PENSIONE USODIMARE
PORTO SANT’ANDREA
Even before his father left, Werner Schramm had a plan to escape his mother and her moods. “Black moods in the Black Forest!” his father called them, after four or five beers. “What’ve you got to moon about, woman?” He never waited for an answer. “Millions dead in the war! Millions dead of influenza. Who gives a shit about one worthless girl? And fix yourself up, for Chris’sake! Startin’ to look like that nun-sister of yours! Ugly old hag.”
Everything was fine before Irmgard was born. Well, Papa drank and Mama had her moods, but Irmgard made everything worse. Putting her away didn’t help. One morning, Papa boarded the train to Freiburg and never came home. Everyone said, “Werner, you’re the man of the family now,” but he wasn’t. He was the son who was left behind, and in his opinion, the blame lay squarely on Irmgard’s huge and freakish head. “Water on the brain,” a city doctor said. It would kill her someday, but not soon enough to save her family.
Werner was damned if he’d end up a debt-ridden farmer with a loony mother in the back bedroom and a freak sister in an institution. He had bigger plans than that. He was good at drawing— he’d won a prize at school. His aunt the nun encouraged him to study art. For months, he daydreamed of a Parisian garret where he would paint, unburdened by secondhand sadness. Gradually, Florence replaced Paris in the geography of his imagination. He got top marks in Latin; Italian would be easier than French.
At seventeen, he got a job at the ski lodge and distinguished himself by working harder than any of the aging veterans drifting through the countryside hoping for a handout. Werner washed dishes. Shoveled snow. Cleaned privies. Anything was preferable to his mother’s frantic loneliness. For a year he saved in secret, and when he had enough he left, like his father before him: at dawn, without saying good-bye. “One way, third-class, to Florence,” he told the Freiburg ticketmaster.
Two days later, he stepped down onto a platform at the Stazione Centrale di Firenze: reborn, sui generis, in Florence, Mother of genius, where painting and sculpture and architecture flourished with jungle luxuriance in the warm Italian sun. A friendly carabiniere told him of a pensione whose owner spoke some German. Schramm paid for two nights, and crossed an inner courtyard where Della Robbia’s terra-cotta putti presided over an arcaded square designed by Brunelleschi.
Too excited to rest, he dropped his rucksack on the bed and made a dash for the Uffizi, where art books and holy cards came to life. He gaped at David, stunned first by the sculpture’s size, then by its power. Altarpieces by Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto competed for attention with paintings by Raphael, Caravaggio, and Botticelli, which themselves battled bronzes by Cellini and Donatello.
That summer, Schramm did chores at the pensione in return for meals and an attic bed. His thoroughness and energy earned the owner’s praise and a few extra lire, which he spent on drawing lessons from an old woman who claimed she was a principessa fallen on hard times. She tutored him in Italian, too, and whenever he could, Schramm practiced conversation with the hotel maid, whose angular face, soft breasts, and complete indifference stoked a sexual heat he was too awkward to reveal.
The days grew shorter. Rooms were closed, one by one. The chambermaid was let go for the off-season. With the kitchen ashes hauled out and the coal fire banked, Schramm was free most afternoons and wandered the city munching roasted chestnuts purchased in paper cones. He hiked the hills of Fiesole and Settignano. The Ponte Vecchio, Boboli Gardens, and Lungarno Corsini became his private domain.
The Florentine winter proved cold and misty. Narrow streets and small piazze turned dark and dirty gray. With the tourists gone, there was no one to look down on. Loneliness set in.
Florence taught Werner Schramm many things, the most significant of which was that he had no real talent. Embarrassed to go home, he waited until his nineteenth birthday to send his mother a postcard, giving his address. The response was a telegram from his aunt’s convent. “Regret to inform you of your mother’s death. Come home. Irmgard needs you.”
His aunt and another nun were waiting for him at the Freiburg station. They boarded the local back to Hinterzarten, where he laid wildflowers on his mother’s grave and learned that shame was worse than grief. That spring, he sold the farm for little more than an apple and an egg, but he cleared his family’s debts. Finally, no excuses left, he went to visit Irmgard.
“The Church will tell you that your mother’s suicide was sin,” Irmgard’s doctor said. “I say the sin is on the heads of those who permit hopeless cripples to drive strong, healthy Germans to despair! It is a perversion of medicine and nature when civilization allows the health of the race to be undermined by these useless wretches.” Silver-haired and kindly, with the high forehead and lucid eyes of a scholar, the physician placed his hand on Schramm’s shoulder, but looked past him toward a better future. “Someday institutions like this will disappear. Money and effort will cease to be lavished on the weakest and the worst. When you return to Freiburg, you must look up Professor Hoche! Ask about the paper he wrote with Karl Binding. It is persuasive, my boy. Persuasive!”
That summer, his aunt arranged for a scholarship, and Werner matriculated at the University of Freiburg. “If you can’t be an artist, you can be art’s apostle,” she said, urging her nephew to study art history. For want of a better idea, he began his courses, working with diligence if not passion. He inquired about a garret on Goethestrasse. The rent was criminally high, but he was still capable of romantic delusions about artistic poverty, and the Jugendstil house was breathtaking: all twining vines and whiplash curves, and slender stained-glass girls with damselfly wings. He did yard work in exchange for Sunday dinners with the family.
At one such dinner he met Elsa Rombach— round and cheerful, with a wholesome prettiness that helped him forget the Florentine chambermaid’s more complicated beauty. Elsa’s father was an industrialist who disapproved of artists, poets, and other lives unworthy of life. Herr Rombach forbade Elsa to see Schramm, but she lied and made excuses, thrilled by her own cool daring. Werner waited for her at Zur Trotte, where a half liter of Viertele Silvaner could last all afternoon. Around them, students talked earnestly of blood, leadership, strength, soul, heritage, health, and race. Elsa read Rilke aloud, and Werner filled sketchbooks with sentimental portraits of a good Catholic girl who wouldn’t put out until he married her.
That year he began to see the future more clearly. Or, rather, he heard the future’s voice every night on the radio. Full of faith, full of emotion. Ringing like a bell, calling the masses to worship. Promising a whole generation— a whole nation! — what it yearned for. A task, a meaning. A greatness that would redeem misery and defeat.
Moved, inspired, Werner Schramm resolved to follow the Führer’s example. He would give up dreams of artistry and serve the German people. With an introduction from Irmgard’s doctor and an energy he hadn’t felt since he first left home, Werner made an appointment with Professor Hoche, who even helped him with the paperwork required to change his field of study from art history to medicine.
“I am so proud of you!” Elsa squealed when Werner told her the news. “Papa will make sure you have the right connections when you go into private practice!”
“Professor Hoche thinks I should do research,” Werner said cautiously. He’d never mentioned Irmgard to the Rombachs. “There were so many defectives born after the Diktat of Versailles. People believe such defects result from bad breeding, but if they were a result of starvation after the Great War, good nutrition could prevent them in the future.”
Elsa pouted prettily. “You sound like a scientist already!” Then the idea sank in, and her guiltless, guileless face lit up. “Oh, Lieber, yes! Why, you’d be contributing to the health of the whole nation! Papa could never object to a son-in-law who did that!”
Years have passed, and Werner Schramm is in a garret once again, but artistic dreams play no part in his choice of quarters now. He needs a place to hide, and this attic is the cheapest he could find. “View of the sea,” the advertisement promised, without mentioning, “only if you sit in the musty upholstered chair near the southern window, lean onto your left elbow, and squint.”
From there, he can just barely see an island in Sant’Andrea’s harbor. “What is that big building on the island?” he asked his landlady after his first night under her roof.
“Il lazzaretto di incurabili,” Signora Usodimare said, crossing herself. “A hospital for incurables. Mostly tuberculars, poor things. You shouldn’t smoke so much, signore! It weakens the lungs. You could get consumption, you know.”
“Yes,” he said, making his face bland. “I’m trying to quit.”
To change the subject, he asked her for something to read. Proudly, she offered a history of Sant’Andrea, which he studies daily, a thick dictionary at his side. The lazzaretto, he’s learned, was built to isolate victims of the Levantine plagues that Renaissance merchants imported to Europe, along with spices, silks, and ivory. During a single fifteenth-century epidemic, over 150,000 Sant’Andresi died. In hope of a cure, Ludovico Usodimare sailed off to raid Montpellier, determined to capture the mummified body of Saint Roch— a holy relic, sovereign against plague. Alas, the Venetians arrived first and stole the Frenchman’s corpse before Usodimare could. A practical man, the prince did some pillaging on his way home and acquired, among other things, a golden salver. This plate, he declared, had once carried the severed head of John the Baptist, and he built the Basilica di San Giovanni Battista to house his souvenir.
“At a stroke,” the breathless author informs Schramm, “Ludovico Usodimare surpassed Andrea Doria of Genoa, who only had a church, and miraculously reduced Sant’Andrea’s mortality from plague ever after.” Natural selection, Schramm replies, setting the book aside. The most susceptible had died off. The surviving population was resistant.
“My late husband was an Usodimare,” his landlady reminds Schramm whenever there is the smallest conversational opening to this topic. Dependent on her discretion, Schramm refrains from commenting on the extent to which ancestral splendor has diminished. Like everything else in this charmless city, his room is cramped and innocent of taste. Time and a leaky roof have been unkind to the walls. A threadbare rug adds little warmth to the uneven plank floor. The mattress is lumpy and thin, the linens frayed. The bulb in his reading lamp is of such low wattage as to be useless.
When the sun sinks behind the roofline of the apartment house next door, Schramm reaches for a bottle and settles back to watch the sky darken mercifully over the scene below. Even before the bombing, Sant’Andrea was a Frankenstein monster sutured together from the decaying ruins of its millennia. Bits of sarcophagi, looted from Egypt, protrude from massive medieval walls. Fluted Roman columns support Gothic arcades fitted with Renaissance portals. Allied bombs have added debris to the architectural mess.
On Saturday, Schramm starts drinking a little earlier than usual. When he’s dosed himself sufficiently to control his cough, he dresses in the ill-fitting suit Signora Usodimare purchased at his request. The cinema is half a block away, with no checkpoints to pass, no document inspection at the box office.
By the time Schramm has slipped into the last row of seats, the house lights have dimmed and the avanspettaculo has begun. Dancers, comedians, and singers perform before the film in a sort of cabaret act. The jokes are in dialect, but Schramm enjoys the laughter and can follow some of the song lyrics. The show ends with a tenor dressed as an Alpino. Longing for home, and love for Mamma, ensure a standing ovation for the troupe.
The stage darkens. Pulleys sweep dusty velvet curtains aside, exposing the shimmering screen. The latest Film Luce newsreel flickers and solidifies. Audience reaction provides Schramm with an informal referendum on current events. Scenes of Italian humiliation are met with sullen silence. German tanks and armored cars roll into Rome through Saint Paul’s Gate. Opposition by adolescent Socialists and middle-aged civilians armed with cobblestones is crushed. The Wehrmacht occupies four-fifths of Italy. Italian territories in France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Salonika are part of Greater Germany now.
Mussolini’s appearance is met with hisses. Snatched from internal exile by SS commandos, il Duce wears a dark topcoat and a jaunty hat, looking dapper if a bit dazed when he climbs out of a small plane to shake the Führer’s hand.
The scene changes. Schramm straightens. Even the Sant’Andresi, no strangers to Allied bombing, gasp at the result of an American raid on Frankfurt. Burning buildings seem to melt, their bricks pouring through the air, dust rising like a waterfall’s mist. It’s enough to make a mason weep, centuries of work reduced to smoking heaps of wreckage. In low tones of outrage, the narrator vilifies heartless Allied bombardiers for causing thousands of civilian deaths.
The screen brightens. “A sea battle rages in the Aegean sunshine!” the narrator announces. “Defeatist-Traitor Badoglio met Eisenhower aboard the HMS Nelson, but an expected Allied landing in the Gulf of Genoa has not materialized.” In the south, Italian Republican units have inflicted five thousand British casualties at Salerno, but the Axis has lost Pompeii and Naples after weeks of vicious infantry combat and nonstop dogfights over southern airspace. “Coraggio, countrymen! The German Reich has come to embattled Italy’s aid! The American Fifth Army and the British 56th Division are stalled at the Volturno! There will be an all-out defense of Rome! The Gustav Line will hold!” Almost as an afterthought, the narrator concludes, “The Red Army has retaken Smolensk.”
