“I see.” Mother Constance nodded slowly. “You don't think she could be away?”
Serena shook her head and brushed away the tears with one long graceful hand. “Where would she go?”
“To Rome perhaps? On family business?”
Serena's eyes grew instantly hard. “She has no business there anymore!”
“I see.” She didn't wish to press the girl further. “It could just be that it's getting harder and harder to get the mail through. Even from London the mail is slow.” During her entire stay in New York the letters from her grandmother had reached her via an intricate network of underground and overseas channels. Getting the letters from Italy to the States had been no easy feat. But they had always come. Always.
Serena gazed at her searchingly. “I don't think it's that.”
“Is there anyone else you would write to?”
“Only one.” There was only one old servant there now. Everyone else had had to leave. Mussolini wouldn't allow anyone of the old guard to keep as many servants as the principessa had been keeping. She was permitted one servant, and one only. Some of the others had wanted to stay on without pay, but it had not been approved. And the bishop had died the previous winter, so there was no one else she could write to. “I'll write to Marcella tomorrow.” She smiled for the first time since the nun had entered her room. “I should have thought of it earlier.”
“I'm sure your grandmother's all right, Serena.”
Serena nodded slowly. With her grandmother having just turned eighty, she was not quite as sure. But she had said nothing of being ill or not feeling well. There was really no reason to think that something was wrong. Except for the silence … which continued, unexplained. The letter to Marcella was returned to Serena four weeks after she wrote it, unopened and undelivered, with a scrawled note from the postman that Marcella Fabiani did not live at that address anymore. Had they gone to stay at the farm? Things must be worse in Venice. With a growing sense of panic, Serena grew ever more silent and strained. She wrote to her grandmother at the farm in Umbría then, but that letter came back too. She wrote to the foreman, and the letter came back marked “Deceased.” For the first weeks and then months, she had felt panic-stricken and desperate, but in time the terror ebbed into a dull pain. Something had happened, of that there was no doubt, but there seemed to be no way to get an explanation. There was no one left. No family except Sergio of course. And now, in her desperation, there was nowhere for Serena to turn. All she could do was wait until she could return to Italy to find out for herself.
There was still enough money for her to do that. When Serena had left, her grandmother had pressed on her a fat roll of American bills. She had no idea how the old woman had got the American money, but it had amounted to a thousand dollars when Serena counted it out quietly, alone in the bathroom the next day. And the nuns had received another ten thousand through elaborate international channels, for her care and whatever she might need during her stay at the convent. Serena knew that there had to be a great deal of that left. And every night, as she lay in her bed, thinking, she planned to use the money to get back to Italy the moment the war was over. She would go straight to Venice and find out, and if something had happened to the old woman, because of Sergio, she would go directly to Rome immediately thereafter and kill him.
It was a thought she had cherished now for almost two years. The war had ended in Europe in May of 1945, and from the very moment it ended she began making plans to go back. Some of the others were still waiting to hear from their parents that things were ready for their return, but Serena had nothing to wait for, except her ticket, her papers. She didn't even need the permission of the nuns. She was over eighteen, and she turned nineteen on V-J Day on the train. It had seemed to take forever to get passage over, but at last she had.
Mother Constance had taken her to the ship in New York. She had held Serena close for a long time. “Remember, my child, that whatever happened, you cannot change it. Not now. And you couldn't have then. You were where she wanted you to be. And it was right for you to be here, with us.”
Serena pulled away from her then, and the elderly nun saw that the tears were pouring down the delicate cheeks and flooding the huge green eyes that seemed brighter than any emerald, as the girl stood there, torn between affection and terror, grief and regret. “You've been so good to me all these years, Mother. Thank you.” She hugged Mother Constance once more, the boat horn sounded again, this time more insistently, and the stately nun left the cabin. Her last words to Serena were “Go with God,” and Serena had watched her wave from the dock as she waved frantically from the ship, this time with a smile on her face.
That had been only nine days before. The memories of Mother Constance seemed to fill her mind as Serena glanced out the window and saw that the dawn had come as they sped along on the train. She stared at the pink and gray sky in amazement as they raced through fields that had not been harvested in years and that showed signs of the bombs, and her heart broke for her country, for her people, for those who had suffered while she was safe in the States. She felt as though she owed them all something, a piece of herself, of her heart, of her life. While she had eaten roast turkey and ice cream on the Hudson they had suffered and struggled and died. And now, here they were, together, the survivors, at the dawn of a new era, a new life. She felt her heart rise within her as the train continued on its journey, and she watched the sun ride up in the early morning sky. The day had come at last. She was home.
Half an hour later they rolled into Santa Lucia Station, and slowly, almost breathlessly, she stepped from the train, behind the old ladies, the children, the toothless old men, the soldiers, and she stood there, at the bleak back door of Venice, looking at the same scene she had seen twice a year as a child when she and her parents had come to visit from Rome. But they were gone now, and this was not an Easter vacation. This was a new world, and a new life, and as she walked slowly away from the station she stared at the bright sunlight shining on the ancient buildings and shimmering on the water of the grand canal. A few gondolas bobbed at the landing, and a fleet of random boats hovered near the quay, drivers shouted to prospective passengers, and suddenly everything was in frantic motion around her, and as she watched it Serena smiled for the first time in days. It was a smile she hadn't felt in her heart for years.
Nothing had changed and everything had. War had come and gone, a holocaust had happened, she had lost everyone, and so had countless others, and yet here it was as it had been for centuries, in all its golden splendor, Venice. Serena smiled to herself, and then as she hurried along with the others, she laughed softly. She had come of age, in that one final moment, and now she was home.
“Signorina!” A gondolier was shouting, staring admiringly at her long graceful legs. “Signorina!”
“Sí… gondola, perpiacere.” They were words she had said a thousand times before. Her parents had always let her pick the one she wanted.
“Ècco.” He swept her a low bow, helped her to her seat, stowed her single, battered suitcase, and she gave him the address and sat back in her seat, as deftly the gondolier sped into the swirling traffic of boats on the Grand Canal.
2
“Beautiful, eh, signorina?” The gondolier glanced at San Marco with pride, and then back at her. But she only nodded. It was extraordinary to be back after so many years, yet nothing had changed here. The rest of the world had been turned upside down, but even the war had not touched Venice. Bombs had fallen nearby, but miraculously, Venice itself had remained untouched. He swept slowly under the Ponte di Paglia then, and rapidly under the illustrious Ponte dei Sospiri, the Bridge of Sighs, and then drifted into the maze of smaller canals, past other less important palazzi and ancient statues carved into the magnificent facades. There were balconies and tiny piazzas and everywhere the ornate splendor that had drawn people to Venice for a thousand years.
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