A Thread of Grace

“Names,” Huppenkothen says. “Addresses. Meeting places.”

The hook draws Osvaldo’s hands upward, backward, away from his body. Sweat pops on his forehead, his upper lip. His feet leave the ground. Suspended a meter above the floor, he is able to think of Christ crucified for an instant.

And then: he is transfigured, transmogrified, all body, no soul. All that was Osvaldo Tomitz gathers into his shoulder joints. His muscles quiver, first slightly, then more violently. He stops breathing, unwilling to spend strength on anything other than holding himself at half-oblique.

“Everyone tries that,” PierCarlo I

From the spindle’s vantage, PierCarlo measures the naked body with a tailor’s eye, deciding how much chain will be needed to keep the feet above the floor. He hoists the priest another half meter up and chocks the spindle. Drawing closer, he inspects the priest’s shivering penis with detached curiosity. “Naughty worm,” he whispers with an odd lilting intimacy. “Naughty little worm…”

He straightens and hits the priest high in the belly, under the rib cage, emptying the lungs so that no scream can mask the crackle of shattering cartilage and snapping ligaments. Torn out, lifted from behind, the balls of the shoulders spring from their sockets. The body falls abruptly, then hangs from its own muscles and skin and nerves and blood vessels. The dislocated arms are twisted high above the head.

“Torture,” PierCarlo says to himself. “From the Latin torquere, to twist.”

He watches, patient, emotionless. Soon the body’s need for breath wins its battle against gravity, and the screaming can begin. When the shrieks subside to a high, thin whine like a piglet’s squeal, PierCarlo begins to chant in the singsong voice of an adult wheedling cooperation from a reluctant child. “No one can hear you but me. Nobody knows where you are,” he croons softly. “Give me what I want, naughty worm, or I’ll never let you go.”

March 1945

PENSIONE USODIMARE

PORTO SANT’ANDREA

The office is makeshift: a cheap desk pushed into an entry that was once a modest receiving room for a prosperous family. After the war, Antonia Usodimare intends to fix the place up again, but for now it’s good enough. Her boarders are lonely men, too weary and dejected to care about threadbare upholstery and derelict draperies. She moves heavily on puffy, leaden legs, cooking plain meals for them, doing their washing. Between bouts of housework, she knits with red and swollen fingers, knobby knees splayed beneath the skirt of a faded black dress, bunioned feet stuffed into a pair of her dead husband’s slippers.

This morning, she aches worse than usual. After all the boarders left, she added a long climb to the garret to her ordinary work, then punished her joints further by kneeling in the corner, prying up the boards, retrieving a bundle of clothing. One flight down, she wrapped the bundle in a thin towel, collected a few shirts, stuffed them into a sack with stinking underwear and socks. Layering them, like a nasty lasagna. Slowly, pausing on each stair tread, she made her way back down to the office, tucked the sack under the desk, and settled down to wait.

She’s been promised that a staffetta called la vedova will give her an entire package of British cigarettes in exchange for the bundle. A princely payment, but justified by the risks Antonia takes for the resistance. The Gestapo will arrest anyone, even old women. If they search the Pensione Usodimare and find what hides under her desk, Antonia Usodimare will pay with her life.

At midmorning, a young peasant knocks politely on the open door but stays just outside, one hand balancing the large basket she carries on her kerchiefed head. “Prego, signora,” she says with a slurry mountain accent, “have you any laundry for me today?”

Antonia frowns suspiciously. She was expecting someone her own age, not this pregnant green-eyed girl. “I usually do my own.”

“Prego, signora, I’ll do a good job, and I don’t charge much. I need the money. I am all alone. A widow.”

As she realizes that la vedova is not just a nickname, the landlady’s lumpy old face changes. “Poveretta,” she murmurs, bending to retrieve the sack. The girl lowers her basket, secreting the bundle amid the sheets and shirts she’s already carrying. “Grazie tanto,” she says. “You are very kind.”

She passes the cigarettes to Antonia when the old woman embraces her. “There are too many widows,” Antonia whispers. “Too many mothers alone.”

“There will be more.”

It is a promise, not a threat. Antonia draws back, chilled. La vedova pauses at the open door. “I’ll have the laundry back by Tuesday,” she says in a voice meant to be heard. “Mille grazie, signora.”

At roadblocks and checkpoints, she can play her pregnancy either way. Italians, either sentimental or in collusion with the resistance, allow the weary young Mado

Sant’Andrea’s early spring has softened into real warmth; her blouse is half open beneath a rust-red cardigan. The waistband of a flowered skirt is shifted above her belly, and raises the hem over her knees. She shuffles forward in the queue, watching the older of two soldiers.

Stepping up to the barricade, she glances at a gang of undersized urchins loitering just beyond. Ragged, barefoot, fearless. “Zigaretten,” such boys beg at every German checkpoint. For sport sometimes, soldiers flick a butt to the cobbles and make bets as children fight for possession. Claudia leans over to set her basket down. The older German watches a trickle of sweat slip between her breasts. She hands over her identity card.

He may toss a cigarette toward the boys, beckon to her, demand a “toll” for her passage. He may see the signs of alteration on her papers and arrest her, or simply shoot her in the head because he’s hung over and knows the war is lost. She will not know why she died, except that she is following her orders: collect the uniform, deliver it to Schramm.

“What’s in there?” He means the basket, but he’s looking now at her belly.

“A little bastard,” she says in Schramm’s Italian-accented German. “Want to search me to be sure?”

Pawing through the laundry, he gives the opportunity some thought. She’s pretty, even six months along— “Scheisse!” he hisses, leaping back as though his hand had been bitten by a snake.

She apologizes, feigning surprise and dismay. Explains that such cleaning is part of her job. He swears again, face twisting with disgust, and tells her to move on. God knows how many people this man’s killed, but rags soaked with menstrual blood have the power to horrify him.

She clears the barricade and follows a boy named Riccardo down a narrow alley, through a low plank door. The other kids filter in, delivering stolen purses, wallets, and guns. Riccardo decides what he can fence in town and what he’ll sell to la vedova. The bargaining is swift. Two packets of British cigarettes for identity papers. He wants two more for the guns, but she shakes her head. “One pack,” she says. “We’ve got plenty of guns.”

“Bene.” Riccardo lights up.

“Next Tuesday,” she tells him. “The Genoa gate.”

The child’s cheeks hollow as he takes a drag. He coughs and nods, then raises a grubby hand in farewell. “Next Tuesday,” he agrees. “Ciao, bella.”