No news of Freiburg, but even Schramm can name the targets. The Kronenbrücke bridge. The Hauptbahnhof and the railroad maintenance yards. Fauler’s foundry, Grether’s heavy-equipment factory. Herr Rombach’s ironworks. Fabric and thread manufacturers like Mez and Krummeich will be hit, to deprive the Reich of uniforms. “Stay away from anything that might attract raids,” Schramm writes to Elsa in his mind. “Don’t believe what you’re told about the war, or about me. Someday I will send for you, and Klaus and Erwin.” But no— there must be nothing incriminating, nothing that could be held against one’s family. “Mein Mädel, my darling girl, take our boys to the countryside, where life is healthier. Never believe me fallen. One day, we will be reunited.” Better, he thinks. Something any patriotic soldier might send his wife. He wonders if it will be enough to disappear, or if he should try to fake his death. He wonders if he’ll live long enough to bother with fakery.
The cinema crowd stirs, murmurs, and settles in to watch the featured film. La cena delle beffe is a popular costume drama in which Good (Amedeo Nazzari) defeats Evil (Osvaldo Valenti) for the sake of Beauty (Clara Calamai). Even Schramm has seen the movie twice. Celluloid is scarce. Not even directors like Blasetti make new movies anymore.
Schramm waits until the much-anticipated moment when Beauty bares the first bosom ever to grace Italian screens. While Signorina Calamai absorbs the cheering crowd’s attention, Schramm gets up to leave, but the change in posture upsets the precarious balance in his chest, and the coughing starts again. Three rows up, someone twists in his seat. Schramm freezes. It’s the man from the church that first day. What was his name? Lorenzo? Something like that… Renzo!
Touching his temple with one finger in a small salute, Renzo turns back to the film. Hurrying outside, Schramm finds the nearest alley, and doubles over to retch up phlegm. Wet-eyed with exertion, he is too preoccupied to be surprised when the Italian appears at his side and exclaims quietly, “Herr Doktor, what a terrible suit! Care for a drink?”
Schramm nods gratefully, and Renzo leads the way through a bewildering rats’ nest of dark and twisting carrugi, circumventing checkpoints and roadblocks with casual changes of direction. All evidence of occupation disappears as they near the docks. The Gestapo has conceded this neighborhood to the wiry men in cotton singlets who loiter, silent and suspicious, at every turn. Fishmongers and butchers stand in doorways, canvas aprons splashed with rusting crimson. Motionless knives drip blood onto cobblestones. Renzo receives and returns nods and gestures of greeting. Not even the whores smile at strangers like Schramm.
The tavern is small, dismally lit. Longshoremen hunch over low mounds of cheap food. Sailors’ thumbs hook the edges of plates in memory of meals tossed by waves. The earthy smells of tripe, dried cod, and chickpeas mingle with the tang of sweat. Renzo takes a small table in the back. The barman delivers a bottle of grappa and two small glasses. Schramm chokes on the first harsh sip, then sighs as its comforting warmth relaxes his chest.
Renzo’s drinking is steady and silent. When the bottle’s contents are visibly diminished, Schramm sets his own glass down. “Keep that up,” he warns, “and you won’t see forty.”
“Promise?” Renzo wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “And who are you to talk?”
“Point taken,” Schramm says. “What day is it?” he asks.
Renzo gives the matter thought. “Saturday?”
“No! The date! What’s the date?”
This takes longer. “October eighth. I think.”
“Verdammte Scheisse. I got a telegram last month,” Schramm whispers, leaning close. “All leaves canceled. Report to your unit immediately! Jesus. October eighth… That’s a whole month of not reporting immediately.”
Closing his eyes, he concentrates on how much better his chest feels, and how glad he is to be here and not in Russia. “Once,” he says, “when I was at the front, we set up a field hospital in a town just taken by a panzer division. There were five or ten Reds around every house. Guts spilling out of bellies. Brains drizzling out of skulls. In the middle of the street, there was a forearm. Completely unharmed, except it was all by itself. No body.”
Renzo nods and pours.
“On the other side of the street, there was a naked leg, sticking straight up out of the snow. Rigid, like an obelisk!” Schramm takes as deep a breath as he can. “Most of the Russians were dead, but there were wounded. One was firing so wildly, no one could get near.”
Renzo’s vague eyes come up. “You shot him?”
“No, but I didn’t treat him.”
“Would’ve been suicide.”
“I knew you’d understand!” Schramm makes a strangled gagging sound, and for once the cough loses a skirmish. “Another man’s clothes were on fire,” he says, clearing his throat. “When the flames got to his ammunition pouch, it exploded. I was five meters away. It was a miracle I wasn’t killed.”
“No miracle for the poor bastard with the ammo pouch.” Renzo scrubs rhythmically at his face. “God only works for the survivors.”
“There was another man— shot through the eyes, from one side to the other. He moaned and moaned, and his face… Wounds steam in the cold. Like soup. Did you know that?”
“You told me before.”
“I expect I did. I talk too much when I’m drunk.” Schramm slumps in the warped wooden chair, fingers curled around his emptied glass. “Nothing I say shocks you,” he realizes. “You’re a veteran, aren’t you.”
“Abyssinia,” Renzo says, enunciating carefully. “Combat pilot.”
Schramm snickers. “Combat! Four hundred crack Italian pilots in the world’s best planes, sent to fight the Abyssinian air force— which consisted of eleven planes, as I recall, only eight of which were actually capable of flight.”
Renzo’s glassy eyes turn cold. “They had a million men under arms. Mountains favor the defenders. We had superiority in the air, and we used it. That war wasn’t the mismatch the British said it was. Fucking League of Nations,” he mutters. “If they hadn’t slapped sanctions on us, Italy never would’ve joined the Axis.”
“What was it like?” Schramm asks. “To fly, I mean. I’ve never been in an airplane.”
“You ski?”
“Notschrei’s about three kilometers from where I grew up.”
“Ever jump?”
Schramm nods.
“With a small plane, it’s like that, except you don’t come down. Single-engine trainers, they leap into the air. And then… you’re in a different world. On a cloudy day, you get up around two thousand meters, break through into sunshine—” He rubs his forehead with one hand. “Bombers are different. Like flying freight trains.”
Schramm tries to imagine it, but all that comes to mind are newsreel memories of Mussolini’s inglorious African adventure. Black bodies smeared with ocher, running barefoot into battle against machine guns. Chieftains dressed in leopard skins, with lion cubs on leashes. Men waving curved swords and wooden pitchforks at airplanes strafing them with—
Struck by a thought, Schramm stares at the man across the table. “You’re a Jew!” he whispers, astonished.
After a long moment, Renzo asks, “What makes you think so?”
“You’re healthy. You’re a combat pilot. Your country is— was— at war. You’re not in uniform. Ergo: you are a Jew.”
“And you,” Renzo says with a grin of warning, “are a deserter.”
Schramm’s laugh is quickly lost to a sharp, shallow cough. “It’s beginning to look that way,” he admits soggily, pulling out another handkerchief.
“Jesus, Schramm! Why didn’t you take medical leave?”
Schramm tries again, and this time he manages the long, vigorous gasp required to shift a heavy clot of phlegm. “I’m not sick. I’m dying.”
Working it out, Renzo moves back in his chair. “Tuberculosis.”
“I fooled myself at first, and then… Well, the Reich was desperate for doctors in Russia. Now even amateurs can diagnose the condition!”
“I’ve seen it before. My father. A friend’s uncle.” Renzo’s brow wrinkles in a muzzy effort to understand. “Why don’t you just go home?”
“I’d be executed.”
“For deserting, sure, but you must have known for months.”
“Time, my friend, is rationed quite severely for the Reich’s consumptives. The final solution to the tuberculosis problem. Saves several Reichsmarks a day on hospital care.” Seeing no comprehension, Schramm waves the topic off. “Why the hell did you go to war? Italy is a beautiful country, filled with beautiful women, beautiful art, beautiful food. Why travel thousands of kilometers to the arse-end of Africa, just to bomb naked savages armed with spears?”
Renzo looks away. “It was… complicated. There was a girl my family wanted me to marry.” He shudders briefly. “And also the girl I was—” He clears his throat, and Schramm nods with avuncular understanding. “And there was another girl. She wouldn’t have me.”
“Your true love!” Schramm brightens. “She was a Catholic!”
“There were religious differences.” Renzo shrugs. “Anyway, joining the air force was patriotic. And convenient.”
“Shall I tell you why young men love war?” Schramm offers dreamily. “In peace, there are a hundred questions with a thousand answers! In war, there is only one big question with one right answer.” He pours them each another shot, emptying the bottle. “War smashes all our petty problems and sweeps the shards into one huge, patriotic pile. Going to war makes you a man. It is emotionally exciting and morally restful.”
“I believed the lies,” Renzo says, leaning back in his chair. “Like every other fool from the Alps to Sicily, I thought I had a share in the glory that was Rome. Mussolini screwed Italy with history, but it wasn’t always rape.” He reaches out to tap Schramm’s glass with his own. “Some of us bent over.”
“Would you like to know what the German lie is?” Schramm whispers. “We are the nation of Beethoven and Schiller and Goethe! We are a great people. But—” Schramm leans close. “Did I compose the Eroica? What poetry have I written? Race isn’t talent! Greatness isn’t just… being German. Who could believe nonsense like that? I’ll tell you who! Chicken farmers. Shoemakers. Grocery clerks. Academic drudges. Bureaucratic hacks.”
“Put ordinary shitheads in impressive uniforms, give them guns and permission to use them, they’ll shoot anyone who threatens their illusions,” Renzo agrees. “So what made you put the uniform on?”
Schramm digs out his wallet, extracts a photo. “That’s my Elsa with Klaus and Erwin. You should’ve seen her before she thickened up.” He passes the picture across the table. “Lovely girl. And we made strong, handsome children. Sturdy, my two boys! Perfect little Aryans. I joined the party because I wanted what the Führer wanted. I wanted German children to have a better childhood than my generation had after the Great War. They’d have good, nourishing, unadulterated food— wholemeal bread, fresh vegetables! The state would make industries clean up the poisons they were spewing into the air and the water.”
“An idealist,” Renzo groans. “The most dangerous kind of criminal!”
“Doctors would transcend the selfishness of treating single patients. We’d be physicians to the Volk! There’d be no disease, no deformity. No madness, no perversion or divorce. No unemployment—”
“And no Jews?”
“No drunks either!” Schramm sobers a bit. “I knew a Jew in Freiburg. He had a bookstore on Holbeinstrasse… You always hear that Jews are money mad, but—”
“— generally from people who borrow money.”
“He always gave me the whole year to pay for my textbooks. He was very decent about it.”
“Jews are simply members of the human race.” After a thoughtful pause, Renzo adds, “I can think of no worse insult.”
“There are plenty of people who can,” Schramm warns. “They never saw you. They don’t know your name. They don’t know anything about you, but they hate you. They hate your mother, they hate your sister, they hate your cousin’s little baby boy.” Schramm shakes his head. “I never understood the logic. You’re Communists to a man, but you own all the banks. You’re subhuman, but you’re running the world.”
Renzo leans over the table. “Never underestimate how soothing it is to have someone else to blame. If Jews didn’t exist, someone would have to invent us.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Schramm says judiciously. “There’re always the Jesuits. Or Freemasons.”
Renzo drinks off his grappa in a single searing swallow and sets the glass gently on the table. “Secret Jews,” he declares, belching. “Every last one of them.”
Schramm crosses his arms on the table and leans against them to ease the pressure building in his lungs. “I barely made it through the Physicum,” he confesses. “The other students had no fears about their abilities. They made the same mistakes as I did,” he says, “but if a procedure went wrong? The patient was weak— a poor specimen. I was afraid all the time, but I had a wife, children, so I kept on. When half the doctors in Germany were fired for being Jewish, a lot of doors opened to mediocrities like me.”
Renzo looks at him for a long moment. “At least you’re honest.”
“Well, my ambitions have diminished. I retain not the slightest desire to improve the world! I just want to live until this fucking war is over,” Schramm says, voice fraying. “I want to see my family before I die.”
