TWENTY-TWO
Francesca
Mid-December 1943
When the truck pulled up alongside an ocher building, night was falling. Francesca understood, immediately, where they’d brought her. Via Tasso. The dark-haired soldier helped her down; without him, she would’ve collapsed. The barrel of a gun nudged her back, and she began to move, haltingly, toward an entrance trimmed in red flags bearing swastikas. She stepped into the building that had become notorious among partisans as an SS prison. And, according to rumors murmured throughout the city, it was also a torture center.
Francesca struggled up the stairs, weak with fear. They ushered her to a room, and its door opened like an eye, then all was black.
“There’s a bit of space over here,” a female voice whispered after locks had clicked. A pair of hands reached through the darkness to guide her. The hands switched as she moved forward, changing in shape and texture. It took a moment for Francesca to understand what surrounded her. She was stumbling through a crowd of seated women, their hands taking turns guiding her to a vacant spot.
When she lowered to sit, her weak leg buckled, and she landed in a heap of limbs. A wall of bricks, crudely set, scratched her back. She strained to see it as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. She could make out a brick patch, sealing up what was once a window. They’d walled off the window? She managed a question.
“What should I expect?”
The shapes of women shifted around her. It was too dark to make out faces.
“Depends on what they brought you in for,” someone answered eventually. A pair of hands fumbled to her, finding her palm and squeezing.
“Gather your strength,” a tired voice said.
Francesca’s thoughts began to race. What would the Nazis do to her? She couldn’t see the faces around her for clues. “How long have you been here?”
“A long time, some of us,” someone croaked from the far corner. “Best you can do is convince them that you’re nobody. They let the nobodies go sometimes—no space for them.”
Before Francesca could ask another question, boots clicked down the hall outside. The locks turned in the heavy door, and everyone in the room shuffled. She shrank back instinctively. A guard waded in, walking through the crowd of women huddling on the floor, his flashlight bobbing over their faces until he found Francesca.
“Come with me,” he barked in accented Italian. “Adesso, adesso.”
They led her down a stark hall, a gun in her back and two men gripping her elbows. She staggered into a room similar to the other, but brightly lit and empty. Its window, too, was sealed over with bricks, and the walls were covered in busy wallpaper. In its center sat a wooden chair. A light shone over it.
She stumbled to the chair, and when she sat, every part of her trembled. She squinted into the light, and memories flashed in her mind: hospital beds under bright bulbs, other inspections and questions, the promise of pain.
“Why were you out tonight?” a man barked, invisible on the other side of the glaring lamp.
Francesca shaded her eyes, speaking with forced calm. “I wanted to go for a walk—”
“At curfew?”
“It wasn’t yet curfew.”
“Where do you live?”
She hesitated. An empty apartment appeared in her mind. It had been a meeting place for partisans, but nobody lived there now. She rattled off the address, squinting to see past the lights. Her questioner was nothing more than a dark silhouette. An armed guard stood at the door.
“Do you know any partisans?”
“No.”
“Do you have a job?”
“I did. In a bookshop. But it’s closed now.”
“Have you heard the name ‘Gianluca Falco’?”
Her interior shuddered, but she maintained an impassive face and steady voice. “No.”
“Do you know anyone called L’Allodola?”
Again, she spoke without a flinch. “No.”
The figure behind the lights stepped forward, and his face came into view. He had bright eyes, glacial blue, and angular cheekbones. He knelt, sniffing in a quick breath, examining her as if she were a pinned butterfly.
When he spoke, it was with a smile, but his eyes remained cold. “I do believe you’re lying, my little lark. You know how people hunt larks, don’t you? They hang tiny mirrors in a tree, very pretty little mirrors, and skylarks fly right into the trap. Perhaps they’re confused when they see their own reflections. Interesting, ja?” He stared at her for a long moment, then stood to his full height. Before she saw it coming, he cuffed her, hard, across the eye.
“Where is Gianluca?”
She held trembling fingers to her eye. “I don’t know any Gianluca.”
Something hit her stomach, and she doubled over on the chair.
“Where is Gianluca?”
