Milano Memories - a short story by ME

She used to be my Uncle Adam’s girlfriend and she was the first Italian woman I ever met. I was seven at the time. An Indian girl who moved to Italy with her Jewish Indian family in 1969.


Sandra came with Uncle Adam to pick us up at the airport. Her brown lush mink coat reached just above her knees. Below were a set of slim ankles encased in transparent skin-colored tights and black, high-heeled pumps. Her ankles were misleading. Looking only at them you’d expect their owner to be tall and thin. Sandra was tall, but on the plumpish side. She had a big homely bosom, tightly ensconced under her soft, silk, flowered shirt. Her arms were large and soft, her bottom plentiful but firm. She had a loud, booming, no-nonsense laugh. Her blue, mascara-rimmed eyes crinkled when she laughed, lighting up her round face. Her short chestnut-brown curls were blown back to reveal a wide forehead yet unlined with worry. Her thin lips were lipstick red, reflecting the colors of her large ruby earrings.

We must have cast a funny sight. A family of Indians that literally landed in the midst of pink, brisk-looking Milanesi.

My 46-year-old father, Shalom, as always, was wearing a suit. His red and blue tie was open at the collar, revealing a firm brown neck under his chiseled chin. His black curly hair was mussed by the long flight. He was pushing a trolley full of our bags, his strong hands firmly clutching all his family’s possessions.

My light-skinned, slim, 30-year old mother, Shirley, was dressed in a tight, hip-hugging pastel-pink wool suit. She could have easily passed for an Italian: her black pumps and black leather handbag were Italian; her short straight hair was blow-dried backwards, as dictated by fashion. Only her big brown eyes and her dark black hair belied her Oriental origins. One of Shirley’s hands held on tight to that of my five-year old, skinny and slightly clumsy sister Noga.

Shirley was closely followed by her other two daughters: my nine-year old sister, Leah, long curly hair surrounding a round, bewildered and pensive face and me, Abigail, my wide brown eyes revealing wonder and anxiety at the surprisingly sterile, smell-less new environment . We girls were dressed in exactly the same outfits. Black patent-leather shoes; white cotton socks that reached up to our knobbly knees; plaid black-and-blue wool skirts that sagged slightly off our hips. Our white shirts were covered by itchy, blue V-necked sweaters. Blue knee-length wool coats with velvet black collars kept us warm.

My family had flown to Milan from a sweltering, colorful and noisy Bombay. We had left our shady large house and said a final goodbye to our staff of workers: our three Ayas (maids); our cook; our driver and all our close friends. The intention was to eventually make our way to Israel. But my grandfather, Hanan, and my Uncle Adam (respectively my mother’s father and brother) were in the jewelry business in Italy and we went to visit them. Little did we know that day that our family would end up living more than 30 years in Milan.

“Ma come siete magre,” cried Sandra when she saw us. “How thin you are,” we later understood she said. She gave us all a hug and she ushered us into my Uncle’s silver Mercedes to take us to our grandfather’s two bedroom apartment in the center of the city. I think it was probably our bewildered and slightly lost looks that caused her to adopt us as her new family.

Sandra was a single mother, no small feat in the very catholic Italy of the 1960s. Her son Guido was five, like Noga. Sandra never talked about Guido’s father and to my knowledge Guido never got to meet him. When my Uncle Adam met Sandra, she worked at the check-out counter of a supermarket. At the end of her shift Sandra would rush to pick her son up from school. Her white-haired, soft spoken mother, Enrica, would look after Guido while Sandra was out. Though my parents were the old-fashioned, no-sex-before-wedding type, at least that is the message they gave us girls, they accepted Sandra as she was: a catholic single mother who was the lover of Adam. Perhaps it was out of love of Adam. But most probably because Sandra was such a warm, no-nonsense person.

My Uncle Adam always looked handsomely tanned. He had short black hair and sharp light brown eyes, constantly on the lookout for fun. He was impeccably shaven and most times sportily dressed: loafers, tailored trousers, and a polo-neck sweater topped by a jacket that perfectly matched his outfit. He wore a gold Rolex watch and he loved driving his Mercedes. This he parked anywhere on the traffic-jammed streets of Milan without getting fined because it had Belgian car plates. He had a bachelor’s pad in Antwerp, from which he worked, and often drove through the night to Milan to see his father and now us.

Whenever Adam would visit, it was a whirlwind of fun. Everything about him was big and loud: he’d drink whiskey deep into the night with my parents and grandfather; he’d eat six brioches (Italian croissants) in the morning and go without food until dinner. He’d never buy just one suit, but six, unabashedly wearing down the Italian salesman with his very non-Italian price negotiations; he’d take us out to eat a pizza and loudly argue with my father over who would have the honor of paying the bill; he’d drive us to lake Como on Sundays, where we would invariably rent a motorboat.