Balancing his chair on its back legs, Renzo retreats into his thoughts, while Schramm’s own mind empties of longing and regret. He closes his eyes, drifting in the lovely twilight liquor bestows. Breathing is easy, he thinks. In. Out. In. Out…
Renzo’s chair levels with a thump. “What would it take?”
Schramm rouses. “What?”
“What would you need? To live until you can see your family again.”
Shocked into near sobriety, Schramm studies the unmoving face, trying to read the bones, the eyes, the mouth. “You’re serious?” Renzo nods, and Schramm tries to think. “A place to stay, someplace quiet. Up in the mountains— cold, dry air. Plain food, but a lot of it. Nursing— if I get too sick to care for myself.”
“What about contagion? If people’ve already been exposed—?”
“I can’t do them much more harm. And there was a study last year in Denmark— the bacillus is airborne. Sunlight kills it.” I might not die, he thinks. I might see my boys again… “If there are windows, open air, that would be best for all of us.”
Renzo’s glass rises. “To pretty wives and healthy children,” he declares with drunken decisiveness. “I’ll see what I can do.”
VALDOTTAVO
NEAR FRAZIONE SANTA CHIARA
Bearded and filthy, Albert Blum peers through the gap between Santino’s blanket and the shack’s doorpost. Claudette stirs. “Papa?” she asks drowsily. “Was that a hawk?”
“Quiet!” he whispers. “Don’t move!”
Her dream hawk’s high cry resolves into the piercing voice of a young girl. Claudette scrambles to her feet. “Someone’s coming!”
Outside, the meadow is silvery with frost, autumn wildflowers dead or dying. Thick with bulky skirts and lumpy layered sweaters, the girl is only a few steps ahead of a stocky, scowling woman. “Mamma says you shouldn’t stay here anymore!” the girl calls, waving frantically. “I knew it was wrong, but—”
“I should cut you in pieces!” the woman shouts. “I should kill you right now!”
Claudette clutches Albert’s arm. “Papa, that lady’s got a gun!”
“Claudette! Please! I’m trying to understand!”
The language is some peasant dialect. He catches words and phrases, but not enough to be sure, and then—
The woman yanks the blanket aside and lifts the gun stock to her shoulder. Claudette screams. Stubby thumb still tensed on the shotgun’s hammer, the woman’s shrewd brown eyes travel from the outline of Claudette’s small bosom to her tattered trousers and disintegrating shoes. A slow smile appears.
“That’s not a boy!” Shifting the shotgun to the crook of her arm, the woman reaches out to smack her own daughter in the back of the head. The blow is glancing, but enough to register the mother’s dismay before she offers the same callused hand to Albert. “Lovera, Tercilla. An honor to meet you, signore.”
Her Italian is slurry but understandable. It’s her disposition that confuses him. “Piacere, signora,” he says uncertainly. “Blum, Alberto. And my daughter, Claudia.”
“That’s Bettina, signore. My youngest— she’s thirteen.” She nods at her daughter, who is gawping at Claudette with a mixture of awe and disappointment. Tercilla leans toward Albert. “I thought she was sneaking out to meet a boy. At her age, you can’t be too sure, ne? Aren’t you ashamed!” she shouts suddenly, rounding on Bettina. “Leaving these poor people out on the mountainside like animals!”
Dumbfounded, Albert accepts the shotgun Tercilla thrusts into his hands. Short even for a peasant, she stretches to pull the army blanket down from the door of the shack and glances around the tiny stone shelter. “Bettina, get that mess kit! And put that fire out. Prego, signore, there’ll be hot food waiting.” Draping the blanket over a short-boned arm, Tercilla asks, “Is this all you have?” Albert nods numbly. “Poveretti,” she says, shaking her head.
Claudette demands translation, and when Albert tells her that they’re invited to dinner, triumph replaces terror. “I told you they wanted to help us! We’re Jews,” she tells the mother. “Siamo ebrei, signora.”
“Sì, certo,” Tercilla says, unconcerned. “The priest said, ‘Help the Hebrews coming over the mountains, and don’t tell anyone.’ ” Without warning, she spins around and yells, “He meant the Germans, not your mother!” Bettina giggles and ducks, evidently accustomed to maternal Blitzkrieg.
With a last quick inspection of the shack, Tercilla takes the shotgun back and waves the Blums outside. “If we meet anybody, pretend you’re stupid. You were bombed out, ne?” She taps the side of her forehead: Not right in the mind. “Don’t worry,” she says over her shoulder when Albert hesitates. “The Germans’re looking for Jews, but nobody up here will help those bastardi. To hell with them, and the chancred whores who bore ’em.”
“What is she saying, Papa?” Claudette asks.
“They don’t like the Germans,” Albert reports drily.
Taking Claudette’s hand, Bettina skips ahead chattering while Tercilla guides Albert to a gravelly trail a few hundred meters down the slope.
“That’s my husband’s cloak you’re wearing,” Tercilla says, helping Albert over a tree trunk that’s fallen over the path. “Domenico was an Alpino during the last war.”
Winded already, Albert sits on the log to catch his breath. “Signor Lovera fought the Austrians?”
“Two and a half years on the line,” Tercilla says grimly, watching the girls round the next switchback. “And now? Gone again. My brother Primo, too. They were at the Wednesday market down in San Mauro. Germans came and took all the men! How’re we supposed to farm with no men?”
Albert is willing to go on, but Tercilla doesn’t notice.
“All I have now is Pierino,” she says. “Four girls married off, just Bettina left to settle. But only one son.” Cradling the shotgun against her thick little body, Tercilla looks east. “Valdottavo sent thirty-five boys to Russia last year. Two came back. My boy was one of them, grazie a Dio, but… The priest— Don Leto— he thought Pierino could be a teacher. No more,” Tercilla says with quiet finality. She turns to meet another parent’s eyes. “This war, signore? It ate my boy alive.”
A dozen twisting switchbacks down the mountain, Santa Chiara hides snug in a deep ravine. Not big enough to be called a town, it consists of a haphazard collection of gray stone buildings pressed hard against a mule path. At the high end of the path, an artesian fountain burbles from a plain pipe, water caught in an unadorned stone basin. Along the ridges, narrow terraces crammed with kitchen gardens, grapevines, fruit trees slice into thin, stony soil.
Staircases ax-chipped from tree trunks angle up the outside walls to plank galleries that lead to haylofts or living quarters. Below, there are shelters for a cow or a few goats, a thick-wheeled wooden wagon, and a mule or ox to pull it. Stone oven-shacks squat near chicken coops, where their warmth can keep the birds laying if the winter’s mild. Flimsy windbreaks surround stand-up latrines: two logs bridging a cesspit.
Inside each house, polenta bubbles in iron pots that hang on chains from tripods over open fires. Colorful pictures of Madonnas and martyrs brighten walls. Packed dirt floors are freshly swept. Twig brooms lean in corners, ready to whisk away footprints at the last moment. Every now and then, someone steps outside to yell, “Pierino! Any sign?”
Putting aside the book he’s reading in the hayloft, Pierino stretches to see as far as possible up the mountain. He shakes his head.
So does his neighbor. The boy speaks so little, you’d think every word cost ten lire, although God knows his mother makes up for Pierino’s silence. This morning, Tercilla caught her daughter sneaking out before dawn, and woke up everyone in Santa Chiara. There were accusations and denials, shouting and weeping. Bettina refused to talk at first, but no one stands up to Tercilla for long. “I was looking for mushrooms last month, and I saw an old gentleman and a boy with—”
“You snuck out in the dark to see a boy?” Tercilla yelled. “Did he touch you? I’ll kill him!”
“I never even talked to him, Mamma! He never saw me! Don Leto said to help the ebrei—”
“Ebrei?” Tercilla wailed. “Dio mio! Those poor people! O la Madonna! How long have you known they were up there? Shame on you! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her neighbors have been cooking and cleaning ever since.
No one among them has ever met a Hebrew, but they’ve heard that Jews are educated, and dignified, and live in cities. It’s a good thing the ebrei will stay with Tercilla. She has an oil lamp made of glass, and there are books because of Pierino, who can’t do anything but read. Her windows are not just shuttered but glazed, with overlapping pieces of salvaged glass that Domenico carried up the mountain from a city after a bombing raid. Tercilla’s brother Primo was a loafer, but Domenico was a match for her drive. He could fix anything, and had more ideas than most people.
Then again, he couldn’t fix Pierino. And big ideas didn’t save him or Primo from the Germans.
Suddenly one dog after another goes into a frenzy. Barefoot children race to meet the visitors. Hanging faded aprons on pegs, the women of Santa Chiara follow, jamming fists into the pockets of hand-knit cardigans. Old men— ropy with muscle and rank with sweat— arrive last, but in time to see the visitors make the last turn.
Surprise ripples through the assembly. Tercilla’s guests are not the august, bearded sage and worrisome boy they’ve all expected, but a sickly gentleman—“Poveretto!”— leaning on Tercilla’s arm, and—“Madonna! A girl in trousers!”
“Alberto Blum, Claudia Blum,” Tercilla says gravely, when they draw even with Santa Chiara’s burbling fountain, “I present to you my neighbors.”
The Hebrews shake hands, murmuring, “Piacere” over and over as Tercilla introduces fifty-some members of the Brondello, Borgogno, Bruno, Cesano, Chiocchia, and Romano families. Then Pierino steps from the shadow of the barn.
“Your mother tells me you are a veteran and a scholar, Signor Lovera!” the Hebrew gentleman says.
Everyone murmurs admiration for the ebreo’s very nice Italian, a language they themselves speak only when dealing with officials. Pierino smiles shyly, and everyone notices with approval that Signor Blum does not offer his hand. Unfortunately, the signorina does, and when she realizes Pierino’s right arm ends in a stump just below the elbow, she stammers an apology, which only makes things worse.
Covering embarrassment, mothers briskly dispatch girls for the food and wine. Little boys crinkle up and laugh when Tercilla urges the Hebrews to use the cesspit. Slaps are aimed at small heads, and the boys dance out of range.
When the Hebrews have washed up at the fountain, Tercilla leads the way to her home, stepping aside to allow the guests to pass first under the heavy wooden lintel. Unfamiliar with the smoky, shadowy little house, the Blums stand inside the doorway, letting their eyes adjust to the gloom. Tercilla eases past them and drags chairs toward a long plank table.
Cloaked from neck to ankle like ancient emperors, peasant patriarchs enter next. They settle on mismatched stools and chairs pulled close around the table. Drab in brown and tan, kerchiefed women follow, perching on the earthen platform that rings the room. Excited children run in and out, adding chicken-cackle giggles to the murmuring of adults.
Like a hen-shaped ballerina, Tercilla rocks onto the toes of her wooden clogs and reaches for a jug on the top shelf of a painted cupboard. “This will warm you,” she says, pouring a generous measure of violet liquid into the only two glasses in the village. “Hand this to Claudia, Bettina. It’s genzianella, signore. We make it from a flower.”
The gentleman’s eyes widen above a smile when he tastes the liqueur. Hands folded over her broad middle, Tercilla nods with satisfaction and turns to the signorina, who takes a sip and gasps, and chokes, and coughs.
“È bello!” Claudia says hoarsely. “It’s beautiful.”
“Bel-la!” Bettina corrects. “Genzianella è bella!”
La ebrea repeats the lilting phrase, “Genzianella è bella,” as though it were a poem. Everyone applauds delightedly except Tercilla, who is looking at Bettina when she says, “Thank you for the flowers, Claudia.”
“Niente, signora. It was nothing,” Claudia replies before taking a more cautious sip of the powerful, sweet brandy. “We are molte grazie for the food.”
“Another lie!” Tercilla hisses at her shamefaced daughter, but her eyes warm when she looks at Claudia.
The Chiocchia girls are the first to reappear, shyly placing two bowls of polenta before the ebrei. Everyone smiles when the signorina picks up a wooden spoon eagerly. Thin as a communion wafer, poor little thing. Her father places a hand on hers. “Prego,” he says, looking around the room. “You must be hungry as well.”
A discussion in dialect, and the eldest among them speaks. “Prego,” Cesare Brondello replies firmly. “We ate enough, before. This is for you.”
