After many kisses and blessings from the Moreschi family, I left. When I reached the street, I was immediately surrounded by the twenty or more little boys and girls who formed my clique. They clung to me and wouldn’t let go. I bought them all caramels and hot chocolate at the corner café, then started for my apartment.
Two men dressed in black were waiting for me as I walked into my living room. One was German, the other Italian. I excused myself and went into my bedroom.
“We must take you to the Questura,” the Italian called after me.
I closed the door. Maria came in. “If you have anything to hide, give it to me,” she whispered.
“Maria, I don’t have anything to hide, I love Italy. Where are they taking me?”
“All I can say is, wear your warmest clothes.” Her manner told me she didn’t think I’d be back soon. She had wormed that much out of them.
I put on a wool dress, threw on my polo coat with its pullover hood, warm socks, and low brogues, grabbed the score of Verdi’s Otello for something to study, and kissed her good-bye.
Outside, I was ushered into a big black Mercedes. I sat silently between the men as we drove swiftly through the darkened city.
“Where are you taking me?” I finally asked.
“To the police station. We want to question you,” the Italian said. “It’s routine.”
We drove through the dark streets and came to a screeching halt at the entrance of the Rome police station. I was taken inside and ordered to sit down on a bench. The two men disappeared into a room so close by I could hear them talking to a third man.
“What shall we do with her?” one asked.
Two hours later, they came out. “Because of the late hour, we will take you to a nunnery for the night.”
In the same Mercedes, we drove wildly through the narrow streets of the city to a huge building bordering the Tiber river. Once inside, I was searched. The guards who worked there took my passport, rings, watch, and anything they said I might use to commit suicide. I was then turned over to some nuns, who led me through a series of dark chambers to the underground beneath the Tiber. One nun walked ahead, the other behind, locking closed each door the first had opened with her huge ring of keys. I counted eight clanking doors. I felt like the Count of Monte Cristo, being put away for life.
Finally, we entered a huge subterranean chamber. Cells lined one side in three tiers. I could hear crying, moaning, and snoring coming from some of the cells. The smell was beyond belief—sweating bodies, foul garbage, refuse, and human excrement. The putrid odors, the clanging of cell doors, and the rebounding noises closed in around me. When I reached out to steady myself, my hand touched the wall . . . it was wet.
This was not a nunnery, this was Le Mantellate, the women’s quarters of the infamous Regina Coeli, an antiquated jail known for its lack of human facilities.
From a dark corner, one of the nuns pulled out a small handful of straw. “You will sleep on this,” she said. “We have no more cells.”
I was glad to be alone, even if I had to lie on the ground without any semblance of privacy. She walked away, and the other nun, carrying a lamp, followed.
I was suddenly in complete darkness. I felt intense fear. I wanted to scream out “You can’t do this to me!” but I knew it would be useless. I pulled the hood of my red polo coat over my head, and lay down on the filthy straw. The cement floor was so cold and damp that it seemed to penetrate my entire body. And although I thanked God that Maria had told me to put on heavy clothing, I was so frozen with fear that I may as well have been wearing a chiffon negligee.
I closed my eyes, trying to blot out the whole scene. I put my hands over my ears, because I couldn’t stand the moaning, the snoring, and the intermittent cries of children, not to mention the combined putrid odors. I felt water running down my cheeks and quickly put my hands to my face. They were my tears. “You mustn’t cry,” I told myself, but I couldn’t stop. Then I remembered a promise I’d made to myself, that if faced with great danger, I would turn to God. “Well, Teddy, you’re in great danger. It’s time to keep your promise.”
I began thinking of some of the things I had learned in Sunday school, when I was a little girl. Immediately, I felt better. I knew I was not alone, not abandoned. I knew there would be an answer. I didn’t have to know what it was—I had only to trust God. I guess I must have dozed off, because suddenly I was wide awake. I hadn’t really slept, just drifted off . . . but for how long?
I realized that in my dreams I had been rehearing the words of Italy’s last propaganda broadcast before being taken to the police station. It was repeating itself over and over. “The entire U.S. Pacific Fleet has been sunk. The way is now open for the Japanese to land in Los Angeles, Seattle . . .”
