“Yes.” She went back to the card game. Hanni is making great strides with her Italian, and I help her with other schoolwork, too. She is very bright, and I hate to think of what she has lost. Surely in normal times she would have been headed for a university. Following her father, she is very musical and plays the piano well. Angelo is fascinated with the piano, and I love to see them together, Angelo seated on Hanni’s lap as she puts his chubby little fingers on the keyboard to play a nursery song and he looks up at her in wonder.

Such are the small memories I shall treasure forever. He will be a year old, and I know that I must hand him over soon. And then what? Then I must surely go to Switzerland and wait out the war there. It might be safe here now, but one never knows how soon things can change. As long as Leo is nearby, I don’t worry too much. He comes to visit often, usually bringing a toy, a cake, a pat of butter. Butter has all but disappeared from the shops. It’s only filthy-tasting margarine now. And meat is a rarity. None of this matters as my fake ration card has now expired and I rely on Francesca and the contessa to keep us in food. At least here in Venice we have our fish and our mussels and clams. I have learned to make Francesca’s linguine with clam sauce. She tried to show me how to make the spaghetti with seppie—the cuttlefish ink—but my memory of the disaster at the professor’s house is all too vivid.

May 3, 1941

We celebrated Angelo’s first birthday. Francesca baked a cake—a miracle with eggs and butter now being unavailable. I knitted him a stuffed bear with yarn from a jumper I no longer wore. It looked rather amateurish, but he seemed to like it. Leo came over for tea and cake and brought with him a wooden train set.

“It used to be mine,” he said. “He will have many toys when he comes over to our house. The time is now right, is it not?”

I looked at my son, sitting on the rug, pushing the engine around the floor and making the sort of noises that little boys make. “Can I come and visit him once he is with you?” I asked.

Leo frowned. “That would not be wise, I think. He is still young enough that he will forget. We can’t keep reminding him of the world he has lost. Let him embrace the new one, come to love his nursemaid and have me to adore him.”

“So I end up with nothing?” I heard my voice crack.