The gentleman surely feels awkward eating with an audience, but hunger takes over, and everyone is pleased by the small moans of appreciation he makes over each new offering. Roasted potatoes and peppers appear, and bowls of tiny white beans called denti del bambino, baby’s teeth. “No, no!” he cries. “This is too much!” which spurs the women to greater competition. Chestnut bread, eggs fried with mushrooms and onions, followed by a platter of misty-black grapes and petal-thin curls of hard, salty cheese that melt on the tongue.
At last, satisfied with a job well done, the bustling women move once more to the benches around the room, but they never stop working. Drop spindles are taken from deep pockets. Arms rise and fall rhythmically as locks of wool play out. Tercilla says something to a sparrow-sized woman with wispy white hair, who leans over to nudge Cesare Brondello. The old man draws a folded woolen blanket from beneath his cloak and presents it to Albert. “My grandson is a prisoner in La ’Merica,” he says.
A tired young woman wearing a man’s padded jacket is next. “My husband served with Pierino. Tomasso’s still in Russia.” She puts a clean, worn shirt in Albert’s hands and pulls a fussy three-year-old onto her hip.
One by one, representatives of each household come forward with a pair of knitted socks, a skirt for the signorina and a kerchief for her head, neatly mended trousers for her father.
Over and over, Albert Blum murmurs gratitude. “You are too kind,” he says, stunned by their generosity.
“We all have boys in the army,” Cesare’s tiny wife explains. “Do unto others, ne? Maybe someone in Russia will be good to my grandson.”
“Grazie. Grazie tante,” Albert says. “May God bring your soldiers safely home to you.”
The oil lamps flicker, and Tercilla yanks a homespun blanket across a sapling mounted above the doorway to block the draft. Sitting at last on muscles thick from climbing, she looks taller somehow, though her feet don’t touch the floor. “Signor Blum,” she prompts, “Don Leto said the ebrei might be from Poland, but you speak such pretty Italian, like a Roman!”
“You are too kind, signora— my accent is terrible! We are Belgian. Before the war, I worked for a metal-ore company based in Antwerp. Every year, I traveled to Genoa and Istanbul and Nice to inspect the books of our partners. I was an accountant—”
“Istanbul!” someone cries.
“An accountant?” someone else asks.
The conversation becomes lively and general with questions about the price of firewood and eggs in France, the habits of Saracens, the likelihood that their landlord il maggiore Malcovato is cheating them on a shared chestnut crop. Albert answers as best he can, his voice flat and unmusical as he concentrates on finding words and remembering grammar. Often, his Italian fails him, and brief good-natured charades ensue, but he warms in the attention and dignity he is accorded, and feels as though he has awakened from a long bad dream. This is what I was like before the war, he realizes. A man of the world. Competent, respected.
Across the room, Tercilla’s eyes meet Albert’s and she lifts her chin toward his daughter. He glances back, and smiles. Huddled together on the fireplace platform, Claudette and the other children look like a litter of sleeping puppies, and the adults’ voices drop.
When the talk turns to rumors of Mussolini’s return, Albert’s knowledge falters. He knows less than the peasants do, but that doesn’t matter. The story of the mountain crossing is better than politics anyway, and his telling of it takes on the epic cadences of the Odyssey.
For all the adventure of the trek from Sainte-Gisèle, what concerns Tercilla and her neighbors most is the awful news that Albert’s wife and sons are missing. There are murmurs of approval when he tells them about the carabiniere’s kindness, but when they hear how Paula and the boys were put on an eastbound train, Pierino stands.
“What is it?” Albert asks him. “Why do you look at me like that?”
“He has seen terrible things,” Tercilla tells everyone. “He cries in his sleep.”
“Shut your face, woman!” Cesare snaps.
“What?” Albert asks again. “Pierino, what have you seen?”
The soldier’s eyelids flutter. His mouth works. His throat spasms. The word, when it emerges, is like a sigh. “Hhh-hands” is all he says.
Day and night, the Italian troop transports chugged eastward, toward the Russian front. Whenever the train stopped for water and coal, Pierino and the other draftees would get out to stretch their legs.
At nearly every station, on the next track over, there were cattle cars filled with Hebrews. “Voda! Voda!” they’d call. Or “Un peu d’eau!” Or, “Wasser, bitte!”
“Acqua! They want water!” someone shouted.
After that, the Italians made sure their canteens were full so they could fill the palms thrust out through gaps in the wooden slats. The Germans’ guard dogs snarled, but you could buy the handlers off or distract them while someone else slipped bread or cigarettes into waiting hands. The ladies asked for combs sometimes, ashamed to be so dirty. Children whimpered. Infants wailed, a high peculiar hopeless sound.
An officer who spoke French found a Jew who did as well. “They’re taking us to Palestine,” that lady told him. “We’re going to be resettled.”
Back on the troop train, the officer said, “Somebody’s lying. They can’t be going to Palestine.”
“Why not, Tenente? Didn’t il Duce send a bunch of Hebrews there back in the thirties?” a sergeant asked. “Those refugees from Austria and Germany, remember, sir?”
“Sì, certo,” the officer said. Mussolini was crafty. Jewish immigrants would stir up the Arabs— that would make things hot for the Tommies in their protectorate. “But the British haven’t let Jews into Palestine for years.”
“So where are the trains going?” Pierino asked. No one answered.
The rails ran out, leaving days and days of marching before they reached the front. The Italian Eighth Army was dug in along a line of low hills about a kilometer from the River Don. They had log-and-earth bunkers for each platoon, with interlocking fields of fire to cover the gaps, but even with reinforcements there weren’t enough men for a line of continuous trenches, and they had no cement for pillboxes or dragon’s-teeth obstacles to stop enemy tanks. Already the Eighth had withstood a Soviet offensive north of Stalingrad, saving the Germans to the south a lot of trouble, but that was stalemate, not victory.
In 1941, the Führer thought Russia would fall as fast as France, and neither Axis army had winter gear for the first Battle of the Don. With a second winter coming on, the Italian reinforcements expected cold. As the days shortened and the weather worsened, they added to their gray-green uniforms a second woolen shirt, a thick sweater, and finally a greatcoat, but no wool in the world could stand up to Russian cold, and their boots were already falling apart.
Warm in fur-lined hats and fur-lined parkas, with felted valenki like a second skin over fur-lined boots, the Soviet army waited on the other bank, patient as a glacier. On sentry duty Pierino would smoke, and stamp his freezing feet, and stare across the river. Most of the time, the only sound was the whisper of high, dry grasses, but if the wind was right he might hear a Russian sing, or cough, or sneeze across the Don.
In November, snowy slush coalesced into a veneer of ice. The Reds fired mortars at the river in the morning to see how fast the holes froze over. Soon Field Marshal Winter would build an ice bridge across the river. And then? There wasn’t a schoolchild in Europe who hadn’t read about Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Everyone but Hitler knew what was coming.
The battle began on Pierino’s watch. There was no bugle call to arms, just the sudden stunning concussion of eight hundred shells exploding simultaneously. In an instant, all along the Italian lines, ripped and broken men screamed and bled, or flew upward in cones of flame and landed in pieces, or vanished into a faint pink mist that settled on the snow.
The Soviet artillerymen loaded and fired, over and over and over, like clockwork executioners. The bombardment went on so long, Pierino could no longer remember a time before it began, or imagine a time when it would end. The entire 2nd Corps was destroyed before the ground attack began.
When the shelling stopped, ten Soviet motorized divisions and two tank regiments roared across the frozen river. Outnumbered and outgunned from the start, the Italians fell back, clawed their way eastward, and retook ground only to be strafed from the air and attacked again by the inexhaustible Red infantry. Day after day, night after night, the battle went on and on. And through it all: the deafening howl of Katiuscia rockets, the whining roar of diving planes, the grinding metal shriek of tanks. The mind-murdering noise of battle.
“G-G-Gesù! They— they just k-keep c-c-coming!” Pierino wept to a major he’d never seen before. “Wh-why d-don’t w-w-we ret-treat?”
“The Germans—” The winded officer gasped, choking on the stench of cordite and blood and shit. “They said… hold the line… to the last man.”
And where could you pull back to? Leave the trenches, you’d be in open country. In Russia. In winter.
Pierino saw the man who threw the grenade that crippled him. Wiping spattered blood and flesh from his face, he stared witlessly at what was left of his right hand, and looked up to meet the Russian’s eyes for an instant before the grenadier’s own head exploded, poppy red.
Cradling his arm as though it were a baby, Pierino bid good-bye to the battle and four of his fingers, and walked, hunched like a hag, to a field hospital eight kilometers west of the front. There were no narcotics, no anesthetics by that time. Appalled by others’ screams, Pierino kept silent while a hollow-eyed, grim-faced medic snipped away the last shreds of his thumb. “Brace yourself,” the medic warned. Pinning Pierino’s arm down, the medic scrubbed mud and grit out of his lacerated flesh with a surgeon’s nailbrush. Blinking away tears, Pierino watched the chopped meat at the end of his blunted arm being wrapped with dressings torn from the dead.
The medic cut Pierino’s shirt off. “You’re lucky these didn’t punch through to the lungs,” he yelled, tweezing grenade fragments out of chest wounds Pierino hadn’t even noticed. “Get some sleep,” the medic said, and went on to someone else.
Pierino eased a dead man’s greatcoat around his own bare shoulders and shuffled to a tent nearby. There he lay among moaning, sobbing men, who filled the air with cries of “Mamma! Acqua! Prego, acqua!” He had hardly closed his eyes when a colonel stuck his head into the hospital tent and shouted, “They’ve broken through! Run, boys! Run!”
Later, Pierino heard the Soviets took one hundred thousand prisoners, many of them wounded. He himself flagged down a truck loaded with salvaged materiél, and begged the driver for a ride. “We’re not supposed to carry infantry,” the Neapolitan corporal told him, darting a look around. “Fuck it. Hop in the back.”
Pierino hid behind ammunition crates and slipped into merciful unconsciousness, oblivious to the jarring, springless ride. Sometime during the retreat, his arm turned septic. He was half dead when the truck driver dropped him off at an Italian military hospital near Warsaw. “I can’t save the arm, but I can save you,” he heard the surgeon say just before the amputation. “You’re going home, son.”
A bargain, Pierino thought as the anesthestic took hold. Half an arm was not too much to pay.
By May of ’43, he was strong enough to travel. The Italian trains were crammed with wounded, each man accompanied by as many orderlies and escorts as possible. Hitler ordered his own shattered regiments to die in Russia, and called his allies cowards. Italy’s generals didn’t care; their pride now lay in saving their nation’s sons and brothers and husbands from pointless slaughter.
This time the troop trains rolled west, with fewer men and fewer legs to stretch while the locomotive took on water and coal. But one thing hadn’t changed: the freight cars packed with Jews. “They’re going to labor camps,” someone in the waiting room said. “That’s what I heard.”
Two SS officers were waiting in the station for a different train. The smaller glanced up from his newspaper. “All’inferno,” he said in clear, supercilious Italian. “They are going to hell.”
Stump throbbing, Pierino muttered, “Wh-wh-what’s that ssssupposed to mmm-mean?”
The German said a word the Italians had never heard before. It sounded like a curse or a cough, like a man clearing his throat.
A Sicilian draftee assigned to Pierino had an accent so thick even other Italians had to listen hard to understand him. Carmello stood and pointed violently first at the Germans in their fine black uniforms and then toward his own eyes. “I saw! I saw in dat city! Dey pulla d’ wife froma d’ husban’! Dey dragga d’ screamin’ chil’ren froma d’ papa’s arms!” His voice cracked, but not from youth. “Dey break uppa da families!”
A hundred stony faces turned toward the Germans, whose hauteur did not alter under scrutiny. “You Italians,” the small one said with soft amusement. “So sentimental! Vermin don’t have families. They merely breed. It’s a public health matter, really.”
He folded his newspaper and stood. His boots were polished to such a reflective shine, it seemed impossible that they were leather. Black glass rather, or obsidian. “I believe I’ll have a bite to eat,” he said. There was no café in that station, but the other German left as well.
“I saw wit’a my own eyes,” the Sicilian whispered again and again. “I saw! I saw—”
“What did you see?” Albert Blum asks.
Pierino whirls, startled by this near, real voice, when he had been listening so intently to the remembered one. He takes a breath before he answers, giving himself time. “Fffreight t-t-t-trains, fffull of eb-brei.”