I turned toward the wall and could feel the damp wet oozing down. I wondered how far below the level of the Tiber we were. Suddenly, the jailers banged on the cell bars. It was 5 A.M., and every cell in every tier was flung open. The inmates began staggering out. None of them looked like people I had ever seen before. They slowly walked toward the open area where I was standing. One young woman stood out among the rest. She was taller, pretty, and wore what I recognized as a Carlin dressing robe.
In perfect English she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m an American,” I said. “Italy has declared war on my country.”
She was shocked. A nun who saw us speaking came quickly over and herded us to five o’clock Mass. As we walked along, the woman whispered, “I’m the nurse to Princess Pallavicini’s children. I’m Irish. Maybe that’s why they imprisoned me.”
“Shush,” the nun said. “Talking is forbidden.” She guided us toward the chapel.
After Mass, we were herded into a line and served black bread and a bitter coffee called orzo (burnt barley). I was then put in a cell with four other women. One was a Nazi agent, seemingly too unimportant for her government to bother releasing her; another was an Austrian Jewess, imprisoned for her failure to declare jewelry as she left her country; the third was a young Italian girl, who was serving the eighth month of a life sentence for attempting to steal food during a blackout; and the fourth, an abortionist.
At the end of the week, I asked if I could take a bath. Like the other women, I had been using the hole in the floor at the end of the corridor as a toilet, with other prisoners looking on. I was desperate for some privacy. One of the nuns gained permission for me to go up to the top floor of the prison, to the infirmary, a huge room with an antiquated bathtub standing in the center. The nun handed me a bar of yellow soap (the kind we used for cleaning floors back home) and a large worn towel. “Put your clothes in the outer room,” she said. “I’ll come back later and meet you there.” I bathed, wrapped myself in the towel, and came out to find that someone had stolen my slip.
During the first few days, I hadn’t eaten any of what they called food, but gave it to the women who were still nursing their babies. About thirty of them had been packed into a cell right across from mine. At mealtime, the women, all holding their babies in their arms, would push and shove their way close to the bars, frantically trying to elbow one another away from the front. Those who made it would hold their bowls out between the bars and yell out to me, “D’ai a me.” (“Give it to me.”) One day, a poor woman, holding her infant in her arms, yelled out, “Give it to me, Signorina, I need it more. I have another baby inside.”
Each night in our cell, much to our astonishment, the Nazi prisoner disrobed and washed herself completely in the ice-cold water. She was belligerent to us all, but especially to the Austrian girl, who was very frightened. I became deeply concerned about the girl’s situation, as she had been seized by the Gestapo when her plane had stopped at the Rome airport, en route from Salzburg to Montevideo, Uruguay. “I was thrown in jail because I didn’t declare an antique gold ring of my grandmother’s,” she told me. “It has no monetary value, just sentimental. I am so frightened they will kill me.”
On the seventh day of my imprisonment at about twelve noon—just after our usual horrible bowl of soup, which by now I had to eat to stay alive—the door to our cell opened and the guards walked in. After looking all of us over, they pointed at me and said, “Le signorina americana e’libertà.”
“Not before I finish my soup,” I cried out, holding on to the bowl as if it were the exquisite soup served at 21. I sat there hunched over, gobbling that soup, thinking it might be my last meal on earth, glancing up occasionally to see if I could determine from the guards’ facial expressions what they were going to do to me. Was I really to be freed, or was it a trick to take me out and have me shot?
After I’d embraced my cellmates, they led me away. As I walked down the corridor, the cries of fellow prisoners followed me.
“Teddy, don’t forget to tell them about me.”
“Call Fernando. He will get me out of here,” yelled a voluptuous girl named Giovanna. “He is with the opera.”
Another, pounding her breast, cried, “They let you out. While a faithful Italian is left to die.”
I was taken to the police station and brought before Cavaliera Aguesci, chief of the Rome police—the same man who had allowed Ethi to stay in the city as an enemy alien, as long as she reported to him on a regular basis. Now that seemed like a lifetime ago. He greeted me with a smile and asked, “How do you like our prison, signorina?”
Frightened at what he might decide to do with me, I boldly answered, “Fine, thank you, Excellence. I’ll write about it when I get home.”
“Until then,” he said, “I’m sending you to be with the other American journalists. How’s that?”
“Oh, thank you, sir,” I managed to say as I was escorted out of his chambers by two officers.