The Hidden

The Hidden

Anthony Mansueto

No one would ever have expected that Salvatore Albatini would earn his living talking to people he didn’t know. He was an introvert’s introvert, socially awkward beyond measure, and almost certainly an undiagnosed autist. He excelled at things even most other students at the University of Chicago detested, like reading Hegel, something his dissertation advisor had forbidden him to do at least until he finished, for fear it would render his writing as incomprehensible as his conversation. But he was as passionate about politics as he was about philosophy, and had been working in political campaigns as a door to door canvasser, since his first year in high school. Later, at university, he answered an ad from a survey research company and found himself their go-to interviewer for complex political surveys in tough neighborhoods. He was the only person they had who was willing to work in North Lawndale. When he went on to seek a doctorate he surprised everyone by choosing an empirical rather than a theoretical dissertation topic and had now returned from California to Chicago where he was sourcing participants for a study of religion and politics in immigrant communities, while helping out when he could in Sonya Bogdanov’s campaign for state representative. Sonya was the mother of a fellow student from the University of Chicago. Nadia was a forceful recruiter for her mother’s campaign and led the army of canvassers with an iron fist, while setting an example by canvassing half the time herself. Salvatore had long had a crush on her, though he had called off his glacially slow and comically awkward attempts to woo her after he discovered that she was actually married (unheard of for someone in their mid-twenties in his circles) and after spending enough time with her to realize that while they shared certain political commitments they had absolutely nothing else in common. University of Chicago graduate though she might be, she hated philosophy almost as much as she hated religion and, when she was’t doing politics she was creating sculptures which he didn’t understand and which she refused to explain. 

One day after reprimanding Salvatore for spending too much time at each house, which resulted in him being unable to finish canvassing a single precinct in an eight hour day she called him back into her office.

“By the way, I found someone you might want to visit. He must be well over eighty but I found him in his back yard building a shack of some kind. He looks and sounds Italian but he was wearing a yarmulke. He might be interesting for your project.”

“Thanks,” said Salvatore. “Do you have a phone number, or an address?”

“Just the address. I doubt that this guy has ever used a phone. He looks like something out of the nineteenth century.” 

She handed him a scrap of paper.

7268 South Malta Ave.

“You do know that I think you are a great canvasser,” she said to him as he turned to leave. “But we would need a whole army of people with your … bizarre and unexpected … skill in order to ever get anything done. Now get the precinct finished by tomorrow or I will reassign you to envelope stuffing as punishment.”

The playful smile with which she concluded still charmed him, though he did not understand how she could punish a volunteer. But even now, having relinquished his romantic aims with her, he would still probably stuff envelopes if she told him to.

***

The next day, Salvatore got up at dawn as he always did and ran three miles along the lake watching the sun rise. Then he returned to the attic room in the house of a friend where he was staying for free, showered, and headed out to a coffee house to read and work on the outline for his first chapter. Once it was l late enough to start knocking on doors he set out for the precinct he had failed to finish yesterday, promising himself that he would get that done before heading to Malta street, which was in the next precinct over. 

The neighborhood consisted mostly of retirees. It was showed up as 95% African American on the census but Salvatore inevitably found more old Italian and Slavic immigrants and the occasional Romanian Jew. But nearly everyone he stopped to visit was home. He was, furthermore, constitutively incapable of obeying Nadia’s orders, and spent fully an hour investigating one old woman’s claim that her landlord was “stealing her electricity,” and another listening to an old Spiritual another woman insisted on sharing with him while he enjoyed the pig ear sandwich she offered him for lunch. It turned out that the first woman’s claim appeared to be correct. All of the electrical lines for the six flat ran through her meter, and her bill was about six times what it should be. So when he finished walking the precinct he kept his promise to her to report the situation to the city and to the electric company. 

By the time he got to the address Nadia had given him, it was nearly 6:00pm. 7268 South Malta was a small octagon bungalow with small decorative stained glass windows and decorative brickwork. The front yard was covered in what remained of a rather wild looking herb garden and was dotted with almost randomly placed statues, including one of the Virgin Mary, one of Lenin, and one that Salvatore was sure was Guan Yin. The lights were on and the heavy wooden door to the house was open, with only the screen door protecting the inside against the Chicago October chill. Salvatore climbed the steps and rang the bell. A young woman approached. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties and had olive skin and jet black hair with deep brown eyes. She was wearing an indigo dress and a saffron scarf. 

“Come around back. We have been expecting you.”

Salvatore followed her, startled. 

“I came to see ….”

