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Iacopo lays down his pen, stretching out the kinks in his own middle-aged back. Poor old Pappus, he thinks. If your gazelle’s father permits the marriage, what will become of such a mismatch?
A knock on the front door interrupts his thoughts. Iacopo glances at the clock. It’s past curfew. He removes his pince-nez, slipping it into his vest pocket. A German rabbi, beaten in his doorway by SA hoodlums, was blinded by his own shattered spectacles. Seven years since Iacopo heard that story, and still it haunts him.
Unburdened by such fear, Mirella has already opened the door— not to a Fascist thug but to a pale priest. “Buona sera,” she says a little blankly. He looks familiar, but there are so many priests in Sant’Andrea. With his forgettable face and anonymous black cassock, this one has failed to make an impression. “Padre…?”
“Tomitz. Osvaldo Tomitz.”
Hurrying down the hall, Iacopo leans past Mirella to welcome the priest with a warmth meant to offset Mirella’s confusion. “Buona sera, Don Osvaldo!”
Mirella presses one hand to her forehead and the other to her belly. “Forgive me, Don Osvaldo. My mind is a sieve these days!”
Making small talk, Mirella ushers their apologetic visitor down the entry hall. No, she tells him, both of us were awake. But, of course! You’re welcome here at any time. Fine, grazie, and you? Yes, very soon now— at the end of the month, most likely…
Iacopo smiles when Don Osvaldo looks around the Soncini’s salon. The furniture is lacquer-sleek, the artwork cubist, the chandelier a stark Venini. “You expected something more traditional,” he notes when Mirella goes to the kitchen. “All new, when Mirella and I married. Traditional is good, I told her. Nothing looks more dated—”
“— than whatever was breathlessly fashionable eight years ago!” Mirella says, returning from the kitchen with a bottle of wine and three glasses on a tray. “I wish we had more to offer, but this is a very nice sangiovese.” She frowns. “Don Osvaldo, is something wrong?”
“Mirella’s right,” Iacopo agrees. “You’re white as snow!”
“Rabbino, you must— Something is—” The unremarkable face twists, and Tomitz looks back toward the door. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. There’s nothing I can say!”
“Drink this, Padre,” Mirella urges. “Can I get you something stronger?”
“Mirella.” There is, in Iacopo’s silken voice, a note of soft command. His wife takes one step back. “I have been meaning to invite you to see our synagogue, Don Osvaldo,” Iacopo says lightly. “Perhaps now would be convenient.”
Tumblers rattle. Well-oiled hinges glide. Footsteps echo on marble, but this is not a lonely sound. For both men, there is comfort in the familiar emptiness of a place of worship at night.
“After the Great War, everyone felt it was time to make some visible statement of our place in Italy. The congregation raised the money for a new synagogue in the twenties. Construction began in the thirties. We were able to employ many men during the Depression.” Iacopo opens the etched-glass door to the main sanctuary of Scuola Ner Tamid and switches on the electric chandeliers.
Osvaldo pulls in a little gasp. Carrara walls reflect brilliant light from gleaming silver fixtures. A raised central altar’s lectern shelters under a sort of indoor gazebo fashioned of clean-lined chestnut. As modern as the Soncinis’ home, the sanctuary’s beauty arises from gracious proportions, and fine materials painstakingly polished.
“I am told the style is Italian rationalist,” the rabbi says, turning the lights off. “Personally, I prefer the little chapel.” He leads Don Osvaldo down a dark staircase. “When the congregation moved uptown from Porto Vecchio— watch your step, Padre— they saved the bima and the ark from a synagogue that was dedicated in 1511. We re-created its chapel down here.” He unlocks another door. “Let there be light!”
