Ruth hurried down the rest of the stairs and sat down next to Iris. “That bastard. I oughta knock his lights out.”

“It’s not—it’s not—It’s my sketchbook!”

“What happened? Did you leave it on a bus somewhere?”

Iris told her sister about the Blackshirts and the café, about all the charcoal drawings fluttering in the air to land on the dirty floor and the sidewalk, about all the people who pretended not to notice, who wouldn’t help, even the waiter. How the two men had left, jeering at her, and disappeared down the street.

Ruth took a handkerchief from her pocket. “Here.”

“And I’m pretty sure they didn’t pay, either!” Iris said, blowing her nose.

“Fascist pigs.”

“I g-gathered up the pages, but they’re all d-dirty and torn and just ruined.”

Ruth gathered Iris in her arms and spoke soothingly into her hair. “Another week and we’ll be gone from here. No more goddamn wars and Blackshirts. I’ll take you home and everything will be all right again.”

Iris leaned her face into Ruth’s shoulder, which smelled of cigarettes and some kind of perfume. Her throat hurt, not because of crying but because of everything she couldn’t say to her own twin sister—the whole story—how she didn’t want to leave, she couldn’t leave, she could not possibly leave one-half of her entire heart in Rome and continue to exist—it was a medical impossibility. The incalculably precious moments of Tivoli laid against her present despair. All those pages torn from her sketchbook, containing everything that was beautiful inside her.

THE NEXT EVENING, THE eighth of June, Harry arrived at their apartment for dinner. He was exhausted. Feed me, Harry begged, and Ruth poured out the drinks while Iris dressed a chicken and scraped together vegetables for a salad. Harry sucked every particle of meat from the bones and sat back on the sofa with a bottle of gin. Ruth asked what was up, was it really as bad as people were saying?

“Worse,” said Harry. “They’ll be in Paris in a week.”

“What about Dunkirk?” Iris asked. “The poor English soldiers.”

“They got as many out as they could. It’s a miracle, really. Paris is next. There’s nothing to keep the Nazis out.”

“Poor Paris.”

Harry looked destroyed. His shirt hung from his bones. His cheeks were hollow, his skin pale and impoverished. Even his hair looked tarnished. Iris couldn’t believe her eyes. Harry, the stalwart older brother, their protector from the vicissitudes of life, the man of the house! She wanted to cook him another chicken and watch him eat it. She wanted to comfort him, to hold him in her arms like a child. She wanted to ask him about Sasha. Was Sasha as ruined as Harry? As overworked and underfed and underloved?

“What about Italy?” Ruth asked.