Страница 78 из 109
“I make it just under a thousand planes— for a single raid,” Messner breathes, awestruck. “More than the entire Italian air force had at the begi
Around the corner, just out of sight, an Italian baritone begins an ironic rendition of “Deutschland über Alles.” There is an angry Teutonic shout, a defiant retort in Italian. A gunshot. A high-pitched scream, cut short by a second bullet. A Sturmba
Always the first to recover from such shocks, Messner snaps his fingers at the rabbity waiter, who still hasn’t moved a muscle. “You there! A round of brandy for everyone!”
Cognacs are quickly distributed. Messner stands, glass raised. “Our faith in the Führer remains unchanged!” he declares with stout volksdeutscher sincerity. Officers and officials greet the toast with a murmured, “Sieg heil.” Glasses are drained.
Loyalty demonstrated, Messner moves his chair to sit at Artur’s side. “Have you come to a decision regarding the arrangement I spoke of last month?” he asks quietly. “The corduroy is first-rate, Artur. Fine wale, with a hand like velvet. Bolts of it locked in a warehouse. Getting that Jew fabric to Germany would be a service to the Vaterland, Artur. Another winter is coming.”
Messner’s voice is low and smooth in Artur’s ear. “Think of Erna!” he urges. “She never complains when others prosper, but I know she loves beautiful things. She is a good woman— I’d ask for her hand, but she deserves better! Where’s the harm?” Messner presses softly. “Corduroy to keep German children snug this winter. A postwar nest egg for Erna, and for the man who might have been my brother-in-law, were I more worthy.”
Artur watches the planes disappearing into the distance. Why are the pilots willing to bomb fellow Aryans? he wonders, at a loss. They should be standing with us against Bolshevism! Stalin and his Jews’ll turn on them— wait and see. They’ll regret what they’ve done to us when Ivan kicks in their doors!
“The war will end eventually, Artur. You must think of your future, and Erna’s.”
Beneath the shimmering white tablecloth, Messner’s thigh is warm. The touch is casual, probably inadvertent. Artur shivers slightly. “Trucks are hard to come by,” he says, his lips hardly moving. “The best I can do is a ’38 Opel Blitz.”
With the barest motion of his hand, Messner taps Huppenkothen’s glass with his own. “Fifty-fifty?”
Artur’s glance flicks toward the other patrons. “Sixty-forty.” He presses a heavy linen serviette against skin misted with sweat, then stands. “Drop by my home at noon. Erna will have an envelope for you.”
SANT’ANDREA MUNICIPAL JAIL
11:45 A.M.
When Jakub Landau stopped at a routine roadblock on the way into Sant’Andrea, he still had an out-of-date work permit identifying him as Hans Obermüller. He’d nearly bluffed his way into the city when the Republican soldiers discovered anti-fascist pamphlets sewn into the lining of his jacket, and turned him over to the carabinieri. Tomorrow il polacco will be shot.
Iacopo Soncini is the only one who knows that the condemned man is a Jew. Landau himself considers the fact of no interest. “I am a Communist,” he replied when the imprisoned rabbi identified himself as a clergyman. “Religion is a drug.” Drawn by Landau’s eerie equanimity, Iacopo asked the source of his calm. “The individual does not matter,” he was told.
In the shadow of death, Landau has talked— to pass the time and, perhaps, to be remembered. His mother was German, his father a Pole working in Germany when they met. “When Mama died, Papa took me and my brother back to Kossow, but we spent our summers in Offenbach, visiting my mother’s parents.” Landau served two years in the Polish army and obtained an engineering degree from Warsaw Polytechnic, but his childhood German did not fade. Like his father before him, he found work in Berlin.
The Depression hit; foreigners were the first to lose their jobs. Landau went home, married a Warsaw girl, had a daughter. “Her birthday was the first of September,” Landau told Iacopo. “She turned three the day Germany invaded in ’39. The news spoiled her party.” Guests huddled around Landau’s shortwave as Radio Berlin a
Absurdity or not, Polish corpses soon rotted on the streets, and hospitals overflowed with wounded. Air attacks went on around the clock, and when the Wehrmacht was close enough to shell the city, the Soviet army invaded along Poland’s eastern border. Occupation was certain; by whom was unclear. Bodies bloated in the late-summer heat, and exploded hideously. There was no food, no electricity, no water, no sewer service. The bombardment ended, and the tanks rolled in.
“The Nazis made a big show of handing out bread. There were journalists, cameras,” Landau recalled. “I heard one reporter say that the German people were compelled to feed the hungry population of Poland due to the criminal neglect of the Polish government!” The cameras didn’t show that the bread was a centimeter deep in mold. Nor did the reporters mention that the food depots near synagogues were called rat traps. “Poles were given moldy bread, but Jews were given beatings.”
Everything of value was confiscated— a fancy word for stolen. Everyone had to register, so the population could be sorted into racial categories. “Poles of German ancestry were given Jewish farms and factories,” Landau said. “They could ride in trains, they ate well. Overnight, the Volksdeutsche were kings! Most couldn’t speak a word of German, but I could.” White-blond, with glacier-blue eyes, he told the authorities he was a civil engineer, a Pole of German ancestry whose identity papers had been destroyed in the shelling. A week later, he was working for the Reich, answering to the name Hans Obermüller. Nerves stretched tighter every day, he supervised the repair of bridges in Warsaw, in German-occupied Estonia and Finland, and finally in Berlin. At the end of 1942, he made a dash for southern France. When the Italian Fourth Army retreated across the Alps last September, Landau was with them, and arrived in Italy the day its own occupation began.
“And what of your family?” Iacopo asks now.
“I sent my wife and daughter to live with my father in Kossow. I could visit them because trains ran nearby. I thought they would be safe.”
The heat in the jail is oppressive, but Iacopo shivers at the echo of his own decisions. “Tell me their names,” he whispers. “If I live, I will look for your family and tell them of your fate.”
“They’re dead,” Landau says without emotion. “The Germans sent everyone in Kossow to a place called Treblinka.”
All the rabbi can summon is the most exalted of banalities. “Surely, they are with God.”
Around the room, conversations and card games stop. Two hundred prisoners packed into the jail stare while Landau laughs, loud and long. Amused and indulgent, the Pole shakes his head, wipes his eyes, and waves their interest off. Smiling tenderly, he pats Iacopo on the arm, like a father soothing a child. “Rebbe,” he says, “what I have seen would make an atheist of Abraham.”
TAVERNA IL DUCE
12:40 P.M.
The Fascist tavern near the seawall is crowded and noisy, filled with men who pay cash for what they want. At a corner table, Santino Cicala waits with a bersagliere in civilian clothing. His name is Giuseppe Farini. Santino pretends he doesn’t know that. It makes Farini feel better. The black marketeer is so nervous, he’s smoking his own stock. Every pack of Milites can buy a thick stack of occupation lire, but this will be the biggest risk he’s taken so far. He glares at the door. “Where the hell is that drunk?”