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Marta grips Suora Ilaria’s elbow. “Stay close,” she tells the boy. “We have to show our papers.”
They shuffle forward. A carabiniere gives the nuns’ documents a cursory inspection and smiles at the child, who is not required to carry any. “This didn’t use to be here!” Suora Ilaria informs the policeman. “Are you sure this is Roccabarbena? I’m sure this wasn’t here!”
“Suora Ilaria grew up here,” Marta explains, “but this is her first visit in a long time.”
“The station wasn’t built until 1927, Suora.” The carabiniere hands the documents back to Suora Marta. “Poveretta,” he mouths, with a sympathetic glance at the old nun.
The view beyond the station is pretty: low mountains in pale sunlight, a cool mist rising over the two rivers that converge just south of the city. Leading the way, Marta keeps her charges moving through telescoping arcades that increased in height and grandiosity as Roccabarbena grew from minor Roman town to busy Fascist railhead.
Already the workday has begun. Merchants roll up iron saracinesce to reveal storefronts. Housewives sweep stoops or shake out string bags and greet neighbors on the way to the market. People look startlingly clean and healthy, without the grimy gray pallor of those who live with air raids on ever-diminishing rations. Roccabarbena has escaped Allied bombing. Food is close at hand.
“You’re a lucky boy,” Marta tells the rabbi’s son. “This is a good place to live.”
His silence borders on rudeness. She lets it go for now, distracted by Suora Ilaria’s increasing agitation at the changes in her hometown. All evidence of the past forty years a
They cross the Piazza Centrale and board a crosstown trolley that deposits them at the base of a hill. “Watch!” Suora Marta tells the child. The trolley rotates on its huge wooden turntable so it can return to the piazza. “That’s Mother of Mercy up there,” she tells him then. “See the walls?”
There’s no reply from the boy, but Suora Ilaria’s mood improves with every step. “This is how it used to be,” she declares happily, bending beyond her ordinary stoop into the long uphill hike. “We always walked!”
There’s no fuss when they arrive. The portress takes Ilaria to a room. Suora Marta shows the boy to a visitor’s W.C., drops her own valise, and heads for the sisters’. When she returns, the child is waiting by the front door. “Are you hungry?” He shakes his head. “Come with me,” she says.
He follows her down a long, cool hallway to a door giving onto a stone pathway bisecting the convent’s high-fenced garden. They pass through a gate into the schoolyard. The weather is clement, the windows open. Singsong classroom chants drift out on the breeze: multiplication tables, irregular verbs, prayers being learned for First Communion.
“That will be your room,” Suora Marta says, pointing. “Your teacher’s name is Suora Corniglia.” She expects a question: is she nice? The rabbi’s son keeps his own counsel. “She’s young, and new to teaching,” Suora Marta tells him anyway, “but she has a good heart. You’ll like her.”
They enter through a side door, but instead of bringing Angelo directly to Suora Corniglia’s classroom, Suora Marta escorts him to an empty office. Pulling the door closed, she takes a seat at a desk, studies the silent child standing in front of her. “Figlio mio,” she asks quietly, “do you know why you are here with us?”
He does not nod so much as hang his head more dejectedly.
“When you answer me, you must say Sì, Suora or No, Suora.” It is a correction, but not a severe one. She is merely teaching him the rules. “Let’s try again. Do you know why your father brought you to us?”
“Sì, Suora,” the boy whispers.
“That’s better, but you must look at me when you answer. From now on, when someone asks your name, you must say—” It will be easier for him to remember if the false name is similar to his own. “You must say Angelo Santoro.”
The boy scowls at his feet. “I don’t want to lie.”
Suora Marta blinks. Yesterday the terrible rumors were confirmed. Eleven hundred Roman ebrei were deported on Yom Kippur, the Jews’ holiest day. The Vatican immediately ordered that all Catholic institutions be opened to refugees, but this must remain a secret, or the Church’s status of diplomatic neutrality will be nullified. “Don’t think of it as lying,” she suggests, cagey as a Jesuit. “Think of it as pretending. Again: what is your name?”
He looks up briefly. “My name is Angelo Santoro,” he says, and adds, “Suora.”
She smiles. “You’re a quick learner, Angelo Santoro. Come here to me, child.” He moves around the corner of her desk, feet scuffling reluctantly. “Angelo,” she whispers, lifting his little chin with one finger, “this is very important. You must never, ever tell anyone why you are here. You must pretend to be a Catholic, and do everything the other children do.”
“Sì, Suora.”
“I’m going to bring you to your new teacher now. Suora Corniglia also knows why you are here. She’ll help you learn our ways, and tonight she’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”
The child’s hangdog silhouette is outlined vaguely by misty light from the window. For an instant, Suora Marta sees the dead partisan’s head canted at a horrible angle.
“Angelo, if anyone finds out why you are with us, we could all be punished. So you must be brave, like a soldier! Promise me,” she whispers. “Promise on your word of honor that you won’t tell anyone why you’re here.”
“Never,” he swears, eyes stinging with tears he refuses to let fall. “Never, Suora!”
Sunlight breaks through fog and low clouds, its sudden dazzle mocking Angelo Soncini’s dark and wounded pride. He sucks his lips between his teeth and bites hard.
Never will he tell a living soul that his father sent him away because he was too noisy, and made his baby sister cry.
DIVISIONAL HEADQUARTERS
12TH WAFFEN-SS WALTHER REINHARDT
PALAZZO USODIMARE, PORTO SANT’ANDREA
These are the times when one is simply happy to be alive. All is right with the world. Suffused with a sense of unassailable well-being, you know you are where you should be, doing what you were meant to do.
This is war’s importance and its essential function, Erhardt von Thadden thinks. War provides an arena in which the best demonstrate their strength by cleansing the world of its worst. A perfect system, really… I should write a paper.
The Schoolmaster. That’s what von Thadden’s officers call him. Tall, spare, and born to instruct, he would still be a university professor but for a fortuitous guest lecture to some military cadets. When he walked into their classroom on the last day of June in 1934, he was merely an honorary major in the Security Department’s Cultural Activities section. He joined the organization primarily to further his study of Aryan philology, but national service came naturally to a von Thadden. And the smart black uniform with its silver runes was handsome.
He’d just begun his lecture when the first of the SA queers were brought to the Gross-Lichtenfeld wall. The cadets rushed to the windows when they heard the first volleys. Appalled by the distressingly unprofessional executions, the boys turned to von Thadden in confusion. Without hesitation, he left the classroom and took charge of the proceedings at the wall. By the end of the day, the Party’s Blood Purge had entered German history, and Erhardt von Thadden had earned his commission.
Nine and a half years later, he has risen to the rank of lieutenant-general in the Waffen-SS. Command sits easily upon him, despite his academic past. Erhardt von Thadden ca
Shaved and dressed by 0600 hours he returns briefly to the bedroom to kiss his sleeping wife’s forehead. He leaves the palazzo’s private rooms, crosses an i