PORTO SANT’ANDREA
Angelo Soncini’s little sister died when he was five. Angelo isn’t sorry. Altira was a pest.
Angelo gets yelled at for saying so, but Sara killed his sister. Christian maids weren’t supposed to work for Jews, but Teresina and Dafne kept coming anyway. Babbo said they’d get in big trouble, so he made them stop coming, and that’s when Sara moved in. “Sara made a mistake,” Angelo’s mamma told him. “She needs a place to stay until after her baby, and that’s why she’s our new housekeeper.” Sara was from the Rome ghetto, where a lot of Jews were poor.
“She was not bad,” Angelo’s babbo always said. “She was ignorant.”
Except she killed Altira, and that was bad! Even if Angelo isn’t sorry. Mamma told Sara, “Don’t use that coal oven until we get it fixed.” But Sara didn’t believe a stove could kill a person. When Angelo and his mamma got back from shopping, Sara was crumped down on the kitchen floor, and Altira’s eyes were all rolled up, and the whites showed. Mamma screamed and pushed Angelo out of the kitchen so hard he fell and hurt his knee. He cried, but she didn’t pay any attention, and was just yelling and shaking Altira and opening windows, even though it was cold out. Sara woke up, but Altira didn’t.
A lot of visitors came while the Soncinis sat shiva. They patted Angelo’s hair, and looked sad, and said, “How terrible!” and “Your poor little sister!” and “What a pity!” Angelo went out to play. That’s when he heard Signora Dolcino tell Signora Leoni, “It was a blessing God took that child.” So Signora Dolcino thought Altira was a pest, too.
Things got better after Angelo turned six. Nonna Casutto died, so Angelo’s grandpa came to live with them. One time, some Blackshirts came and shouted slogans in the piazza by the synagogue. Nonno Casutto went out with a pistol. “I’m a Jew and as good a Fascist as any of you! I fought at the Brenner Pass, you little finocchini!” He shot the pistol into the air and laughed when they ran away. The carabinieri came, but Nonno didn’t care.
Nonno Casutto wouldn’t go to services either. Angelo’s mamma was always yelling at him. “Your son-in-law is a rabbi! You’re setting a terrible example for Angelo, and you’re embarrassing me!”
Nonno just sneered, “Religion is a load of crap.” Angelo laughed because Nonno said “crap,” so Mamma smacked him in the back of the head and yelled at him, too. She never, ever said anything good to Angelo, not once in his whole life. She didn’t care when he cried because he wasn’t allowed to go to school with the other kids. “Your babbo opened a nice new school right here in the synagogue,” she told him. “You’ll have the best teachers— professors from the university! And you’ll make new friends. Everything’s going to be fine.”
She always lies. Last spring she said she wasn’t sick, but she was throwing up all the time. She’s always complaining, too, even though Angelo’s not supposed to. “Iacopo, I can’t do it all! The housework, the cooking— every night you bring people home, and I’m supposed to feed them and make them welcome. One day there’s no water, the next there’s no electricity! My father is a troublemaker, and Angelo argues with me all day long. The air raids are driving me crazy. I’m so tired, Iacopo! I’m just so tired!”
She’s always crabbing about something.
Nonno Casutto was the only person in the world who really liked Angelo. “He’s a boy! Boys are supposed to be noisy!” Nonno said. He always stuck up for Angelo, and that’s why Babbo sent Nonno away to live with Zia Etta in Florence.
Now the single only good thing in Angelo Soncini’s whole life is when he gets to go to Signor Brizzolari’s office at the Palazzo Municipale. The secretary has candy, and she gives Angelo some if he behaves. Behave means you have to sit right next to Babbo, and no talking or fidgeting. That’s hard because it’s so boring, but today it’s even worse than usual, because his mother had to come to Signor Brizzolari, not Babbo, and Mamma always gets all huggy in front of people. Angelo hates that.
“But Signor Brizzolari, what are these families to do?” she asks. “How are they to live without bread? Without milk for their children?”
Sure enough, she rests one hand on her big fat belly and reaches out to place the other on Angelo’s hair. He squirms away. “I’m not a baby,” he says. “I’m going outside!”
Serafino Brizzolari has children and grandchildren. He cannot help smiling as Angelo, an unwilling prop in his mother’s performance, leaves the office to cadge caramelle off the department secretary. Even so, when the two adults are alone the bureaucrat shakes his head with ponderous regret. “Signora, I would like nothing better than to help you, but—” He drops his voice. “I’m not certain I can issue ration cards to Italian Jews now, let alone to foreigners!”
“But surely there’s something you can do! Signor Brizzolari, a man of your compassion? Your importance! If you can’t help us, who can we turn to?”
Like so many Italian women whose menfolk hide from German labor roundups, Mirella Soncini has been thrust into the public sphere despite her advanced pregnancy. She’s put together a classic combination of flattery and supplication that would normally bring this little drama to a satisfying conclusion, which Serafino does not fail to appreciate. Nevertheless…
Stalling for time, he passes a white linen handkerchief over a heavy round face damp with sweat. Ordinarily he carries his great weight and his responsibilities well, but this breathless September heat is hard on him, and today he feels more burdened than usual by his body and his position. He removes his spectacles, rubbing at the sore spots they make on the bridge of his fleshy nose. “Signora, I am powerless.”
“Signor Brizzolari, you can’t mean it!” she says, beginning to realize that he does.
“Signora, you must understand my position—”
Angelo steps back into the room, frowning as he chews. “Mammina, isn’t he going to give us the ration cards?”
