A Thread of Grace

“You admit it! We’re—”

“We are not lost!” Exasperated, Renzo closes his eyes. Folded and forested, the hills must seem impossible to navigate from the ground, but he’s seen this landscape from above. He sees it at this moment as though he were flying over the countryside. The plains sweep north from the coast, breaking into long valleys rimmed by wooded mountains that crumple into higher and higher terrain until they merge with the Maritimes. “We are five kilometers by air from Borgo San Mauro, which is that way,” he says, pointing. “It’s twenty kilometers on this miserable dirt track, which is a pain in the coglioni to drive on, but better than getting picked up by a German patrol on the main road. Answer my question.”

The priest straightens. “We are taught: Do not stand by while your neighbor’s blood is shed.”

“Sounds like Leviticus,” Renzo remarks, watching the clouds.

“We must place ourselves on the side of those who suffer persecution!” Osvaldo insists, as though arguing with someone. “I am here without permission,” he confesses. “You know what they say in the Curia? Tutti preti sono falsi.”

Renzo looks surprised. “All priests are frauds? Not all, surely! There’s your friend Leto Girotti. Archbishop Boetto in Genoa, and his man Don Repetto. That nuncio in Turkey.”

“Roncalli?”

“Yes, that’s the one.” Elbows on his knees, Renzo hunches over, cigarette shielded by his palms from the rising breeze. “You know what I think? Ten percent of any group of human beings are shitheads. Catholics, Jews. Germans, Italians. Pilots, priests. Teachers, doctors, shopkeepers. Ten percent are shitheads. Another ten percent— salt of the earth! Saints! Give you the shirts off their backs. Most people are in the middle, just trying to get by.” Squinting through tendrils of smoke, he leans away to look at Tomitz. “You are a very dangerous man, Padre. You are an ordinary, decent fellow who aspires to saintliness.”

“And you?” Osvaldo demands, flushing angrily. “You have false papers— Stefano Savoca could simply disappear. As Ugo Messner, you could go to Berlin if you wanted to! Where do you fit in this moral taxonomy?”

Renzo grins derisively. “Oh, I’m definitely a shithead. I’m just trying to commit a better class of sin than I used to.” Renzo takes a drag, holds smoke in his lungs, blows it out slowly. “You know anything about Yom Kippur, Padre? The Day of Atonement. Jews are supposed to fast and ask God’s forgiveness for sins against Him, but not even God can absolve sins against someone else. So. We’re supposed to go to the people we’ve harmed, beg forgiveness, make things right. Which is why some sins are unforgivable.” He studies the wooded hillside that borders the road. “Murder, for example.”

“Because one can’t ask forgiveness of the dead.”

“Too true. You know what Cain’s sin was, Padre?”

“Why, killing his brother, of course.”

“Catholics! One answer per question, end of discussion. No, Padre, Cain’s sin was depriving the world of Abel’s children. My theory is, if Abel had lived, the percentage of shitheads in the world might be significantly lower.” Renzo stands and shuffles bent-kneed for a few steps before he can straighten. “Can you reach that Beretta from where you’re standing? Don’t move, just tell me.”

“The pistol? Yes, it’s on the dashboard.” Alert now, Osvaldo whispers, “What do you see?”

Renzo seems to study the clouds. Raindrops roll off the leaves and hit his face. “Who, not what.”

Osvaldo Tomitz is carrying sixteen thousand lire in cash, its bulk concealed in the black cincture around his waist. There are, Leto Girotti estimated, over a thousand Jews hiding in his mountain parish, and he’ll distribute the money to families sheltering them— assuming Osvaldo isn’t robbed this afternoon. He grabs the gun and thrusts it into Renzo’s hand.

Casually, Renzo drops the cigarette butt to the dampening ground before bellowing, “Sh’ma, Israel! Adonai Eloheynu!”

“Pazzo! Are you crazy?” Osvaldo cries.

“It’s the one prayer even a half-assed Jew like me knows: Hear, O Israel! Adonai is God…”

The answer comes back in an adolescent quaver: “Adonoi Echad!”

“… Adonai is One,” Renzo concludes.

A bedraggled boy appears at the hilltop and plunges toward the road. Sledding down the steepest section on his backside, he arrives possessed of nothing but dirty clothes, a big nose, and greasy brown hair.

“Juif? Jude?” Renzo asks. The boy hesitates, not sure what to admit. Renzo points to himself. “Ebreo.” The boy considers the Beretta with an expression of profound skepticism. “Behold! A Jew with a gun,” Renzo confirms, and sings a verse of Kaddish to prove it.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Osvaldo asks, wiping rain out of his eyes.

A sullen resolve appears. “Solo italiano. No more German-speaking!”

“That should spare us a great deal of superfluous juvenile commentary,” Renzo mutters cheerily. Depositing the pistol in the cab, he reaches for a lunch pail and a can of milk.

“I am Don Osvaldo,” the priest says. “What are you called?”

“Duno.”

“Do you have family near here?”

“No famiglia!” the boy swears. “Solo io.”

“And how old are you? Nineteen?” Renzo asks, with every evidence of sincerity. The boy considers the question and nods. “A linguist, and a liar as well,” Renzo remarks admiringly. “Skills much in demand these days.”

Don Osvaldo points to the lunch pail in Renzo’s hand. “Siete affamato, Duno? Are you hungry?”

“I Germans want to fight!” the boy says, shivering in the sudden chill.

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” Renzo assures him warmly, pouring milk into a tin cup. “Italy has a surplus of Germans at the moment. The Allies are presently being slaughtered at Anzio, so I fear you may soon constitute the totality of the opposition, but lack of manpower enhances opportunities for advancement. A bloodthirsty young savage like you should be a major general by December.”

Duno takes in perhaps every fifth word, but Renzo is enjoying his own performance. “Eat first. Fight later,” Don Osvaldo suggests, handing the boy a panino.

The boy drains the cup, then devours the sandwich in three huge gulps, Adam’s apple prominent in his ski

“We are not partisans, and I am not the Red Priest,” Osvaldo says slowly. “We’ll take you to him.”

“Gentlemen,” Renzo says, “may I suggest that we get in out of the rain? And who the hell’s the Red Priest?”

The three of them climb into the truck, Renzo settling behind the wheel, the boy taking the middle of the bench. Osvaldo slams his door twice before the latch catches, then says, “He means Leto Girotti. Leto’s not a Communist. People call him that because he had a big dispute with a landlord named Malcovato years ago— the factor was keeping two sets of books. Leto got more money for the tenants.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Renzo shouts over the roar of the engine. “And did Don Leto take out an ad in La Stampa, or just nail flyers on all the trees? Radical priest desires martyrdom! Please arrest at earliest convenience.”

The racket is deafening: chuffing gassogeno, grinding gears, rain hammering on the roof of the cab. “It’s just a nickname,” Osvaldo yells, “but I think your mother would like him.”

Fed and warm after weeks of stealing food and living rough, Duno Brössler bicycles to school. Hurrying and late, as usual, he pedals frantically. Then he’s waiting at a train station, and no amount of pushing yields headway through the crowds that block his way. Suddenly he’s on a road, in the middle of a traffic jam—

The milk van’s engine stops. The priest shakes his shoulder. Duno jerks awake. “Put these on,” Don Osvaldo says, handing him a pair of well-oiled work boots two sizes too big. “Give me yours.”