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He clambers back to the Hebrews. The two little girls are asleep in the mud near Albert Blum, who shakes and mumbles. Duno and his parents stand, bodies rigid with the effort of holding back hope. Claudia sits wordlessly, and bursts into tears when Santino nods: Yes, I found something!
“I’m sorry,” he says, coming to her side. “I should have prayed sooner.” Looking past her, he tells the Brösslers, “I don’t know how much farther we have to go, but the Mado
Without Albert Blum to translate, they don’t really understand, but Santino’s happiness is unmistakable and infectious. Within the hour, he and Duno have moved the Blums and a supply of ti
“It’s not much, signorina, but it’s better than a haystack,” he tells Claudia. “The house is used by charcoal makers. Nobody will come up here now that the rains have started.”
“Santino, prego! My father— il mio papa? — he said there are people who help Jews. Delegazione Assistenza Emigrati Ebrei. Capisce?”
“Sì. Capisco,” he says, not wanting to leave. “I have to take the Brösslers to their barn, but I won’t forget you. Capisce, signorina? I’ll come back!”
“Capisco,” she says. Not what he’s said, but what he means.
She pulls her sleeve down over her palm and uses it to wipe at the forgotten blood crusted under his nose. Embarrassed, he tries to look away, but her cold hands rise to the sides of his face. For a long moment, her serious green eyes study him, as though learning him by heart, and for the first time in his life, Santino Cicala does not feel ugly. Emboldened, he takes her head in both his hands, gently, and kisses her, hard. She does not pull away. “I have to go now,” he says, eyes on hers. He trips over a root but catches his balance. “I’ll come back,” he says again.
Watching until he disappears into the gloom, Claudette ducks inside the tiny hut and adjusts the army blanket Santino made into a door, to keep the light and heat inside. Rosy in the fire’s embers, her father lies curled, inert beneath another blanket, which steams in the warmth. She sits on the packed-dirt floor and listens to the hiss of the fire, watching the rise and fall of her father’s chest. His convulsive shivering has stopped, and he snores with comforting familiarity, relaxing into ordinary sleep.
Against her will, her own chest falls into the slow rhythm his provides. Noiselessly, almost calmly, the measured movement deepens. She looks up, to keep the tears from falling. “I miss you, Mama,” she whispers in the tiny voice that escapes her thickening throat. “Papa was sick. I was so scared.”
Don’t be silly, her mother would say. He was very tired and cold. He’ll be fine in the morning. Wipe your nose.
Was Papa handsome when you fell in love, Mama?
He was no Maurice Chevalier, I can tell you. But who is?
Santino’s short, Mama. He’s shorter than I am, I think.
Everyone’s tall on my side of the family. Height’s not important. Is he of good character? That’s important.
He’s Catholic, Mama.
Well, Moses married a shiksa. If it’s good enough for him…
Smiling damply, Claudette cleans her nose on the back of her bloodied sleeve and pulls in a shuddery breath. She adds another chunk of charcoal to the fire, lifts the damp and smoky blanket that covers her father, and crawls in beside him to share her warmth. “We’ll be all right, Papa,” she whispers. “Santino will come back, and everything will be fine.”
11–13 September 1943
BASILICA SAN GIOVANNI BATTISTA
PORTO SANT’ANDREA
Boxed inside the confessional, Osvaldo Tomitz slides open the grille to his right, and yearns to hear San Giobatta’s bells toll five. Instead he hears a well-known voice whisper, “Bless me, Padre, for I have si
In Osvaldo’s opinion, Catarina Dolcino has not confessed a single genuine sin since he arrived in Sant’Andrea, but every Saturday old Rina proudly presents a minor misdeed for absolution. “Why did you miss Mass, figlia mia?”
“Padre, I was aching so much Saturday evening, I thought it might be typhus!” she whispers. “I decided not to go to Mass and maybe spread the sickness.”
“God does not expect you to come to Mass if you’re sick. You missed Mass for the good of others—”
“But I felt fine on Sunday morning. So it was a sin.”
“No, figlia mia, it wasn’t.”
“Yes, Padre, it was!”
“Look, this is not a debate. I am the priest, and I say you didn’t commit a sin when you missed Mass last Sunday.”
“Padre, I know it’s a sin!” Rina insists more loudly.
“And what seminary did you attend?” Osvaldo demands.
A patrician chuckle issues from another confessional a few meters away. “Surrender, Tomitz,” an authoritative male voice advises.
“That was the archbishop, you know,” the old lady informs Osvaldo u
“Oh, all right. An Ave Maria,” Osvaldo mutters. “And a Pater Noster—for arguing!”
Rina recites a victorious Act of Contrition, and Osvaldo surrenders to a headache. He expected lay confessions to differ from those of seminarians, but old women never cease to astonish him. They are fawningly deferential to priests everywhere but in the confessional.
Before she rises to leave, Rina drops her voice to ask, “Did you think about what my neighbor asked you, Padre? You wouldn’t have to do anything. Suora Marta and Signora Leoni and I will take care of everything.”
“Signora,” Osvaldo says softly, “your friend’s son is a criminal—”
“But— no! I mean, yes, he was in prison, but he went for someone else. Remember in ’38, when every city had to send ten anti-Fascist Jews to jail? All we had in Sant’Andrea was one Communist and a lunatic, but what does Rome care? Ten is ten! Serafino Brizzolari picked men at random— how else could you do such a thing to your own neighbors? One of them was Tranquillo Loeb, Padre. A war hero! An attorney with a family, with responsibilities! Renzo wasn’t married, so he went to the Palazzo Municipale and—”
“Volunteered to go in his brother-in-law’s place?”
“He thinks nobody knows, but I hear things,” she says smugly. “The Leonis are good people, Padre. Lidia’s husband gave money to anyone who needed help. Catholic, Jew. And Emanuele never took the money back. He’d tell them to give it to someone else who needed help.” The old lady pauses cagily. “A lot of people put those coins in the poor box, Padre.”
“Go in peace, figlia mia,” Osvaldo commands firmly, but he adds, “I’ll do what I can in conscience.”
Sliding open the opposite grille, Osvaldo uses the movement to read his watch in a ray of light coming through a gap in the curtain. It’s nearly five, but the ones who wait until the last moment often have the longest list of the most repetitive sins and the most self-serving excuses. It’s the war, Padre. Always the war. Death is everywhere. Sordid solace beckons. The mind should focus on the soul’s nearness to eternity, but bodies yearn to experience each pleasure life offers— now, before it is too late. Babies are conceived while husbands are at the front; wives do desperate things. Lying and theft become a way of life. Rationing, the draft, a thousand deprivations… Osvaldo tries to be compassionate, but he can feel himself slipping into priestly middle age, becoming snappish and judgmental as his capacity for caritas erodes. A child next, he prays. Suffer the little children to come unto Thee, Lord. Grant me the blessing of hearing their earnest if unreliable promises to be better next week.