Nine Summers Page 19

  ****

  It was the end of the school year when Tante and I arrived in Trieste, so for the following three months tutors came each day to prepare me for the school entrance exams in September. First, I had to learn the Latin alphabet, then to read, write and speak Italian as well as study Italian history, geography and maths, not to mention the glory of Fascism and love for the Duce. Years later, I learnt how this had upset the family but they didn’t know what to do about it. For good measure, a Hebrew teacher came twice a week to ensure that I retained my mother tongue. I liked all my tutors and enjoyed the lessons.

  But I was terrified of Tante’s mother, Grossmutter Rosa. For Grossmutter Rosa I was the wildest, most ill-mannered child she had ever met. Her mission was to tame me, teach me good manners, to curtsey, and of course, to speak German. I dreaded the evenings after dinner when she brought out grammar books and Grimms Fairy Tales, which added to my nightmares.

  As I had no one to play with, I drifted towards the unused part of the back garden, where three citrus trees grew and scent wafted among overgrown shrubs and bushes. Here, I built my cubby house. I loved to sit on the pile of leaves I’d collected, and be transported into another world. Sometimes I heard my father play his violin, or my mother sing her favourite plaintive song about dreaming. My mother’s voice, or the sound of my father’s violin, made me cry. Occasionally, when puffs of breeze made the leaves shiver and sun rays sketched patterns on the ground, I’d see shadows dance and become spirits in the world I’d created in my cubby. Then I’d get up and start to dance with them. And as I danced, I prayed that they would turn me into a spirit, so that I could join their world. Now and again I saw tombstones slip forward slowly, followed by an upward sweep of shroud-like streaks rising from graves. When that happened, I’d rush into the open front garden, panic-stricken with fear, too terrified to wait and see what would happen next.

  The best friend I had was Berta. The first time I went shopping with her, we passed a troupe of uniformed school-children marching with their arms up in a straight salute. At the head of the file were boys holding raised flags and beating drums. I was mesmerised. ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘Balilla, piccole italiane, fascisti. It’s the last day of school,’ she said as she dragged me away. As soon as we were home, I rushed to Tante. ‘Can I go to this school with the uniforms and the flags and everything?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ she replied, and changed the subject. The family didn’t know how to deal with my confusion. Once, on the street, I saw a priest.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked. ‘That’s a priest. Christians have priests, like Jews have rabbis.’

  ‘What are Christians?’

  ‘It’s a religion, like being Jewish. In Italy most people are Christians.’

  I was stunned. I’d never heard of Christians. I’d assumed the whole world was made up of Jews, Arabs and British police. That’s when it was decided to send me to a Jewish school in inner city Trieste rather than the school closest to home.

  ‘But will I have a fascist uniform and be a piccola italiana?’

  ‘There’s plenty of time for that. You’ll have a nice white smock with a big blue bow.’ Tante didn’t know that it was compulsory for children in all Italian schools to wear fascist uniforms on special occasions. I was delirious when, soon after I’d started school, I got the uniform. But much to my annoyance, instead of the admiration I craved, the family ignored me when I paraded in it at home. Even Berta ridiculed me. Nobody dared enlighten me.

  ****

  As Galatea drifted on silently, I dug my head into Felix’s chest and cried. It was a relief when he said, ‘Time to turn on the engine and take down the sails.’ I pulled myself together, washed my face, put on sunglasses, and gave him a hug.

  ‘Welcome to Trieste Yacht Club,’ the marina supervisor called out from the office window as he saw us approach. ‘Make for the empty berth to port. When you’re ready, come up to the office!’

  The tables on the marina deck were crowded with diners. Some watched us tie up, and waved. Flags fluttered above the marina, seagulls circled and loudspeakers sang.

  When Felix came down from the office, I noticed him talking to an elegant couple in their 40s. The woman, exquisitely groomed, had coiffed dark hair and a spotted scarf around her neck. The man had a receding hairline, an aquiline nose, and wore wire-rimmed glasses.

  ‘They asked us to join them,’ Felix said when he came on board. ‘They’ve just come back from Greece. They’d like to know about the west coast of Italy.’

  ‘OK, I’m ready.’ I no longer felt embarrassed by our non-designer attire. Being foreign and from the Antipodes excused us from competing with the style-conscious Mediterraneans.

