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“— generally from people who borrow money.”
“He always gave me the whole year to pay for my textbooks. He was very decent about it.”
“Jews are simply members of the human race.” After a thoughtful pause, Renzo adds, “I can think of no worse insult.”
“There are plenty of people who can,” Schramm warns. “They never saw you. They don’t know your name. They don’t know anything about you, but they hate you. They hate your mother, they hate your sister, they hate your cousin’s little baby boy.” Schramm shakes his head. “I never understood the logic. You’re Communists to a man, but you own all the banks. You’re subhuman, but you’re ru
Renzo leans over the table. “Never underestimate how soothing it is to have someone else to blame. If Jews didn’t exist, someone would have to invent us.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Schramm says judiciously. “There’re always the Jesuits. Or Freemasons.”
Renzo drinks off his grappa in a single searing swallow and sets the glass gently on the table. “Secret Jews,” he declares, belching. “Every last one of them.”
Schramm crosses his arms on the table and leans against them to ease the pressure building in his lungs. “I barely made it through the Physicum,” he confesses. “The other students had no fears about their abilities. They made the same mistakes as I did,” he says, “but if a procedure went wrong? The patient was weak— a poor specimen. I was afraid all the time, but I had a wife, children, so I kept on. When half the doctors in Germany were fired for being Jewish, a lot of doors opened to mediocrities like me.”
Renzo looks at him for a long moment. “At least you’re honest.”
“Well, my ambitions have diminished. I retain not the slightest desire to improve the world! I just want to live until this fucking war is over,” Schramm says, voice fraying. “I want to see my family before I die.”
Balancing his chair on its back legs, Renzo retreats into his thoughts, while Schramm’s own mind empties of longing and regret. He closes his eyes, drifting in the lovely twilight liquor bestows. Breathing is easy, he thinks. In. Out. In. Out…
Renzo’s chair levels with a thump. “What would it take?”
Schramm rouses. “What?”
“What would you need? To live until you can see your family again.”
Shocked into near sobriety, Schramm studies the unmoving face, trying to read the bones, the eyes, the mouth. “You’re serious?” Renzo nods, and Schramm tries to think. “A place to stay, someplace quiet. Up in the mountains— cold, dry air. Plain food, but a lot of it. Nursing— if I get too sick to care for myself.”
“What about contagion? If people’ve already been exposed—?”
“I can’t do them much more harm. And there was a study last year in Denmark— the bacillus is airborne. Sunlight kills it.” I might not die, he thinks. I might see my boys again… “If there are windows, open air, that would be best for all of us.”
Renzo’s glass rises. “To pretty wives and healthy children,” he declares with drunken decisiveness. “I’ll see what I can do.”
VALDOTTAVO
NEAR FRAZIONE SANTA CHIARA
Bearded and filthy, Albert Blum peers through the gap between Santino’s blanket and the shack’s doorpost. Claudette stirs. “Papa?” she asks drowsily. “Was that a hawk?”
“Quiet!” he whispers. “Don’t move!”
Her dream hawk’s high cry resolves into the piercing voice of a young girl. Claudette scrambles to her feet. “Someone’s coming!”
Outside, the meadow is silvery with frost, autumn wildflowers dead or dying. Thick with bulky skirts and lumpy layered sweaters, the girl is only a few steps ahead of a stocky, scowling woman. “Mamma says you shouldn’t stay here anymore!” the girl calls, waving frantically. “I knew it was wrong, but—”
“I should cut you in pieces!” the woman shouts. “I should kill you right now!”
Claudette clutches Albert’s arm. “Papa, that lady’s got a gun!”
“Claudette! Please! I’m trying to understand!”
The language is some peasant dialect. He catches words and phrases, but not enough to be sure, and then—
The woman yanks the blanket aside and lifts the gun stock to her shoulder. Claudette screams. Stubby thumb still tensed on the shotgun’s hammer, the woman’s shrewd brown eyes travel from the outline of Claudette’s small bosom to her tattered trousers and disintegrating shoes. A slow smile appears.
“That’s not a boy!” Shifting the shotgun to the crook of her arm, the woman reaches out to smack her own daughter in the back of the head. The blow is glancing, but enough to register the mother’s dismay before she offers the same callused hand to Albert. “Lovera, Tercilla. An honor to meet you, signore.”
Her Italian is slurry but understandable. It’s her disposition that confuses him. “Piacere, signora,” he says uncertainly. “Blum, Alberto. And my daughter, Claudia.”
“That’s Bettina, signore. My youngest— she’s thirteen.” She nods at her daughter, who is gawping at Claudette with a mixture of awe and disappointment. Tercilla leans toward Albert. “I thought she was sneaking out to meet a boy. At her age, you can’t be too sure, ne? Aren’t you ashamed!” she shouts suddenly, rounding on Bettina. “Leaving these poor people out on the mountainside like animals!”
Dumbfounded, Albert accepts the shotgun Tercilla thrusts into his hands. Short even for a peasant, she stretches to pull the army blanket down from the door of the shack and glances around the tiny stone shelter. “Bettina, get that mess kit! And put that fire out. Prego, signore, there’ll be hot food waiting.” Draping the blanket over a short-boned arm, Tercilla asks, “Is this all you have?” Albert nods numbly. “Poveretti,” she says, shaking her head.
Claudette demands translation, and when Albert tells her that they’re invited to di
“Sì, certo,” Tercilla says, unconcerned. “The priest said, ‘Help the Hebrews coming over the mountains, and don’t tell anyone.’ ” Without warning, she spins around and yells, “He meant the Germans, not your mother!” Bettina giggles and ducks, evidently accustomed to maternal Blitzkrieg.
With a last quick inspection of the shack, Tercilla takes the shotgun back and waves the Blums outside. “If we meet anybody, pretend you’re stupid. You were bombed out, ne?” She taps the side of her forehead: Not right in the mind. “Don’t worry,” she says over her shoulder when Albert hesitates. “The Germans’re looking for Jews, but nobody up here will help those bastardi. To hell with them, and the chancred whores who bore ’em.”
“What is she saying, Papa?” Claudette asks.
“They don’t like the Germans,” Albert reports drily.
Taking Claudette’s hand, Bettina skips ahead chattering while Tercilla guides Albert to a gravelly trail a few hundred meters down the slope.
“That’s my husband’s cloak you’re wearing,” Tercilla says, helping Albert over a tree trunk that’s fallen over the path. “Domenico was an Alpino during the last war.”
Winded already, Albert sits on the log to catch his breath. “Signor Lovera fought the Austrians?”
“Two and a half years on the line,” Tercilla says grimly, watching the girls round the next switchback. “And now? Gone again. My brother Primo, too. They were at the Wednesday market down in San Mauro. Germans came and took all the men! How’re we supposed to farm with no men?”
Albert is willing to go on, but Tercilla doesn’t notice.
“All I have now is Pierino,” she says. “Four girls married off, just Bettina left to settle. But only one son.” Cradling the shotgun against her thick little body, Tercilla looks east. “Valdottavo sent thirty-five boys to Russia last year. Two came back. My boy was one of them, grazie a Dio, but… The priest— Don Leto— he thought Pierino could be a teacher. No more,” Tercilla says with quiet finality. She turns to meet another parent’s eyes. “This war, signore? It ate my boy alive.”