Easing to the edge of the wooden armchair, the rabbi’s wife uses both hands to push herself up, and when she speaks, the innocent, flirtatious teasing and operatic pathos have vanished. “Thank you, Signor Brizzolari, for all you’ve done for us in the past. You have nothing to reproach yourself with.” She motions for her purse and the empty shopping bag. For once her son does as he’s asked. “Angelo,” she says, “look carefully at Signor Brizzolari.” Sobered by his mother’s tone, the boy turns serious brown eyes toward the bureaucrat. “Shake the hand of an honorable man,” his mother tells him. “We are in Signor Brizzolari’s debt.”
Alone in his office, Serafino Brizzolari shifts his weight to ease the ache where a buried chunk of Austrian shrapnel lies too near the femoral artery to remove. When the rabbi’s wife walked into his office, he had braced himself for tears, for outrage, for pleading. Nothing would have been more formidable than the grave and manly gesture of a small Jewish boy, shaking the hand that Serafino studies now.
For twenty-six years, Serafino’s own clean hands have had the power to shock him, so certain was he once that he’d never be free of the mud and stink of the Great War’s trenches. His white cuffs are immaculate, his suit freshly pressed and spotless. His shoes gleam. His feet, once foul with wet rot, are dry and sweet, even in summer, even if he must bathe twice a day to keep them that way. All these years, and he’s still jolted awake at least once a week by shrieks and shell blasts. The dreams are so real that for a few moments after waking, he dares not breathe for fear of mustard gas.
When he left his mother in 1916 and marched away to war, Serafino was a cocky kid, indestructible and convinced of his own courage. Bravado quickly withered under fire, but pride took its place. Determined to drive the Huns from his homeland, he was wounded twice for Italy and the king, but when he limped home from that bloodbath, he was spat on by Bolsheviks, jeered at by trade unionists. The king was a puppet dancing on capital’s strings, they said. Soldiers like Serafino had been duped by speculators who’d grown fat as ticks on labor’s blood.
Stunned by the hostility, half-convinced the Reds were right, Serafino took off his uniform and locked his medals in a drawer, obscurely ashamed of the deaths and the maimings, the suffering and sacrifice he had witnessed and inflicted. He forgot courage, and remembered terror. He forgot the cause, if there ever was one, and remembered the catastrophe.
Benito Mussolini changed all that. “Better one day as lions than fifty years as sheep!” il Duce cried, and Serafino is still grateful for the pride Mussolini restored in the soldiers who came home from the Great War and were made to feel ashamed. Even so, Mussolini has a great deal to answer for. Three hundred thousand Italian casualties in Greece, Yugoslavia, Libya, Russia. The nation occupied by Germany, invaded by the Allies. The king in exile, the economy in ruins. And Mussolini himself is the principal marionette in a puppet government Berlin has named the Republic of Salò.
Early this morning, there was a call from Salò: il Duce’s representatives will be in Sant’Andrea this afternoon, accompanied by German authorities. Serafino was reminded that he has prospered in government service, that his family has come through this war secure, well-housed, well-fed. The only thing required to ensure the continuation of this good fortune is a simple change of political label, from Fascist to Republican.
My sons are petty tyrants, he thinks. My daughters are vain, my wife is cold and house-proud. My mistress is a grasping slut. And I? he asks himself. I am a fat, powerless bureaucrat in a vassal state, taking orders from an Austrian corporal’s lackeys.
Mirella Soncini and her son are already past the mezzanine when Brizzolari shouts. Standing on the landing outside his office, he waves the rabbi’s wife back, then changes his mind. “Stay there,” he calls, and reappears a minute later with a large and bulging envelope.
He knows he is elephantine and graceless but feels lithe as a leopard descending the long marble staircase. Beckoning, he directs the rabbi’s wife into a recessed doorway in a deserted corridor. “So many have left the city because of the bombing,” he observes airily. “Who knows where they are now? In the mountains? Dead?” He lowers his voice. “If anyone comes back to claim these, I’ll think of something. Sell them for cash, signora. Use that on the black market.”
Mirella presses the package of ration cards to her breast and beams at her small son. “You see, Angelo? I told you he’d find a way to help! Signor Brizzolari, I don’t know how to thank you—”
He raises a clean, dry hand, swallowing nervously. “Just don’t tell anyone where you got them!” he pleads. “It’s a capital crime to aid enemies of the state.”
Enemies of the state? Mirella shakes her head, refusing to believe it. Did Serafino Brizzolari just call us enemies of the state—
“Mamma?” Angelo digs his heels in. “Mamma! You’re not listening!”
She stops and looks around, amazed to see how far they’ve walked. “I’m sorry, Angelo. What did you say?”
“I said I don’t see why we have to help the refugees anyway. They talk funny! They touch our stuff! I’m tired of them.”
“I know, Angelo. I am, too.” Tired of the war, of being pregnant, of sleep broken by air raids and a crowded bladder. And, yes— tired of strangers trooping through her home. For the past three years, Scuola Ner Tamid has made a place for Jewish refugees who’ve somehow found their way to Sant’Andrea. The Germans are cultured and urbane, but O Dio! The Poles… Bearded men with bizarre side curls, dowdy women with awful wigs. Thoughtlessly conspicuous, regally unconcerned that Sant’Andrese Jews must bribe officials like Brizzolari to keep them out of the camp for illegal aliens at Ferramonti. They refuse to enroll their children in Talmud Torah because Italian boys and girls study together to become b’nai mitzvah. Iacopo says Hasidic theology is the bel canto opera of Judaism: gloriously ornamented, astonishingly elaborate, breathtakingly beautiful. To Mirella, Polish Jews seem obsessed with cutlery and dishes. And they’re scandalized that Mirella dresses like any other stylish Italian woman. Are Polish men so oversexed that a glimpse of a woman’s hair can plunge them into ungovernable lust? It’s absurd.
