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“We had attacks pla
Around the corner, Giuseppe Farini waits with the Opel ready and ru
Santino pushes the body up into the truck, heedless of the cargo its blood will spoil, and gives the rabbi a boost as well. “Drive!” he yells.
Farini starts for the cab.
“Wait!” Iacopo shouts, pointing.
Jakub Landau sprints down the alley and dives headfirst into the truck. Slamming the tailgate into position, Santino dashes for the cab.
The Opel lurches forward, and they’re on their way: a fake priest, a genuine rabbi, and the regional political officer of the Italian Committee for National Liberation, along with cargo officially bound for Germany, all transportation papers stamped “Highest Priority” and signed by Artur Huppenkothen.
Improbably jabbed and prodded by the bolts of cloth beneath him, Jakub Landau feels through the layers and pulls out a 9mm Beretta. Unfurling a roll of fabric, he finds seven more pistols. Concealed in the center: two carbines nestled like lovers, stock to barrel. Counting quickly, he makes an estimate. Fifty bolts of cloth. Four hundred Berettas, a hundred rifles. He snakes an arm downward. Crates of ammunition, beneath it all. A bonanza.
The rebbe is on his knees putting pressure on the gunshot wound in the bogus priest’s thigh. “We have a good medic in the mountains,” Landau yells.
Up in the cab, the driver downshifts to handle a steeper grade as they drive out of town. The engine noise adds to the ringing in his ears, but Landau can read the wounded man’s lips.
Italians, he thinks, smiling to himself. It’s always Mamma with them.
Summer 1944
SAN MAURO BRIGADE FIELD HOSPITAL
VALDOTTAVO, PIEMONTE
The dream usually begins the same way. Duno is alert, but never scared. The planes will make a wide turn, he expects, then double back for a second run at the Roman bridge in Roccabarbena.
He hears the rattle and ping of gunfire hitting stone, sees Nello Toselli, still tubby despite a winter of hunger, racing bullets to the cave. Two planes flash overhead, German crosses, black on white, under the wings. Nello’s screams are lost in a series of deafening explosions.
Duno kneels at Nello’s side. The air reeks like a barnyard. The ground is brown and rust and red. Nello is facedown, his pants sticky with blood. Holes in his back and buttocks gape through the torn fabric like lipsticked mouths. Duno rolls him over. Loops of glistening bowel tumble out. The colors are astonishing. Maroon. Crimson. A bright spring green. Yellow, like chicken schmaltz.
This is where the dream can change. Most nights, the others gather to stare at the crater in Nello’s belly and groin. Someone vomits. “Go get la no
Nello whimpers, “Mamma, it hurts.” Something in his gut breaks. Bright red arcs out of the body in pulses. Duno flinches when his face is splashed with hot blood, and wakes up.
Sometimes, though, the dream is different. He shouts for boiled salt water, washes dirt from the intestines, stuffs them back inside. Nello sighs. His face loses its clenched look and relaxes into a blank repose. On those nights, Duno sleeps better.
No one could have saved Nello. Duno knows that now. A swill of blood and bile and shit obscuring the field means ruptured viscera and ripped vessels. “Reassurance is your last gift,” the German doctor told him. “Speak calmly and quietly to the wounded man, and go on to someone else.”
Nearsighted, without spectacles, Duno Brössler is no good with a gun, but he isn’t squeamish, and he’s not afraid of blood. He can look at great ragged cavities left in pulpy flesh and simply… go to work. He has, quite likely, saved six lives under terrible conditions, and made it possible for them to return to battle. To do that, Jakub Landau told him, is as though Duno himself were six soldiers.
Since Nello’s death, Duno has spent countless hours studying the anatomical drawings Doktor Schramm improvised on the plaster walls of la no
I ragazzi: the boys. That’s what the Valdottavese still call the San Mauro Brigade, but there are no boys left, not since Nello Toselli died. They’re men now, even those too young to shave. Since the air raid on the cave, they’ve moved every few nights, on the run, but not afraid. They coalesce for pla
“We’ve got the Nazis on the run,” Duno tells the man he’s working on. “Rome is free, and yesterday the Allies invaded France. Radio London said it’s the largest invasion in history.”
The wounded man is conscious, but hasn’t said a word. The right side of his face is swollen to twice its normal size. Duno rinses the cloth in hot water, presses it against the half-formed scabs. When they’re softened and looser, he can pry them off and get at the bits of stone embedded in the skin.
Blood starts to flow again. The rabbi looks ready to pass out. “Head lacerations bleed a lot,” Duno tells him. “Don’t worry. These are superficial.”
“He’ll be all right?” the rabbi asks.
“Sì, certo!” Duno says, audibly confident for the patient’s sake.
In fact, the leg looks angry. Streaky, reddened. Sepsis could be setting in. “You can’t be sure,” Schramm told him. “Sometimes the body defeats an infection.”
Today Duno has the luxury of shelter for the operation, even if it’s only a barn. There’s a fire, boiling water to sterilize the knife, brandy for anesthesia, the rabbi to assist. Duno motions, and the rabbi hands him the grappa. “Drink up,” Duno says, putting the bottle into the wounded man’s hand. “I’m going after that bullet.”
The fingers refuse to grip. The man works to speak clearly through fattened lips. “Do wha’ y’have to.”
Duno looks at the rabbi. “Help me roll him onto his side, then hold him steady.” They cut the blood-crusted trouser leg neatly, so it’ll be easier for la no