A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russell

  Osvaldo hesitates only long enough to pull his rosary from his pocket, to look at the crucifix and bring it to his lips. “The sick require a physician’s help, not the healthy”—that’s what Jesus taught. But gazing at the emaciated figure on the cross, what Osvaldo sees are the cool, clean hands of a doctor touching the warm flesh of a starving Jew. The hands of a physician who touches not to heal or comfort but to push a syringe full of poison into his 91,867th victim’s heart.

  If that can be forgiven, Osvaldo thinks, hell is empty.

  May 1944

  MOTHER OF MERCY ORPHANAGE

  ROCCABARBENA

  Everybody thinks Isma is a half-wit, but Angelo Soncini is pretty sure she’s Jewish.

  At first, Angelo thought he was the only Jew in the orphanage. Then one time he was doing chores, and scrubbing circles on the floor made him hum. Riccardo came over and whispered, “Quit that!” Angelo thought he wasn’t supposed to scrub anymore, but when he started to get up, Riccardo said, “No, stupid! Just shut up! You were humming ‘Hatikva’!”

  After he knew about Riccardo, Angelo looked for other kids pretending to be Catholic. He watched at meals to see who kept kosher, but that didn’t work. There’s never any meat, so there’s nothing you can’t mix with milk, so everything’s pareve. Mostly there’s zucchini, or potatoes, or polenta, or rice in watery soup, and a little bread after school. You might get an egg if you’re real sick, but you have to have spots or something. The sisters can tell when you’re faking it. Sometimes there’s soup with real old pasta, and little worms floating in it. Worms are definitely not kosher, but everybody picks them out, except the biggest boys, who eat them to make the girls scream and get in trouble.

  You have to be quiet all the time, except at recess and on Sunday after Mass. You have to act real serious like the sisters. You have to walk in lines, two by two, and you wear dark blue uniforms with white shirts if you’re a boy, and white blouses if you’re a girl. You have to be obedient, and you can’t have anything that belongs to you alone, so you have to be careful with everything. Because it’s not yours, it’s just “for your use.” When you outgrow your pants or something, you turn them in and get bigger ones. For your use. If you talk or get out of line, you’ll get a smack from Suora Paola. Suora Paura, everyone calls her: Sister Scary.

  Sister Scary always yells, and she calls you by your last name, and sometimes Angelo forgets that his name is supposed to be Santoro, and he gets in trouble because he doesn’t answer right away. After he figured out about Isma, Angelo snuck up and told her, “Watch out for Suora Paura—she’ll smack you one if you do something wrong!” Isma just stared at her feet and said, “Isma glai,” or something like that. That’s all she ever says, so that’s what everybody calls her: Isma.

  “Suora Paola has to be strict,” Suora Corniglia told Angelo. “If soldiers are coming, you have to do exactly as we say without asking why, or somebody might get hurt.” Suora Corniglia always explains stuff, and she never ever yells. Not even soft. Suora Corniglia calls everybody by their first names, like a mother, and she’s pretty, and nice, and she has dimples. Angelo is going to marry her when he grows up, because she’s always kind. She’ll wear pretty dresses then.

  But she can still go to Mass.

  Sometimes Suora Corniglia hides half an apple in her big sleeves, and she secretly gives a quarter to Angelo and a quarter to Isma. Suora Corniglia is real careful that nobody else sees. That’s another reason Angelo thinks Isma’s Jewish.

  Plus, another reason is, Sister Scary let Isma keep that stupid doll. It’s just a china head and a rubber body with the arms gone. The hair is all scrabbly. It’s ugly, and nobody’s allowed to have private stuff, but when Sister Scary tried to take it away, Isma screamed so much you could hear it all over the school, and everybody thought their ears were going to fall off. “It’s all the poor little thing has,” Suora Corniglia told Sister Scary. And then they looked at each other real serious. That’s how Angelo figured out for almost sure that Isma is Jewish. If she was a Catholic kid, she could’ve screamed until she turned blue. Sister Scary still wouldn’t have let her keep that doll.

  A lot of girls cheat, though. They make little, tiny dolls out of a stick and a scrap of cloth or a leaf or something. They hide the dolls in their uniform pockets. At recess the girls take the dolls out and make them talk to each other in real high squeaky voices. It makes Angelo sick.

