Maria Grazia left the next morning. Beatrice accompanied her to the train station for her to return to Rome.
"Please do not talk to anyone about anything that has happened here, wait for me to come back, and we will see how to deal with it," she asked of her daughter.
On her way back to her aunt's house, she stopped for coffee at a small bar on the main road. For several days she had not responded to Romeo's text messages, and now she had a chance to do so.
"I can finally hear your sweet voice; I thought you had abandoned me to the dogs. How are things going? He asked with curiosity mixed with a bit of sarcasm that, as always, came out amazingly natural.
"Romeo, Romeo, the issues, as you call them, are out of control, and now emotions and feelings of pain and betrayal are in charge. Over the phone, I cannot say more, other than that my heart broke beyond any possible imagination."
"I hope you have all your questions answered," he said.
"I got a lot more than I bargained for. My mind still can't absorb everything. We'll talk when I get back."
When she left the bar, she took notice of the passersby. A young woman was pushing a baby stroller, an older man walking with a cane, and a group of young people in sportswear running around the park, passing a man walking his dog. She looked at them and wrestled with the question if fifty years ago, people just like these were involved in the persecution of Jews and their extradition to the Germans. How did it happen? And why?
Beatrice understood from her aunt's story that the fascist Marco Pellegrini, despite blackmailing Lazzaro Levite, Clara, and Michele's father, and betraying them to the Germans, nevertheless saved Clara and her brother by hiding them in the basement of the house, perhaps intending to abuse Clara. For a moment, she thought of going to Marco Pellegrini's house and settle accounts with him. The feelings of revenge she felt were so intense that her heart pounded wildly in her chest, and thoughts raced through her mind to eliminate that villain.
She lit a cigarette, chain-smoked two of them, and then thought, "I must not act when I am full of rage; I must calm down and reason."
When Beatrice entered the house, Aunt Clara was lying on the couch with her eyes closed. She walked over to take a close look and lightly touched her forehead. "I'm still alive," Clara screamed.
Beatrice jumped back, "I just wanted to make sure you're not too hot," she lied. Looking at her pale, skinny aunt laying there with her eyes closed and her mouth open, one could think she was dead.
"Auntie, how old were you when they took your parents to Auschwitz?" Beatrice asked.
"Michele was thirty, and I was twenty-eight," she answered.
"And your parents, Lazzaro and Sara, how old were they? What about your grandparents"?
"My father was fifty-six, and my mother was fifty-one."
"I would like you to show them to me. I have a box full of photos, but I do not know who is whom," Beatrice stated.
"Next time you come, bring along the photos."
"Can you continue to tell about your experiences during the war until the liberation?"
"Yes, after we have lunch, I will tell you, but now I will cook us some delicious minestrone."
While Aunt Clara was cooking, Beatrice took the opportunity to call Romeo once again.
"Please could you check with your sources whether a lawsuit ever was filed against Marco Pellegrini after the war and if so, what was the outcome?" Beatrice asked.
"I'll call you if I have any answers. As for your aunt, please do not take everything she says as absolute truth. She has been living alone for many years and may have developed theories that she believes in, but it is not certain that it is the real truth," he said, choosing his words carefully.
"Do you want me to doubt the words of my aunt who lost her parents in the holocaust and went through humiliation and physical and mental abuse?"
"Everything might be true, darling. I understand your bitter disappointment, but reason, that's all," he said, trying to defend himself.
"I do not doubt Clara's testimony," she said.
After they had eaten, they sat next to each other, and Clara took Beatrice's hand and held it tightly. "As the days went by, the tension and fear grew that they would come and imprison us as well. At one point, Marco informed us that he had obtained an order for the foreclosure of the house in favor of the fascist government. He explained that now no one would come to the house as it is known to be uninhabited. He also added that the Germans were retreating from Sicily, and the American army was advancing towards Rome, which made us very happy. We hoped that all would end shortly and we would be reunited with our parents.
Marco did not stop abusing me and would come every day or two and force me to have relations with him. He claimed it was all out of love and unrelated to the situation. On the one hand, I disliked him physically. He smelled like a beast and was rude in his behavior, but on the other hand, he was keeping us safe. We knew that without his intervention, the Nazis would have sent us too to the camps."
"What happened after the liberation? After you already knew you would never see your parents, what happened to him? And what about the house?" Beatrice asked, wiping tears from her eyes.
"We listened to the radio all the time. Some stations asked that the citizens not leave their houses, while the fascist stations continued to broadcast lies. Marco stopped showing up at our house. After hearing that the Germans were retreating north of us and battles were taking place, we dared to venture out in the street. We saw American fighter jets flying north low above our heads; Rome was liberated. The threshold of fear had gone down, and with it came to our great hope that our parents will return. Marco had vanished into thin air. We were terrified to ask as we did not know what was happening yet. We continued life as usual. We searched every possible hole in the house for the hiding place we knew our father had constructed and hidden our money in. We found it inside the fireplace in the living room, right inside the chimney. We took out the little we needed to live on."
Beatrice looked at the clock on the wall and noticed that it was almost midnight. She had already decided to leave early the next morning and informed Clara of her intentions, promising to return soon to her with the box of photos.