Salvatore realized the Nadia had not even given him the old man’s name.

They walked down the driveway and into backyard overgrown with fruit trees and the remains of vegetable garden. In the center was what was obviously a sukkah.

“This is my grandfather, Shmuel,” she said. “My name is Lucia.”

The old man sitting at the head of the small table looked impossibly ancient. Salvatore would have assumed that he was from. Southern Italy or Sicily, or perhaps Greece or the Southern Balkans or even North Africa. The name, however … and he was wearing a Kippah. But the granddaughter … Lucia was an Italian name. 

“My name is Salvatore Albatini,” he said, introducing himself. “Nadia Bogdanov gave me your address. I am working on a … research project … collecting stories.”

The old man made a gesture I the direction of one of the two empty seats at the table. Lucia approached the other. Shmuel stood and Lucia took an ornate lighter from the table and lit the two candles, reciting in Hebrew

Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, Melekh ha'olam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Shabbat.

Then Shmuel took the large deep blue ceramic cup which was sitting before him and raised, saying: 

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, borei p’ri hagafen.

He took a sip from the cup and passed it to his granddaughter, who then passed it on to Salvatore. Finally, he raised the loaf of challah and said:

Baruch atah, Adonai

Eloheinu melech haolam,

hamotzi lechem min haaretz.

Lucia then began serving the most extraordinary dinner. There were tiny eggplants stuffed with walnuts and pomegranate seeds. There was cuscus prepared with cici and harissa. And there was a most extraordinary apricot pudding. 

Salvatore thanked them for their hospitality and explained his project. Lucia responded by saying, once again, the they had been waiting for him. 

“But how …?”

“Ask him,” responded Lucia.

Salvatore turned to the old man who, for the first time since Salvatore had arrived, began speaking. He told a long winding tale of his birth outside Matera in Basilicata, the death of his father in a blood feud “because jealousy was very big then and if you look at the wrong woman, they do this.”

The old man made what Salvatore had always been warned was crude gesture, flicking his index finger under the back of his right incisor.

“That means that anyone in my famiglia who means anyone in your famiglia they have to kill each other. Which they did.”

His mother could not support him so she sold him to a local landlord as a servant. He was kept in a barn with the animals and fed only a thin minestra “with a salami only to smell.” The landlord’s son, however, was a freethinker and fancied himself a socialist, so when Shmuel expressed a desire to learn how to read he brought him books from the local school. Despite the fact that he was beaten every time he was caught reading, he worked his way through the “fifth book,” essentially competing primary school on as an autodidact.

Eventually he escaped and made his way to the United States, working as a “flood control expert —I dig dtiches” but was lured back to Italy by the call to defend the homeland against the ”Austraic Imperium,” “for which I get my lung burn by mustard gas thanks to the traitor of Caporetto.”

Returning to the United States he continued to work in “flood control,” as he called it. He married and had two children “which are a no good fascisti collaborator.” He made the crude gesture once again. Then, during the Great Depression, standing in line at one of soup kitchens run by the Communist Party’s the Unemployed Council he was handed a flier inviting him to join the Communist Party, “the highest expression of working class” and to “organize and direct the historical process.” I had found his calling and joined at once. 

From there Shmuel had defeated the KKK in both the Kensington district of far South Side Chicago and in Bowling Green Kentucky where he was nearly killed. He was hero for most of the party and was even considered as a candidate for the Central Committee. But the war intervened and gave him an opportunity to return to Italy as senior NCO working as an intelligence sergeant and a liaison with the Resistance in his native Basilicata. When the war was over he was able to stay for a while and try to find any family he might still have. The landlord’s son who had helped him learn to read was now member of the communal council and was the local Communist Party Secretary and was able to help him find his birth certificate and those of his mother and her ancestors. There were no records of his father. 

He was, it turned out, descended from a family of Jews who had come to Basilicata after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. Given the surname, Coen, they were almost certainly priests. While most of the Jews had fled the region after the Norman conquests, his family had held on, nominally converting to Christianity but secretly maintaining its Jewish customs. His mother’s family had taken the name Clerici, as a hidden reference to their actual origin, and he was baptized Simon. 

After he returned to the United States he found himself increasingly isolated. His children were now grown and his wife died of breast cancer in her early fifties. Always the autodidact he read some books about health and nutrition and became a vegetarian. When he tried to share the good news with his comrades he was expelled for what they determined was a Left deviation. The local synagogues he consulted were willing to recognize him as a Jew, and accepted Shmuel as his choice of a Hebrew name, but they were not really able to integrate him into the community, especially since so many members were moving away from their original neighborhoods and into the suburbs, something he had no desire to do. 

