Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

Amara lived with her shoemaker father and her mother in a small house some three hundred metres from the gardens of the villa, at the junction of Via Incontri and Via Alderotti. An old farmhouse with an added toilet that stuck out from the first floor.

One May morning Amara had ventured into the garden of Villa Lorenzi, whose secret passages she knew by heart, and had settled under the cherry tree book in hand, reading and imagining things. She had no idea that anyone was hidden among the branches above her head watching her. Her mind was far away in a natural harbour somewhere in the south seas, where a pioneer ship had just dropped anchor in water as transparent as glass, and where the coast was apparently empty and hospitable, but in fact full of snares for the unwary. What was Captain D to do? His ship was damaged and he needed water for his sailors.

At that point a revolving bluish-green leaf shaped like a lance came twisting down and fell on the middle of her open book. She pushed it aside without a thought. But a few seconds later another leaf, dancing and turning, landed in the same place. She brushed that away too, with a gesture of impatience. She wanted to concentrate on the bay and the ship and on the problems of Captain D and his thirsty crew

So she continued reading, but a few minutes later something hard hit her on the neck. A little red cherry that bounced off her hair and fell near her left shoe. Finally she raised her eyes from the book and bending back her head looked up to see two legs with naked sunburned feet dangling from a branch, and above them the face of a child with a blond quiff and laughing eyes. It had been her first sight of Emanuele and from then on, whenever she thought of him, she always saw that image of the free and agile body of a small boy apparently suspended in thin air, his face surprised and happy, his eyes full of the joy of life.

By the time of their bicycle expedition they had already been friends for two years. Everyone knew how close they were and no one seemed to mind. Babbo Karl Orenstein loved the little girl with the sensible and kindly air, hoping she might for a while restrain his son from the dangers he seemed so determined to throw himself headlong into. Mamma Thelma smuggled chocolate into their rucksacks whenever they set off on an expedition outside the city. Babbo Amintore Sironi was probably more cautious. Even if Mamma Stefania urged him to leave them alone; they were two children who knew perfectly well how to look after themselves. Though they were afraid of nothing they were not reckless, they were fully aware of dangers and took care to avoid them. But to Babbo Amintore they were too careless: ‘There are too many delinquents about; too many crooks ready to kill just for a bicycle.’ It was something they were all afraid of even if luckily so far nothing like that had happened near Rifredi. Lots of thefts yes, but no one would commit a crime just to steal a bicycle. The Orensteins were too rich to worry, protected in their villa by gardeners and guard dogs. But the Sironis, whose ancient hovel had nothing more substantial than a little wooden gate, were mistrustful, especially Amintore who as a shoemaker was used to judging people’s characters from their shoes. He was extremely perspicacious and usually right. If someone was very hard on his shoes it meant he was absent-minded and often tripped or stumbled, had no sense of orientation and was always bumping into things. If he wore his shoes down on one side it must mean he was a spy with a crooked walk who backed up against walls. And as for women, he knew everything about them from the way they consumed their heels and tightened their laces, and from the polish they chose to shine the uppers of a pair of shoes finished in red Chinese lacquer, for example, or green jade or Prussian blue. Sor Amintore, as they respectfully called him in the district, trusted nobody. He had a precise and astute way of looking at them, starting with their shoes then raising his eyes up their bodies. It was an inquisitorial look and not benevolent, but he did not make mistakes. He did not trust those Orensteins from Austria, a country so quick to adopt Nazism, which he hated because to him it was obscene. Yes, he did know they were Jews, but that was the reason he approved of his daughter associating with them. He had no use at all for the rich as such. Being rich proved they must have been thieves because no one gets rich by accident. Their children might have never stolen anything themselves, but they were still perforce the children of rich thieves; and if they had inherited from rich forbears, their status depended precisely on that, and what can the rich ever know about real life? Had they ever taken a pair of holed shoes in hand to resole them? Had they ever sniffed at a pair of bootees with their laces ripped out and soles worn down from endlessly walking the pavements? Nor did he trust that Emanuele who went everywhere in bare feet, like a Zulu in Africa, and ate and slept in trees; you could smell the stink of spoilt brat from miles away. Nor did he like his daughter Amara going around with that scamp scrumping cherries from the highest branches and catching tadpoles among the stones of the Terzolle River. ‘He’s turning her into a wild thing,’ he would say to his wife, grumbling as he carefully hammered tiny nails into a shoe. He would grumble too about the poor quality of the leather available in these times of national economic self-reliance. ‘These people would palm off frogskin as calfskin,’ he would say, testing with his teeth a piece of pigskin that had cost him a fortune. His mouth was his best counsellor. His mouth and teeth could tell him what to expect from a particular piece of shoe leather.

Yet it was only in the Second World War, after he had been pensioned off wounded from Ethiopia, that Sironi had started earning real money as a shoe repairer. No one could any longer afford to buy new shoes so they all went to him for new soles and laces, to have old uppers reconstructed or to have worn discoloured leather dyed. So much work of this kind came his way that he eventually took on an assistant, whom he insisted on paying well, because that was how he had started himself and he had no wish to exploit others in the way that others had exploited him.

A large photograph hanging in the back room of the shop showed the whole Sironi family: grandfather Anacleto with his well-waxed moustaches with upturned points; father Amedeo Sironi, also a shoemaker, holding in his hands the instruments of his trade, a small hammer and metal anvil. The photo dated from 1910. Next to the father and son were uncles Angelo and Anacleto, also in leather aprons with rolled-up shirtsleeves and holding shoemaker’s knives. The very young Amintore was visible too, a small boy hiding behind the massive figure of his father. The photograph proclaimed the integrity and philosophy of the family: discipline, solidarity and loyalty to their trade, because that was how they saw it: theirs was an art of making and constructing, of understanding and repairing. They were faithful to a tradition of freedom and independent of everything and everyone. They nearly welcomed fascism in its heady first years when Mussolini seemed to be adopting socialist views, but when the reality became clear and the self-proclaimed socialist began associating first with the great industrialists and then with the Germans, they decided to oppose him, though cautiously because you can’t mess with thugs. Amintore had done everything possible to avoid being sent to Ethiopia to fight against Africans for an empire he didn’t believe in. But he had to go all the same. And had come home wounded. After that he tried to keep as low a profile as possible. He and his whole family had kept themselves to themselves, not hiding their beliefs but not parading them either. None of them joined the fascist party, not obliged to since they were not public servants. A degree of detachment was permitted to the humble self-employed. So long as it did not lead to outright denunciation of pretensions of the regime. That would bring imprisonment. They maintained a careful balance, and kept their heads down. They never wore the fez or black shirt, or joined in rallies or parades.