  Most of the time the boys and girls are apart, so Angelo doesn’t see Isma much, except at recess. And Mass. Everybody goes to Mass together at 6:30 every morning, which surprised Angelo a lot the first time. In synagogue, ladies and girls had to sit up in the gallery, but in church, they sit right in with men and boys! Angelo understands that now. In the synagogue, the women always came late, and then they talked too much, and the men would always be looking up and glaring at them, and when the women got noisy, Signor Tura would hiss like a snake. But Catholic girls know how to shut up. The sisters teach them that in school.

  Angelo likes Mass, except for the crucifix, which is scarier than Suora Paura. One time, when Angelo went to visit Don Osvaldo at San Giobatta, Babbo told him, “In the old days, the Romans did that to anyone who made trouble. There was a slave called Spartacus who fought for freedom, and the Romans crucified six thousand of his followers, all along the Via Appia.” When Angelo asked Suora Corniglia what kind of trouble Jesus made, she said, “He died for our sins.” Which still doesn’t seem fair, even though Suora has tried real hard to explain it.

  Mass is mostly very nice. The candles are like when Mamma lit the candles for Shabbat. Near the end, the priest chants, “Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus!” just like when Babbo chants, “Kadosh! Kadosh! Kadosh!” And the priest wears fancy stuff that looks like what Aaron wore in the Tent of Meeting in the desert—Angelo had a picture book about that when he was little. Plus, the singing is good.

  Angelo likes school, too. There aren’t many books, so they memorize a lot. Multiplication tables, case endings, trees, stars, how to use punctuation. Angelo has a good memory, but sometimes he pretends he doesn’t know an answer because there’s this big kid named Bruno Ceretto. Bruno’s older, because he got held back. He’ll twist your arm real hard if you show off. Bruno hates show-offs, but he’s more show-offy than anybody.

  The whole school has recess after lunch. Angelo doesn’t play with Isma, but he watches out so nobody picks on her. Once Bruno took Isma’s stupid doll away from her, and Angelo slugged him in the stomach so hard Bruno couldn’t even talk, and then recess was over. Bruno leaves Isma alone now, but then he started kicking Angelo whenever he got the chance, so Angelo would punch him. Sister Scary caught them fighting, and made them both kneel for an hour on pieces of real hard, dry corn, which hurt worse than getting kicked, and made marks in his knees that are still there! So now Angelo just says, “Girls kick. Are you a girl, Bruno?” Bruno gets mad, but he can’t do anything because Sister Scary is watching them all the time with real fierce eyes.

  Someday his parents will visit, and Angelo is definitely going to tell them how mean Sister Scary is. Angelo got a secret message that he was going to see Babbo at Passover, but he didn’t come. When Angelo cried, Suora Corniglia said it was too dangerous at Passover because the Germans might suspect. But still.

  His parents will visit pretty soon. Angelo is almost practically sure of that. He’s going to tell them they should adopt Isma. They can change her name to Altira because Isma’s not a real name. It’s a pretend name, like Angelo Santoro. Or Sister Scary.

  “You can come and live with my family after the war,” he promises Isma at recess every day.

  Isma just hugs her stupid doll and looks at her feet. “Isma glai.” That’s all she ever says.

  Long white fingers grip a wooden-handled brass bell at 5:15 A.M., and Suora Ursula calls, “May Mary’s immaculate heart . . .” From every cell, the responsum comes: “. . . be forever praised.”

  Suora Corniglia pulls off a plain cotton nightg
own and dresses as she has each morning since she became a postulant: in a fog of half-remembered dreams. Hands clumsy, she ties the laces of stout black shoes, then pulls a blue-violet gown over white cotton undergarments. She tightens the belt around her waist, adjusting the soft pleats of the gown. There are more pleats now than ever. She’s never been a large person, but since the occupation began weight has fallen off her and the other nuns like leaves from a tree. They are bone-tired and always hungry, but this is no more than anyone else suffers, and much less than many endure. Together, she and her sisters in Christ remember Jesus in the desert, and join their hunger to His.