And hands. So many hands. You have not seen them, signore? Pierino asks in thoughts that are still fluent. A hundred in each boxcar. A thousand on each train. Train after train, headed toward Poland, from the east and from the west. How many? Pierino wonders. How many in eight months?
Albert frowns. “The Germans said they’d be resettled…”
Think, Pierino’s face urges. Are the Germans so charitable, signore? Did they conquer the East so that Juden would have Lebensraum?
“There was a Pole in Sainte-Gisèle,” the older man recalls uncertainly. “Jakub Landau. Ebreo, but—” He waves his hand around his head. “Very blond, like an Aryan. He said… crazy things. He told us, ‘They have factories for killing Jews in Poland.’ He was such a strange man! Maybe they shoot people for some infraction? For working too slowly, perhaps, or damaging a machine.”
Pierino Lovera rubs the stump of his aching arm, and says no more. History will break your heart, he thinks, but I won’t wield the hammer.
LEONI APARTMENT
PORTO SANT’ANDREA
“Mamma promised me a brother,” Angelo Soncini grumps. “She always lies.”
Loosening a crinkly length of used wool, Lidia Leoni peers over her glasses at the misbuttoned shirt, short pants, and unmatched socks of a child who’s dressed himself. “Your mother didn’t lie, Angelo. Sometimes ladies are quite sure they’ll have a boy, and then it turns out to be a girl. Until a baby is born, only God knows what it will be. Don’t pick those. You’ll get an infection.”
He turns attention from his scabby knees to the handbag slumping near him on the floor. Soon, the rhythmic tick of knitting needles is joined by the metallic click of the two gold beads that hold Lidia’s purse closed. “My other sister died,” Angelo says conversationally. “I didn’t care. She was a pest.” He glances up. “She was!”
In Lidia’s considerable experience, seven-year-olds are frequently morose and sour little people. The best policy for dealing with them is to wait until they’re eight, when they get silly.
Click, click, click goes the purse clasp. “Maybe Rosina will die, too!” Angelo says, brightening a bit.
“Your new sister arrived a little early, but I’m afraid Rosina is just fine.”
“Accidents happen,” Angelo reminds her darkly. “Mamma told Sara, ‘Don’t use that coal oven till we get it fixed,’ but Sara didn’t believe a stove could kill a person.”
Lidia nods. The boy tells this story nearly every day.
“When me and Mamma got back, Sara was all crumped down, and Altira’s eyes were all white, like this.” He demonstrates gruesomely.
“My daughter Ester was the baby of the family for four years,” Lidia tells him, purling. “When her brother Renzo was born, Ester was very annoyed. She didn’t hate Renzo. She hated not being so special as before.”
The child watches her hands, momentarily fascinated by the way old moth-eaten sweaters can become a new blanket. “Can I look in your purse? Please?”
She nods. Angelo begins to dig. “I know a lot of dead people,” he brags. “Both my nonne are dead.”
“How sad! My grandmothers are dead, too,” Lidia confides, turning the needles.
“And one of my nonni is dead, plus Altira.” He holds out an ancient candy he’s found at the bottom of her purse. “May I have this? Please?” Lidia nods. “Catholic funerals are better than sitting shiva,” Angelo decides, unwrapping cellophane so old it disintegrates in his fingers. “You go, and it’s over. Shiva lasts forever! After Altira died, there was a scary man. He kept looking in the windows.”
Lidia has never been sure whether the scary man was real or just a bad dream.
“One time, a lot of Blackshirts came, and they were yelling, and Nonno Casutto shot at them!”
“Yes, I remember,” Lidia says aridly. A stray bullet lodged in her kitchen ceiling that evening.
“The police came. Nonno Casutto didn’t care. He wouldn’t go to services either. Mamma was always yelling at him.”
“Angelo, I live right across the street, and I’ve never once heard your mother raise her voice in anger.” In complete and utter exasperation, perhaps…
“She yells soft! May I draw with this?” he asks, squirming around to show her the fountain pen from her purse. “Please?”
Lidia finds him a pencil instead, and chooses a copy of Cinema from a pile of magazines. “I suspect there are ladies in this who would look very nice with beards.”
“Do you have any little boys like me?” he asks, turning pages.
Lidia had forgotten how much children talk. “My little boy is all grown up. You know Signor Leoni— he’s my son, Renzo.”
Angelo thinks this information over; at seven, the notion that grown men were once boys is still hearsay. “I know a kid who says Signor Leoni is a galeotto,” he says slyly. “What does that mean?”
“It means jailbird, Angelo, and something else very vulgar. Don’t use that word in my home.”
“Now you’re yelling at me.” Lower lip protruding, he looks for an old woman in the magazine and scribbles furiously through the face of a character actress in her forties. Lidia is flattered. “Everybody’s always yelling at me,” he mutters. “Angelo, be quiet!” he whines in what he believes to be his mother’s voice. “Angelo, you’ll wake Rosina up! Angelo, play outside!” This reminds him of his earlier grievance. “Mamma does too lie! She said the war was over, but they bombed us last night again.”
“Being wrong is not the same as lying. The war we fought against the Allies is over, but now the Germans are using our factories to make things for their army, so the English are still bombing—”
He’s stopped listening. World politics are difficult enough for adults these days. She reaches down to lift his chin. “Angelo, listen carefully. If we can save a life by lying— our own or someone else’s— it is our duty to lie. That’s why I’m pretending to be Catholic.”
“Babbo says that’s wrong. Babbo says if he carries the Torah to God’s people, he’s safe. ’Cause God protects him. ’Cause he’s doing a mitzvah.”
“Your father is a very brave man.” Foolhardy, but brave. “Just remember: you don’t have to tell Germans the truth. If a German asks where a road goes, tell him you don’t know, even if you do. Or tell him it goes to Milan, even if it really goes to Genoa. If he asks, ‘Do Jews live here?’ You must say, ‘They all left!’ Or you could say, ‘We kicked them all out!’ Germans will like that. Those lies can save lives, Angelo—”
“Do you know any other dead people?”
This is what’s so tiring about children. Endless changes in direction, the constant need to adjust. “Ye-es,” she says slowly, summoning patience like a moderately obedient dog. “I know a lot of dead people.” She goes back to her knitting. “I had an uncle who died before I was born.”
“Then you didn’t know him!”
“Don’t be pedantic. My uncle fought with the House of Savoia against the ninth Pius. The popes owned the whole middle of Italy back then, and Pius the Ninth was a terrible man. My uncle was killed in battle, but he was so brave, the king gave my grandmother a medal.”
“The king? Himself?”
“Vittorio Emanuele the Second! The very king who unified Italy and made us equal citizens, because Jews fought so well.” Lidia decides not to confuse the child with her current opinion of the monarchy.
“Who else do you know that’s dead?” Angelo asks eagerly. “’Specially soldiers! I’m going to be a soldier, and I’m going to drop bombs and shoot bad people.”
After six daughters, Lidia was always shocked when Renzo came home bloody and grinning; she is retroactively comforted that even a rabbi’s son starts out as barbaric as her own once was. “Two of my nephews died in the last war, fighting the Austrians. So did my daughter Susanna’s first love. Davide was a nice boy, but he was killed before they married. It was very sad. And then there was a terrible sickness called influenza—”
Footsteps in the hallway slow. An envelope slides under the door. Angelo runs over to get it. “Is it a secret message?”
“Just some papers.” Lidia flips through the documents. “Very serviceable,” she remarks, and goes to the kitchen to sign several of them. “Put these in my purse, please, Angelo.”
He does as he’s told, then returns to the magazine, looking for more ladies to deface. Belly on the floor, feet waving, he says, “I like it when I stay with you.”
“Thank you, Angelo. It’s kind of you to say so. I have a grandson your age. He lives in Rome, with his two little sisters. All my grandchildren live far away. Rome, Turin, Florence.” Even before the war made petrol scarce and travel dangerous, Lidia didn’t get to see her grandchildren often enough. Her daughters rarely visit.
“You’re like my Nonno Casutto,” Angelo decides, drawing an airplane in the sky over Amedeo Nazzari’s fedora. “You let me do stuff other grown-ups won’t. One time,” he says, sitting up, “there was this air raid, and me and Nonno Casutto sneaked up to the roof to see the fires! I like air raids. My sister Altira— she got scared, but I like ’em. ’Cause after, you can find stuff, and look in people’s apartments, and see their wallpaper and toilets and everything.”
“Very interesting,” she admits.
“I found an unexploded bomb once. I ran for a carabiniere. He gave me caramelle for telling.”
“That was very brave and sensible, Angelo.”
“A kid I know? He said Jews are cowards.”
“Nazi propaganda,” she snaps. “He’s just parroting what he hears on the radio. In the Great War, the oldest man and the youngest to be decorated were both Jews! Remember Signor Loeb? He was decorated after the Battle of Caporetto! And my son, Renzo, earned the silver medal for valor during the Abyssinian—”
“Look! What a stupid hat!” Angelo holds the magazine up briefly. “One time, I saw Signor Ravera walking around with a bucket. His apartment building was all wrecked, and he was crying and yelling.” The pencil stills, and Angelo aims a sidelong glance at Lidia. “I looked in the bucket. Signora Ravera’s head was in there.”
Lidia stares, her hands going motionless.
Gratified by the reaction, Angelo adds a pointy beard to the lady with the stupid hat. The hat has a little bird on it, so he draws a soldier shooting the bird. “If Mammina and Babbo got killed, I wouldn’t care. I’m not a baby,” he boasts. “I know how to do stuff.”
Lidia lays her knitting aside, horrified by the bravado, awed by the courage. Violent death, casual horror— just part of childhood now. “You are exceedingly competent for a seven-year-old,” she tells him firmly, “but your parents are going to be fine.” The mantel clock begins to chime. “Santo cielo! Noon already.” Eyes narrowing, she considers Renzo’s bedroom door. “Angelo, I believe it’s time to play something nice and loud on the piano!”
Lingering in the hallway while his pounding heartbeat slows, Iacopo Soncini listens to the racket inside and smiles in spite of everything. The signora is playing Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat while Angelo bangs on the low keys, more or less in time.
Removing his hat, Iacopo knocks, and his hand automatically brushes the doorpost where a mezuzah used to hang. It’s gone, the nail holes neatly patched. The doors of all eight tenants are freshly painted; no household’s entry attracts attention. “Routine maintenance,” Rina Dolcino can claim if things go badly. “I had no idea anyone in my building was Jewish. Why would anyone pay attention to things like that?”
Small feet pound down the hall to gleeful shouts of “Babbo! Babbo! Babbo!” Signora Leoni has barely unlocked the door when Angelo hurtles through it, then stops, mouth open. “Babbo, why are you so dirty?”
“Rabbino, what happened?” Lidia cries, pulling him inside.
“A little unpleasantness in the street. I was wondering if I might clean here before I take Angelo home.” He glances meaningfully at his son. “We don’t want to worry your mammina, do we!”
“Angelo,” Lidia says, equally cool, “show your babbo to the lavatory.”
Angelo leads him past a crucifix hung prominently in the entry. A framed picture of Piux XII has joined the family photos in the salon; the silver menorah is nowhere to be seen. Renzo hunches over the table, unshaven and comprehensively hung over. Hands around a cup of ersatz coffee, he looks worse off than the credenza’s display of grisly plaster martyrs. Colorful saints merely cast lugubrious eyes toward heaven in attitudes of mild vexation at their torture; Renzo can barely raise an index finger in greeting.
Iacopo bids him a hearty, if ironic, “Buon giorno” and retreats behind the bathroom door, closing it more loudly than strictly necessary. He takes his time, wiping gray dust from his black suit with a dampened cloth, washing his face and hands, borrowing a comb to neaten his hair and beard. There’s nothing to be done about his spectacles, and the eye will blacken, but it could have been worse. When he cannot put the moment off any longer, he switches off the light.
Angelo leaps up the instant the door reopens. “Babbo, look what I found this morning!” he says, digging something out of his satchel.
“Later, Angelo. Signora, I’m afraid…” Iacopo holds out a slip of paper. “A stranger gave this to me on the street.”
Unfolding the small note, Lidia reads aloud. “ ‘Five parcels sent to Switzerland have been confiscated at the border. Do not try to export any more of these goods.’ There’s no signature.” She sniffs in a short breath. “Rachele. Tranquillo,” she says numbly. “Their three youngest. That makes five—”
“Babbo, look!” Angelo says, holding what looks like a cigar stub.
