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The peasants depart with their baskets and tools. Otello posts a sentry. The others pass wine bags from hand to hand, but no one sings tonight. When the skins are empty, each man makes a pile of pine boughs to lie on, above the freezing mud. A childhood prayer runs through Simon’s mind. Now I lay me down to sleep. If I should die…
Tomorrow, he’ll be escorted to one of the many tall stone watchtowers built into the slant of Piemonte’s hilltops. Seven feet on a side, the upper level ten feet above a cellar downslope, they always afford a panoramic view of Valdottavo.
Otello and Maurizio will stay with him, to help with the batteries and generator. Over the next few hours, they’ll watch activity in the valley. Identify high, quiet places within a few miles of the hideout. Hike to the best spot for the first transmission. There Simon will open the radio case, fit a stone into a loop at the end of a fifty-foot copper wire, and fling it over a nearby tree branch. He’ll tune to Algiers, and be amazed once again by how easily such a primitive arrangement brings in QSA5 signals.
With a onetime code pad, index finger tapping thirty errorless words per minute, he’ll deliver the intelligence he’s gathered in the past two weeks. “Partisan strength est 23,000 / disciplined under fire well-led / main German withdrawal hwy estimated 150 lorries destroyed / 200 KW 50 POW / partisan losses light / civilian reprisals heavy.”
He’ll ask to be released from the mission he and Major Salvi were supposed to have carried out in Milan. He’s already with a group of autonomous partisans who deserve all the help they can get. He’ll request airdrops of plastic explosives, of Stens, Brens, and automatic rifles, of ammo and spare parts for all the weapons. He’ll ask for more signal flares, for salt and cigarettes, for penicillin, sulfa drugs, plasma, sterile bandages, and morphine.
Then he’ll break to receive, taking down his own orders in Morse, to be decoded when he gets back to the stone tower. He’ll have under an hour from start to finish— the time it would take for two German direction-finding vehicles to get a fix on him.
Today he learned he can rely on his training, rely on himself to do his duty, and do it well, under fire. In the morning, no doubt, Simon Henley will feel like a blooded veteran, ready for whatever the war can throw at him. But tonight? Lying on a bed of pine boughs near the grave of a young woman he barely knew, he thinks of the short, hard life of Maria Avoni, and he cries. Like a baby.
VILLA MALCOVATO
NEAR ROCCABARBENA
They are the bravest of the brave, these girls. The chances they take, the risks they run. The more Mirella learns of them, the more awe and sadness she feels.
When the occupation began, the Resistance printed pamphlets for wives and mothers. “Your greatest contribution to the nation is to open your door and let your men go— to fight!” But who risked arrest and rape and death to distribute those pamphlets? Girls. Women.
Staffette carried letters, documents, intelligence. Then medical supplies, then dynamite, ammunition, and grenades. They knew their fate if caught, so they learned to load and fire pistols for their own protection. Soon they joined brigades and assault groups, and now they fight beside the men. Constantly on the move, traveling on foot in the awful cold, sleeping in cellars, on concrete floors, in barns or open country. Hungry, wet, lice ridden.
No wonder, then, when a widow of sixteen becomes the mother of an infant boy born many weeks too soon.
Mirella hears a quiet knock at the door, and opens it to Werner Schramm. “The doctor is here,” she tells Claudia.
Mirella moves to the fireplace, listening to Schramm’s soothing murmur as he examines mother and child. In a voice as small as her baby, Claudia asks, “Will he live?”
Schramm’s eyes briefly meet Mirella’s. “Your son is very small, very weak,” he tells Claudia gently, “but babies can surprise us.”
“Why won’t he suckle?”
“He is tired from being born, signora. He needs rest and warmth. As you do.”
A few years ago, Werner Schramm would have whisked this doomed infant away. Out of sight, he’d have done nature’s work, granting the child a quick and merciful death. He is a different man now, but it is very difficult to watch the little chest heave spasmodically, working hard for air.
Across the room Mirella refills a cooling scaldino with hot coals and slides it under the bedding near the girl’s feet, tucking the blankets around her. Together she and Schramm step away from the bedside.
“You can try feeding him with an eyedropper,” he suggests quietly. “The skin is very fragile. Perhaps some olive oil, to protect it. Keep him warm. That is most important.”
Duno Brössler is in the kitchen, pacing as nervously as a young father. When Claudette went into labor, Duno sent for Schramm immediately, but the baby was born so soon… “Your young friend will live,” Schramm says, “but her son won’t last the night.” Duno sags. “You did well to save one of them,” Schramm tells him. “You should go to medical school when this is over.”
Duno runs his fingers through lank and dirty hair. “Is she awake? May I go in?”
“Yes. She will like to see a familiar face, I think. Send Signora Soncini to bed. She needs rest, or she may lose her own pregnancy.”
Duno steps quietly into the little room, speaks to the rabbi’s wife, who kisses the infant’s forehead on her way out. Duno draws a chair near, sitting close enough to stroke the dying baby’s fine, dark curls. He looks more like an organ-grinder’s monkey than a human child, but Duno says, “He’s beautiful, Claudette.”
“Thank you,” she says, believing him.
“Have you chosen a name?”
“Alberto, for my father. That’s what Santino wanted.”
“That’s a good name,” Duno says. “Rest now. I’ll stay with you, Claudette.”
Once they knew that Osvaldo Tomitz was in a Gestapo prison on Via San Marco in Porto Sant’Andrea, the hours of discussion yielded only one good plan. “I’ll say I was sent to check on his condition,” Schramm argued. “My friends, you must allow me to save lives. That is a doctor’s duty, is it not?” Eventually even Renzo was persuaded: Schramm could do by stealth what would otherwise require a full-scale attack on a fortified position in an occupied city.
He unwraps the bundle of dirty cotton sheets delivered at such cost by la vedova. Shakes the wrinkles from the uniform, holds the jacket to his shoulders with a sense of unreality. Who wore this? Werner Schramm shares a name with that man, and a biography to a point. To wear the uniform now is to put on a mask in a Greek tragedy, but Schramm is ready to assume his role.
He leaves a note of thanks and farewell for Renzo. Urges Mirella to take care of herself. She cries, and kisses him on both cheeks. A partisan escort waits outside.
They hike across pastures and through woodlands, snake along bends in the winding river, take cover in a vineyard. A church bell strikes nine. Across the road, at the top of a slight rise, Tullio Goletta waves, taps his ear, and puts his finger to his lips. Wind rattles the branches of nearby trees. Tullio raises one finger, makes a T of his hands. Tedeschi: Germans.
The noise grows. A camouflaged Wehrmacht command car lumbers into view, slowly dodging craters left by British bombs. Half-amused by how predictable German schedules are, Schramm brushes dirt and leaves from his uniform, squares his shoulders, and walks out onto the road. The lines come back to him. The posturing, the presumption. Herr Doktor Oberstabsarzt Werner Schramm of the Waffen-SS commandeers the car, demands to be driven to Sant’Andrea. He is obeyed by a very young, very inferior officer.
Schramm blusters and bullies his way through roadblocks and checkpoints, and arrives at his destination in early afternoon, sweating in the early warmth of the coast. Surrounded by barbed wire, sandbags, and giant iron stars, the building’s windows are bricked almost to the top, leaving just a few centimeters open for ventilation.