  A plain woolen scapular goes over her head, falling almost to the floor in front and behind. Beginning to wake up, she kisses the silver crucifix and slips its long chain around her neck. In the corner of the cell, propped overnight on a mop pole: the white coif and cape with its new black veil. She settles it onto a forehead grooved by the stiffly starched headband that sits just above her brows, and fastens its laces at the back of her neck. Muffling sound, the fabric embraces her face, and she adjusts the drape of the cloth that covers her shoulders.

  Her clothing, like the cell she sleeps in, is merely “for her use.” The practice of poverty is meant to free the mind and heart from concern for worldly goods, but before she came to the convent, she never thought so much about material things as she does now. She conserves the tiniest slivers of soap. She is aware of each millimeter of candlewick burned. In spare moments she repairs hems, patches holes, mends stockings for the children. The fabric is old. Careful stitches come apart. Sometimes it’s all she can do to keep from weeping.

  Turning back loose outer sleeves the prescribed twelve centimeters, she stands and waits. The bell rings a second time, and she joins her sisters in procession to chapel. She used to pray for the end of the war, but she suspects God doesn’t need a nun to nag Him about that. These days she prays for patience with the children and the mending, with her superiors and herself.

  Ite, Missa est: Go, the Mass is ended. Older orphans shepherd littler ones to a refectory where peasant women dish out polenta. The nuns return to the convent to share a breakfast hardly more substantial than the communion wafers they have just received. When the bell rings again, Suora Corniglia stands for the two-by-two procession with the other teachers to the school.

  The classroom for her use is large and high-ceilinged, floored with gleaming chestnut. Whitewashed walls reflect the light pouring through enormous windows that look out over an old Roman bridge. On the eve of its third millennium, Ponte Ligure seems determined to carry people and goods across the river forever, but British bombardieri cannot let this insult to their manhood stand. They return for round after round in a lunatic boxing match: twentieth-century explosives versus first-century stonework. At least once a week she has a nightmare about the classroom windows. In her dreams, they’re shattered by concussions, and the children are cut to pieces.

  At 8:00 the students file in, two by two, their lives as regulated by brass bells as her own. They take their places next to scarred wooden desks bolted to sleighlike iron runners, shortest to tallest, so the ones in the back can see over those in front. When Bruno Ceretto arrives at the last desk in the far corner, they chorus, “Buon giorno, Suora Corniglia.”

  They are unsmiling except for Angelo, who sneaks a grin at her like a secret lover. Embarrassed by the thought, Suora Corniglia frowns when she replies, “Buon giorno, children. Bruno, will you lead us in the Credo?”

  Prayers are recited in singsong Latin. Permission is granted to be seated. Floor bolts creak as small bottoms hit wood. The boys know the schedule as well as she does, but they wait for her cues.

  Religion. History. Grammar. The morning passes. Desktops bang open, slam closed. The boys wait. She nods approval and faces the blackboard in a swirl of dark blue wool. Raising her arm, she places a centimeter-long stub of chalk against the blackboard. “When subtracting a—”

  Two planes flash by, level with the hillside school. For an instant, she sees a pilot clearly. Machine-gun fire spits in both directions. Bombs bounce off stonework into the river. Water erupts into the air. Boys surge toward the windows.

  “Get away from the glass!” she shrills, seizing Angelo and Bruno by their shirts. She can hear the planes’ engines as they climb and bank to reapproach German gun emplacements. Fabric gives way as she flings the boys toward the door. “Into the corridor! All of you! Now! Now! Now!”

  “Did you see him?” Angelo asks Bruno excitedly. “The pilot looked right at us! Did you see him?”

  Trembling uncontrollably, she wants to slap the child for not being terrified, but by the time she has the whole class crouched along the edges of the hallway floor the attack is over, and someone is tugging on her sleeve, announcing, “Suora! Mario peed hisself!”

  Mario stares at his lap, fat tears slipping down thin cheeks. “O poveretto!” she sighs with exasperated sympathy. “Don’t make fun!” she orders sharply, glaring until nervous laughter lapses into suppressed giggles. “Bruno! You and Angelo take Mario to the dormitory. Ask Suora Idigna to help him clean up and change. Get clean shirts for your use and bring the ripped ones to me for mending. Be back here in ten minutes! The rest of you: into your seats!”

