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

rainbow.
I was lucky to remain slim in spite of my good appetite - true, I ate often, but in small quantities, I've never really been greedy - that was probably due to my metabolism, which had nothing to do with it.  Dalia had my constitution, which wasn't the case for Astrid, who had gained weight and who didn't like to show herself in a swimming suit.  My eldest had a tendency towards depression and her body would automatically be affected.  I was worried about her, especially since she always insisted on being so independent.  What comforted me was to know, that, when she was in Africa, now, so far away, she and Daviko were very close, inasmuch as these last three years her relationship with her father had been somewhat rocky.  Those two were so alike that their tempers were bound to flare up now and then.
Nature can be so quirky!  If anyone should have been rebellious, it was Daviko, not Astrid, for having spent his whole childhood protected by the cocoon of his tribe, then for having been so brutally thrust out into the urban world, where the separation between Europeans and Congolese was so obvious and therefore much more humiliating for him, even if he was privileged enough to attend the Athénée interracial, where youngsters of all origins learned to mix, to know each other and to play sports together, something that didn't exist in the British colonies, at least not that I know of.

Dalia used to make me laugh with her picturesque beach anecdotes.
"You should have seen those stuck-up teeny boppers," she'd report, "how they would find any stupid excuse to approach Daviko, the ugliest ones too thought they could have a try, putting on such monkey faces.  One of them even pretended she hurt her toe and began to hopscotch just under his nose.  She expected that he would play doctor with her, cretina !  But what took the cake", Dalia would go on, blinking in the fashion of an automaton, ”took place on the way back to the hotel.  Astrid and I purposely stayed on the opposite pavement, to watch their shenanigans.  There was always one or the other of those nitwits who kept following him, hoping that he would turn towards them and invite them for an ice cream, or something, and the funniest thing was that Daviko who had, as usual, his head in the clouds, didn't have an inkling of what was going on behind his footsteps.  Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a young blond guy appeared, with long straw-colored hair - he looked Scandinavian and was, I must say, quite cute; he should have come to us, this world is so unjust! - and walked up to Daviko.  This time, the boy was so close to him, that our brother woke up with a start and he began to look for us, in a panic.  When he did find us - we were giggling so loudly, we couldn't be missed - he was full of reproach.  Why did we abandon him, he grumbled, what was the fun all about?  How naive, that beloved brother of ours!  He is so serious and has no clue about life, least of all, about l'amore!".

