A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russell

  Years have passed, and Werner Schramm is in a garret once again, but artistic dreams play no part in his choice of quarters now. He needs a place to hide, and this attic is the cheapest he could find. “View of the sea,” the advertisement promised, without mentioning, “only if you sit in the musty upholstered chair near the southern window, lean onto your left elbow, and squint.”

  From there, he can just barely see an island in Sant’Andrea’s harbor. “What is that big building on the island?” he asked his landlady after his first night under her roof.

  “Il lazzaretto di incurabili,” Signora Usodimare said, crossing herself. “A hospital for incurables. Mostly tuberculars, poor things. You shouldn’t smoke so much, signore! It weakens the lungs. You could get consumption, you know.”

  “Yes,” he said, making his face bland. “I’m trying to quit.”

  To change the subject, he asked her for something to read. Proudly, she offered a history of Sant’Andrea, which he studies daily, a thick dictionary at his side. The lazzaretto, he’s learned, was built to isolate victims of the Levantine plagues that Renaissance merchants imported to Europe, along with spices, silks, and ivory. During a single fifteenth-century epidemic, over 150,000 Sant’Andresi died. In hope of a cure, Ludovico Usodimare sailed off to raid Montpellier, determined to capture the mummified body of Saint Roch—a holy relic, sovereign against plague. Alas, the Venetians arrived first and stole the Frenchman’s corpse before Usodimare could. A practical man, the prince did some pillaging on his way home and acquired, among other things, a golden salver. This plate, he declared, had once carried the severed head of John the Baptist, and he built the Basilica di San Giovanni Battista to house his souvenir.

  “At a stroke,” the breathless author informs Schramm, “Ludovico Usodimare surpassed Andrea Doria of Genoa, who only had a church, and miraculously reduced Sant’Andrea’s mortality from plague ever after.” Natural selection, Schramm replies, setting the book aside. The most susceptible had died off. The surviving population was resistant.

  “My late husband was an Usodimare,” his landlady reminds Schramm whenever there is the smallest conversational opening to this topic. Dependent on her discretion, Schramm refrains from commenting on the extent to which ancestral splendor has diminished. Like everything else in this charmless city, his room is cramped and innocent of taste. Time and a leaky roof have been unkind to the walls. A threadbare rug adds little warmth to the uneven plank floor. The mattress is lumpy and thin, the linens frayed. The bulb in his reading lamp is of such low wattage as to be useless.

  When the sun sinks behind the roofline of the apartment house next door, Schramm reaches for a bottle and settles back to watch the sky darken mercifully over the scene below. Even before the bombing, Sant’Andrea was a Frankenstein monster sutured together from the decaying ruins of its millennia. Bits of sarcophagi, looted from Egypt, protrude from massive medieval walls. Fluted Roman columns support Gothic arcades fitted with Renaissance portals. Allied bombs have added debris to the architectural mess.

  On Saturday, Schramm starts drinking a little earlier than usual. When he’s dosed himself sufficiently to control his cough, he dresses in the ill-fitting suit Signora Usodimare purchased at his request. The cinema is half a block away, with no checkpoints to pass, no document inspection at the box office.

  By the time Schramm has slipped into the last row of seats, the house lights have dimmed and the avanspettaculo has begun. Dancers, comedians, and singers perform before the film in a sort of cabaret act. The jokes are in dialect, but Schramm enjoys the laughter and can follow some of the song lyrics. The show ends with a tenor dressed as an Alpino. Longing for home, and love for Mamma, ensure a standing ovation for the troupe.

  The stage darkens. Pulleys sweep dusty velvet curtains aside, exposing the shimmering screen. The latest Film Luce newsreel flickers and solidifies. Audience reaction provides Schramm with an informal referendum on current events. Scenes of Italian humiliation are met with sullen silence. German tanks and armored cars roll into Rome through Saint Paul’s Gate. Opposition by adolescent Socialists and middle-aged civilians armed with cobblestones is crushed. The Wehrmacht occupies four-fifths of Italy. Italian territories in France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Salonika are part of Greater Germany now.

  Mussolini’s appearance is met with hisses. Snatched from internal exile by SS commandos, il Duce wears a dark topcoat and a jaunty hat, looking dapper if a bit dazed when he climbs out of a small plane to shake the Führer’s hand.

