Chapter Fourteen – Luisa's Story
FLASHBACK
We see a story from the past told in flashback. The colours are washed out and a sepia tone is laid over them, scenes fade into one another.
A steam train leaving the 22 year old Luisa at a station. Luisa entering a café and buying the cat doll. The young woman walking with a middle aged man and woman, two young boys are with them, its night, they carry suitcases and the man looks nervously over his shoulder. A white Jewish star of David on a blue background. The background burns and fades to reveal a Nazi swastika flag. War: German bombers. German tanks. Explosions. A houses collapsing under bombs.
Commentary by Anna-Marie over the top of the flashback scenes:
Anna-Marie (voice over): "My mother bought the doll from the café owner but very soon after that things became very difficult for her parents in Germany. You've noticed of course that I am a Jew. And you know all about what that meant for Jews living in Germany in the 1930s. One night a friend knocked on my grandfathers door. There were soldiers in the town, pulling people out of their beds in the middle of the night and putting them on lorries, taking them away. My mother and her family took what they could in a few bags and left at once. They travelled by night and slept under hedges in the day. They went south and eventually reached Switzerland. They were lucky. For years afterwards my mother would tell me again and again how lucky they were. The war started, the town was burned, nothing remained. The German army was defeated, the American army came."
FLASHBACK, the scenes fading one into another continue.
The middle aged man walking down a street of ruined buildings, he looks much older, thinner. The man picking up things from the rubble. Fade to: an Italian flag. A handsome Italian man in a suit and an old fashioned trilby hat. A big building with a line of old motor cars outside. A gravestone. A station name board reading CREMONA. The antique shop exterior as it was several years ago. An old lady in a wheelchair. The old lady holds the battered cat doll on her lap and weeps.
Commentary by Anna-Marie over the top of the flashback scenes:
Anna-Marie (voice over): "In 1945 my grandfather went back to southern Bavaria, the Arlberg region. There was nothing left. Nothing at all. The town was a ruin. He found a few things in the rubble of their lovely house. And he never went back. The cat doll was one of the few things that survived. My grandfather learned that there was a Jewish community in Torino. Germany was full of hatred and bitterness, the north of Italy had not been affected so much by the war and there were British troops there. So they went to Torino. Mother married the son of the owner of a car factory. My grandparents died in the 1960s. After the war my father's workshop couldn't build lorries fast enough, the whole country needed them. He made lots of money. He sold the car factory to a big company just after I was born. FIAT I think it was. My mother then fell ill and they retired and moved to Cremona. The air in Torino in those days was very dirty from the factories. Father said Cremona was cleaner. My mother bought this shop and it was something to keep her mind working as she grew older. But her illness got worse and I looked after the shop and have been here since – oh, the late 1980s. After father died mother went to live with her younger brother. She would sit in her chair in the evenings and tell me all about the war and her school days before the war, and the handsome Japanese student she met. How they fell in love but he had to leave. She would often hold the doll and cry. She believed Mr. Nishi had died in the war, Japan suffered as badly as Germany you know."