During our stay in Riccione, Massimo and his sister Liliana paid us a visit; they were my husband's first cousins.  He had the litheness and the nobility of Gregory Peck, and eyes that pierced through you to the soul, whereas she, a head shorter than him, could have seemed quite pretty if she didn't frown so much.  It was only later that I understood why such a woman, still young, bore the wrinkled mask of a woman in her forties.
Unlike their parents, Massimo and Liliana had miraculously escaped from the concentration camp.  Upon their return, they found their home in Pisa, luckily, untouched and unoccupied.  Massimo had resumed his medical studies at the city's renowned university and became a pediatrician with a reputation for efficiency and great benevolence, whilst Liliana, with a degree in hand, taught junior high school, taking care, at the same time, of the household.  She doted on her brother, like a mother hen.  There was between them the tacit understanding that they should never speak of the horrors they had suffered during the war, and especially not of the loss of their beloved parents.      
What had brought the young people to the Adriatic coast was not, like most holidaymakers, to have a good time at the sea, but to meet with their cousin.  Considering Sandro to be like a family elder, they needed to hear his opinion on a serious and urgent matter which disturbed them profoundly.
At university, Massimo had met a young girl with whom he had fallen passionately in love.  She in turn reciprocated with the same intensity, to the point where they reached the conclusion that, once they had both accomplished their studies, they would marry.  
They had known each other for three years, but Massimo had always concealed their relationship to his sister, for Eva, that was her name, was Austrian.  But once she got back home, with her degree, and to Massimo's distress, the young woman wrote him a long letter, telling him that she had thought over their situation and that, despite her strong feelings for him, she believed that the inhuman treatment he and his people had been subjected to during the war, would sooner or later re-surface and that he would hold her, even if only subconsciously, responsible in part for that collective tragedy, and that therefore, it would be better if he forgot her.
Distraught, Massimo telephoned her several times, and seeing that she wasn't changing her mind, took the train for Linz, where she lived.  But even that visit didn't help to change her decision.  They were both heartbroken and cried in each other's arms.  He rode the train back to Italy, alone, and wearing sunglasses, even in the shade, to hide the redness of his eyes.
After that sad and bitter experience, the young doctor had a few flings, but didn't want to hear about getting married, ever again.  And he didn't hear from Eva thereafter.
The years went by, then, one day, by a stroke of fate, the two crossed each other's path in Florence, where Massimo had to attend a medical congress.  Their encounter was electrifying.  Eva had just divorced from her Viennese husband, but had conceived no children with him.  This time the two lovers swore never to part again, but the young woman requested that he have a bit more patience, just a couple of months, until she could settle her affairs in Austria and rejoin him for good.
Thus came for Massimo the most crucial and difficult moment he had had to confront: revealing to his sister his intention to get married.  The latter received the news with shock and dismay, rekindling the accursed events of the past, like the explosion of a dormant volcano, and she actually became physically ill.  It is thus with such a heavy burden, which they now both had to share, that brother and sister had asked to consult with their cousin.
They spent three days in Riccione, staying in a hotel near the pensione, and because of them, our vacation took another turn.  Whether we were at the beach, as early as 9:30 in the morning, eating lunch or dinner, having a drink on the terrace of a café - breakfast was the only time that belonged to us entirely - or even before retiring to one of our bedrooms, till late in the night, the only subject that would be discussed revolved around Massimo, his Austrian fiancée and the unbearable pain the situation had inflicted upon Liliana, opening old wounds she had vowed to bury in the marshes of her mind; the wretched girl had become an insomniac and she could hardly keep her eyes open, they hurt so much and got relentlessly moist, she had to wipe them every other minute or so.  She also had to hold the armrests with a firm grip, lest she broke into new tears.  The muscles of her neck wrought like those frightening creepers of the Cambodian jungle that looked as if they enclosed the remains of human limbs, and her veins stood out so tensely that I was afraid they would spill over and burst at the slightest movement.
So as to avoid the inquisitive looks of strangers, especially since Liliana's shrill voice inevitably drew stares, the four of us would sidle into Massimo's room, whilst I’d send the children off to have some fun, for the poor dears were constrained to take part in this family drama whenever we went out with them.  
I begrudged Massimo and his sister to spell out their problems in front of my daughters and Daviko, exposing them to events which reflected, with such sadness and such crudeness, the darkest side of the human soul, events they could never have imagined, since, growing up in Africa, they were spared the details of the war, even during their history classes.  It was one thing to read that millions of people had lost their lives during the two world conflicts, and another to face relatives who had suffered the consequences in the flesh, with all their sordid descriptions.  People just didn't want to hear about them, and even in Europe, the victims of the Holocaust who had escaped death, did all they could to close their books of horrors.
Within the walls of our room, Liliana became hysterical and hurled daggers at her brother, repeating in a long-drawn wail, like that of a wounded animal, so that the echo of her lament reverberated deep into your marrow:
"What he intends to do is nothing less than blasphemous, it is unacceptable!  Why did our parents die, and with them millions of our folk?  So that this massacre - the largest and most horrific mankind has ever experienced - be so quickly forgotten, erased from memory?  Pushed under the carpet, like dust?  And on top of it all, the father of that Boche (dirty Fritz) was a Nazi officer.  He wants to marry a Nazi!!!"       
"Eva isn't a Boche, she's Austrian!" retorted her brother, in a broken voice.
"Oh, a fat lot of a difference it makes!" she snapped, brushing him off with another nerve-wracking tirade no one dared interrupt.  "And if that wasn't enough, she bears the same name as Hitler's whore; wasn't the monster born in Austria?  Champion of the Aryan race, Ha!  The tragic farce!  Remember how small he was, and how disgusting he appeared, dressed like a clown, with hair the color of mud?  Beautiful, tall and blond!  Let me laugh!  Even the ugliest among the Jews was better looking than him."
Then she would turn toward Sandro and reiterate her question: "Would you accept that one of your brothers marry the daughter of a Nazi torturer?  You see, it is as if they killed my parents a second time, with the only difference being that the crime this time would be committed by their own son."    
Massimo was perspiring, eyes downcast, shivers running up and down his spine.  He let her blather, so tangled up that she was in her frantic verbiage, during five, ten minutes, then, incapable of standing it  any longer, he too began to holler:
“Stop it, stop it, will you!  Haven't we both lived through the same hell in Bergen Belsen?  I loved our parents as much as you did and the image of their pleading stares will burn my heart until my lasting days, so don't play the righter of wrongs with me, OK?!!"  He was now out of breath, sweating profusely, and before she could resume her accusations, he stretched out his arm, determined to have