  The scene changes. Schramm straightens. Even the Sant’Andresi, no strangers to Allied bombing, gasp at the result of an American raid on Frankfurt. Burning buildings seem to melt, their bricks pouring through the air, dust rising like a waterfall’s mist. It’s enough to make a mason weep, centuries of work reduced to smoking heaps of wreckage. In low tones of outrage, the narrator vilifies heartless Allied bombardiers for causing thousands of civilian deaths.

  The screen brightens. “A sea battle rages in the Aegean sunshine!” the narrator announces. “Defeatist-Traitor Badoglio met Eisenhower aboard the HMS Nelson, but an expected Allied landing in the Gulf of Genoa has not materialized.” In the south, Italian Republican units have inflicted five thousand British casualties at Salerno, but the Axis has lost Pompeii and Naples after weeks of vicious infantry combat and nonstop dogfights over southern airspace. “Coraggio, countrymen! The German Reich has come to embattled Italy’s aid! The American Fifth Army and the British 56th Division are stalled at the Volturno! There will be an all-out defense of Rome! The Gustav Line will hold!” Almost as an afterthought, the narrator concludes, “The Red Army has retaken Smolensk.”

  No news of Freiburg, but even Schramm can name the targets. The Kronenbrücke bridge. The Hauptbahnhof and the railroad maintenance yards. Fauler’s foundry, Grether’s heavy-equipment factory. Herr Rombach’s ironworks. Fabric and thread manufacturers like Mez and Krummeich will be hit, to deprive the Reich of uniforms. “Stay away from anything that might attract raids,” Schramm writes to Elsa in his mind. “Don’t believe what you’re told about the war, or about me. Someday I will send for you, and Klaus and Erwin.” But no—there must be nothing incriminating, nothing that could be held against one’s family. “Mein Mädel, my darling girl, take our boys to the countryside, where life is healthier. Never believe me fallen. One day, we will be reunited.” Better, he thinks. Something any patriotic soldier might send his wife. He wonders if it will be enough to disappear, or if he should try to fake his death. He wonders if he’ll live long enough to bother with fakery.

  The cinema crowd stirs, murmurs, and settles in to watch the featured film. La cena delle beffe is a popular costume drama in which Good (Amedeo Nazzari) defeats Evil (Osvaldo Valenti) for the sake of Beauty (Clara Calamai). Even Schramm has seen the movie twice. Celluloid is scarce. Not even directors like Blasetti make new movies anymore.

  Schramm waits until the much-anticipated moment when Beauty bares the first bosom ever to grace Italian screens. While Signorina Calamai absorbs the cheering crowd’s attention, Schramm gets up to leave, but the change in posture upsets the precarious balance in his chest, and the coughing starts again. Three rows up, someone twists in his seat. Schramm freezes. It’s the man from the church that first day. What was his name? Lorenzo? Something like that . . . Renzo!

  Touching his temple with one finger in a small salute, Renzo turns back to the film. Hurrying outside, Schramm finds the nearest alley, and doubles over to retch up phlegm. Wet-eyed with exertion, he is too preoccupied to be surprised when the Italian appears at his side and exclaims quietly, “Herr Doktor, what a terrible suit! Care for a drink?”

  Schramm nods gratefully, and Renzo leads the way through a bewildering rats’ nest of dark and twisting carrugi, circumventing checkpoints and roadblocks with casual changes of direction. All evidence of occupation disappears as they near the docks. The Gestapo has conceded this neighborhood to the wiry men in cotton singlets who loiter, silent and s
uspicious, at every turn. Fishmongers and butchers stand in doorways, canvas aprons splashed with rusting crimson. Motionless knives drip blood onto cobblestones. Renzo receives and returns nods and gestures of greeting. Not even the whores smile at strangers like Schramm.

  The tavern is small, dismally lit. Longshoremen hunch over low mounds of cheap food. Sailors’ thumbs hook the edges of plates in memory of meals tossed by waves. The earthy smells of tripe, dried cod, and chickpeas mingle with the tang of sweat. Renzo takes a small table in the back. The barman delivers a bottle of grappa and two small glasses. Schramm chokes on the first harsh sip, then sighs as its comforting warmth relaxes his chest.

