THIRTY-FIVE
Lucia
March 26, 1944
Lucia sensed warmth on her face before she opened her eyes. She’d been floating somewhere, like a leaf in a stream, the world glittering around her. She held on to the dream as she sensed her own breath sweeping in and out. The memory of where she was, and all that had happened, trickled in.
There was a sheet under one of her hands, bunched and twisted where she’d gripped it. A small body lay under her other palm, a hand in hers. She felt Matteo’s fingers, still and cool, and her dream fragmented in a sudden cold burst. She opened her eyes in a panic.
“Mamma?”
Lucia blinked, sitting up from where she’d slept on the narrow bed, and looked at her boy. Was she still dreaming? His large eyes were open, flicking around the ceiling before landing on her face in question. “Mamma? What happened?”
A sob and a laugh escaped her lips. Could it be? She reached for him, touching his forehead, feeling for heat. Nothing. She gripped his little wrist in her own stiff fingers, trying to believe it. He was real. She wasn’t dreaming. Her beautiful boy had woken up.
“Matteo, piccolo,” she sputtered, gathering his thin limbs in her arms. He shifted himself, resting his head on her shoulder. Not strong, but he was moving.
“Are you feeling better, my love? You’ve been very sick.”
He shrugged, glancing up to study her. “Why are you crying, Mamma?” He held a shaky fist to his face, rubbing at his freckled nose.
“I’m just happy to see you awake, piccolo.” Lucia wiped at her cheeks with her free hand. “Do you see the sunshine?”
He glanced toward the window, then took in the rest of the room. Francesca was gone; it was just the two of them. He blinked, his gaze hinging on her face. His eyes were so like Carlo’s, bright and earnest, brown as warm earth.
She had to glance away as she remembered. She would never see Carlo again.
“Mamma? What’s wrong?”
She looked back to her son, and when his lips curved into a hesitant smile, Carlo was there in her mind. But this time, she didn’t imagine him in a cave. She saw her husband grinning at her under a pink sky while waves lapped at their feet, years ago. She saw him laughing with her on the rooftop, helping her spread dirt over the roots of a lemon tree. She saw him under the stars on that same rooftop, urging her to go. Urging her to save their boy.
Lucia smiled through her tears. Wherever Carlo was, he was still here. He was here in Matteo.
“Nothing’s wrong, my love.” She cleared the curls from her child’s eyes. “We’re going to be all right.”
A few weeks later, Matteo and Franco sat on a bench together in the courtyard of the convent, perched like birds under an ornate crucifix, and Lucia and Francesca sat on a bench opposite. Lucia glanced up while folding linens, a giant stack produced by all the people sleeping in the convent’s beds. Franco whispered something, and Matteo clapped a hand over his mouth, giggling. The boys could be brothers. They both had dark hair and wide, brown eyes. But Franco was nearly a foot taller at eight years old, and thin, like everyone, and his cheek was sliced by a fresh, pink scar. He had a sister downstairs, playing with the younger children, close to hiding spots in case the Nazis came. Suora Chiara once explained how their parents had saved them. On the day the Nazis raided the ghetto, they’d urged their children to run fast and far, and, miraculously, they’d escaped. Lucia shook a sheet in the sunlight, sorrowful.
The boys erupted in giggles, their bare feet pressed together on the bench and clothes hanging loosely from their limbs. They’d been held apart from the other children by their illnesses, and now they stayed that way, lounging like little old men, gathering what strength they could. Lucia’s stomach knotted at that thought. They couldn’t gather much strength, not with rations set at a meager hundred grams of pane nero a day, the black bread made of mysterious ingredients that never accomplished the task of filling anyone up.
Francesca broke the quiet, echoing her thoughts. “They’re so thin they could blow away.”
The knot tightened in Lucia’s stomach. “So are you and I. But soon—”
“What if they never get here?” Francesca turned, posing the question like a challenge, her face a mix of solemnity and something like panic. “The Allies have been fighting the Germans in Italy for nearly eight months. Eight months, and it’s a stalemate on two fronts. We keep saying things will get better when they come, when they rescue us. But what if they don’t? We could all starve—that’s what the Nazis want. If we live, our children will grow up speaking German.”