“Angelo!” Renzo says sharply. “Sit down and be quiet!” Bloodshot eyes on his mother, Renzo pulls out a chair for her.
Iacopo settles himself across the table from Lidia. “Signora,” he says calmly, “I’ve already seen the archbishop. His secretary, Don Osvaldo, has made inquiries. The Loebs were turned back by the Swiss because they didn’t have the proper transit visas. They’re in German custody. Archbishop Tirassa himself spoke to the man in charge. The Loebs were not arrested for their race, but because they were attempting to leave Italy illegally. His Excellency has been assured that all law-abiding Jewish citizens of Italy will be treated properly. I think that’s true. I’ve been stopped twice by German soldiers today, and allowed to pass with no trouble.”
“And the unpleasantness in the street?” Renzo asks.
“Rabble,” Iacopo says. “A carabiniere chased them off.”
“Babbo, look—”
“Angelo,” Lidia says a little raggedly, “the grown-ups are talking! Rabbino, I understand that Tranquillo is in trouble, but surely Rachele and the children—?”
“Technically they all committed a crime when they tried to cross the border with false documents, Signora. His Excellency will try to get them released.”
“Iacopo,” Renzo says, “you have to close the synagogue.”
“During the High Holy Days? Never!”
“Take a million, maybe two million lire out of the bank,” Renzo continues, voice low and even. “Give all the synagogue employees three months’ salary, and tell everyone to get the hell out of the city!”
Lidia shakes her head stubbornly. “Evacuation is collaboration!”
“And I don’t have the authority to close the synagogue,” Iacopo says. “That’s the community president’s decision, and he’s in Florence.”
“Then hide the synagogue records, at least!” Renzo urges. “Take anything with names and addresses to Osvaldo Tomitz. He’ll bury them in the basilica’s papers. Otherwise, we’ll be no better off than the Jews in Rome—”
“Wait!” Lidia says sharply. “What’s happened in Rome?”
“Babbo! Look!” Angelo insists, waving the cigar.
“A shakedown. Angelo, please!” Renzo pleads. “I got a telephone call through to Ester last night, Mamma. She and the children are fine, but she had to give her wedding ring and Nonna Segre’s necklace to the Nazis.”
“The Gestapo gave the Roman Jews thirty-six hours to deliver fifty kilos of gold,” Iacopo explains.
“If they don’t pay up,” Renzo says, “Kappler will deport two hundred people to Germany—”
“A great many Catholics are coming to our aid, signora! The gold will be delivered on time.”
“Demonstrating that we can be intimidated and robbed,” Renzo points out. “Let’s not make it easy for them—”
“Babbo! Look!” Angelo yells. Three adults wheel, ready to shout. Angelo holds out his treasure and finally achieves the silent awe he hoped for. “I found it in the street after last night’s raid,” he says proudly. “The nail polish is still on it!”
It’s not a cigar stub. It’s a woman’s thumb.
RABBINICAL RESIDENCE
PORTO SANT’ANDREA
Underslept and overburdened, Iacopo Soncini closes his eyes behind the cracked lens of his glasses. Listening to the silence of his book-crammed study, he thanks God that Rosina’s colicky crying has finally quieted and that Mirella will get a few hours of rest before the baby needs to nurse again.
He eases the desk drawer open and chooses a pen with care, selecting one his grandfather gave him on the day Iacopo became bar mitzvah. “These are the Days of Awe,” he writes, wondering if even a minyan will be left for Sabbath services. “When Abraham bound Isaac upon the altar, he was ready to sacrifice his only son at the Holy One’s command. God did not require that awful deed: an angel stayed Abraham’s hand, and told him to substitute a ram for the boy. On Rosh Hashana, when the year begins anew, the children of Abraham and of Isaac are reminded by the call of a ram’s horn that during the following eight days, God considers all His children and decides who will be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year.”
Since Italy’s surrender, Allied air raids have become more frequent. Targets seem more random. Renzo Leoni has offered to take Lidia, Mirella, and the children to the mountains, where they’ll all be safer. Should I have said yes? Iacopo asks himself. Have I waited too long? Dio santo, my son believes that finding a woman’s thumb is interesting— like finding a bird’s feather or a pretty shell on the beach!
“Wake up from your slumber,” he writes. “Examine your deeds! Maimonides tells us that is what the ram’s horn proclaims. Turn in repentance, remembering your Creator. On Yom Kippur, we’ll rise together to ask forgiveness, so that we might be inscribed in the Book of Life, and together we will be comforted by Jonah’s assurance of the Lord’s compassion for all creatures. And yet, next year at this time, some of us will be gone.”
You’ve got to close the synagogue…
Easy enough to ignore the advice of a dislikable drunk, but Osvaldo Tomitz came this evening to give the same advice, and the priest was even more insistent. “What better target than a synagogue full of fasting Jews on Yom Kippur? Just surround the building with troops and scoop the Juden up! Rabbino, the Loebs were not the only ones to be stopped at the Swiss border,” Don Osvaldo told him. “Forty-nine Jews were arrested at that crossing. This afternoon we got word that their bodies were found in Lake Maggiore!”
“Never has a year passed in which no one died,” Iacopo writes resolutely. “Death waits for all who live— the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of dry land. We who have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, we alone know that death is coming for us. Adonai, in His compassion and wisdom, has given us the Days of Awe, so that we might turn back toward Him. Some do. Some don’t. Some need not return because they’ve never left. It seems to make no difference. Each year, the Holy One takes life from those whose deaths leave us stunned and bereft. Each year, He leaves among us those whose lives are a curse. Of all His creatures, we alone ask, ‘Why?’ ”
Why my mother, my son, my cousin, my wife? his congregants will ask themselves. Why these innocents, when Hitler and Himmler, Goebbels and Kappler live on.
“I have studied Torah for many years,” he writes. “Had I studied alone, I might have come to believe that Torah does not teach us to understand God but simply to belong to Him. Fortunately, we Jews have as our study partners the wise of all ages, sages who lived in the times of the Canaanites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hellenists, and the Romans.”
Iacopo’s gaze drifts along the shelves of his library. Bibles in Hebrew and German, French and Italian. The many-volumed Talmud with its centuries-long conversation among past rabbis. Commentaries by Maimonides and Nachmonides, by Rashi and Rabbi Luzzatto share a plank with Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Plutarch. Flavius Josephus and Nathan ben Yehiel rest cozily between Machiavelli and Tacitus. Schiller and Shakespeare rub shoulders with Solomon Conegliano. Cantarini, Cardoso, Lampronti. Deborah Ascarelli, Sara Coppio Sullam. So many dear friends…
“The sages offer us a way to understand the terrible times when we are driven into exile, when we are beaten and enslaved, when we are killed with less thought than a shochet gives a chicken. The Holy One has made us His partners, the sages teach. He gives us wheat, we make bread. He gives us grapes, we make wine. He gives us the world. We make of it what we will— all of us together. When the preponderance of human beings choose to act with justice and generosity and kindness, then learning and love and decency prevail. When the preponderance of human beings choose power, greed, and indifference to suffering, the world is filled with war, poverty, and cruelty. Bombs do not drop from God’s hand. Triggers are not pulled by God’s finger. Each of us chooses, one by one, and God’s eye does not turn from those who suffer or from those who inflict suffering. Our choices are weighed. And, thus, the nations are judged.”
Carefully, Iacopo removes his cracked spectacles. Elbows on his desk, he presses his fingers into his eyes and weighs his own obligations. He cannot abandon the foreign Jews hiding in Sant’Andrea, but he will risk only his own life, not the lives of his family or his congregants.
He can close the synagogue school on his own authority. Suora Marta has offered to enroll Jewish children in a boarding school run by her order in Roccabarbena. The repubblicani have closed the state schools, but Mother of Mercy is also an orphanage, and classes are in session. Inland, away from industrial targets, the children can continue their education in relative safety.
On Monday, Iacopo will bring Angelo to Suora Marta himself, and urge other parents to follow his example. And then he will ask— no, he will beg Lidia Leoni to take Mirella and the baby to Decimo, where they can hide on a tenant farm owned by her Catholic son-in-law’s parents until the war is over.
Iacopo is aware of the irony. All these years, he has refused to bless mixed marriages, alarmed that so many of his congregation’s young people were marrying Catholics— the inevitable result of shared lives, shared neighborhoods, shared values. He considered those marriages heartening proof of Italy’s religious tolerance but a threat to Jewish survival. Such unions may be the salvation of the Italkim now.
Replacing his glasses, he picks up his grandfather’s pen. “The Jews of Italy have always striven to be a source of generosity in the world, for God has often granted us koach latet: the power to give. For centuries, we Italkim have supported the victims of persecution and expulsion. In the days to come, remember this: when we accept the generosity of others, we are the occasion of the Holy One’s blessing on our benefactors for their kindness. May God guide us all,” he concludes, “from war to justice, from justice to mercy, and from mercy to peace.”
He caps his pen and taps the paper into a neat stack. His muscles are cramped, and his mind seems packed in cotton wool. Even so, before he goes to bed, he reaches for the small Bible he keeps on his desk for easy reference. Holding it in one palm, he opens his hand and lets the book fall open where it pleases. “I cannot go where God is not,” he whispers, and draws a finger down the text, stopping midway down a column in Psalms.
“I hear the whispering of many, terror on every side,” he reads. “But I trust in you, O Lord.”
EN ROUTE TO ROCCABARBENA
VALDOTTAVO, PIEMONTE
Mussolini’s trains contrive to leave stations on time, only to slow and stop repeatedly. Damaged rails must be repaired. Military transports sidetrack civilian trains. Locomotives break down, or run out of coal.
“Bring food,” everyone advised. “It’ll take all night to get there.”
Third class was crammed with passengers who would doze and cough and curse, but when Suora Marta boarded, a conductor recognized her from a geometry class in 1931. Crooking his finger, he led her and her companions to a safer and more private compartment shared by three well-dressed gentlemen who treated the nuns with courtesy and smiled at the little boy. On Marta’s left, nearest the sliding door, Suora Ilaria drew out her rosary; within minutes, she was snoring peacefully, black beads clutched in fingers clawed by arthritis. Squashed next to the window, the rabbi’s silent son stared at the countryside until he, too, fell asleep.
Bookended by her companions in the motionless train, Marta shifts carefully, trying to restore feeling to her thick little legs, without notable success. Unable to sleep, she offers up the pincushion sensation and starts another drowsy rosary.
Outside, welders work: demonic in iron masks, lit blue and brilliant white by acetylene torches. Sparks scatter from a section of twisted rail. At last, and slowly, the train makes its way past the workers, onto a different track. The gentleman sitting opposite lifts his chin toward the window. “That’s why we were delayed, Suora.”
First she sees only her own unappealing reflection. Her breath catches. A young man’s body hangs from a rope tied to the crossbar of a telegraph pole. A placard slung around his neck reads “Saboteur” in Italian and German.
“Troublemakers,” the man grumbles as the train’s movement smooths out and gains speed. “They only make it harder for the rest of us.”
“We must pray for his soul,” Suora Marta counters, pugnaciously pious.
The man snorts, crossing his arms over his chest. No one in the compartment speaks again.
They arrive in Roccabarbena just after dawn. The station isn’t large compared to those at Sant’Andrea or Genoa, but this is an important, if small, city. On five tracks flanked by crowds and crates, Roccabarbena gathers in Valdottavo’s olive oil and wine, cornmeal and chestnut flour, pork and fruit, and sends this bounty to the coast in exchange for manufactured goods, dried cod, sardines, and anchovies.
Small valise in her right hand, Suora Marta has only her left to deploy, and debates which of her charges to hold on to: the little boy or an old nun in her second childhood. Either might wander off.
Suora Ilaria’s veiled head tosses and swivels; she reminds Suora Marta of a horse trying to see around blinkers. “This didn’t use to be here,” Ilaria says, glaring at the railway station. “I’m sure this didn’t use to be here!”
Marta grips Suora Ilaria’s elbow. “Stay close,” she tells the boy. “We have to show our papers.”
They shuffle forward. A carabiniere gives the nuns’ documents a cursory inspection and smiles at the child, who is not required to carry any. “This didn’t use to be here!” Suora Ilaria informs the policeman. “Are you sure this is Roccabarbena? I’m sure this wasn’t here!”