  Renzo’s drinking is steady and silent. When the bottle’s contents are visibly diminished, Schramm sets his own glass down. “Keep that up,” he warns, “and you won’t see forty.”

  “Promise?” Renzo wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “And who are you to talk?”

  “Point taken,” Schramm says. “What day is it?” he asks.

  Renzo gives the matter thought. “Saturday?”

  “No! The date! What’s the date?”

  This takes longer. “October eighth. I think.”

  “Verdammte Scheisse. I got a telegram last month,” Schramm whispers, leaning close. “All leaves canceled. Report to your unit immediately! Jesus. October eighth . . . That’s a whole month of not reporting immediately.”

  Closing his eyes, he concentrates on how much better his chest feels, and how glad he is to be here and not in Russia. “Once,” he says, “when I was at the front, we set up a field hospital in a town just taken by a panzer division. There were five or ten Reds around every house. Guts spilling out of bellies. Brains drizzling out of skulls. In the middle of the street, there was a forearm. Completely unharmed, except it was all by itself. No body.”

  Renzo nods and pours.

  “On the other side of the street, there was a naked leg, sticking straight up out of the snow. Rigid, like an obelisk!” Schramm takes as deep a breath as he can. “Most of the Russians were dead, but there were wounded. One was firing so wildly, no one could get near.”

  Renzo’s vague eyes come up. “You shot him?”

  “No, but I didn’t treat him.”

  “Would’ve been suicide.”

  “I knew you’d understand!” Schramm makes a strangled gagging sound, and for once the cough loses a skirmish. “Another man’s clothes were on fire,” he says, clearing his throat. “When the flames got to his ammunition pouch, it exploded. I was five meters away. It was a miracle I wasn’t killed.”

  “No miracle for the poor bastard with the ammo pouch.” Renzo scrubs rhythmically at his face. “God only works for the survivors.”

  “There was another man—shot through the eyes, from one side to the other. He moaned and moaned, and his face . . . Wounds steam in the cold. Like soup. Did you know that?”

  “You told me before.”

  “I expect I did. I talk too much when I’m drunk.” Schramm slumps in the warped wooden chair, fingers curled around his emptied glass. “Nothing I say shocks you,” he realizes. “You’re a veteran, aren’t you.”

  “Abyssinia,” Renzo says, enunciating carefully. “Combat pilot.”

  Schramm snickers. “Combat! Four hundred crack Italian pilots in the world’s best planes, sent to fight the Abyssinian air force—which consisted of eleven planes, as I recall, only eight of which were actually capable of flight.”

  Renzo’s glassy eyes turn cold. “They had a million men under arms. Mountains favor the defenders. We had superiority in the air, and we used it. That war wasn’t the mismatch the British said it was. Fucking League of Nations,” he mutters. “If they hadn’t slapped sanctions on us, Italy never would’ve joined the Axis.”

  “What was it like?” Schramm asks. “To fly, I mean. I’ve never been in an airplane.”

  “You ski?”

  “Notschrei’s about three kilometers from where I grew up.”

  “Ever jump?”

  Schramm nods.

  “With a small plane, it’s like that, except you don’t come down. Single-engine trainers, they leap into the air. And then . . . you’re in a different world. On a cloudy day, you get up around two thousand meters, break through into sunshine—” He rubs his forehead with one hand. “Bombers are different. Like flying freight trains.”

  Schramm tries to imagine it, but all that comes to mind are newsreel memories of Mussolini’s inglorious African adventure. Black bodies smeared with ocher, running barefoot into battle against machine guns. Chieftains dressed in leopard skins, with lion cubs on leashes. Men waving curved swords and wooden pitchforks at airplanes strafing them with—

  Struck by a thought, Schramm stares at the man across the table. “You’re a Jew!” he whispers, astonished.

  After a long moment, Renzo asks, “What makes you think so?”

  “You’re healthy. You’re a combat pilot. Your country is—was—at war. You’re not in uniform. Ergo: you are a Jew.”

  “And you,” Renzo says with a grin of warning, “are a deserter.”

  Schramm’s laugh is quickly lost to a sharp, shallow cough. “It’s beginning to look that way,” he admits soggily, pulling out another handkerchief.

  “Jesus, Schramm! Why didn’t you take medical leave?”