“No.” Lucia glanced at the boys. They were still engrossed in their own world, leaning close for a thumb war while Gesù looked on over their bent heads, forever nailed to his cross. Francesca spoke quietly as a default; they hadn’t heard. But ever since the attack on Via Rasella, she’d been like this. Hopeless. Angry.
“You need to find something to do,” Lucia whispered, flicking out a pillowcase. “If you’re not going out as a staffetta anymore, there are other ways to help. There are plenty of opportunities right here—the chores are innumerable.”
“I cleaned the pots this morning. Though broth doesn’t leave much to scrub off.” Francesca picked at her fingernails, brooding. “They’re saying Kesselring is unbeatable, you know. That the Allies are never going to break through at Cassino. That they’ll never get farther than the beaches in Anzio—”
“Stop it.” Lucia pursed her lips, and Francesca quieted. L’Allodola had only left the convent once since the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves. She’d left for Lucia, crossing Rome to visit with an old neighbor named Signora Russo, and enlisting her boy, Roberto, to check Lucia’s mail and deliver anything that came. The Germans had finally started notifying families of the men they’d murdered, and Lucia was desperate for certainty about Carlo. A week later, Roberto had come to the convent, letter in hand. She choked now at the memory of her husband’s name in print, confirmed dead. It hadn’t been a surprise by then, but the grief was overwhelming.
Now she cleared her throat, turning to Francesca. “You have to stop languishing. We’re all afraid for the future. We’ve all lost people.”
“I know.” Francesca looked up, her stare suddenly naked. “Every day, I think of ways I could have prevented those losses. How I could have saved Carlo.”
“Saved Carlo?” Lucia stared at her, puzzling. Did she hold herself responsible for what had happened? How could she? Lucia gathered Francesca’s hands, squeezing, and understood: it was who she was, a person who unerringly chose right from wrong, who sought justice in the face of overwhelming injustice. Her father had been the same before her, and her Giacomo as well. The idea that the Nazis could win in the end? That evil might prevail, her fight meaningless? It was more than she could bear.
Lucia chose her words carefully. “Francesca, you must hear what I’m saying. None of this is your fault. You couldn’t have prevented Carlo’s death, or what happened in the Ardeatine Caves, or—”
“If I’d never met you, you’d still be safe in your house. And Carlo wouldn’t have had to warn you the night the Gestapo came, because you would never have been in danger.”
“No.” Lucia said the word so firmly Francesca blinked. “You cannot take responsibility for the choices of other people. I chose to fight back. Carlo chose to find me. And the atrocities? The Nazis massacred all those men in the caves—not the partisans.”
“But if I could’ve stopped the strike—”
“You tried.” Lucia inhaled, holding Francesca’s stare. “You always try, you always fight for what you believe is right, and there’s power in that. What if everyone was more like you? Think of the difference you’ve made—all the papers you’ve carried, the identity cards you’ve delivered, the ammunition you’ve prevented from reaching the front and killing yet more Allied boys.” She hinged closer. “You should keep on fighting, Allodola. It’s who you are.”
She held Francesca’s stare, and the girl bent to weep. Lucia continued folding sheets, glancing over from time to time while Francesca sobbed through her private grief. When she eventually raised her head, her green eyes were glassy, but bright. The boys passed furtive glances across the courtyard, yet continued to play. They were used to seeing adults cry.
“Francesca,” Lucia ventured. “It’s nearly impossible for the nuns to feed all the people here. One of their tricks is going out individually to buy what they can, so nobody can trace the quantity back to this convent and calculate how many people are here . . .” She set a folded sheet aside. “You could do that. Put on those robes you used to wear and go out to fill rations.”
Francesca squinted across the courtyard, wiping at her eyes, and she nodded. She appeared to be thinking still when a rumble grew outside the convent walls, starting small but gaining momentum. Francesca’s eyes swung to Lucia, widening.
