Authors: Andromeda Romano-Lax
“I understand.”
“Will you be here tomorrow morning?”
“As long as you’d like me to be here.”
“You’ll find a hotel?”
“Why not?”
“That’s good. It gives me time to think, time to explain.” She pulls a lipstick out of her purse and applies it at the table, trying to remake her face, though by now it is a lost cause—splotchy and puffy—and I don’t mind at all, not how she looks, nor that she has dropped my aching hand. She has been squeezing my knuckles for the last hour, as if she expects me to vanish as soon as she turns her back.
“I named him Enzo,” she says. “I know that is unusual, but I wanted to remember him. I wanted to remember everything. I hope you think it’s all right.”
“But why not ‘Cosimo?’ ”
“I was saving that for the second boy—which only shows how foolishly optimistic I was.”
“So—things didn’t turn out.”
“What things?”
“With your son’s father, I only meant.”
She stops, and closes the compact. “
Ernesto
.”
“Yes?”
“Are you paying attention?”
“Completely.”
“You didn’t have an idea, as soon as you talked to Zio Adamo?”
“Idea …?”
She states the facts again, directly, and I am left speechless, as speechless as when I first saw her, bathing nude in the tub, awestruck.
“He is completely normal. Ten fingers, ten toes, nothing extra and nothing forgotten.”
I probably look queasy, but so does she, reacting to my own surprised expression. “Is it all right?”
“It’s better than all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“
Certo
. It is beautiful and unexpected news, Rosina. It is a gift I don’t deserve.”
“None of us deserve anything,” she says, reaching up to wipe my cheek.
This is what I always expected her to say—that in the light of what happened to Cosimo, and to so many others, too, we do not deserve happiness, perhaps no one does.
“But,” she continues, “we can always hope for more than we deserve.”
I am still absorbing everything she has said when she asks, “Where would we live?”
I hadn’t expected that question, hadn’t expected to come to Italy again and have my life change so suddenly. But that’s the way it happened before; that’s the way it can happen now. Isn’t that why I had come?
“There is Munich, or Florence, if you prefer. Or maybe
somewhere far from all of this,” I say. “I don’t know. We can discuss it.”
“I’m not saying it will work. I’m not saying I’ll stay if it doesn’t work, Ernesto.”
“Of course.”
Something new comes into her face. It relaxes slightly, filling with the light of a new confidence. “But it could work, couldn’t it?”
“Yes.” And I have never felt so certain in my life of anything: “
Certo. Ja
.”
She rests her chin in her palm. “I might want to go somewhere new …”
We consider the possibilities that are close at hand, then allow our imaginations to take flight, to new continents where neither of us ever expected to travel, much less settle. Australia. The Americas. She seems open to anything, and that openness confirms what I remember and promises new discoveries to come. I want this conversation never to be finished—not because I dread that shift from perfect stasis to uncertain forward motion, as I once did, but because the conversation alone makes the world seem a better and more promising place than I have let myself believe for so many years.
We have drained our glasses, but continue to grasp the stems as if they are not empty. We are the last people in the restaurant. They have swept it out and stacked the outdoor chairs and removed all the white tablecloths except ours, and the owner is standing in the open doorway, smoking a cigarette, ready to be home himself but willing to give us this final unhurried moment, as if civilization depends on it.
T
his novel is populated by fictional characters whose lives are shaped by a factual event: the purchase of the ancient
Discus Thrower
statue by Adolf Hitler in 1938, against the objection of many Italians—a first step in what would become a seven-year looting campaign of Europe’s greatest artistic treasures. I have used some historical details from that ultimately-thwarted Nazi cultural project, while inventing others (including some minor variations in chronology) to suit this novel’s needs. Hitler’s most ambitious plans to collect art for a new museum in Linz, Austria, started taking their clearest shape about one year following the fictionalized storyline in this book. The
Discus Thrower
was repatriated from Germany to Italy in 1948, ten years after its original purchase;
it can now be seen in the National Museum of Rome. For a broader historical context, including the work of America’s “Monuments Men,” who helped track down and protect stolen art during and following World War II, I recommend
Rescuing Da Vinci
by Robert M. Edsel. Another entertaining book that inspired my (and Ernst Vogler’s) ideas about classical art and body image was
Love, Sex and Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives
, by Simon Goldhill. Much of my information about sculpture and historical context comes from trips to Munich and Rome, including visits to the National Museum of Rome and to Munich’s Glyptothek, where the
Discus Thrower
was on display for one year. (A brief history can be found in an excellent museum guide,
Glyptothek, Munich: Masterpieces of Greek and Roman Sculpture
, by Raimund Wünsche, translated from the German by Rodney Batstone.) Aside from research, inspiration for this story may have originated with my own hybrid identity: My first name is Greek, my heritage is Italian and German, and I married into a Jewish family. All of those threads shape my interest in 1938 Europe and the strange confluence at that time of influential and sometimes dangerous ideas about classical art, genetics, and politics.
My most sincere gratitude goes to Juliet Grames, my Soho Press editor and a person who won my respect even before this book brought us into closer contact, and thanks to my agent, Gail Hochman, who championed this project and made helpful editorial suggestions, as well as to the many people at Soho Press who shared their time and their talents: Bronwen Hruska, Ailen Lujo, Scott Cain, Anna Bliss, and Michelle Rafferty. The
Rasmuson Foundation supported this project with a fellowship, without which I would not have been able to travel to Europe in 2009.
Thanks are due my sisters Honorée and Eliza, practitioners of art and lovers of travel, with whom I should have visited Cold War-era Berlin more than twenty-five years ago, when I had the chance, rather than heading my own way to Barcelona. For being a general source of family support extended across many miles, thanks to Nikki and Leona; my mother, Catherine; my mother-in-law, Evelyn; and to all of the extended Lax clan, for ongoing support, as well as to my most trusted first reader, Brian, and my children, Aryeh and Tziporah. I am indebted to Alaska writers Bill Sherwonit, Lee Goodman, Kathleen Tarr, Doug O’Harra, Amanda Coyne, Eowyn Ivey, and the 49 Writers community of writers and readers, for literary advice and camaraderie. Thanks to Amy Bower, my childhood friend and fellow believer in detours and other life adventures; and to Stewart and Karen Ferguson, who have been helpful readers, listeners, and running partners, willing to share ideas and rants while pounding away stress. For assistance with language questions (any remaining errors are mine alone), I thank Charles Beattie, Keith Jensen, Nausicaa Pouscoulous, Filippo Furri, and Henriette Zeidler.