“I hate them,” Angelo told her once. “I wish they’d all go away.” Mirella was distressed, but Iacopo was amused. “Ah, the brutal honesty of the very young! It takes time to learn hypocrisy. Our guests steal our time and attention. It’s normal to feel outrage at theft. And you, Mirella? They’ve stolen me away from you as well.”
“I’m proud of your work,” she said, “and I’m proud of you.”
Mild eyes amused, Iacopo considered this. “Not brutal honesty, but no hypocrisy either. Instead, discretion!” He kissed her forehead. “Discretion will do nicely.”
Two thirds her husband’s age, Mirella often feels closer to her son’s resentment than to Iacopo’s generosity of spirit. The wellspring of Ner Tamid, Iacopo provides a reliable flow of reason and diplomacy during endless meetings with destitute foreigners and bombed-out congregants. He expresses genuine sympathy for religious instructors whose restless students are delighted when an air raid interrupts their reluctant study of Hebrew. He soothes the wounded pride of college professors teaching in Jewish day schools after the universities were closed to them. And then there is the ordinary work of a rabbi: making halachic rulings, preparing divrai Torah, conducting services. Iacopo works and works and works, and when his public day is over, there is his own need to study, to be off in his own world—
“Can we?” Angelo pulls his hand out of hers. “You said you’d think about it, so can we?”
“Can we what, Angelo?”
“Get a puppy! Please, Mamma? I’ll take care of it myself.”
“O caro mio! We’ve been over this, and over this. No. The answer is no.” Panting, she quickens the pace, even though hurrying makes her look like a foie gras goose. “They’re treyf, Angelo: they’re unclean. They have fleas. They carry diseases—”
“But you promised!”
“I promised to think about it, and I did, and it’s just impossible. We hardly have enough food for our family and the guests, and now with the new rationing rules, there’s nothing extra for a great big dog.”
“It wouldn’t be a great big dog. It would only be a little puppy—” Angelo moans when he sees the gate of the cemetery. “Oh, Mamma! Do we have to go here again?”
“You ask the same question every time, and the answer is always the same. Caring for graves is a great mitzvah because it’s a good deed we can never be thanked for. Keeping your sister’s resting place clean is all we can do for her now.”
“But do we have to go every week?”
“We don’t have to. I just like to…”
Mirella’s steps slow, and stop. Angelo, too, takes a breath.
The cemetery is an enclave of peace in a clamorous, dirty city. Stately cypresses guard the gate. Inside, the long strong limbs of six-hundred-year-old chestnuts stretch over neatly swept pathways, sheltering the dead, enclosing their families in hushed dignity. Leaves in unnumbered multitudes are renewed each year. Gnarled roots grip the ground. Generation after generation of Jews have come here to mourn and be mourned. To remember and be remembered.
How long did it take, Mirella wonders numbly, to desecrate a graveyard tended for centuries?
“Mamma,” Angelo whispers. “Someone made caca on Altira’s stone!”
Swastikas are scrawled in dripping black paint. Nearby: a shout of triumph, roars of drunken laughter. They’re still here, Mirella thinks. Men capable of shitting on a baby’s grave. In Sant’Andrea.
She grab’s Angelo’s hand, and together they back away. One of the men looks up and points. “Run,” she says, and they do: through narrow streets and alleys, past Tranquillo Loeb’s shuttered law office, past the cobbler’s where Iacopo’s dress shoes are being resoled, past the barbershop where Angelo had his first haircut. In the market, she becomes one housewife among many carrying string bags and little parcels, accompanied by a child or two. She works her way through the crowd, around pushcarts with paltry displays of spoiled fruit and withered vegetables— all that’s escaped confiscation by the Germans.
Vision blurred by tears, Mirella drags her son along, wrenches away from hands that reach for her, hears nothing of what her neighbors say. Heart hammering, she turns down the narrow passage that leads to the synagogue. Shouting breaks out ahead. Everyone stops, trapped by a checkpoint—
“Thank God! I thought they’d gotten you, too.”
The low, startling voice is directly behind her. “Renzo!” Mirella cries softly, finding herself all but in his arms. “They’re desecrating the—”
He shakes his head. “Brace yourself,” he whispers. “Iacopo’s been arrested.” Mirella moans. “Don’t upset Angelo.” Eyes shut, Mirella nods. “Rina Dolcino told my mother. Mamma told me. The whole neighborhood’s been watching for you.”
The queue shuffles forward toward a pair of pimply soldiers. “Dokumente!” one shouts every few moments, brandishing some sort of machine gun. The other boy is younger, less sure of himself, fumbling as he studies each person’s identity papers.
Moving forward, Renzo takes Angelo’s hand and grips Mirella’s arm. There are only two people ahead of them. “Renzo,” she whispers. “Our papers say we’re—”
“Cry!” he says. Confused, she starts again to protest. “Oh, for God’s sake!” he shouts angrily. “You stupid woman!” She backs away, shocked. “How many times do I have to tell you? God in heaven! You have the brains of a chicken!”
