The Signora was unprepossessing enough in her bloated shapelessness, her shabby dress and worn bedroom slippers; but, at least, she was someone to talk to, and they were a long time at breakfast settling the question of life in America. Before they left the table Noah asked about the girl at the portiere’s desk. Was she Italian? She didn’t sound like it when she spoke English.
“Rosanna?” said the Signora. “Oh, yes, yes, Italian. But when she was a little one — you know, when the Germans were here — she was sent to people in England. She was there many years. Oh, Italian, but una Ebrea, a Jew, poor sad little thing.”
The note of pity rankled. “So am I,” Noah said.
“Yes, she has told me,” the Signora remarked, and he saw that her pity was not at all for the girl’s being una Ebrea. More than that, he was warmed by the knowledge that the beautiful and unapproachable Rosanna had taken note of him after all.
“What makes her sad?” he asked. “The war’s been over a long time.”
“For some, yes. But her people will not let her forget what her father did when the Germans were here. There was the Resistance here, the partisans you know, and her father sold them to the Germans. So they believe. Now they hate her and her brother because they are the children of a Judas.”
“What do you mean, so they believe? Are they wrong about her father?”
“She says they are. To her, you understand, the father was like a saint. A man of honor and very brave. That might be. But when the Germans were here, even brave men were not so brave sometimes. Yet, who am I to say this about him? He was the doctor who saved my life and the life of my first son when I gave birth to him. That is why when the girl needed work I paid back a little of my debt by helping her this way. A good bargain, too. She’s honest, she works hard, she speaks other languages, so I lose nothing by a little kindness.”
“And what about her brother? Is he still around?”
“You see him every day. Giorgio. You know Giorgio?”
“The cleaning man?”
“He cleans, he carries, he gets drunk whenever he can, that’s Giorgio. Useless, really, but what can I do? For the girl’s sake I make as much of him as I can. You see the trouble with kindness? I wish to repay a debt, so now the windows are forever dirty. When you need that one he is always drunk somewhere. And always with a bad temper. His father had a bad temper, too, but at least he had great skill. As for the girl, she is an angel. But sad. That loneliness, you know, it can kill you.” The Signora leaned forward inquiringly, her bosom overflowing the table. “Maybe if you would talk to her—”
“I tried to,” said Noah. “She didn’t seem very much interested.”
“Because you are a stranger. But I have seen her watch you when you pass by. If you were a friend, perhaps. If the three of us dined together tonight—”
Signora Alfiara was someone who had her own way when she wanted to. The three of them dined together that night, but in an atmosphere of constraint, the conversation moving only under the impetus of questions the Signora aimed at Noah, Rosanna sitting silent and withdrawn as he answered.
When, while they were at their fruit and cheese, the Signora took abrupt and smiling leave of them with transparent motive, Noah said with some resentment to the girl, “I’m sorry about all this. I hope you know I wasn’t the one to suggest this little party. It was the lady’s idea.”
“I do know that.”
“Then why take out your mood on me?”
Rosanna’s lips parted in surprise. “Mood? But I had no intention — believe me, it has nothing to do with you.”
“What does it have to do with? Your father?” And seeing from her reaction that he had hit the mark, he said, “Yes, I heard about that.”
“Heard what?”
“A little. Now you can tell me the rest. Or do you enjoy having it stuck in your throat where you can’t swallow it and can’t bring it up, one way or the other?”
“You must have a strange idea of enjoyment And if you want the story, go to the synagogue, go to the ghetto or Via Catalana. You’ll hear it there quick enough. Everyone knows it.”
“I might do that First I’d like to hear your side of it.”
“As a policeman? You’re too late, Mr. Freeman. The case against Ezechiele Coen was decided long ago without policemen or judges.”
“What case?”
“He was said to have betrayed leaders of the Resistance. That was a lie, but partisans killed him for it. They shot him and left him lying with a sign on him saying Betrayer. Yes, Mr. Freeman, Ezechiele Coen who preached honor to his children as the one meaningful thing in life died in dishonor. He lay there in the dirt of the Teatro Marcello a long time that day, because his own people — our people — would not give him burial. When they remember him now, they spit on the ground. I know,” the girl said in a brittle voice, “because when I walk past them, they remember him.”
“Then why do you stay here?”
“Because he is here. Because here is where his blackened memory — his spirit — remains, waiting for the truth to be known.”
“Twenty years after the event?”
“Twenty or a hundred or a thousand. Does time change the truth, Mr. Freeman? Isn’t it as important for the dead to get justice as the living?”
“Maybe it is. But how do you know that justice wasn’t done in this case? What evidence is there to disprove the verdict? You were a child when all this happened, weren’t you?”
“And not even in Rome. I was in England then, living with a doctor who knew my father since their school days. Yes, England is far away and I was a child then, but I knew my father.” If faith could really move mountains, Noah thought. “And what about your brother. Does he feel the way you do?”
“Giorgio tries to feel as little as he can about it. When he was a boy everyone said that some day he would be as fine a man and a doctor as his father. Now he’s a drunkard. A bottle of wine makes it easy not to feel pain.”
“Would he mind if I talked to him about this?”
“Why should you want to? What could Ezechiele Coen mean to you anyhow? Is Rome so boring that you must play detective here to pass the time? I don’t understand you, Mr. Freeman.”
“No, you don’t,” Noah said harshly. “But you might if you listen to what I’m going to tell you. Do you know where I got the time and money to come on a trip like this, a plain, ordinary, underpaid cop like me? Well, last year there was quite a scandal about some policemen in New York who were charged with taking graft from a gambler. I was one of them under charges. I had no part of that mess, but I was suspended from my job and when they got around to it, I was put on trial. The verdict was not guilty, I got all my back pay in one lump, and I was told to return to duty. Things must have looked fine for me, wouldn’t you think?”
“Because you did get justice,” Rosanna said.
“From the court. Only from the court. Afterward, I found that no one else really believed I was innocent. No one. Even my own father sometimes wonders about it. And if I went back on the Force, the grafters there would count me as one of them, and the honest men wouldn’t trust me. That’s why I’m here. Because I don’t know whether to go back or not, and I need time to think, I need to get away from them all. So I did get justice, and now you tell me what good it did.”