had already made a choice for her.
26
CHAPTER FIVE
FORBIDDEN AFFECTIONS Palermo, July 1943
The decision was announced at dinner as though it had already been made.
Her father did not ask whether she agreed.
He placed his fork beside his plate, wiped his mouth with the napkin and said, “The families have spoken. When this is over, the marriage will take place.”
For a moment she though t the distant thunder was another explosion.
Then she realized it was only a cart passing over the stones outside.
The smell of roasted onions suddenly turned her stomach. She pushed her plate away and blamed the heat, although the evening was not especially warm.
Her mother kept her eyes lowered.
“To whom?” she asked, although she already knew.
Her father's expression hardened. “Do not embarrass yourself.”
The young man chosen for her came from a family her father respected. He was considered depen dable, respectable and suitable. Those three words had been repeated so often that they had begun to sound like a sentence handed down by a judge.
She had nothing against him.
That was almost worse.
How could she explain that a decent man could still be the wrong man?
“I don't love him.”
27
Her father's hand struck the table.
The plates jumped.
“Love,” he said, lowering his voice, “is not what keeps a family alive.”
She thought of the letter hidden beneath the lining of her drawer.
No, she thought. Sometimes love is what keeps a person alive.
But she did not say it.
Not yet.
Later that night, her mother came into her room.
She closed the door carefully behind her.
“You must be careful.”
“You knew?”
Her mother did not pretend to misunderstand.
“Mothers know mo re than their daughters think.”
“Then help me.”
A shadow crossed her mother's face.
“I am trying to.”
“By letting him marry me to someone I don't love?”
Her mother sat on the edge of the bed. For several seconds she stared at her own hands.
“You think choi ces are simple because you are young.”
“And you think obedience is the same as safety.”
Her mother looked up sharply.