By the time they reach the barricade, Mirella is weeping, and Angelo wails as well. “My apologies,” Renzo tells the younger soldier in excruciatingly embarrassed German. “My wife is Italian, and therefore an idiot. I never should have married her, but what can you do? It was a lapse in judgment, but it’s too late for regrets! Ugo Messner,” he says, introducing himself and handing over a fine leather document case. “We’re down from Südtirol for a few days, and my wife has forgotten her papers in our hotel. I’ve told her a hundred times. Carry them always. Women! Might as well talk to a bag of sand. Italians are so lax about this sort of thing. They honor the law when convenient or necessary, and ignore it on precisely the same grounds. We Germans will put things right, though, won’t we!”
A few months out of basic training, the soldier probably misses his mother. Faced with a sobbing woman and a squalling child, he hesitates. “All right,” he says, relieved to be speaking German. “But she must carry her papers at all times from now on. Next!”
“Bravissima!” Renzo whispers delightedly as they walk on. “I really thought you were going to faint! That would have been as good as crying, now that I think of it.”
“You pinched me!” Angelo says, sniveling. “And you were yelling at Mamma!”
“We had to fool the Germans, caro, and we did it!” Mirella says, as though it were a thrilling episode in a grand adventure. “Renzo, where did you get those papers?”
“From a friend who lives up in Bolzano. Her older brother died last year.” Steering them quickly down an alley behind his apartment building, he raps twice, then once more, on the service entrance.
Rina Dolcino flings the door open. “Mirella! I saw the whole thing. Dragged him off like a common criminal. And when I came out to stop them, they—”
“Thank you, Signora Dolcino,” Renzo says smoothly, cutting Rina off before she can frighten Angelo.
Upstairs, his mother is waiting for them at her door. “Catch your breath, Mirella,” Lidia says, pointing to a chair. “Angelo, come with me. I have a treat for you.”
“O Dio!” Mirella moans, once Angelo’s out of earshot. “Tranquillo Loeb told us this would happen!”
“Fear is what they want, Mirella.” Renzo pulls up a stool and sits at her feet. “Don’t give it to them.”
“But, Renzo, what about Iacopo?”
“Mammina, come and look! Signora Leoni has cheese!”
“Angelo, let your mamma rest.” Renzo covers Mirella’s hands with his own. “Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?” She swallows and shakes her head. “Va bene,” he says. “Stay here while I get things sorted out.”
He gets to his feet and leans over, his lips grazing her cheek just as Angelo reappears in the hallway, a generous lump of fontina in his hand. “Mamma!” the child says, scandalized.
Mirella stares at her son, then raises her gaze to meet Lidia’s knowing eyes. “Signor Leoni was just being courteous, Angelo,” Lidia says firmly. “That’s how gentlemen treat ladies in distress.”
Hours later, resting on Lidia’s bed, Mirella dozes in the brief, heavy sleep of late pregnancy and dreams of Iacopo. “Mirella,” he croons softly, “it’s time to go home.”
She was sixteen and Iacopo almost thirty when they met. Hired away from the scuola in Turin, Rabbino Soncini came to Sant’Andrea to serve her congregation as rabbi and cantor. The entire congregation attended his inaugural service, even families like Mirella’s that weren’t very observant. With a scholar’s beard and pallor, Iacopo Soncini had the soft, boneless look of a man who’d never lifted anything heavier than a volume of the Talmud. But that voice! Effortless, melodious. Chanting the ancient prayers, commanding attention, drawing her in. The moment Mirella heard him sing, she became the most devout Casutto in three generations.
Cool lips kiss her cheek. Unfamiliar hands grip her arms. She smiles in her sleep, and Renzo sings to her again with Iacopo’s velvety baritone. “Mirella?” An aria in three notes. “Wake up, cara mia.”
She struggles to sit, startled to find herself surrounded by neighbors. Renzo stands alone in the corner. Iacopo is sitting on the bed, his voice back in his own body. “Everything is fine, cara. It was a simple misunderstanding.”
“I saw the whole thing!” Rina Dolcino tells everyone again. “Dragged him out like a common criminal! When I tried to stop them, they threatened to shoot me!”
“Oh, Rina!” Lidia says, taking her friend’s arm. “Don’t make an opera!”
“Babbo,” Angelo reports, “Signor Leoni was kissing Mammina.”
“And with your permission, Rabbino, I’ll do it again.” With a sweeping bow, Renzo kisses her hand. “You see, Signora? Your husband is back, safe and sound.”
“But how?” Mirella asks, addressing the room rather generally. “Iacopo, what happened? Why were—”
“Renzo was kind enough to alert Don Osvaldo,” Iacopo tells her. “The archbishop himself intervened. According to Article Seven of the June 24, 1929, statute, I am a religious leader approved by the Fascist state, required to remain in residence and to fulfill my obligations to the congregation.” Iacopo smiles, confident and calm. “The German commandant was satisfied, and I was free to go.”
“The archbishop will protest. I’ll see to that!” Rina vows as Mirella gathers her things. “And my sister’s husband has a cousin in the carabinieri. He’ll put guards at the cemetery.”
Iacopo thanks Lidia for her hospitality, Rina for her concern. Renzo, more coolly, for swift action. Other neighbors emerge from shadowed doorways as the Soncinis cross the street. Sì, certo, Iacopo assures them, everything is fine! He and his family will be perfectly safe in their own home.
And indeed, the mess inside is no worse than normal. Anxiety dissipates in the ordinariness of household clutter and the prolonged process of putting a little boy to bed. On her way back from Angelo’s bedroom, Mirella notices the fat envelope that’s been tossed onto the table. “I completely forgot,” she says, bringing it to Iacopo. “Serafino Brizzolari gave us the ration cards.”
“The new ones?” Iacopo opens the envelope and whistles, impressed by the number of cards stuffed into it. Then he reads the list. “Two hundred grams of bread a day, two thousand grams of pasta a month… This isn’t enough to fatten a finch.”