  We shook hands and introduced ourselves. ‘Claudio, my wife Eugenia…’

  Claudio motioned the waiter to bring two more wine glasses. The waiter came to take our orders.

  ‘Scampi fritti per me, grazie,’ I said. ‘You speak Italian?’ Eugenia asked me. ‘I did once, but now it’s rusty.’

  ‘But your pronunciation…you have no accent.’

  ‘I lived here for almost three years when I was a child.’ There was a long silence. I sensed their quick reckoning. Before their time. Fascism, the war…

  ‘When did you leave?’

  ‘We left before the war, we were Jewish,’ I said.

  She looked astonished, ‘My family is Jewish, my parents were interned for three years in Yugoslavia. They’re dead now. I was born after the war. So you went to school here?’

  ‘Yes, I went to the Jewish school in Via del Monte.’

  ‘My father’s uncle taught at that school.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Segre.’

  ‘Segre? Signor Segre? The scripture teacher?’

  Felix and I looked at each other in disbelief. He’d heard about my battles with Signor Segre.

  ****

  After three months’ private tuition I passed the entrance exam to third class. I was apprehensive on my first day at the Jewish school in Via del Monte. It didn’t look like a school. It was on the third floor of a building, and there was no schoolyard. But I liked the look of my form teacher, Signorina Windspach, with her dark smiling eyes and jolly round face. She introduced me to the class and sat me next to a girl called Fortunata Belleli. ‘After play lunch we have scripture,’ Fortunata told me.

  The class stood when Signor Segre, attired in a buttoned up dark suit and a homburg, entered the classroom. With his heavy black moustache and piercing black eyes, his face looked menacing. He surveyed the class, his eyes locking onto people’s faces like searchlights. Shivers ran down my spine. I sensed anger.

  ‘Buongiorno, Signor Segre!’ The class said in unison. Signor Segre returned our greeting. After a long silence, he signalled with a nod. The class commenced to recite: ‘Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad…’ I looked around. I was silent, had no idea what this was. As soon as the recital ended, the class sat down.

  ‘You!’ he shouted, pointing to me. ‘Stand up. Why didn’t you recite the Shema?’

  ‘I don’t know what it is, Signor.’

  ‘You! A child from the Holy Land! You don’t know the most important Jewish prayer?’

  ‘No, Signor.’

  ‘How is it possible a child from the Holy Land does not know the Shema? What sort of a school did you go to?’

  ‘Just an ordinary school, Signor.’

  The silence was tangible. Everyone’s eyes were on me. ‘Tell me then, you child from the Holy Land, do you write and sew on the Sabbath?’

  ‘Si, Signor.’

  ‘And I suppose you eat meat and milk at the same time?’ His eyes flashed. My head buzzed. Why these questions? What does he want?

  ‘Sometimes. It all depends, Signor.’

  ‘So you are not Kosher?’

  Kosher. I’d heard the word before, but what did it mean? ‘I don’t know, Signor.’

  ‘You! From Erez Israe
l!’ he bellowed. ‘You stand before the class and tell us that you don’t know what it is to be Kosher?’

  He stopped to catch his breath, then boomed, ‘You know what you are? You are a LIAR!’

  LIAR, LIAR, LIAR rang through my spinning head. ‘I AM NOT A LIAR! I DON’T TELL LIES!’ I shrieked. ‘Come out here!’ he commanded. I hesitated. ‘Come here, do you hear me?’

  I walked out slowly. ‘Hold out your hands! BOTH hands!’ He picked up a long ruler, raised it slowly, then slammed it down onto each hand. ‘And you shall get this every day until you learn to tell the truth! Do you understand?’ Tears of anger rolled down my cheeks. I thought of my teacher in Haifa, of my parents, my grandmother, my brother, my friends…

  Signor Segre turned away and continued with his lesson.

  ****

  The memory of Signor Segre has remained with me all my life. I said nothing of this, and tried to keep my face neutral as Eugenia said in disbelief, ‘So you remember him? I must tell my cousin, she’d be his granddaughter, I think.’

  ‘Oh yes! I remember him very well!’ I said, and changed the subject. ‘We’re looking forward to exploring Trieste, but we have to pick up our car from Florence first.’

  ‘We’d love to show you round but we’re leaving tomorrow. You’ll probably find Trieste hasn’t changed much.’