Adam chatted with everyone, and flirted unrestrainedly with all women of all ages. Shopkeepers, restaurant owners, waitresses, teachers, students, businesswomen and saleswomen, all fell for his charm. “Ciao bella,” he’d say. And then, in broken Italian, he’d rattle off a whole list of compliments, the most common being: “But, haven’t you lost weight?” He’d ask this even if it was the first time he met someone. The women, girls, and old maids alike, would blush and titter and revel in this unabashed courting. Adam taught Sandra the jewelry business after he started dating her. When we met her, in 1969, she was already doing very well in the field.

Adam and Sandra enjoyed each other’s company and teased each other constantly. He’d call her “Fatso” and she called him “Rimbambito” – meaning “senile” or “idiot”. Whenever he’d come to Milan, Adam would call her up. “Fatso, let’s take the girls to the new Disney movie,” he’d say. That is how we girls got to see all the Disney cartoons – among them Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White - while my hard-working parents got a break from their parenting duties and enjoyed some time alone.

Sandra was a true friend. She’d check on us when my father left for his month-long business trips to India; she was there when we chose our first apartment and she drove my mother to hospital when she delivered, unexpectedly early, her fourth daughter within the year of our landing in Milan. My father was in Bombay at the time. Sandra was also there when we chose my new baby sister’s name, adamantly vetoing some, but finally approving that of Zahava. We called her Aunty Sandra, as is traditional for Indian children to do when referring to relatives and good family friends. “Auntyyyy Saaandra”, Sandra would mimic how my sister Noga called her. “Auntyyy Saaandraaaa.”

Sandra often brought her son Guido to play with us. He was a sweet, shy boy with a round baby face, sandy colored hair and a goofy toothy smile. We’d play cowboys and Indians with him. And cards. And just aimlessly caper around the rooms of our apartment. We, an army of three, and then four, girls, teased him lovingly. And he took it all in stride, warming to the noise, bustle and mouthwatering smells that characterized our very non-Italian home. He grew up with us and was, in some ways, a sort of brother we never had.

My Uncle Adam never married Sandra. Being an observant Jew, he couldn’t bring himself to marry a catholic. He married a Jewish woman instead, someone much younger than him, and bore a daughter. But they didn’t get along, and he soon divorced. He remained good friends with Sandra, but they never were in a relationship again.

When my sisters and I were in high school and just before we left, one by one, for our university studies in Jerusalem, Israel, we heard that Guido was in trouble. He had a girlfriend and she introduced him to heavy drugs. Sandra was desperate. She tried to help him, but Guido had fallen deep into a drug hell and couldn’t get out. He started stealing from her. Often beating her, to get his drug money. “I hate him,” Sandra screamed to my mother one day, her body badly bruised. “I wish he were dead,” she sobbed.

We hardly saw Guido anymore. He was in and out of detox programs. He never came to our house. Once, on a visit from university, I saw him with his girlfriend in an alley behind our apartment. He was wearing a green raincoat, its collar turned up. He looked back and saw me. His same baby face broke out into a shy goofy smile, his pierced eyebrows rising slightly with pleasure. “How are you Guido?” I asked. “Fine thanks,” he answered bashfully, with a small shrug of his shoulders. Sweet memories surfaced in our eyes, but faded quickly. I walked on. We didn’t have much to say to each other anymore.

Soon after, one night, while I was in my student apartment in Jerusalem, I got a call from my parents. “Guido is dead,” they said crying. He had overdosed in an abandoned villa in the Italian countryside. The friends he was with ran away, fearing police retaliation. He was found dead, alone, stretched out on the cold floor.

I wasn’t there for the funeral, and I didn’t see Sandra for a long time after that. She was shattered. So were my parents and Uncle Adam. When I did see her, it was for a short time. “I’m in a rush,” she said. Since then, she has always been in a rush. She once confessed to my mother that it was hard for her to meet us girls, as we remind her of her Guido.

Sandra choked up when I handed her my wedding invitation. But she never came to any of us girls’ weddings in Israel. When we visit Milan with our children she sometimes joins us for a quick pizza and then rushes off again. These days her brow is creased with sorrow. Sometimes, in a rare moment of weakness, she cries. But she quickly dries the mascara smeared tears and rushes off again.

Sandra still occasionally meets my Uncle Adam for a pizza when he visits Milan. He too has aged. He remarried and has a second daughter, but is always a bachelor at heart. He splits his time between Antwerp and Tel Aviv, where his wife and daughter reside. Sandra and Adam still laugh together. And sometimes they cry, remembering Guido, the good old days and my father Shalom who passed away in Israel nearly five years ago.

The last time I visited Milan I called her. “Aunty Sandra, it’s me Abigail,” I told her cell phone. “Ah Abigail,” she said. “I’m busy now. I’ll call you back.” She never did.

Ends