  The three boys march off: Mario bowlegged around the shamefully stained trousers, Angelo and Bruno tattered and torn from her own assault. Next time, she tells herself, grab arms, not collars.

  The balance of the day is uneventful, until the school portress knocks. With a stern look toward the boys, Suora Corniglia lays down her chalk and goes to the classroom door.

  “Sorry for the interruption, Suora,” the portress whispers. “There’s a Padre Righetti here to see you. He’s waiting at the convent.”

  She glances at the wall clock. “Grazie, suora. Ask him to forgive me, but I can’t leave until recess.”

  There are, in the event, two additional minor crises to manage. Sweeping into the convent receiving room, she says, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Padre. One of the boys—”

  The priest turns from the window. Suora Corniglia’s mouth drops open. So does the visitor’s.

  “You’re Angelo’s teacher?” He snaps his fingers twice, trying to recall where they met. “You—you were scrubbing the floor at San Giobatta!” he says. “September eighth, right?”

  “Yes!” she says with quiet excitement, placing him now. “You helped with the broken glass! You’re the—” She stops herself.

  “The Jew who went off with the German. I see you got a promotion.” His eyes flick toward her black veil. “You’re an officer now! How have you been, Sister Dimples?”

  “It’s Suora Corniglia,” she says primly, hands under her scapular. “And if that’s a costume for Carnevale, you’re a little late in the season. What are you doing in a cassock?”

  “Trying earnestly not to get arrested.” He holds up the biretta’s square crown, with its three shark fins and pompon, and puts it on his head, vamping like a Parisian model before sitting at the table. “I borrowed the ensemble from Osvaldo Tomitz, who was carrying a doctor’s bag last time I saw him.”

  “Not getting arrested seems to be Italy’s national sport,” she remarks, feeling a great deal less tired now. “I need to get back to the students in fifteen minutes. What was it you wanted, Padre?”

  She expects him to laugh at the title, but he sobers instead. “I’d like to meet with Angelo, if that can be arranged.”

  There’s something about his tone. “But—no! His parents?”

  “His mother and baby sister are safe. His father’s been jailed as a hostage.” He holds up a hand when the nun gasps. “For the moment, everything is fine, but I’d like to speak to Angelo. I led him to believe I could arrange a visit, and I want to explain. Is there any way I can talk to him without arousing suspicion?”

  “If he were older, you could pretend to hear his confession, but his class hasn’t had First Communion yet.” She thinks for a m
oment. “On Sunday afternoons, the children are allowed to hike up toward the monastery. Within reason, we let them do as they please for a few hours. They can play or read. Most of them hunt for mushrooms or berries—there’s so little food. If you were to wait by the monastery gate, I could steer him toward you.”

  “Do you think I could stay with the brothers until then?”

  “Ask for Fra Edoardo. You won’t have to explain anything to him.” She hesitates. “When Angelo comes to you, he’ll bring a little girl along. She’s only three, or maybe four. We think she might be one of the refugees who came over the Alps last year.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “We don’t know. She’s almost mute, poor thing. The children call her Isma. The only thing she ever says is, ‘Isma glai.’ ”

  “Isma glai . . . ? Ist mir gleich? Is that what she says?”

  “I suppose . . . Yes! That could be it—nursery German for ‘I don’t care’?”

  “Don’t say anything to her yet. Let me talk to her first.” Fussing with unfamiliar fabric tangled around his legs, Renzo stands. “Until Sunday, then, Suora Fossette.”

  “Until Sunday. And don’t you dare call me Sister Dimples in front of the children!”

  A slow grin forms above the Roman collar. “The thought,” he lies, “never entered my mind.”

  Wrung out by five minutes’ effort fueled by a diet of poor-quality starch, spring chard, and not much else, Suora Corniglia leans against a terrace wall to muster strength and catch her breath. Beside her, tiny brown lizards dart into crevices between stones. Fig trees bake in the basil-scented warmth above meticulously tended vineyards that crisscross the hillside. The Mediterranean is a stripe of silver between gray-green foothills, and when the wind shifts, the astringency of pine from nearby mountains is replaced by the barest hint of salt and seaweed.