  I wanted to see the house where we’d lived in Barcola and perhaps ask to be allowed in. I also hoped to visit the school, but I didn’t know whether I could cope emotionally.

  Two policemen stood outside the front door of the building in which the school still functioned. Apart from Signor Segre, I’d been happy there. I loved the teachers and got on well with my classmates. But I didn’t see them after school. They lived on the other side of town around the area of the old ghetto.

  My heart raced as Felix and I approached the entrance to the school, when suddenly, I turned and ran down the hill as fast as I could. Felix caught me, and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘I didn’t think I’d make such a fool of myself!’ I cried.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, honey,’ Felix said. ‘Maybe I’ll be OK when we go to Barcola.’

  ‘But before that, let’s go somewhere less emotional.’

  We made for Café Specchi, where the elegant and sophisticated congregated in Trieste’s grandest square, Piazza dell’Unita. I still have vivid memories of Tante and her friends sipping short blacks, their voices ringing with laughter, while I polished off cassatas. But when Felix and I entered Café Specchi, it seemed a sad place. Perhaps it was the wrong time of day. Only a handful of people were there, and there was no music.

  I was in turmoil before we’d even reached our house in Barcola. A garage had been added but the pear tree still covered the pergola.

  ‘It must be at least 80 years old,’ I said. ‘There’s a stone table under it. My swing was under that pergola too.’ I stood in front of the large metal gate for a long time, then walked up to ring the bell. But I didn’t press the button. I burst into tears. ‘I can’t do it…I can’t.’ Felix put his arm around me, and we went for a walk along narrow back lanes where I’d once walked alone.

  ‘I guess this is where my passion for Italy started,’ I said as we pulled out of the marina, ‘…but I couldn’t have coped returning to Trieste without you, Puss.’

  chapter eight

  ‘Can you believe this is us sailing to Venice?’ I whispered as we backed out of Lignano Sabbiadoro. I took the helm, and Felix cleared the deck. It was a breathless, moonless night. Stars glittered low above us. The engine’s purring broke the stillness. We sat in silence and watched a sliver of moon peep over the horizon, and waited for dawn. At 4.30 a streak of pink lined the eastern sky. Slowly, a golden arc slid from the sea, a breeze stirred the water and caressed our cheeks — the whiff of a summer’s day.

  ‘Coffee and panettone?’

  The steam and scent of coffee, the texture of fresh panettone, the gurgle of water against the hull and an apricot sky enveloped us in a feeling of unreality. Our excitement was palpable. Neither the flat landscape nor the ugly apartment blocks along the shore detracted from the romance of approaching our dream city. We looked at each other in disbelief. Felix put his arms around me. ‘The breeze is freshening, I’ll put up the sails.’ He finished his coffee, then stepped up to the mast.

  To sail into Venice at dawn, as the mist rises and sunrays touch cupolas and spires, is to feel Venice. That’s when she sheds her grey silhouette and emerges glowing and golden.

  How many times had I conjured up the scene! How we’d approach the entrance to the lagoon, see San Marco, San Giorgio and the Doge’s Palace, just as sailors and merchants of old had done. And now we were almost there. Above us, seagulls soared and shrieked.

  Facing away from the coast towards the eastern horizon, my mind turned to the past, to that day in the autumn of 1202 when the blind, foxy Doge, Enrico Dandolo, had set out with the largest fleet ever assembled on that grand enterprise, the Fourth Crusade. In my mind’s eye I saw the spectacle of 500 ships manoeuvring in front of the piazzetta, crowded with people in finery waving and wishing them god speed, and where the crusaders’ ships filled the waters from the basin to the Lido, which we were about to enter.

  I saw galleys and argosies homeward bound, from the Levant, from Greece, from Cyprus, Crete, Corfu, from all parts of the empire, laden with silks and cottons, hides and furs — goods to fill shops and bazaars on the Rialto.

  Felix broke the spell. ‘Only 5 miles to the fairway.’

  As we approached the buoys, we changed course and sailed to the entrance between the breakwaters. To starboard stood a distinctive black and white chequered lighthouse, to port a tower painted with red and white bands. Our headsail billowed and the engine purred as we negotiated the fairway and drifted towards the Riva degli Schiavoni, Isola San Giorgio and the Bacino.