Francesca sucked air, heaving over her throbbing belly. She fought a wave of nausea. What would an innocent girl do? She released tears. “I don’t know any Gianluca,” she sobbed. Her left eye warmed and swelled under her cupped fingertips.
“Which partisans do you know?”
“None.”
The club hit her shin, and she yelped. The skin around her eye throbbed, and she began to weep for real. Would her eye be damaged? Her good leg? She inhaled and tried to corral her bucking thoughts. She couldn’t say anything. She was nobody. She knew nothing.
The Nazi knelt again. For a long moment, the room was quiet. She didn’t open her good eye but touched the damaged one. The skin was puffy, like dough. The sweep of his breath was inches away. She sensed the weight of his stare.
“I can beat you all night, if you’re stubborn,” he murmured. “Or, you can tell me now and I’ll take you back to the cell and we can all get some sleep. Wouldn’t that be nicer? To lie down and rest?”
She didn’t move, but she opened her good eye. She met his stare with her uneven gaze, unblinking. “My name is Francesca Gallo.” Her voice came out rough. “I worked in a bookshop. I have no friends in Rome. I’m nobody important.”
He stood, spinning on his heels and looking at the bricks as if contemplating the view. “Interesting,” he said quietly. “Do you know we arrested a man this week who was printing illegal documents in a basement? Such terrible disloyalty.” When he turned, he thumped the club in his open palm. “Guess what he mentioned, here in this very room? A girl picked his documents up. L’Allodola, he called her. And what a coincidence that you were out taking a stroll so close to the site of a crime tonight!”
Her heart hammered. Had the forger described her? He’d have tried not to, she was certain. She forced her words out. “I was only out for a walk. To see the sunset.”
He stepped closer, and his voice dipped in anger. “It’s too bad we had to beat that man to death, ja? If you want to avoid his fate, you’ll tell me where your friends are.”
“I have no friends.”
She saw the club before it crashed into her temple. She gasped, folding in on herself, and something bright bloomed in her head before the club slammed down on her bent back. She fell from the chair, collapsing to the floor. Orange flashed behind her eyes, little explosions of light and pain. It hadn’t subsided when someone heaved her to her feet, forcing her writhing body to straighten before the lights. She staggered, and the glacial eyes appeared in front of her, shifting like a mirage. Her head throbbed while she tried to focus.
“Where’s Gianluca? Tell me, and we’ll be finished here.”
Her voice was a croak. “I’ve never met anyone named Gianluca. I’m just a bookshop clerk. I know nothing—”
The arms holding her up let go. She fell, hard, on her tailbone. The Nazi stepped over her, staring down.
“You’ll stay here and think about your options. You have only one, signorina.” He chuckled. “I will kill you, if I have to.”
With that, he pivoted and strode away, heels clicking, and the door swung shut behind him. Francesca managed to glance around the room, her vision swimming. She might die here. She thought of her mother, waiting in her little farmhouse, and sobs came on their own. Francesca had been angry since her father vanished, but her mother carried her grief alone. And now her mother would grieve again.
She blinked through her tears. The world seemed to spin around her, faster with every turn. Her gaze hinged on the guard, still standing at the door, staring blankly at the brick wall. Then the world narrowed, dimming, and it all fell away.
She was with Giacomo in the orchard. She sat in a tree, daylight on her face, legs dangling over the stream. It glistened, shining like a thousand prisms in the sun. Giacomo perched beside her. His hand rested next to hers on the clean bark.
“You have to be brave.” His eyes flicked up, dark and lively. His hair fell over them, and he smiled faintly, reaching up to touch her cheek.
“Mino. I’m trying.” She hesitated, confused. “I’ve been fighting them, all this time. I’m fighting, so hard, to find my way back to you.”
“I know.” He leaned over and kissed her eyes. The olive leaves rustled, like petticoats in a breeze. “Francesca, my love. I’m already with you.”
She looked up. She sensed the warmth of him, the pulse of his heart. She’d yearned to touch him, to hold him, for so long. Was he really with her?