  Schramm tries again, and this time he manages the long, vigorous gasp required to shift a heavy clot of phlegm. “I’m not sick. I’m dying.”

  Working it out, Renzo moves back in his chair. “Tuberculosis.”

  “I fooled myself at first, and then . . . Well, the Reich was desperate for doctors in Russia. Now even amateurs can diagnose the condition!”

  “I’ve seen it before. My father. A friend’s uncle.” Renzo’s brow wrinkles in a muzzy effort to understand. “Why don’t you just go home?”

  “I’d be executed.”

  “For deserting, sure, but you must have known for months.”

  “Time, my friend, is rationed quite severely for the Reich’s consumptives. The final solution to the tuberculosis problem. Saves several Reichsmarks a day on hospital care.” Seeing no comprehension, Schramm waves the topic off. “Why the hell did you go to war? Italy is a beautiful country, filled with beautiful women, beautiful art, beautiful food. Why travel thousands of kilometers to the arse-end of Africa, just to bomb naked savages armed with spears?”

  Renzo looks away. “It was . . . complicated. There was a girl my family wanted me to marry.” He shudders briefly. “And also the girl I was—” He clears his throat, and Schramm nods with avuncular understanding. “And there was another girl. She wouldn’t have me.”

  “Your true love!” Schramm brightens. “She was a Catholic!”

  “There were religious differences.” Renzo shrugs. “Anyway, joining the air force was patriotic. And convenient.”

  “Shall I tell you why young men love war?” Schramm offers dreamily. “In peace, there are a hundred questions with a thousand answers! In war, there is only one big question with one right answer.” He pours them each another shot, emptying the bottle. “War smashes all our petty problems and sweeps the shards into one huge, patriotic pile. Going to war makes you a man. It is emotionally exciting and morally restful.”

  “I believed the lies,” Renzo says, leaning back in his chair. “Like every other fool from the Alps to Sicily, I thought I had a share in the glory that was Rome. Mussolini screwed Italy with history, but it wasn’t always rape.” He reaches out to tap Schramm’s glass with his own. “Some of us bent over.”

  “Would you like to know what the German lie is?” Schramm whispers. “We are the nation of Beethoven and Schiller and Goethe! We are a great people. But—” Schramm leans close. “Did I compose the Eroica? What poetry have I written? Race isn’t talent! Greatness isn’t just . . . being German. Who could believe nonsense like that? I’ll tell you who! Chicken farmers. Shoemakers. Grocery clerks. Academic drudges. Bureaucratic hacks.”

  �
�Put ordinary shitheads in impressive uniforms, give them guns and permission to use them, they’ll shoot anyone who threatens their illusions,” Renzo agrees. “So what made you put the uniform on?”

  Schramm digs out his wallet, extracts a photo. “That’s my Elsa with Klaus and Erwin. You should’ve seen her before she thickened up.” He passes the picture across the table. “Lovely girl. And we made strong, handsome children. Sturdy, my two boys! Perfect little Aryans. I joined the party because I wanted what the Führer wanted. I wanted German children to have a better childhood than my generation had after the Great War. They’d have good, nourishing, unadulterated food—wholemeal bread, fresh vegetables! The state would make industries clean up the poisons they were spewing into the air and the water.”

  “An idealist,” Renzo groans. “The most dangerous kind of criminal!”

  “Doctors would transcend the selfishness of treating single patients. We’d be physicians to the Volk! There’d be no disease, no deformity. No madness, no perversion or divorce. No unemployment—”

  “And no Jews?”

  “No drunks either!” Schramm sobers a bit. “I knew a Jew in Freiburg. He had a bookstore on Holbeinstrasse . . . You always hear that Jews are money mad, but—”

  “—generally from people who borrow money.”

  “He always gave me the whole year to pay for my textbooks. He was very decent about it.”

  “Jews are simply members of the human race.” After a thoughtful pause, Renzo adds, “I can think of no worse insult.”

  “There are plenty of people who can,” Schramm warns. “They never saw you. They don’t know your name. They don’t know anything about you, but they hate you. They hate your mother, they hate your sister, they hate your cousin’s little baby boy.” Schramm shakes his head. “I never understood the logic. You’re Communists to a man, but you own all the banks. You’re subhuman, but you’re running the world.”