She bustles around the room, putting things right. “Signor Brizzolari said we should sell the ration cards to Catholics and use the cash on the black market.”
“What would I do without you?”
“Work too hard and sleep too little.” She sweeps crumbs off the table and into her hand, but comes to him for a quick embrace. The child within her kicks, and Iacopo feels it, too. “A boy, I’m sure of it!” she says. “He’s rearranging furniture— my liver inconveniences him, so he kicks it out of the way.”
“Angelo will be pleased with a brother.”
“And you, Iacopo? If it’s a girl?”
“A daughter would be delightful. But a son, Mirella!” He laughs sheepishly. “Another son would be very fine.”
The nights have begun to cool. Fog rises from the harbor. When the bronze bells of San Giobatta strike ten, the sound floats eerily on the mist, then fades, replaced in the Leoni apartment by the steady tick of knitting needles.
“She chose Iacopo.” Lidia loosens a length of yarn with a decisive tug. “Mirella has always been a thoroughly conventional young woman.” This is not strictly true, but Lidia refuses to undermine her own argument. “It would have been a poor match. Where are you going?”
Renzo shrugs on a gabardine jacket, checks his hair and tie in the mirror over the credenza.
“You are an extremist,” Lidia says. “Flying at the sun, or crashing into the sea! You must learn to regulate yourself.” Silence. That’s how she knows he’s truly angry. “Renzo,” she says, refusing to be bullied. “The curfew?”
“Buona notte, Mamma.”
Rina Dolcino might have pursued such a son down the hall, clutching at his arm in the doorway. Lidia pitches her voice so that it will carry just far enough. “If I were to keep a bottle in the apartment,” she asks curiously, “would you drink at home?”
He hesitates. She dares to hope. The door slams shut behind him.
MARITIME ALPS
PIEMONTE
In Alpine resorts and border posts, hotel staff and soldiers move from room to room, and bunk to bunk, regretful but insistent. “The situation has changed,” they tell the Jews in low, quick voices. “Italy is occupied. The SS know you’re here.”
At Colle Aurelio, children are shaken from deepest sleep. Fine, sweaty hair is brushed back from pale, round foreheads. Battered little shoes are tied. A whimpering flock is shepherded from latrine to mess hall, and when everyone is fed, border policemen bundle bewildered boys and girls into military-issue pullovers that hang to the children’s knees.
“Vipere? Snakes?” a corporal scoffs, when Liesl Brössler asks and Albert Blum translates. “My brothers and I camped all over these mountains when we were kids. You’ll be fine!” Nearby, a beardless private fishes Steffi’s thin blond braids out of a gray-green collar. “I’ve got a sister your age,” he says. “Don’t worry, bella. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Shifting from foot to blistered foot, Frieda Brössler stares dumbly at a sunrise framed like an oil painting by the rough wooden casement. The corporal offers her a blanket. She smiles spasmodically and wraps it around her shoulders, but her eyes return to the mountains. Aquamarine under a sky streaked with pink and yellow, they break like spent waves from the Maritimes to the horizon. “Mein Gott,” Frieda whispers. “Mein Gott…”
Babies cry. Children whine. Limp toddlers fall asleep again, this time in their mothers’ arms. Border guards strap on cartridge belts, sling carbines over shoulders, fasten grenades to D-clips. “It’s time!” someone calls. Frieda takes the girls’ hands. They follow the others outside, where trucks are being loaded with provisions, light weapons, ammunition.
The young lieutenant is everywhere at once, supervising the abandonment of the post, answering questions in French, German, Italian. Yes, the soldiers will be on the run too. No, they don’t expect much trouble. This part of Piemonte is lightly populated, far from any military objective. Don’t stop in the nearest valley. Try to get to Valdottavo— it’s a big valley southeast of here, very isolated. The roads are gravel tracks, meant for mules and wooden carts, not tanks or armored cars. If you get lost, look for stone terraces. They’ll lead you to farmhouses. God— and luck— be with you!
Hefting knapsacks filled with army rations, the strongest Jews start down the mountain alone or in small groups. Others mill about, conferring, almost ready or ready but unsure. Claudette hurries across the parade ground to where the Brösslers stand. “Santino says we can ride partway in the trucks. We’ll sit on the boxes in the back. If the driver stops, be ready to get out fast and run.”
Overhearing this, a family from Mannheim scrambles into the nearest truck. Duno dashes after them, to reserve space. With a reassuring gap-toothed smile, an ugly young soldier helps Frieda with the girls, then boosts Claudette and her father into the crowded truck.
Somewhere inside, a foot is trod on. Hearing grumbled Yiddish, Frieda reflexively takes command, as though accommodating unexpected guests at her dinner table. “You there, give your seat to Herr Blum. Liesl, sit on your father’s lap. Claudette, sit between me and Duno, and take Steffi on your lap.” Four more quick commands, and she nods to Claudette’s soldier.
He lifts the tailgate into place and bangs on it twice to signal the driver. “Wait!” Claudette cries. “Santino, aren’t you coming with us?”
The truck’s engine roars to life. Eyes on Claudette, Santino hops away from the exhaust pipe and crashes into Lieutenant Miroglio. “Sorry, sir! I didn’t see you!”
“Love is blind,” Miroglio says. “Look after them, Cicala. And God be with us all.”
Gears grind. The sun rises. Beneath the tented fabric, the air warms. With only a few hours’ sleep after the trek over the mountain, smaller children and older adults soon fall asleep. Claudette can’t imagine how they manage it, with the truck swaying around switchbacks and jolting over ruts, but as the morning crawls on, her head sinks lower and lower.