A swallow dipped overhead, skimming the stream, and they glanced at it in unison. Its wings arced like arrows, and it rose past the trees, evaporating. Francesca’s breath caught. Something was happening. The edges of the orchard darkened, as if a storm surrounded them on every side, but the ribbon of water was bright.
“I’m with you. I’ll be with you always.” Giacomo reached for her chin, turning it toward him. “Coraggio, amore mio.”
Courage, my love.
Darkness blurred the edges of the orchard, creeping like fog. His eyes remained on hers, black and steady, while the darkness slipped over the stream, closed over the silver leaves, and climbed up his legs. Francesca let go of the tree limb, reaching for Giacomo’s hands, but they disintegrated under her grip. She was losing him again.
“Giacomo,” she wailed. His eyes stayed on her, even while the rest of him faded. “Don’t leave me again,” she wept.
But all that was left of him was a word, spoken into the darkness. Coraggio.
She lay, somewhere between sleep and consciousness, sobbing. A voice broke into the fog of her mind.
“Who’s Giacomo?”
The voice was soft, and her thoughts jumbled with confusion. Mino had just been here, with her, hadn’t he? The words fell from her lips.
“My fiancé.”
“Where is he?”
She sobbed the words while her mind cast around, trying to make sense of things.
“Taken. By the Nazis.”
Her questioner was gentle. “What’s his last name?”
“Lombardi.” Who was she talking to? She struggled to open her eyes but couldn’t.
“Where is Gianluca Falco?”
She shook her head instinctively, fighting to climb out of her jumbled dreams, to remember where she was. Her head throbbed with a steady beat.
“We can find out where your Giacomo is,” the voice coaxed, returning to a gentle cadence. “I only have to make some calls.”
She found herself nodding, dipping again into the current of dreams, and everything faded away.
“Wake up.”
Francesca shifted on the cold, hard floor, struggling to surface. She tried to open her eyes, but one pair of lids was stuck shut. Light broke into her other eye, too bright, searing her pounding skull.
“We know where Giacomo is.”
For a moment she couldn’t move. Giacomo? How did they know about Giacomo? It was as if someone threw cold water over Francesca and her mind sharpened, gaining clarity. How long had she been unconscious? The words hung in the room as she scrambled to pull herself up from her heap on the floor. The lights were on. She touched her swollen eye, and then her pulsing head. Every bit of her ached. The world she’d escaped from assembled around her, cool and bright.
She was still in the room.
“I can tell you where he is, but you must answer my questions first.”
She blinked her good eye and turned to the chair, using it to wrench herself up. She clawed her body onto its seat, and the chill of fear settled in her chest. She looked up to meet her interrogator’s cool, measured stare. He knew where Giacomo was. Her heart skipped faster, propelled by wild hope, yet she knew what she had to do.
“I can’t answer your questions,” she sputtered, tasting blood. “I know nothing.”
His face was impassive, as if carved from stone, giving nothing away. “We can save him. Bring him back to you. All you have to do is cooperate.”
Everything in Francesca stilled, as if she were walking a tightrope spanning a gulf. One false move, and she’d plummet. She inhaled slowly.
“I’m nobody. I know nothing.”
Fury lit her questioner’s eyes. He stared at her for another moment, calculating, and then he let the words drop. “You’re too late to save him anyway. Giacomo Lombardi is dead.”
It felt like falling, wind whipping around her, the impact quickly approaching. “He’s not dead,” she hissed, but her chest flooded with something cold. “He’s a medic, working on the front lines.”
The Nazi laughed softly. “Is that what you think? No. He was a laborer on the southern front. Like all the other Italian men we’ve caught deserting Germany, their greatest ally, in its hour of need. We took him from Rome on September 10. Transferred him to Bracciano, a labor camp, and then south to build fortifications.” He shrugged, glee in his gaze. “He tried to escape.”
She couldn’t breathe. He stared at her, aware that she hung on the fishhook of his words.
“We shot him.”
And then she knew. This Nazi wasn’t lying.
She blinked up at the bright lights and saw Giacomo, not from life but from moments before, when he’d dropped into her mind. She saw the swallow dipping over the stream, the tree, his dark eyes fading. And she knew what he’d been trying to tell her: he was gone from this world. But he was still with her.
