Gloria's Diary, Albert Russo [reading in the dark .TXT] 📗

to each other, in a complicit fashion, but as soon as they saw me, they both flashed a knowing smile in my direction.
We spoke and spoke, each one of us voicing her opinion.  My two friends ultimately came to the conclusion that I should give the young man a positive answer, or at least an encouraging one.  I, however, remained terribly puzzled, repeating over and over:
"But how can he be so sure we're made for each other?  This is all too sudden.  After all we live in different countries, with such different mentalities!  Isn't it ... a tad bit dangerous?"      
Bella responded with a touch of humor:
"Actually, there's a greater danger in meeting an elephant in the bush, or driving a racing car, at breakneck speed, don't you think?"
After that remark, I burst out laughing, and felt all the stress I had endured the previous night, melt away.  I became suddenly quite hungry, since because I had woken up earlier that afternoon I had skipped both breakfast and lunch.
Bella then rushed into the kitchen and prepared two thick Belgian sandwiches, the one filled with ham steak and the other with cottage cheese, called here double crème, as well as a chicken leg left over from the previous day, which she brought along with a half pint of beer.  All of it, accompanied by a plate of asparagus, radishes and raw onions.
When I asked her for a hot cup of tea instead of the beer, she cast me a mischievous look.  To lighten up the atmosphere she then sauntered to her brand new Your Master's Voice gramophone, turned the crank several times forcefully and put on some frenzied Charleston and boogie-woogie 78 rpm records.
The two cousins began to jive and to hoof it like mares gone wild that some rodeo cowboy tried to lasso, in vain.  
The phone had to ring twice before we all heard it, for I too had now joined the cousins in their spinning merry-go-round.  
It was Sandro, he wished to speak to me, but I threw out my arms with lofty gestures, signifying to the girls that I wasn't home.      
So, Bella, always the (self-proclaimed) ringleader, set up a new appointment with the young man, late that same afternoon, at the terrace of the city's most famous Italian pâtisserie, which served the best gâteaux and ice-cream in town.  I was grateful to her, for I didn't have the courage to confront him directly, so soon after his proposal.
What a strange show we performed, Sandro and I, taking the two cousins as our witnesses, substituting, as it were, our respective parents.
Sandro didn't stop talking, almost breathlessly, like a long distance runner who has no alternative but to aim for the finish, to the point where, this once, I couldn't place a single word.   The two girls intervened in turn, interrupting him, sometimes curtly, for he didn't seem to be able to stop, querying him about his past, his short term plans and what he strove for in the near future.  That's where he implied how important my presence would become beside him.  Oh, he didn't say it straight out, but there was no doubt as to what he meant, especially since he looked at me intensely, certain that I would approve.
Taking the cue, and acting like a protective elder sister, Debbie lifted her hand in a lordly gesture and said:
“This should not be concluded in haste, give yourselves time to know each other better.  We still have a few days for discussion before we leave Elisabethville." Then, facing me she added: "But in any case, darling, you will have a clearer mind once you are back in Rhodesia, in your own environment, and you will need those few weeks in order to make your final decision." 
I agreed with her, whilst hiding, at the same time, the enthusiasm I felt, for I too had become infatuated with my handsome suitor.
Sandro and I met again every afternoon and every evening that followed, our two escorts rejoining us, as usual, for coffee.
The last days of the week flew by terribly fast, and the moment I found myself back on the train, I felt both happy and suddenly very empty inside.