An elbow rams her ribs. “Wake up!” Duno whispers fiercely.
She wipes a thin line of drool off her chin and mutters “Sorry” when she sees how wet his shoulder is.
He shakes his head and mouths, “Shut up!”
The truck is motionless. Sunlight flickers on the canvas. Leaves rustle all around. Frieda Brössler lifts Steffi from Claudette’s lap. The little girl doesn’t rouse, but her sister, Liesl, is stiff with fear. “Wake up, Liebling,” Frau Brössler says softly, shaking Steffi. “We have to walk again.”
“I don’ wanna! Where’s Antoinette?”
“Hush!” Her mother hands Steffi the china-faced doll. “Hold her tight!”
Canvas flaps jerk open. Everybody jumps. “The first convoy’s gone on, but there’re more coming up the road.” Santino motions for Claudette to jump down while Albert translates. “We’re leaving the truck here.”
The driver has nosed the vehicle into a thicket. Duno helps him heap branches against the truck for camouflage while the others assess the terrain. The nearest mountain rises steeply from a stony riverbed. Three days ago, this would have seemed an impossible climb.
Draping rolled-up army blankets over their shoulders and slinging mess kits around their necks, the Mannheimers jump from the truck calling “Mazel!” to the Blums and Brösslers. “Claudette,” Frau Brössler asks, “may we come with you and your soldier?” Duno starts to protest. Claudette narrows her eyes at him. Frau Brössler stops them both with a look. “Go ask your father, Claudette.”
Another quick conference, from German to Italian and back again. The soldier grimaces— a barely perceptible change. It’s probably more responsibility than he wants, Frieda thinks. Nevertheless, he takes it with good grace, and lifts Steffi onto his shoulders.
For a long time, the only sound is the crash of vegetation and the huff of their own labored breathing as they climb. “Mutti! You’re going too fast!” Liesl complains, bringing up the rear. “I can’t—”
The flat crack of a single gunshot in the distance silences her. “Un cacciatore,” Santino says casually. “A hunter,” Albert translates with matching, if breathless, composure.
Everyone above the age of nine stares, first at Albert Blum, then at Santino. A rattling burst of machine pistol fire confirms their silent skepticism, and all discussion ceases. They grip roots, haul on branches, making for higher ground. Knapsacks full of ration cans thump against their backs. Wild berry canes snap at legs and faces. Thorns rip clothes and scratch tender skin. For the next two hours, not even Liesl complains.
“Mangeremo qui,” Santino says, unslinging his ’91 and leaning the rifle barrel against a fallen log beside a miniature waterfall.
“We’ll eat here,” Albert translates, dropping onto the log near the carbine.
Clutching Antoinette’s china face, Steffi whimpers when the soldier lets her slide off his back to the ground. “What are you crying about?” Liesl snarls. “You got to ride!”
Duno looks around. “We’re lost.” No one answers. “We’re lost!” he says louder.
“Maybe that’s good,” Albert says. “The Germans will be lost, too!”
“You’re always so cheerful,” Claudette grouses, flopping onto the ground.
“The truck driver said there was a village over there,” Duno claims, pointing. “Una villa!” Santino levers open ration tins, playing deaf. “We should have crossed the ridge where that pine tree comes out of those rocks. We’re going in circles.”
“And you have such a lot of experience in these matters, Mr. Fenimore Cooper?” his father asks. “You know the woods better than a man born here?”
“He wasn’t born here,” Claudette feels compelled to point out.
“Don’t mix in, Claudette!” her father warns, taking a tin from Santino.
“Papa, he’s from Calabria!”
Hearing the word, Santino looks up, can opener in hand. He doesn’t understand what the Hebrews are saying, but he hears Duno’s scorn and accepts it as his due. He’s tried to keep them going upward, but when the ground slopes down, is it another ravine or are they going back toward the San Leandro again? I should have gotten a compass from Miroglio, he thinks glumly, but he catches Signor Blum’s eye and jerks his head toward the Brösslers. “Tell them not to waste their strength. And quiet down. There could be Germans in the next ravine.”
Albert translates. Mouths snap shut. Duno stalks off angrily. The others eat in a silence broken only by Steffi’s quiet chatter. “There’ll be a handsome nice prince,” she tells Antoinette. “He’ll have a big pretty castle and soft big beds…”
Sharing the fallen tree trunk, Santino and Albert chew companionably, eyes on a valley barely visible through a stand of elms. A low rumble rolls over them. Thunder, not artillery. A moment later, the first drops of rain smack against leaves. Santino pulls out a square of oilcloth and wraps his rifle in it.
Albert asks, “Are you a good shot, Santino?”
“My nonno could pit an olive at fifty meters! I’m not that good.”
“But not so bad either, eh?” Albert guesses, nudging him with an elbow.
Santino smiles modestly. “We should try to get up to those rocks before dark. Maybe we’ll see something.”
“Santino, the peasants— the contadini—will they help strangers?”
“Sì, certo, signore.”
“Even Jews?”
“We’re all human beings, signore. Even Turks and Africans.” In point of fact, until his unit was deployed in southern France, Santino Cicala didn’t know there were still Hebrews alive in the world. If anyone had asked, he’d have said ebrei were only in the Bible. Like Egyptians, or those other E-people… Ephesians! “Italians don’t hate strangers, signore. We hate the uncle who screwed us out of an inheritance. Like Mamma used to say, ‘Trust only family, only family can betray you.’ She tried to get along with everyone, but…” He shakes his head. “Zia Rosa won’t talk to her brother, and he won’t talk to his wife’s nephews, and nobody talks to my cousin Salvatore. My nonna—just before she died, she told us, ‘Here’s who I want you to hate when I’m gone.’ Twenty-three names!”