Lucia’s heart began to hammer. She cocked her head, listening. It was the grind of truck engines. More than one. Were they coming to the convent? The sheet shook in her hands, trembling in the sunlight. She set it down, gesturing toward a line of rooms across the courtyard that looked out on the road beyond the convent, and Francesca followed her.
The Gestapo had amplified their raids since the attack on Via Rasella. Rumors flew through Rome, bouncing from neighborhood to neighborhood. In the last week, the Gestapo had searched houses for men and boys who could work, taking nearly eight hundred from southeast Rome and shipping them north. And the Nazis had doubled down on their hunt for Jews and partisans, sowing terror all over the city with surveillance and arrests.
Lucia swept into a dim room, blinking in the gloom. Could they be coming here? Did someone tip them off about the people hiding inside these walls? She rounded on the window, standing on her tiptoes to look out, and there they were.
Coming down the road, a pair of trucks tipped and bounced along. She narrowed her eyes, confused. What was that on their hoods? The trucks were covered in brush and mud, as if they’d been tearing through the sodden countryside. As they drew closer, she could make out olive branches lashed to the hoods, silver leaves fluttering. It took her a moment to digest that it was an attempt at camouflage.
Lucia didn’t have time to dwell on the irony of olive branches in battle, because a long line of men followed the trucks. They were on foot, walking at a tired pace. Their uniforms hung loosely, as muddy as the vehicles preceding them. But Lucia’s heart leapt. They were Allied soldiers. Prisoners or not, it was thrilling to see them. She exchanged an electrified glance with Francesca, whose green eyes widened. Francesca stepped quickly from the room to get a chair to stand on, and Lucia hoisted herself up a little and leaned out the window to get a better look. They propped themselves in the sill, watching as the Allied soldiers streamed beneath them, the first Allied soldiers they’d ever seen.
For prisoners, the men appeared strangely cheerful. Many of them had a bounce in their step, and they gazed around at the buildings towering over them with wonder on their faces.
“Not what I’d expect from prisoners,” Lucia heard herself saying, voicing unfinished thoughts.
Francesca shrugged. “Maybe they’re glad to be out of the mud, in a city? The Eternal City, at that. I wonder why the Germans are parading them through . . .”
Lucia followed their shapes, filing in an orderly cluster beneath the convent windows. “Probably so everyone will see them.” She met Francesca’s quick glance. “The Nazis love to boast, right? I’m sure they think parading Allied POWs around will smother anti-Fascist morale even more . . .”
Her words fell away when one of the soldiers glanced up. He was a young man with ruddy hair and a dirty face, and when his eyes found Lucia’s, he did something that made her heart flip. He raised his hand in the air, his fingers forming a V, and grinned.
“Vittoria,” Francesca whispered. “Isn’t that the sign for victory?”
Lucia held the soldier’s stare, confused. “Sì. But he’s been taken prisoner. Why is he flashing the sign for victory?”
Francesca stood motionless beside her. Lucia glanced at her friend, whose face had gained a fierce intensity. “He’s flashing the V because he thinks the Allies will win.”
Francesca raised her own fingers in a V, and Lucia’s soul leapt. The men below were prisoners, but they weren’t beaten. They’d lost a battle, but they hadn’t lost faith. She turned back to them, reaching out her own hand. The soldiers below erupted in cheers as they saw it: two Vs flashing on the outstretched arms of Italian women, hidden in the heart of Rome.
The next day, German leaflets fluttered down over the streets, and Lucia took a chance and ducked outside to fetch one.
She brought it into the courtyard, where she’d left Francesca sitting under the crucifix.
“Look at this.” Lucia handed the leaflet over, sitting close so she could study it again. The German propaganda started with a photo of the Allied prisoners standing in front of the Colosseum. She scanned their faces, looking for the young man who’d held up the sign for victory, but the picture was too grainy to make anyone out. Beneath the photo, the Nazis had written a sarcastic message. They said they would come to Rome: here they are!
Francesca gripped the paper. Her jaw firmed, and Lucia’s breath caught. Was there a bit of fire left in her yet?
“Little do they know,” Francesca said, her eyes snapping up. “The men in this picture? They’re merely the first. And the rest will come on their own.”