One day in early June, she sat in a café near the Palazzo Venezia, drinking listless coffee, while a pair of Fascists argued at the table next to her. Iris took out her sketchbook. Until now, she hadn’t paid much attention to those men in their angry black shirts. She would have liked to pretend they didn’t exist, and anyway she felt no connection to them at all, like foreigners from a country she’d never heard of. Today she studied them from the corner of her gaze. She’d learned some Italian over the past several months, and she could pick out certain words, but the truth was, she didn’t really care what they were saying. She didn’t understand the Fascist creed to begin with; politics had never interested her. Still, they were people, weren’t they? They were men who, for reasons of their own, believed certain things so passionately they were willing to fight for them. In that respect, were they so different from Sasha? Each believed with his whole heart that he was doing the right thing, making the world a better place. Iris took out her sketchbook. She filled in the two men with quick, bold strokes of her charcoal. She tried not to glance at them too often; she stamped the images on her mind and drew from that memory as long as it lasted, and then she dipped for more.

She was nearly done with the drawing when one of them caught sight of her catching sight of him and nudged his friend. They turned to stare at her, at the sketchbook in her lap, the charcoal poised above the page.

Iris flipped the sketchbook shut and looked around for the waiter. Before she could find him, a shadow fell over the table. She glanced up just as one of the Blackshirts snatched the sketchbook from her lap.

“Hey!” She lunged after the book and fell right out of the chair. In an instant she was up again, but the man was already ripping the pages from the book, two at a time, flinging them into the air. The white leaves fluttered and scattered and littered the sidewalk. Iris yelled, Stop, you can’t do that, somebody help, but the other people in the café glanced over their shoulders and turned swiftly away, and the passersby pretended not to notice anything at all, although they took care not to step on any of the drawings.

A DOOR CLICKED OPEN somewhere above her, and the noise echoed down the stairs.

“Iris? Is that you?”

Iris stuffed the handkerchief back in her pocketbook and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

Ruth’s footsteps clattered down the stairs. Iris couldn’t find the strength to rise. Ruth whipped around the second-floor landing and paused.

“Oh, pumpkin! What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”