Another crack of thunder shortens Albert’s chuckle.
“Must rain a lot here,” Santino says. “At home, it’s not green like this. Same kind of country, though— mountains, ravines, all cut up. Hard work, sunup, sundown. Every day the same, except for festas—saint’s days.” He scratches at four days’ growth of beard. “Strangers mean news, something interesting to talk about. Another thing,” he says, warming to the topic. “Farmers always hate the government! All government means to farmers is taxes. Tell people you’re running from the government, and you’ll always get help.”
Albert pulls up his collar and settles his dampening homburg more firmly. “Were you a farmer before the war?”
Santino holds out callused palms scored by short, pale scars. His fingers are nearly twice the thickness of Albert’s own. “Dry-stone waller, signore! Harder than farming, but a good wall will last two hundred years, without repairs.” His lip curls. “Mussolini built everything with concrete! Concrete is a sin.”
“I feel the same way about typewriters,” Albert declares, one professional to another. “And calculating machines are an abomination in the sight of the Lord.”
The rain’s intensity suddenly triples, as though God has drawn a knife through a big cloud’s belly. The noise almost drowns out the sound of someone yelling. On his feet, Santino says, “Stay here, and stay quiet.”
Crouching slightly, rifle in hand, Santino sprints halfway up the hill, but he stops, furious with relief, when he realizes who’s hollering, “Una via!” Hair plastered to his skull, the Austrian kid comes sliding down through the brush. “I am correct— I telled you,” he crows in bad Italian. “Una via, right there! With a latteria truck!”
Santino grabs him by the upper arm and squeezes, hard. Duno squawks, and Santino increases the pressure until his own knuckles are white and the boy’s eyes widen in pain and confusion. Voice low, Santino says, “If you want to be a man, learn to shut the fuck up.”
Wiping tears and rain from his eyes, Duno nods. They return to the others in silence. “He found a road on the other side of this hill,” Santino tells Albert. “He saw a milk collector driving by— a man who goes from farmer to farmer and brings the milk back to the central dairy in a city.”
Albert translates. Everyone looks at Duno, who is uncharacteristically quiet about this triumph. “There’s a reason for a road,” Albert points out. “We must be near a dairy farm!”
The girls moan. Herrmann sighs, but Frieda staggers to her feet. “Herr Blum is right,” she says, shamed by Alfred’s blue-lipped optimism. “The milk van was going somewhere, and the quicker we get there, the better.”
Wet day darkens into sodden twilight. The road turns into a gravel track, and then the gravel runs out. The rain becomes a steady downpour that hits the mud so hard, drops leap up like tiny frogs. “Stay on the edges,” Santino reminds everyone periodically, gesturing as they splash through the mire. “Walk on the weeds, so you don’t sink.”
They understand the principle, though they often forget it, tramping down unnamed ravines and over identical ridges. The parents are cheerless, wool blankets draped over their heads. Claudette and Duno pass the time sniping at each other. Santino carries Steffi. When Liesl falls behind, he lets them all rest, balancing exhaustion with exposure.
Night and the temperature fall. Liesl begins to cry, and the others aren’t far from it. Even Albert Blum is muttering as he stumbles along behind her. “I tol’ you we should’ve brought th’ umbrellas!” he shouts suddenly. “You never lis’en to me, Paula!”
His daughter turns. “We don’t have umbrellas, Papa,” she says uncertainly. “And Mama isn’t here—”
“You shou’ be ’n school, young lady.”
Duno snickers. “He sounds like he’s drunk!”
“È ammalato?” Santino asks.
Albert focuses for a moment, bends at the waist, pukes in two thin gouts. It happens so quickly, nobody reacts. “I think I’ll just sit here and wait,” he announces in a reasonable tone of voice.
“Frau Brössler! Papa’s sick!” Claudette calls. “What should we do?”
“What does she want from you?” Herrmann asks. “You’re a doctor now?” Frieda starts toward the Blums, but Herrmann grabs her sleeve. “We’ve got to keep moving!” he says. “We’ll all catch our deaths out here.”
“Papa’s right,” Duno says, agreeing with his father for once. “We have to leave them behind.”
“I won’t hear of it,” his mother snaps.
“Mutti, we can’t carry him! We left Oma—”
“Yes! Yes, we did! We left my parents in Vienna. We left Oma Brössler in Sainte-Gisèle. Now you two want to leave Herr Blum. Who’s next? Liesl? Steffi? Only the strong survive— that’s what the Nazis say!”
“Frieda!” her husband gasps, but she pulls her sopping blanket tighter and approaches Herr Blum gingerly. She’s never been much good around sick people, but she’s seen what nurses do, so she places a palm on his forehead. Her own hands are freezing, but Herr Blum’s skin is weirdly clammy and her fingers on his face seem warm by contrast. No fever, so what’s wrong? A chill? A bad heart? Too great a strain for too long a time? Duno and Herrmann are probably right, but she can hardly say so now. “Herr Blum needs to get warm. He needs shelter!” she tells the soldier, sketching a roof over her head with her hands.
The lady’s gesture is plain, but Santino can only shrug. Of course, we need a house! he thinks. We’ve been looking for one all day!