“Suora Ilaria grew up here,” Marta explains, “but this is her first visit in a long time.”
“The station wasn’t built until 1927, Suora.” The carabiniere hands the documents back to Suora Marta. “Poveretta,” he mouths, with a sympathetic glance at the old nun.
The view beyond the station is pretty: low mountains in pale sunlight, a cool mist rising over the two rivers that converge just south of the city. Leading the way, Marta keeps her charges moving through telescoping arcades that increased in height and grandiosity as Roccabarbena grew from minor Roman town to busy Fascist railhead.
Already the workday has begun. Merchants roll up iron saracinesce to reveal storefronts. Housewives sweep stoops or shake out string bags and greet neighbors on the way to the market. People look startlingly clean and healthy, without the grimy gray pallor of those who live with air raids on ever-diminishing rations. Roccabarbena has escaped Allied bombing. Food is close at hand.
“You’re a lucky boy,” Marta tells the rabbi’s son. “This is a good place to live.”
His silence borders on rudeness. She lets it go for now, distracted by Suora Ilaria’s increasing agitation at the changes in her hometown. All evidence of the past forty years annoys and frightens the old girl. And I’m beginning to feel the same way about this century, Suora Marta thinks.
They cross the Piazza Centrale and board a crosstown trolley that deposits them at the base of a hill. “Watch!” Suora Marta tells the child. The trolley rotates on its huge wooden turntable so it can return to the piazza. “That’s Mother of Mercy up there,” she tells him then. “See the walls?”
There’s no reply from the boy, but Suora Ilaria’s mood improves with every step. “This is how it used to be,” she declares happily, bending beyond her ordinary stoop into the long uphill hike. “We always walked!”
There’s no fuss when they arrive. The portress takes Ilaria to a room. Suora Marta shows the boy to a visitor’s W.C., drops her own valise, and heads for the sisters’. When she returns, the child is waiting by the front door. “Are you hungry?” He shakes his head. “Come with me,” she says.
He follows her down a long, cool hallway to a door giving onto a stone pathway bisecting the convent’s high-fenced garden. They pass through a gate into the schoolyard. The weather is clement, the windows open. Singsong classroom chants drift out on the breeze: multiplication tables, irregular verbs, prayers being learned for First Communion.
“That will be your room,” Suora Marta says, pointing. “Your teacher’s name is Suora Corniglia.” She expects a question: is she nice? The rabbi’s son keeps his own counsel. “She’s young, and new to teaching,” Suora Marta tells him anyway, “but she has a good heart. You’ll like her.”
They enter through a side door, but instead of bringing Angelo directly to Suora Corniglia’s classroom, Suora Marta escorts him to an empty office. Pulling the door closed, she takes a seat at a desk, studies the silent child standing in front of her. “Figlio mio,” she asks quietly, “do you know why you are here with us?”
He does not nod so much as hang his head more dejectedly.
“When you answer me, you must say Sì, Suora or No, Suora.” It is a correction, but not a severe one. She is merely teaching him the rules. “Let’s try again. Do you know why your father brought you to us?”
“Sì, Suora,” the boy whispers.
“That’s better, but you must look at me when you answer. From now on, when someone asks your name, you must say—” It will be easier for him to remember if the false name is similar to his own. “You must say Angelo Santoro.”
The boy scowls at his feet. “I don’t want to lie.”
Suora Marta blinks. Yesterday the terrible rumors were confirmed. Eleven hundred Roman ebrei were deported on Yom Kippur, the Jews’ holiest day. The Vatican immediately ordered that all Catholic institutions be opened to refugees, but this must remain a secret, or the Church’s status of diplomatic neutrality will be nullified. “Don’t think of it as lying,” she suggests, cagey as a Jesuit. “Think of it as pretending. Again: what is your name?”
He looks up briefly. “My name is Angelo Santoro,” he says, and adds, “Suora.”
She smiles. “You’re a quick learner, Angelo Santoro. Come here to me, child.” He moves around the corner of her desk, feet scuffling reluctantly. “Angelo,” she whispers, lifting his little chin with one finger, “this is very important. You must never, ever tell anyone why you are here. You must pretend to be a Catholic, and do everything the other children do.”
“Sì, Suora.”
“I’m going to bring you to your new teacher now. Suora Corniglia also knows why you are here. She’ll help you learn our ways, and tonight she’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”
The child’s hangdog silhouette is outlined vaguely by misty light from the window. For an instant, Suora Marta sees the dead partisan’s head canted at a horrible angle.
“Angelo, if anyone finds out why you are with us, we could all be punished. So you must be brave, like a soldier! Promise me,” she whispers. “Promise on your word of honor that you won’t tell anyone why you’re here.”
“Never,” he swears, eyes stinging with tears he refuses to let fall. “Never, Suora!”
Sunlight breaks through fog and low clouds, its sudden dazzle mocking Angelo Soncini’s dark and wounded pride. He sucks his lips between his teeth and bites hard.
Never will he tell a living soul that his father sent him away because he was too noisy, and made his baby sister cry.
DIVISIONAL HEADQUARTERS
12TH WAFFEN-SS WALTHER REINHARDT
PALAZZO USODIMARE, PORTO SANT’ANDREA
These are the times when one is simply happy to be alive. All is right with the world. Suffused with a sense of unassailable well-being, you know you are where you should be, doing what you were meant to do.
This is war’s importance and its essential function, Erhardt von Thadden thinks. War provides an arena in which the best demonstrate their strength by cleansing the world of its worst. A perfect system, really… I should write a paper.
The Schoolmaster. That’s what von Thadden’s officers call him. Tall, spare, and born to instruct, he would still be a university professor but for a fortuitous guest lecture to some military cadets. When he walked into their classroom on the last day of June in 1934, he was merely an honorary major in the Security Department’s Cultural Activities section. He joined the organization primarily to further his study of Aryan philology, but national service came naturally to a von Thadden. And the smart black uniform with its silver runes was handsome.
He’d just begun his lecture when the first of the SA queers were brought to the Gross-Lichtenfeld wall. The cadets rushed to the windows when they heard the first volleys. Appalled by the distressingly unprofessional executions, the boys turned to von Thadden in confusion. Without hesitation, he left the classroom and took charge of the proceedings at the wall. By the end of the day, the Party’s Blood Purge had entered German history, and Erhardt von Thadden had earned his commission.
Nine and a half years later, he has risen to the rank of lieutenant-general in the Waffen-SS. Command sits easily upon him, despite his academic past. Erhardt von Thadden cannot deny it: he is a man of many talents.
Shaved and dressed by 0600 hours he returns briefly to the bedroom to kiss his sleeping wife’s forehead. He leaves the palazzo’s private rooms, crosses an inner piazza, and strolls down a polished marble hallway to his office. Oberscharführer Kunkel stands at the door ready to hand the Gruppenführer an espresso. Before accepting it, Erhardt holds his arms away from his body and pirouettes for his staff sergeant’s inspection.
“Your collar, Gruppenführer,” Kunkel murmurs indulgently. The Schoolmaster’s inattention to dress is famous.
Von Thadden checks his reflection in a gilt-framed mirror. “Ach!” he cries, smoothing the offending fabric. “This morning,” he promises Kunkel, “I shall make a special effort to keep the coffee off my uniform.”
For the next half hour, von Thadden reviews the night’s events, scanning dispatches and reports laid out on a superb neoclassical table. When the Gruppenführer sets those papers aside, Kunkel materializes with another stack: notes prepared for the morning’s briefing. At 0700 sharp, von Thadden heads for the library, pausing just outside a grand ballroom filled with rows of gunmetal gray desks. Typewriter keys smack sharply against paper, voices murmur, telephones ring. When the C.O. appears, men stand and salute. Von Thadden raises his own hand more casually as he passes. Behind him, chair legs squeal, and his staff goes back to work.
“Heil Hitler,” he murmurs, entering a small room walled with four hundred years of finely bound books. Officers come to their feet, salute. A man in civilian clothing raises his right arm straight, forty-five degrees off horizontal. The soldiers’ attention is on their commander, but the civilian’s eyes rest with conspicuous devotion on the photo of the Führer that has replaced a portrait of the Sant’Andrese pirate who built this palace.
“How nice to see you again, Artur,” von Thadden says, forcing the civilian to acknowledge him. “Gentlemen, we have a guest this morning: an old acquaintance of mine from our days in München. Herr Artur Huppenkothen— formerly of the Vienna Office for Jewish Emigration, currently Oberst der Polizei in Sant’Andrea. He will be addressing us later in a discussion of joint operations.”
Kunkel pulls down a large map mounted on the wall. Von Thadden reaches for a wooden pointer and strikes a pose behind the lectern. “I know what you’re thinking,” the Schoolmaster says, looking over his shoulder slyly. He does not join the burst of surprised laughter, but his eyes sparkle.
With the pointer, he quickly outlines a triangle of territory angling north-northwest. “Gentlemen, our area of responsibility runs from the Port of Sant’Andrea here, inland to central Piemonte.” (Tap, scrape.) “The arc of land along the Gulf of Genoa is Liguria, which takes its name from a pre-Roman tribe. Piemonte means ‘foot of the mountain,’ the mountains in question being the Maritime Alps. Eastern Piemonte is a large, fertile plain. Highly developed agriculture. Rice, corn, wheat. Western Piemonte is composed of long river valleys bordered by high saddles of low but steep wooded mountains, all of which are ribbed by numberless ravines.”
Von Thadden clears his throat and looks around. “Kunkel? Where is the water?” he asks mildly.
“Sorry, Gruppenführer. Right away, sir.”
“Valleys,” von Thadden continues, “often take their names from their rivers. Valle Stura. Valle Gesso, Valle San Leandro.” (Tap. Tap. Tap.) “The pattern is broken in our area of authority. The Romans called this Vallis Octavii— Eighth Valley. Italian is, of course, merely Vandalized Latin…”
He pauses to take note of who chuckles first: Helmut Reinecke. No surprise there. Always in the front row, like a diligent young graduate student, but an excellent combat record. Artur Huppenkothen, on Reinecke’s right, makes a show of boredom.
“Like everything else in this once great empire,” von Thadden resumes, “ ‘Vallis Octavii’ has been corrupted— the present inhabitants call it Valdottavo. The valley forms a great funnel pointing south-southeast, with the San Mauro River running down the center. Saint Mauro is the patron of the region. Some sort of bishop in the reign of Pope Sixtus the Fifth.” He pauses for effect. “Or was it Fiftus the Sixth? Difficult to keep all these popes straight…”
From the staff: smiles all round. Huppenkothen looks out the window.
“Despite the terrain, Vallis Octavii was famous for peasant farmers whose capacity for hardship and toil earned the poet Virgil’s praise. The land is all but untillable, its soil imported by sailors in sacks, so the story goes, and hauled up the mountains on muleback. The peasants are tough, secretive, hostile to outsiders and—”
“Communists,” Huppenkothen says in a loud, flat voice. “The place is rotten with them.”
Von Thadden goes on as if Artur had not spoken. “Transport is fairly primitive. The San Mauro River is broad, shallow, rocky, and unnavigable. Torrential in spring and autumn, frozen in winter. In summer, the river may dry up altogether. Mule paths connect high hamlets with villages. Gravel tracks connect some of the larger towns. Paved roads and a railway parallel the riverbed.”
Kunkel delivers mineral water in a Murano goblet on a silver tray. Von Thadden takes a sip and continues: “Note that at the narrow ends of these two valleys, the San Leandro and San Mauro rivers converge.” (Scrape. Scrape.) “Together they have carved out a wedge of land. The city of Roccabarbena”— tap—“sits on that wedge, at the funnel’s narrow end. The Roccabarbena railway switching station collects freight and passengers from both Valle San Leandro and Valdottavo. Four bridges cross the rivers at Roccabarbena.” (Tap. Tap.) “Two are Roman, built for foot and wheeled traffic. The others are railway trestles, built in the 1920s by Herr Mussolini.”
He lays the pointer down. “By December, German engineers will finish blasting a tunnel from Valdottavo into the plains northeast of the region. This connection will allow food, goods, and laborers to be delivered to the Vaterland. Armaments will flow southward to the Gustav Line, below Rome. Your thoughts?”