At first, my parents refused to meet Sandro.  Everything seemed to work against him: not only was he a foreigner, but he lived in a colony they deemed primitive, compared to Rhodesia, and what's more he wasn't even Christian.  I didn't know which of the three "flaws" upset them the most.
I had to revert to another depression before they, reluctantly, agreed to see him.  Poor Sandro, he had already made the long and tiring trip twice from the Congo to Rhodesia by car, driving hundreds of miles through the savannah and the jungle, on dirt roads most of the way, in the sweltering heat, amid the hordes of mosquitoes and other dangerous vermin, all in vain.  He couldn't afford to take the train, but never complained about it, pretending, on the contrary, that he much preferred motoring.  This was his third attempt.
When they finally greeted him on the verandah of our house, with my brother Jonathan, a sort of miracle took place.  In front of them stood a young man impeccably dressed, wearing a striped navy-blue suit, with a cerulean tie, and patent-leather moccasins, so typically and fashionably Italian.
The moment he held my mother's hand in his, then bent over to kiss it, with such chivalry, she fell under his spell.  There was an unmistakable glow in her pupils - was she thinking perhaps of Rudolf Valentino, the swarthy swashbuckling Latin lover of the silent movies, who broke the hearts of so many women on both sides of the Atlantic?
My father, on the other hand, was at first hesitant in his attitude towards the young man; he initially observed him, like someone he had heard of but who didn't quite correspond to the description.  As for Jonathan, he looked pleased to meet him, although he didn't open his mouth, lest he should make a faux pas and embarrass my folks, inasmuch as he too was somewhat suspicious when I gave him the news, though he wasn't as categorical. 
As any well-born Englishman, my father swiftly regained his composure and phlegm and he began to ask Sandro the questions a father asks any potential predator - wasn't the young man's intention to take their daughter away from them? - that he did in an icy tone of voice, peppering them with a pinch of sarcasm, which made my mother wince.  Sandro kept his calm all the while he faced his inquisitor, and his answers were imbued with a wisdom tinged with respect.  He was the opposite of the clichéd Italian who got quickly excited and gesticulated wildly, a behavior the British generally looked down upon, finding it if not outright vulgar, buffoonish.
After the round of questions my father fired at our guest and the latter's unwaveringly gentlemanly response, Sandro was invited to stay for dinner.  He had passed the grueling paternal test with flying colors, never so much as showing the slightest displeasure or aggression.  
My mother kept glancing at her husband in search of approval as she spoke to the young man, inquiring about more urbane subjects, such as everyday life in the Congo, the customs of the indigenous population, and of course, how he endured the tropical climate, whose effect she feared might prove debilitating to her daughter.  The lightness of her tone, in contrast to that of my father, made us all feel more relaxed.  Jonathan, who was keen on sports cars and on auto makes in general, wanted to know what cars the Belgians favored.  Learning that they mostly drove big, mighty American automobiles, as well as some French cars like Peugeot's and Citroën's, he let out a long whistle of admiration, since in Southern Rhodesia, you practically never saw any of those.  They were all British-made and usually smaller.  You would see, of course, the few gleaming MG's, Jaguar's and Triumph's around, and the two or three impressive Rolls Royce's, which her Majesty's representative in this part of Africa, and Mister Berg, the country's most famous doctor drove or were driven in, the latter being our family GP.  Dr. Berg was a Lithuanian Jew, highly regarded in his profession and especially well liked by his more modest patients, for if the wealthy folk had to dish out a high price for his services, the former either paid a token fee or nothing at all.  He would be called for emergencies in the middle of the night and was, consequently, an extremely busy person, never taking into account the social rank of his patients.  Yet, he didn't necessarily escape the antisemitic innuendos people made, and you would hear the odd: "Oh, but He is totally different."
Every time I heard such remarks, I couldn't help but smirk, for you just had to open an encyclopedia to read how many of these Jews were indeed exceptional, whether they were scientists, doctors, philosophers, musicians, writers or whatnot, not mentioning the Nobel prize winners, a quarter of whom shared their faith, when the whole Jewish population was less than one percent of the world's.  
But 2000 years of Jew bashing by the various strains of Christianity, whether Greek or Russian Orthodox, Catholic, or even Protestant (when Calvin and Martin Luther realized that the Jews didn't want to convert to their new faith, they became as vicious with them as with the traditional Church they so contested).  To the point that their millions of scions, even if many of them, especially in Europe, no longer go to mass, or get baptized, still harbor negative feelings towards the descendants of the Hebrews, not knowing exactly why they have this lingering sentiment, and, forgetting, very strangely, that Jesus belonged to their tribe.
I remember posing this question to a classmate:
"Why don't you like them?  They haven't done anything bad to you personally." 
Her answer was unstoppable:
“They're not like us, and then too, all they think about is money!"
That poor soul certainly wasn't aware of the fact that the planet's largest banks were held, for generations, by Protestant families.
To conclude with this subject, I'd like to reproduce a poem which David-Kanza wrote after he graduated from college and which he entitled:
YOU SHALL MARK MY WORDS

I, Yeshua ben Yosef, son of our beloved Myriam,
turn to you who have forsaken and betrayed me,
you who claim to be such good Christians,
all the while you have tried to erase the Jew in me,
you have done that on all six continents,
and many of you are still doing it, unashamedly, 
either out of habit or out of sheer ignorance,
for let it be known, now and forever:
the enemy of my People is my enemy.

2000 years have passed before a pope 
has asked for forgiveness.
It is never too late, you will say
it may not be too late for your children
or for the generations to come,
but it is far too late for the countless brothers and sisters
who were chased, tortured and murdered
by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitors.
It is far too late for the tens of thousands of brothers and sisters
who were persecuted and killed
during the Russian and the Polish pogroms.
It is far too late for all those millions of brothers and sisters
who were treated like animals, tormented and then gassed
by the Nazis, who thus perpetrated history's most diabolic crime;
as it is much too late for the numerous refugees whom the Allies
turned away during WWII, as they desperately 
sought a haven on their shores.
Was then Jewish life, as a French neo-fascist still insists today,