Still, he corresponded regularly with the party secretary in Matera, preparing an analysis of the current situation and an argument regarding the principal contradictions of the period and conjuncture, a document he also shared with the President of the United States, his Cabinet, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, along with the corresponding state officials in Illinois and the Mayor and City Council of Chicago. He learned Hebrew and studied the Torah and Talmud and eventually the Kabbalah on his own and practiced a Judaism all his own. 

Salvatore had wanted to stop him and ask if he could record the story, but he could not bring himself to do so. But when he was finished Lucia produced a tape recorder from within a pile of books and handed Salvatore the cassette. 

“You probably have papers he needs to sign as well,” she said.

Salvatore, overcome by the story, was nearly in tears. It took him a moment to sort through his briefcase and find them.

The old man signed, proudly. 

“And you?” Salvatore asked, turning to Lucia.  

“I am a doctoral student at the Universita degli Studii di Basilicata. I am writing a dissertation on the Jews of Matera and the old Seminary Ghetto. I took a a few months off to come and care for my grandfather. But my life is there now.”

The final addition was a gentle message that she knew Salvatore was taken with her and, however much she had appreciated his visit, this was not likely the beginning of a longer relationship. 

“And now,” said Shmuel, “I am very tired. I go to dream and perchance to die.”

He got up and left the table, giving Salvatore a warm embrace as he left. 

“I should help him,” said Lucia. “Please send me a copy of the tape and a transcript, and anything you write based on it, even in part.” 

“Of course,” said Salvatore. Then he saw himself out in the chilly Chicago night. 

***

Salvatore was more than a little surprised when he received a call from Lucia the next afternoon. He was back at the Bogdanov campaign and Nadia had, in fact, put him on envelope duty because, while he had finished canvassing his assigned precinct he had failed to call her and report in.

“Nadia says you are grounded,” teased Lucia. Then she started crying. 

Her grandfather had, in fact, actually died that night. She found him in the morning when he did not come down for breakfast at dawn as he always did. 

“I am so sorry,” said Salvatore. “I hope that last night was not too much for him.”

“He was just waiting, I think. In any case, he left you something —a manuscript. I am not sure how good your Hebrew is, but …”

“What kind of …?”

“You will see,” she said. ”I would invite you to sit shiva with us and attend the funeral, but managing the family will be overwhelming for me. They thought that he was just an old nutter and are already fighting over what little he left behind. But I would be happy to meet you a week from Friday at the Cafe Gondar on Cottage Grove. I am guessing that Nadia will be finished punishing you by then.”

“I would like that,” said Salvatore.

A week later Salvatore sat in the Cafe Gondar sipping the best Harrar he had ever tasted. Lucia entered, wearing the same indigo dress and saffron scarf as she had when he had first met her. 

“So what made you decide to study in Italy?” He asked. 

“My grandfather’s stories and my parents’ abuse,” she answered smiling.

“And to stay?”

“A wonderful fiancé,” she said, “and Il Sanguinello.”

“Il San …”

“It is a new political collective dedicated Communism as a spiritual project. You can consider yourself an honorary member.”

Then she opened her satchel and pulled out a book of some kind. It was bound with dark leather with deep ultramarine decorations on it: a Mogen David and the Hebrew letters Lamed Vav.

“I am not at all sure what it is. My Hebrew is very limited. But it is entitled Ha Nistarim: the Hidden.”

“And he wrote this?”

“Yes. The letter he left said that he wrote it for the one who and heard his story and understood.”

Salvatore took the book. It was a magnificent work of art, with hand lettering and complex illuminations. 

“It just doesn’t feel right for me to …”

“I think that if he could have, he would have had you as his apprentice. And failing that he would have left you me,” said Lucia. “But you came too late and he knew that my own life had already unfolded too far, and that I had found my place and my partner, and my calling. I think that you will find here the guidance you need in living … your calling.”

“My Hebrew is limited as well, but this will give me a motive to improve it. Will I see you again?”

“Not soon. I leave tomorrow and have no plans to return to Chicago anytime soon. But you are always welcome to visit in Matera. I suspect our paths will cross again.”

Salvatore had hoped to prolong the conversation, but Lucia rose to leave.

“I need to pack and get ready for my journey. And besides, I promised Nadia that I would not keep you away from the office for too long. What in the world did you do?”

Then she smiled with pretend disapproval, turned, and left.