I am writing this on a train bound for the French coast and then a boat to England. I waited for Leo. He never came. I wondered if he was still in prison, or if he had gone home to his family after all. I spent two weeks recovering in a Swiss hospital and then was found a job at a girls’ convent school in Lausanne. It was peaceful and quiet amongst the nuns, but nothing could heal the ache in my heart. I dreamed about Leo. I dreamed about Hanni. I dreamed about Angelo. When the Allies finally liberated Italy, I wrote to Leo’s father and received a short reply: Leonardo Da Rossi was shot, trying to escape from a prison camp, November 1943.

As soon as the war ended, I tried to search for Hanni. I joined an organization helping refugee children, but there were almost no Jews amongst them. It seemed that every Jew had vanished from the face of the Earth. It took a while before we learned names like Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen. And then we knew. And there were no tears left to cry.

I didn’t go home as soon as the war ended. At first I wanted to find Hanni, and then, when I learned the awful truth, I wanted to do something useful—something to somehow make up for the fact that I had promised to keep her safe and I had failed. But I did write letters home. My mother was delighted to hear from me and glad that I had been working with refugees in Switzerland. She got it into her head that I had been doing this throughout the war and wrote long letters telling me how much they had suffered in England while I had been living on good Swiss milk and cream. I am not going to disillusion her. I have also decided that I am not going back to teaching again. Every time I looked at one of the young girls, I would see Hanni and know that I hadn’t been able to save her. I pray that Angelo is thriving. I will not be going back to Venice to see for myself. I will never go back again. Too many painful memories. I will start a new chapter in my life, reinvent myself as a new person—an automaton with a padlock around my heart. And I find that I have no desire to paint again.

I was going to keep these recollections, but now I realize that I don’t want anyone to know. And I certainly won’t want to read them again. The only stories worth reading have happy endings. And so I have decided, as we cross the Channel, I shall tear them up and throw them into the sea, as if this chapter of my life never existed.

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 47

Postscript: Caroline, October 28, 2001