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by the fireplace in the kitchen after supper, to finish basting a dress she was making for the elementary school teacher’s wife. The flickering light of the oil lamp fell on nimble fingers that moved as swiftly as those of a magician.
    Reaching the hemline of the dress, she stopped and stretched, her torso stiff from sitting so long in a contracted position. Her eyes were tired, her shoulders ached. Suddenly she felt a familiar weariness that she recently found herself having to endure almost every day. She put the needle and thread back in the shoe box and went into the bedroom, where her husband was still tugging at the blankets, tossing and turning in bed.
    â€œPeppino, can’t you sleep?” she asked, unbuttoning her sweater.
    The doctor grumbled and turned over for the hundredth time, pulling the heavy army blankets over him.
    Annachiara sat down on the edge of the bed. “Peppino, don’t torture yourself. You know how things work here. In a month, no one will think about it anymore. Besides, who’s going to bother us down here in Sicily?” She shook him, to get him to agree.
    Ragusa sat up. “This time won’t be like the others. You’ll see, they’ll hound us, the Duce will try to please the Führer. Did you hear what they said to each other in Rome?”
    â€œYou’ve worked all your life, you were in the trenches during the Great War, the Austrians even wounded you—who do you think could be out to get you? When you act like this, I don’t understand you.” Annachiara rose from the bed and, slipping off first her sweater and then her wool dress, was left wearing a black cotton slip.
    She was not yet forty, but life’s hardships, the three children to raise, the struggle of having to find something to put on the table each day for lunch and dinner, the work as a seamstress that she did at night, stealing hours from sleep, had aged her prematurely.
    Ragusa looked at his wife, feeling a sense of guilt. “We must leave the country.”
    His tone made her freeze. “You can’t be serious. Our life is here,” she replied patiently, putting on her heavy nightgown.
    Ragusa turned over again in the bed. “It will be difficult for us Jews to live in a nation where they’ll take away all our rights, even the right to work.”
    His wife tousled his hair, trying to play down her husband’s paranoia. “Peppino, we live in the most remote corner of Italy,” she said with that charming Venetian cadence that had made her Sicilian husband fall so deeply in love. “Don’t worry, no one will come looking for you here.”
    Ragusa pushed away his wife’s hand. “You should have seen that man’s despair.”
    â€œOh, come on, don’t think about it anymore. Put out the lamp instead; we’ll run out of oil.”
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    The following Sunday was the feast of Saint Faustina, patroness of the fields. From early dawn, the streets of Salemi would be overrun with stalls and street vendors from all over the province. Later in the day, the celebration would include a Mass, followed by a solemn procession led by the bishop. Toward evening, a band from nearby Calatafimi would entertain the residents with opera passages and regional songs. Then it would be time for tombola , a kind of bingo, in the piazza, with prizes offered by several of the province’s wholesalers: bottles of wine, olive oil, ricotta, and salami. Finally, with the first shadows of evening would come the most awaited event: the fireworks, a thrilling show that children dreamed of throughout the year and that even adults wouldn’t miss.
    The arrival of stalls crammed with all sorts of wonderful things provided a chance for the local women to be able to find dresses, shawls, soaps, stockings, and other items that were hard to come by in town. That morning, Mena, accompanied by the ever-present Nennella, strolled through the market, which