the way Australians simply turned their faces to the sea and their backs to the vast, rust-coloured emptiness behind them. He loved New South Wales and he loved the broad vowels of his Australian neighbours and the clipped English ones of his relatives. He did not even mind the urine stench of the roast mutton all Australians seemed to eat for Sunday lunch, which they called dinner.
When Italy joined the war, they were interned. His brother took it as a personal affront but Umberto could see perfectly why Italians and Germans would be viewed with mistrust, and he knew from news from home that English and Australians were being treated in the same way in Italy. He also knew, though, that many other ‘enemy aliens’ in Australia suffered much more than they had. On their release at war’s end, Giacomo took ship immediately for Italy and died on the voyage, of influenza. Giacomo had never been sturdy. Umberto happily worked out his time of internment as a labourer on the elegant property, Blackheath, belonging to the old grazing family, the Mortons. He married Madeleine Morton and within a few years, they had three children in rapid succession, of whom Delia was the last.
When Delia was born, he became Bert and renounced his Italian citizenship. He was naturalised. Neutralised, Delia called it as a child. She was reared mainly in English and she only spoke Italian on visits to Italy, or during her adored aunt Annabelle’s many visits. Once she was able to travel to Florence without her parents, Delia grew used to her Italian life with her aunt, between worlds, in the ancient building in Borgo Pinti with its five floors of relatives. Her father rarely used his apartment there, and she and her mother preferred to stay with Annabelle when they visited. After a time the room she used became her room, reserved from other guests. It seemed natural that she would gravitate to Florence for her university studies and even more natural that those studies would revolve around the families who had made Florence and her forbears. While their history stifled Bert, Delia carried it lightly, it not having been forced upon her.
Delia came to terms early with her mixed heritage. Tom and Frank always found their Italian name a bit of a worry, happy for it to be Australianised. Delia insisted on the correct pronunciation. She had romantic pretensions and enjoyed her exotic image. Albizzi was a mouthful, certainly, but Australia was full of stranger names than that in those days – Poles with waxed moustaches, Lithuanians with sad eyes, Estonians, whatever that meant, Serbs and Croats who carried knives, and lots of other Italians, but Italians much smaller and darker than any she had seen. Most of them were there to build the Snowy River dam. Most of them did not speak English. Many of the Italians did not speak Italian. Neither did Tom and Frank. For the boys, Albo was the obvious nickname and it stuck. Albo and Albi – boys’ schools were like that. St Catherine’s was not. Delia was Dellie only at home.
Bert’s was not the only title among his fellow internees, including one, he said, who claimed to be a prince: dime a dozen, Italian counts and barons. Always someone ready to take the piss – Bert learned a lot of his English from the shearers and jackaroos on the property. The King’s English that Bert learned as a boy was a different language from the gnarly vowels and the sly, wry humour of the shearing shed. That was the 1950s. In the 1960s, in Sydney and especially in ‘Swinging London’, it was quite fashionable to have a Florentine connection.
When Delia made her laconic way to Sydney University in 1972, with not much idea of what she wanted to do apart from meet boys who were not friends of her brothers, it seemed logical she would jump at the chance for a ready-made subject and Italian history did not seem too hard. Nothing seemed hard in Australia then – the fizzy optimism of Gough Whitlam’s ascension to the throne at home and the tempered hope of Nixon’s visits to China and Russia, coursed through the veins at social gatherings, together with cask wine. By then, she had become used to travelling back and forth between Sydney and Florence. Completely smitten with her exotic aunt, she would have done anything to please her, but following her into medicine was not an option because Delia had not exactly distinguished herself in the sciences at school, so, history it was. She thought history might be useful, though at the time she could not have imagined falling beneath the spell of all the early Medici. She fell in love at first sight with the Laurentian library: the arched cloisters full of potted orange trees around the central well, honey-coloured stones full of secrets, the great church of San Lorenzo with its rough unclad façade and porphyry and marble tombs. The moment she saw the sensuous sweep of Michelangelo’s majestic staircase and breathed in the heady scent of ancient books and young Italian professors, she realised history could also be sexy.
November 1, 1941
Our famous Duce could barely keep the grin off his face today. How I hate that man. I could kill him but I’m so afraid Enrico will. Papà is afraid. We are all afraid. I am tired of being afraid. I have been living with fear for as long as I remember of my life. All the fault of Il Duce. Enrico says it is the fault of Papà and Zio too and all of those who thought him a fool and did not oppose him.
‘So you found them.’ Delia leaned against the doorjamb, lanky, a little tense, with a nod at the diary in her aunt’s hand. ‘I could never keep a diary. I could not,’ she said, ‘even imagine committing to paper my innermost thoughts, let alone my secrets and indiscretions.’ She snorted. ‘Of which, I might add, there have been far too many.’
Delia had wanted to read Annabelle’s wartime diaries ages ago, wanted to write something about her aunt’s part in the rescuing of the art treasures looted by the Nazis. She had suggested Annabelle get the diaries out and go through them.
Annabelle had been resistant. No, she said. No. She had kept a diary since she was six years old. ‘I never read them. I never look back. I have no desire to go back. If the past is another country, then I no longer speak the language there. Anyway, diaries should be burned. I’m not even sure where they are.’
Yet, here they were, piled precariously on the desk. Annabelle turned, trailing her finger across the brittle page. She closed the notebook on her finger, marking the place, and regarded the tottering pile of diaries. Some were in worse condition than others, but most were still pretty good really.
‘I always … I … knew where they were. I haven’t had any desire to get them out until now.’
Delia nodded at the newspaper clipping in her other hand. ‘Is that it? Somehow it seems more official in the hard copy.’
Annabelle held it out to her. ‘It came in today’s post. The only time he did not have the last word!’
The piece of newsprint was much more real. So dry. Is that a life? Annabelle felt tremors from very deep within, which made her think of ground resonance. She once read that a helicopter, on landing badly, could shake itself to pieces if care were not taken. She took great care.
Delia crossed to her, put a hand on her back in a gentle caress and took the clipping. Backing up a couple of steps until she felt the sofa behind her knees, she sat, reading the Sydney Morning Herald obituary.
Enrico Francesco Albizzi 1925–2008
‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea/and the hunter home from the hill.’
So he wished to be remembered, the distinguished Classicist, Professor Enrico Albizzi, who died this week in Sydney after a short illness. He was eighty-five. He leaves two daughters, the violinist Clare Morgan, and Dr Diana Croyden, whose work on tropical diseases is well known. Professor Albizzi immigrated to Australia in 1952 after completing his studies in Bologna. His translations of the early Roman poets are still used in schools today, and his recent translation of Marcus Aurelius from the Greek is credited with bringing the Stoic Emperor to a whole new generation. His fiery temperament added an edge to the Classics, said a fellow academic. He fought as a partisan in the Civil War in Italy, between 1943–45. He made a significant contribution to the nascent wine industry in Australia and was a well-known identity in the sailing fraternity, having participated in his first Sydney to Hobart yacht race in the year of his arrival. He only missed one race in the intervening years. His ashes will be scattered outside the Heads in a private family ceremony.
‘Are