The Brösslers start to argue again. Signor Blum is mumbling German, and no one else speaks Italian. Claudia’s eyes plead with Santino to do something. He looks up at the ridge that snakes along the track. “Maybe I’ll see something from up there,” he says, trying not to sound doubtful. Or weary. Or hungry. Or scared. “I’ll find something, I promise.”
He starts to climb, hands to the ground. The rain is slowing, but midway to the top, he slips on slimy half-rotted leaves and mashes his nose against a rock. “Gesù!” he cries, spitting mud. “Santa Madonna, it’s probably broke!” Pain, hunger, and helplessness compete to overwhelm him. He slumps onto his knees, letting his bloodied nose drip into the mud. “Madonna,” he weeps, over and over, hopeless and alone. “Madonna!”
Without warning, the epithet becomes a prayer. “Santa Madonna! Let there be something on the other side of this hill! Prego, Holy Mother! I know I don’t go to church much, but I don’t ask this for myself. Just help me to help them, Signora. Prego, prego…”
The bleeding stops. He wipes his eyes, fingers his nose gingerly, looks up. The clouds have begun to part, and a milky moon is reclaiming the sky. Climbing again, and cresting, he stands, eyes straining for the slightest indication of humanity’s mark on this dark, soggy landscape: a village, a house, a barn. Anything! he implores. A bridge the Hebrews can sleep under. Haystacks they can burrow into…
He sees only more ravines, and more trees. His face twists, but he holds back the tears, determined not to commit the sin of despair. Holy Mother, he prays with an inspired desperation, you ran from Herod. You hid in Egypt. Prego, help me find a cave, maybe, or— or—
A charcoal maker’s shack.
He stares, open-mouthed. A miracle, he thinks. How else could you explain it? The tiny stone hut slumps behind axed stumps and old hearths, barely visible amid a tangle of weeds taking over an abandoned field. The Madonna must have guided his eyes!
Fatigue vanishing, Santino scrambles down and looks inside. The carbonaro is long gone. Drafted, maybe. Dead, or a prisoner now in Russia, God help him. But he left a supply of charcoal on the stone hearth, and there’s a stream nearby. Bene! Benissimo, Blessed Mother! Santino prays, dropping to his knees, sweeping windblown debris out the door with his hands. I’ll leave Claudia and her father here, but the Brösslers will need a bigger place, he warns the Virgin. It’s a family with three children, so a barn would be good, if it’s not too much trouble.
He clambers back to the Hebrews. The two little girls are asleep in the mud near Albert Blum, who shakes and mumbles. Duno and his parents stand, bodies rigid with the effort of holding back hope. Claudia sits wordlessly, and bursts into tears when Santino nods: Yes, I found something!
“I’m sorry,” he says, coming to her side. “I should have prayed sooner.” Looking past her, he tells the Brösslers, “I don’t know how much farther we have to go, but the Madonna will find you a barn, I promise.”
Without Albert Blum to translate, they don’t really understand, but Santino’s happiness is unmistakable and infectious. Within the hour, he and Duno have moved the Blums and a supply of tinned rations inside the shack. Duno leaves to rejoin his family, but Santino lingers, making sure the little fire he built is going well.
“It’s not much, signorina, but it’s better than a haystack,” he tells Claudia. “The house is used by charcoal makers. Nobody will come up here now that the rains have started.”
“Santino, prego! My father— il mio papa? — he said there are people who help Jews. Delegazione Assistenza Emigrati Ebrei. Capisce?”
“Sì. Capisco,” he says, not wanting to leave. “I have to take the Brösslers to their barn, but I won’t forget you. Capisce, signorina? I’ll come back!”
“Capisco,” she says. Not what he’s said, but what he means.
She pulls her sleeve down over her palm and uses it to wipe at the forgotten blood crusted under his nose. Embarrassed, he tries to look away, but her cold hands rise to the sides of his face. For a long moment, her serious green eyes study him, as though learning him by heart, and for the first time in his life, Santino Cicala does not feel ugly. Emboldened, he takes her head in both his hands, gently, and kisses her, hard. She does not pull away. “I have to go now,” he says, eyes on hers. He trips over a root but catches his balance. “I’ll come back,” he says again.
Watching until he disappears into the gloom, Claudette ducks inside the tiny hut and adjusts the army blanket Santino made into a door, to keep the light and heat inside. Rosy in the fire’s embers, her father lies curled, inert beneath another blanket, which steams in the warmth. She sits on the packed-dirt floor and listens to the hiss of the fire, watching the rise and fall of her father’s chest. His convulsive shivering has stopped, and he snores with comforting familiarity, relaxing into ordinary sleep.
Against her will, her own chest falls into the slow rhythm his provides. Noiselessly, almost calmly, the measured movement deepens. She looks up, to keep the tears from falling. “I miss you, Mama,” she whispers in the tiny voice that escapes her thickening throat. “Papa was sick. I was so scared.”
Don’t be silly, her mother would say. He was very tired and cold. He’ll be fine in the morning. Wipe your nose.
Was Papa handsome when you fell in love, Mama?
He was no Maurice Chevalier, I can tell you. But who is?
Santino’s short, Mama. He’s shorter than I am, I think.
Everyone’s tall on my side of the family. Height’s not important. Is he of good character? That’s important.
He’s Catholic, Mama.
Well, Moses married a shiksa. If it’s good enough for him…
Smiling damply, Claudette cleans her nose on the back of her bloodied sleeve and pulls in a shuddery breath. She adds another chunk of charcoal to the fire, lifts the damp and smoky blanket that covers her father, and crawls in beside him to share her warmth. “We’ll be all right, Papa,” she whispers. “Santino will come back, and everything will be fine.”