Illuminated by antique lanterns discreetly electrified, the small square room is as stu
A stately candelabrum, tall as a man and branched like an espaliered tree, guards what appears to be an ornate wardrobe inlaid with ivory flowers and jade ivy. “That’s the ark,” Iacopo explains, “where the Torah scrolls rest.” He takes a seat on a mid-Renaissance chair opposite the menorah. “We are commanded to beautify the elements of worship. Our ancestors fulfilled that mitzvah admirably, in my opinion.” He motions toward a pew. “Prego, Don Osvaldo. What we say here is heard by God alone.”
The priest’s silence is different now.
“You have been a good friend to our community, Don Osvaldo,” Iacopo says, giving the other man time. “I am aware that since you took up your post at San Giobatta, you have encouraged His Excellency and the good sisters at Immacolata to cooperate with the Jewish relief committee. You yourself have helped us find housing for displaced Hebrews. Naturally, when such a friend comes to me with a grave concern, I am distressed. I wish to know if there is some way I can be of help to you.”
Osvaldo’s lips part, but still no words emerge.
“It must be difficult to hear confessions,” Iacopo remarks, one clergyman to another. “Listening, hour after hour, to the shameful and humiliating secrets of others. It must feel like an assault or the onset of an illness. To accept such a burden, to take it onto one’s own shoulders—”
“But I am not alone in the confessional!” Don Osvaldo cries, his face twisting. “I am in the presence of One who died in agony to redeem the sins of the world!”
“And yet, you weep,” Iacopo observes, offering a handkerchief.
“Rabbino, I have refused a si
Taken aback, Iacopo asks, “Is that possible?”
“I–I don’t know. It may be a sort of heresy. But what I heard was so terrible that— that…”
“You doubt your savior’s ability to forgive it?”
“Or my worthiness to be His priest.” Osvaldo moves from place to place in the little room. “What if a penitent is mad? Or deluded. What if he feels such guilt for what he’s done in war that he believes himself guilty of other unspeakable acts?”
“Don Osvaldo, why have you not gone to the archbishop with these questions?”
“Because— because what I heard is of great importance to you, and to your congregants. To all of us who—” Tomitz stops. “I’m sorry. Even to say this much—”
“May be breaking the seal of the confessional. Perhaps,” Iacopo suggests carefully, “it would be permissible to tell me what you think I might do, were I in possession of the information you ca
“You would immediately advise your congregation to—” Don Osvaldo hesitates, but when he speaks again his voice is firm. “To avoid arrest and deportation.”
“I am not aware that we are doing anything to invite arrest, Don Osvaldo. The king himself says Italy has no more exemplary citizens than the Jews.”
“The king himself has fled the Germans— as you should! Tranquillo Loeb was right, Rabbino. You must all leave as soon as possible.”
“And where do you suggest we go, Don Osvaldo?”
“Someplace— anyplace you’re not known. Into the hills, the mountains! You could pass for Catholics. I–I’ll get you baptismal certificates. You wouldn’t have to be baptized, I swear it!”
“A generous offer, Don Osvaldo, and we Italians could conceivably melt into the countryside. But what of the refugees who’ve come to us for shelter? What would become of them?”
Tomitz sags onto a pew and puts his face in his hands.
“I am working with a German refugee,” Iacopo tells him quietly. “He’s almost thirteen, studying to become bar mitzvah— a ceremony rather like confirmation. For nearly two years, he and his family have lived in the basement of a bombed-out building near here. They look Jewish, whatever that means. They speak almost no Italian. They have no money. This boy’s only possession is a stamp album. Every week, he shows it to me before we begin our study. Three hundred stamps, from all over the world. The Philippines, Bolivia, Tunisia. Algeria, America. Switzerland. Mauritius. Spain, Portugal. Shanghai, Hong Kong, Japan, India. Venezuela, Cuba, the West Indies. I asked him once, ‘How did you amass such a collection?’ And he answered, ‘They’re from letters my father received from embassies when we were trying to emigrate from Germany.’ ” The priest looks up, and Iacopo asks, “Can I abandon that boy, when the whole world has rejected him?”