My Name Is Vittoria by Dafna Vitale Ben Bassat

Author:Dafna Vitale Ben Bassat [Vitale Ben Bassat, Dafna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

Profughi Ebrei

(Jewish Refugees)

It was cold, and the scent of urine and fear hung in the air. Dirty and desperate, I lay down next to the children, asking that slumber bestow a few hours of oblivion on me. But the fear and the worrying for Bruno left me awake almost until dawn.

That night—the first without Bruno—was when a big hole opened in my stomach, when worry started eating at me. There, in the gap that opened inside me, was where the tumor later settled and started gnawing my insides. I don’t remember how I managed to fall asleep, but I recall waking up to the smell of urine in the hall and to the sound of persistent rain on the hall’s roof.

I woke up on the cold floor of the gymnasium with worry spreading throughout my being that Bruno and Maurizio hadn’t arrived yet. The story about what happened to Bruno, who stayed with Maurizio in the house after we left, I heard much later, from Bruno.

He said it was strange for him to be in the abandoned house without Carlota and without us. Maurizio went in and out of the house numerous times until that night, he arrived and ate his dinner in deafening silence, after which he said to Bruno, “Tomorrow morning we leave.”

Ten-year-old Bruno was scared to disappoint his father, and that’s why he had trouble falling asleep. He tossed and turned all night. When his father came to wake him, he was already sitting on the bed all dressed up holding the little bag that had been prepared for him the night before.

It was six o’clock in the morning when they arrived at the train station.

At the station, someone from town, who worked at the cheese shop on the street near our home, approached Maurizio and asked him, “Aren’t you afraid the Nazis will take you?”

Maurizio didn’t reply but pulled Bruno by the hand to his side. In the meantime, the train arrived, and Maurizio bent over to Bruno and said, “This man might tell on me. If so, I’d rather that you go to where TO is so they won’t take you with me. They are taking people to labor camps.”

The children called me “mother and Maurizio called me “TO,” and when Bruno told me this story, the word “TO” sounded so peculiar in his mouth. Maurizio also told him, “In your pocket, there is a note saying where you need to go. If anyone asks you, tell them that your mother is there and that your father isn’t with you. Here’s the ticket. I will take the next train. When the train reaches Milan, you will meet me, and we will both board the train to Como, but we will not talk to each other.

“If anyone asks you who I am, act as if we don’t know each other.

“We don’t know each other,” he said, and pushed Bruno into the train that had just stopped, as its door opened.

This was the scene that brought an end to my eldest boy’s childhood.

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