  ‘Keep going round in circles, I want to take photos!’ Felix handed me the helm. Dazed, I took the wheel, left the engine in neutral, and sailed into the milling morning traffic. Vaporetti swept past us, motoscafi sped in all directions, a gondolier emerged from somewhere, bounced off our hull, swore and moved on. I veered to port. The headsail flapped, and the boom swung across with a bang.

  ‘Jesus! You didn’t secure it properly!’ I glanced at Felix. He didn’t hear or notice. Legs astride, balanced against the aft rail, camera glued to his face, he was documenting ‘This Is Us Sailing into Venice’.

  As I manoeuvred back and forth, the headsail obscured my vision. In the mayhem I hadn’t seen the grotesque Club Med cruise ship steam out of the Canale della Giudecca in a collision course with our bow. As soon as I did, my brain froze. I veered sharply to starboard, which brought me into a collision course with a vaporetto ferrying people in the morning rush hour.

  Felix, still engrossed in his mission and oblivious to my near panic or our proximity to disaster, continued photographing. I steered to port, then to starboard, then back again. From under the sail I glimpsed people on vaporetti gesticulating wildly, pointing in all directions. I heard shouts of ‘In dietro! In dietro! Reverse! Reverse!’ and ignored them. By now I was in a nightmare movie and had lost track of reality. I wanted to call to Felix for help but my voice failed me.

  Suddenly Felix came alive. ‘What the fucking hell are you doing! There’s a bridge ahead!’

  ‘What bridge?’

  ‘Accademia! Can’t you see? Where’ve you been steering?’

  ‘Oh my God! We must be in the Grand Canal!’ Vaporetti listed as commuters hung over railings to watch the drama unfold. Craft fled as if by centrifugal force. Police boats flashed towards us.

  ‘Via! Via!’ loudspeakers boomed. Now my brain gave up completely. I let go of the helm. Felix grabbed it, spun it 180 degrees. The engine roared. Water frothed. From all sides came roars of ‘Bravo! Bravo!’

  Felix was in control. I collapsed. Policemen in speedboats, who had appeared from nowhere, wiped their brows. When I came to, I gave them a pain
ful, sorry look and said, ‘Ah, siamo stupidi turisti...’ I remembered the advice we’d been given: ‘When in trouble in Italy, it’s a good idea to make sure they know you’re foreign, act dumb and look very sorry…’

  ‘We are very sorry, we meant to go to the marina of the Porto Turistico on Tronchetto,’ Felix explained. They shrugged, smiled charmingly, ‘Ah, va bene.’

  I dived downstairs to hide and wait until the pandemonium had died down, then emerged again. With one police boat to port, one to starboard and a third to our rear, we motored in royal procession out of the Grand Canal to Isola del Tronchetto.

  One of the policemen recognised our Australian flag. ‘I have relatives in Australia.’ He beamed and regaled us all the way to Tronchetto with how his parents had once thought seriously about migrating to Australia. I now assumed every Italian had relatives in Australia.

  The policemen were angelic. They didn’t allude to our stupidity. As soon as they’d helped us tie up to four poles, they revved their speedboats, waved as if we were now best friends, and roared off towards the Bacino.

  ‘Do you think we’re the first idiots to sail up the Grand Canal?’

  ‘I doubt it, but we were bloody stupidi turisti!’

  The following morning Felix phoned the local sailing club at Sant’Elena. ‘We’re in luck. The guy said that locals flee Venice this time of the year, and yes, they have a berth.’

  ‘Great.’ I tried to sound upbeat. Subdued and silent, we motored past San Giorgio, Santa Maria della Salute, Palazzo Ducale, Riva degli Schiavoni. But soon Felix reverted to his old self. ‘Cheer up, honey. We’re in Venice. We’re in the Bacino, smack in the middle where the action is.’

  The sailing club was a simple marina with few facilities. Of the two in charge, one was an elderly man in baggy trousers, with a broad smile in a benevolent, weathered face. The second — young, athletic, square-jawed with designer stubble and dressed in jeans — caught our lines and helped us tie up. ‘Sydney, eh?’ He made it sound as if we’d come from the moon.

  ‘Quanto tempo, how long you stay?’ the old man asked. ‘Cinque, sei settimane, dipende, five, six weeks, depends,’ Felix said.