The discussion of tactics for controlling supply lines is routine, methods for securing them standard. Roccabarbena’s bridges and Valdottavo’s railway line are of clear strategic importance. “And the Communists in the region, Gruppenführer?” Helmut Reinecke asks, with attention to detail. “Indigenous or imported?”
“Both,” Huppenkothen says.
“Yes— and perhaps now is the time to turn things over to our Gestapo colleague,” von Thadden says mildly, backing away.
The men shift in their chairs. Artur Huppenkothen takes the podium, realizes it is too high for him, and sidesteps it. Behind him, the Gruppenführer leans against a wall lined with books, arms crossed just below his medals. Von Thadden catches Reinecke’s eye, and glances toward Huppenkothen’s heels, which are undoubtedly raised by lifts. Reinecke’s lips twitch. Suspicious, Huppenkothen glances over his shoulder. Von Thadden smiles encouragingly, like a teacher urging a shy student to get on with his book report.
Artur is a remarkably colorless man: pale skin, pale eyes, a pale scalp showing through thinning blond hair. His cuff links are fashioned of unadorned gold, the better to draw attention to the red monogram AH embroidered on his shirt cuffs. These are Artur’s own initials but, one is invited to note, also the Führer’s. Artur always dresses with strict attention to grooming, his shoes polished to a high gloss, his trousers pressed to a fine edge. He thinks all this will win respect, but others see it as a confirmation of a widespread speculation. If he hadn’t informed on his own lovers to Himmler, Artur Huppenkothen would have been executed in 1934 like the rest of Röhm’s SA fairies.
“Our department has completed an assessment of the Jewish problem in northern Italy,” he begins, pulling a sheaf of crackly onionskin from a leather document case. “The infestation is pervasive,” he says, rattling the report to prove it. “As soon as our Führer began to drive them from the Vaterland, Jews ran like rats for Italy. But the Jew also has deep roots here—”
Von Thadden interrupts. “If I may add a bit of background for the men, Artur? The earliest Roman synagogues predate the Vatican by centuries. Historians estimate a tenth of the population of the Empire was Jewish at the beginning of the Christian era. Many Romans converted to Hebrew monotheism,” von Thadden says with a wry smile. “Women generally, adult males being reluctant to undertake circumcision.”
Huppenkothen clears his throat as the uncomfortable chuckles fade. “Your commander is, of course, correct. The oldest Jew community in Europe is that of Rome. Soon, however, we shall say that it was in Rome. Deportations have begun,” he says, regaining his momentum, “but our task is daunting. The Jew has infiltrated Italian society at all levels, and in every sphere. Not only trade unions, but also the military and the government—”
“In Italy,” von Thadden interjects helpfully, “the Jew is not closely associated with commerce. Until recently, he was prominent in the Italian armed forces.”
“Accounting, no doubt, for the poor showing Italy has made militarily,” Huppenkothen snaps. “Even the Catholic Church has been subverted here— not at the highest levels, but among so-called worker-priests who stir up discontent among factory workers and the peasantry. The Fascist Party itself was filled with Jews from the beginning, even on Mussolini’s Grand Council. Il Duce’s daughter nearly married one! Race mixture has been extensive here, even in the face of the 1938 laws. Native-born Jews have been provided endless exemptions to the laws. A Jew could be Aryanized if he had served in the armed forces, or—”
“Knew whom to bribe in the registry,” von Thadden murmurs.
Huppenkothen soldiers on. “The race laws were not enforced at all in Italian-occupied territories. The Italian foreign minister Count Luca Pietromarchi has Jewish blood. He is married to a Jewess—”
“Really?” von Thadden asks. Needling Artur is almost too easy, but someone has to keep the little queer in his place. “I thought that was only a rumor.”
“The Italian Foreign Ministry never surrendered a single Jew from any of their territories,” Huppenkothen says, his bearing rigidly erect, to make the most of his inadequate stature. “Not from Greece, Salonika, Russia, or Yugoslavia, not from southern France—”
“My dear Artur, handing over undesirables to another government would have meant a loss of sovereignty.” Von Thadden addresses his men. “That, of course, is no longer an issue for the Republic of Salò.”
Huppenkothen gathers his papers and replaces them in the document case. “Our survival as a Volk demands that we free ourselves and Europe of this ancient racial cancer.” He looks at each of the officers in the room. “The malign influence of the Jew festers in every city and every valley of this country. We must be hard. We must be ruthless. Be assured,” he says directly to von Thadden, “the Gestapo takes note of those who fail in this regard.”
The room remains silent until the small man’s footsteps are heard no more. The Schoolmaster strolls back to his place behind the lectern. “Herr Oberstpolizei Huppenkothen’s devotion to the Aryan race is admirable. It is a devotion I endorse, a devotion I share, but the Waffen-SS is a military organization, gentlemen. Our priorities must be well ordered. Reinecke, do you have the figures I requested?”
“Jawohl, Gruppenführer. On 8th September, there were approximately thirty-five thousand native-born Italian Jews, or less than half a percent of the national population. To this, add several thousand foreign Jews smuggled into the country from France and Yugoslavia by Italian troops last month.”
“For a total of…?”
“Best estimate seems to be forty-five thousand, Gruppenführer. Although with the deportation from Rome, that number has already dropped.”
“So, forty-four thousand Jews, two-thirds women and children. Leaving—?”
“Fifteen thousand men, of whom a third would be too old to fight,” Reinecke says, having anticipated the calculation. “Say, ten thousand potential combatants.”
“Make that ten potential combatants!” a Standartenführer in the last row retorts. “These are Jews we speak of!”
“Worse,” someone else calls out. “Most are Italian Jews!”
“How many gears does an Italian tank have?” another asks.
“Only one: reverse!” comes the answer.
Suddenly the room erupts with jokes. How do you stop an Italian tank? Shoot the soldier pushing it! Did you hear about the Italian rifle for sale? Never been fired, only dropped once! What do Italians call half a million men with their hands in the air? The army! Did you hear about the new Italian flag? It has a white stripe— on a white background! Did you hear? Did you hear? Did you hear?
Reinecke looks increasingly troubled, but von Thadden lets the men enjoy themselves. All their lives, they’ve been taught to sneer at the Untermenschen of the world, but when the laughter wanes, he warns them, “In war, as in chess, underestimating the enemy is a mistake. We who have served in Russia know that Italian soldiers can be formidable and ferocious fighters.”
“Particularly the Alpini,” Reinecke says earnestly.
“Obersturmführer Reinecke was seconded to an Alpine unit during the first battle of the Don,” von Thadden informs the others. “Bear in mind as well: the Badoglio government surrendered, but il Duce’s Black Brigades are united with us in opposition to the Allied invasion of Italy, and to the Bolshevik threat to Europe. Other demobilized soldiers,” he grants, “consider us an occupying force. They could pose a substantial threat. Furthermore, Italians are a notably tenderhearted and generous people, and such altruistic softness inevitably leads to collectivism. If Bolshevik Jews join and subvert Italian resistance forces, they must be considered the vanguard of the Soviet army.”
He waits in the chastened silence for his words to sink in. “Garrison all population centers with over one thousand inhabitants. Conscript laborers and clear fifty meters on either side of all railroads and paved highways. Burn everything that can give cover to saboteurs. Shoot anyone who resists. I want anti-aircraft guns around all bridges and at two-kilometer intervals along the whole of the railway from Sant’Andrea to Borgo San Mauro. Establish supply-line patrols— every four hours, round the clock, starting at seventeen hundred hours this afternoon. Dismissed.”
Chairs rumble. Low voices murmur. The staff meeting breaks up, but von Thadden motions for Reinecke to remain. “Your given name is Helmut, is it not, Obersturmführer?”
“Yes, it is, Gruppenführer.”
“And your wife is Anneliese? Expecting, I believe.” Reinecke nods, a little startled. Von Thadden smiles warmly. “Shall I arrange leave for the event?”
“The Reich comes first, sir.”
“Of course! But I’ll see if we can’t find a few days for you to go home. Or,” von Thadden offers craftily, “your little family could join you here. The presence of a man’s wife and children does so much for morale, and I want my adjutant to operate at peak efficiency. The rise in pay grade will not be unappreciated by a new father, eh, Hauptsturmführer?”
“I— Thank you, Gruppenführer. This is most unexpected.”
“I’ve had my eye on you, Reinecke. I pride myself on recognizing merit. You’ve earned this promotion.” Von Thadden extracts a slip of paper from his breast pocket. “Contact this man about the arrangements.”
Reinecke reads the name. “Ugo Messner. German, sir?”
“Of German blood— a Volksdeutscher from Bozen. Charming, and very helpful with finding accommodations, furniture, and so on. Get cracking, Reinecke! My Martina is lonely, and she loves babies. Your Anneliese will be good company for her.”
FORMER RABBINICAL RESIDENCE
PORTO SANT’ANDREA
Erna Huppenkothen rubs at a smudge on the credenza with the corner of her apron and adjusts the lace tablecloth on the dining table. Fine porcelain and lovely silver are already laid at Artur’s place. She has prepared his supper herself. Plain, sensible German cooking. Ugo— Herr Messner, that is— offered to find Italian girls to cook and clean for her, but Erna has refused. “Let silly women like that Martina von Thadden have servants and grand homes!” she told Herr Messner. His eyes glowed with admiration. He sensed the strength of her will, her determination. She will not be corrupted by the warm weather and aristocratic ease Italy offers its conquerors.
Erna sees through all that seductive courtesy. Behind each fawning smile, there is trickery and insult. Mouths wish you Buon giorno, Buona sera, Buona notte. Eyes wish you dead.
Ugo is Italian, too, but different, of course, being Aryan by blood. She could never have established this household so quickly without his help.
Happy to be in the company of other good Germans, Ugo appeared out of nowhere, pointed out this house, and arranged the removal of all its awful modern furniture and degenerate Jew art. Most of the house was as clean as could be expected, given the dust and smoke from the bombing, but— Scheibenkleister! That horrible library! Enough dirt in there to plant a garden and raise potatoes.
Not even a good, strong German woman like Erna could have carried all those filthy Jew books away to be burned, so she agreed to let Ugo’s men get rid of them for her. A few days later, he told her about some lovely antiques, available for a very reasonable price, and had them delivered on approval. Erna’s favorite piece is a sideboard of ebonized walnut, magnificently carved. Difficult to dust, but worth the effort. An ornate mirror hangs above it. “The glass is four hundred years old,” Ugo said, “and you’re the most handsome woman it’s ever seen.”
Such a flirt! But courteous. Respectful. And so attentive, although he travels on business regularly, gone for several days at a time. He always brings her little gifts: handsome old drawings, lovely candlesticks, lace linens to grace her table. Nicer than anything she had back in München.
She enjoys Ugo’s visits. Even at home, she was often lonely. After Mutti died, she kept house for Papa until he, too, passed away. When her brother, Artur, asked her to come to Italy as his housekeeper, Erna was grateful and determined to justify the expense and bother he went to, bringing her here. She had long since resigned herself to spinsterhood. She never expected to meet anyone as pleasant as Herr Messner, and in Italy, of all places!
The mantel clock chimes six. She straightens her apron and waits in the vestibule, knowing Artur will arrive at 6:05. Already, they have established their daily schedule. She’ll take his hat and briefcase. He’ll remove his coat and make a brief reply to her greeting while she hangs up his things. She’ll serve his supper in silence; he works even while he eats. “That was good,” he’ll say when he finishes, then retreat to his study, a collection of files in hand. When he goes to bed, he’ll find beautifully ironed pajamas, a silk robe, and Turkish slippers laid out in his room. In the morning, his suit will be sponged and pressed, his shoes blacked and shining.
Each evening Erna clears away his dishes and eats her own meal, standing, in the kitchen. “I wish Artur were more like you, Herr Messner,” she confessed yesterday. “He barely speaks, and he never listens to me!”
“Artur is lucky to have you looking after him,” Ugo said, “but naturally he is preoccupied by affairs of state. Noticing things like furniture and cooking would be a sort of dereliction of duty. You serve the Führer by serving Artur, Fräulein!”
“I never thought of it that way,” she said.
“Men always love to talk about their professions,” Ugo said thoughtfully. “Perhaps if you take an interest…?”
The door opens. Her brother steps inside. “Good evening, Artur,” Erna says, taking his hat and briefcase. “You look tired. How was work today?”