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“Perché?”
“Because they’re looking for the Jews who crossed the Alps,” the Jewish milkman says. “They arrest anyone with worn-out street shoes.”
Don Osvaldo hands Duno a jacket that fits as badly as the shoes. “You’re a mute, understand? Don’t say anything!”
Duno squirms into the coat. “Nobody will believe this is mine.”
“It’s not supposed to be yours,” the milkman says. “Shut up!”
The queue on the main road is a kilometer long: farmers in mule carts, young people walking beside bicycles, peasant women shuffling on foot with bundles balanced on their heads. It takes them nearly an hour to snake across a stone bridge toward a pair of carabinieri inspecting documents.
Two civilians in brown leather trench coats stand behind the policemen, looking hard at each person who passes. “Germans,” Duno whispers. No one answers. Thinking they haven’t understood, Duno repeats, “Those men— they’re Tedeschi!”
The milkman cranks his window down, checks on the queue lengthening behind the van, flashes a grin at the priest. “Ready?”
The priest inclines his head. “Prego.”
“Listen!” Duno cries. “Those are Germans—”
“Permit me to explain what shut up means,” Osvaldo says, driving an elbow into Duno’s belly.
“Bravo!” the milkman murmurs. “See you in Sant’Andrea.” Sticking his head out the window, he begins to pound on the truck horn and yell. “Vaffanculo! I gotta d’ orphans’ milk here! Lemme t’rough, y’ fuckin’ castrati!”
Snarling people whirl to see not just the maniacal Sicilian in the milk van’s cab waving his arm out the window, but the serene priest and the winded wide-eyed boy. Eyebrows shoot up. The priest nods ever so slightly.
The queue convulses into a crowd. Horn blaring, the milk van bulls its way forward, its driver screaming, “Milk for’a da i
“Perfect,” Osvaldo says, flinging open the passenger door. He hops down and hauls Duno out of the truck. “Keep quiet,” he orders, gripping Duno’s arm and dragging him toward the policeman who’s busy with the girl. Leaning toward the policeman’s ear, Osvaldo says, “This boy has no papers, figlio mio. His family was killed by a bomb in Sant’Andrea. He’s a mute, but neighbors said he has relatives around here.”
“Sì, sì, sì,” the carabiniere says, operatically distracted. “Take him to the rectory. Padre Girotti knows everyone in the parish. Ecco, signorina, this address doesn’t look correct to me.”
Marching quick-time, Osvaldo starts uphill, the boy in tow. Duno giggles, looking over his shoulder at the chaos behind them. “That was great! Where’s he going?”
“To an orphanage.” Swiftly changing directions, Osvaldo leads Duno into an alley. Glancing left and right, satisfied that they are alone, Osvaldo shoves the boy against a stucco wall. “If you say one… more… word,” he promises in a low soft voice, “I will hand you to the Gestapo myself.”
Five silent minutes later, at the far end of the village, a church comes into view. The blank-walled exterior is as plain as pabulum, but when Duno steps over its threshold, he stifles a gasp. “Sit!” snaps the priest, pointing at a pew. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
Duno obeys, too stu
Not so much as a finger’s breadth of wall, floor, or ceiling has been left unadorned. Dancing angels crown a sort of chuppah over the altar. Swags of dusty red fabric trimmed in tarnished gold enclose the bima. Two smaller altars flank the main one. Duno recognizes the Virgin by her blue robe and chastely bowed head. Candles, lit after a Mass, gutter and smoke at her feet. The season’s last few roses scent her air. Above the altar on the right, her unlucky husband, Joseph, stands diffidently, carpenter’s tools in hand, candleless and unpetitioned.
Halfway down the nave, off to one side, a plaster man is enclosed in a smaller canopy supported by baroque carvings of what might be wiggly trout, or maybe dolphins, or possibly just vines. San Mauro, according to a hand-lettered sign. A bishop, judging from the fish-head hat and shepherd’s crook. The walls of his alcove are completely covered with paintings and drawings that appear to have been done by children, or by untutored adults. One, drawn in colored pencils, shows a train station. A man in a blue conductor’s uniform has fallen from the platform between two cars, saved from wheeled decapitation by the bishop, who floats on a nearby cloud, two fingers raised in blessing. In another, Alpini guard a mountain pass, but there has been an avalanche. Two soldiers tumble tragicomically in the snow, uniformed arms and legs sticking out of whiteness in all directions. The bishop hovers in the corner, blessing the third soldier, who kneels in thanksgiving, palms pressed together.
Duno snickers. “I guess San Mauro didn’t like those other two.”
“Perhaps they didn’t ask for his help,” a soft voice replies.
Don Osvaldo stands in the tall doorway at the back of the church, but it is a second priest who’s spoken. Frail and bony in middle age, but with amused eyes and an unlined face, he holds out both his hands, and something about him draws Duno forward. “Agnus Dei! Another of God’s lambs come down from the mountain!” this priest declares. “Welcome to San Mauro. I’m Leto Girotti.”
“Piacere, signore. I am called Du—”
“No names!” Don Leto warns sharply. “If I’m arrested, I can’t reveal what I don’t know.”
“And yet,” Osvaldo points out, “everyone’s heard of the Red Priest.”
“The people here know me, and they protect me. I’m in no danger. Ah! Here is Signora Toselli, who makes the best polenta in Piemonte! Signora, a place at the table for this young man,” Leto tells the tiny, wrinkled lady in black. “The other padre and I will come to lunch soon.”
When he and Osvaldo are alone in the church, Leto stumps down the center aisle like a cinema pirate. Gripping the back of a pew, he genuflects as best he can and slides sideways, lowering himself onto the front seat. Osvaldo brings a kneeler over, and Leto lifts his peg onto it. “All this rain! The ankle that isn’t there aches this time of year! Now tell me the latest, Osvaldo! I haven’t seen a newspaper since All Souls’!”
“The Soviets have pushed the Germans out of the Caucasus. And they’ve retaken Kiev.”
“And here? There are rumors of strikes at Fiat.”
“Yes, but the Germans arrested fifteen hundred hostages and forced the workers back to the factories.”
“The unions will find a way around that,” Leto says confidently. “And in the south?”
“Stalemate. The Allies can’t get past Monte Cassino. The British Eighth managed to cross the Sangro, but winter’s closed in and the offensive stalled. Leto, there are terrible reports from the areas occupied by the Allies. It’s chaos. People are starving.”
Leto grins at Osvaldo’s bulging waistline. “You seem to be eating well.” Osvaldo blinks, then unwraps his cincture. “How much did you bring?” Leto asks, eager as a child on Epiphany to see what La Befana has brought him.
“Sixteen thousand.” Osvaldo stacks the bundles of bills and rewraps a less impressive waistline. “That’s all that was left after we took care of those hiding in the city. We lost money converting it to occupation lire.”
“Like the loaves and the fishes, it will be enough.”
“Leto, the Gestapo is offering a huge bounty for Jews.”
“Trust in God, and in my parishioners.” Leto smiles. “I knew you’d come, even if you had to disobey.”