Fear calcified in her chest, hardening into something formidable. She looked up at the Nazi, with his amused smile, and without thinking, she gathered saliva in her mouth and spit. A glob of bloody liquid landed on his polished shoe.
“Is that how it’s going to be?” He cocked his head. “Or would you prefer to answer my question? Who are you?”
“I’m Francesca Gallo,” she croaked. “And I’m nobody.”
“Ah.” The Nazi turned, nodding. “You very well may be nobody. But I have to find out for sure. We must know for sure, ja? In these dangerous times?”
When he pivoted again, there was something in his hand. Francesca’s head throbbed, the pain like an ocean pulling back and crashing forward, again and again. She tried to see through it, to make out what was in his fingers.
“Oh, you’re wondering what this is?” He ambled over, kneeling before her, turning a tool in his hands. It flashed in the light. “Just pliers. Good for removing things.”
He nodded to the guard, who strode over like an automaton. The guard holstered his gun and stood behind Francesca, threading his arms through her elbows. He tightened his grip, and her chest thrust out. She tried to think through her pounding skull. What were they doing? She looked down with her good eye, thoughts humming, electric. Giacomo’s voice echoed in her soul as she saw the Nazi fit the pliers over her middle fingernail.
I’m with you.
She closed her eyes just before he yanked. Pain engulfed her hand, snaking up it like flames. She screamed, and the sound echoed through the room, otherworldly. Agony pulsed through every part of her body, and she heaved, somewhere between vomiting and gasping while the guard pinned her tighter to the chair. The flames continued to roll through her while the interrogator’s voice spoke over them.
“Now would you like to answer me, or will you lose another fingernail?”
She gurgled instead of speaking, riding the waves. But her mind began to work on its own as she struggled. She’d known pain. An image floated to her: polio, as she’d pictured it in childhood. She’d imagined her disease as a growing thing, its roots plunging through her body, multiplying until her seven-year-old limbs were paralyzed and wracked. But her mind. She breathed. Her mind was another thing. Giacomo hid there, in her memories. And she could hide there, too, separate from her body. After all, she’d had to do it before.
“I’m nobody,” she croaked again, and the pliers latched on to another fingernail.
This time when the pain crashed over her, she retreated into her mind. She heard herself screaming, she felt her body shuddering and heaving where it was pinned to the chair. And she saw herself in a hospital bed, immobilized and tiny. She saw the arch in her young neck and the whites of her eyes, and she remembered herself then: a small child, finding a way out. Polio’s roots twisted through her, the tall tree that had grown through her life. And, somehow, those roots strengthened her now.
“Who are you?” the German shouted again, latching the pliers to another fingernail. Francesca sucked in a deep breath, found Giacomo’s eyes in her mind, and readied.
The door flung open. The pliers paused.
“Was machen Sie?”
Someone strode into the room, but Francesca couldn’t see him.
“Das ist nicht dein Ernst. Dieses verkrüppelte Mädchen?”
The guard released her elbows, and she slid into a heap on the chair, breath rattling. The men convened in the corner. When she could see straight, she shifted enough to view the man who’d come into the room, moments ago, as if he owned it. She studied him with her good eye, taking in his uniform and stature, while her body shook through waves of pain. The newcomer glanced at her, rolling his eyes as if exasperated. She tilted to the side and closed her eyes. Perhaps this high-ranking man wanted to go home. Perhaps he felt that his colleagues were grasping at straws, interrogating a crippled girl in the wake of a bombing.
Their voices rolled from the corner of the room, and she tried to make out words, but it all seemed very distant. Perhaps she’d succeeded, like the imprisoned women advised her. She’d convinced them she was nobody.
An argument broke out, and Francesca slumped beneath it. She thought about how she looked, collapsed there, with her shriveled leg and bloodied hands. The high-ranking Nazi glanced at her again, disdain in his glare, and barked something at his subordinates.
She drifted. Something flashed before her, but she didn’t look to see what it was. Barely conscious, she clung to her last hope: that nobody in the room could see what she’d become.
Unconquerable.