All around them, bullets sing and smack into masonry. Santino scuttles backward, stumbling when the body in his hands goes suddenly slack. The face above the dog collar is white. “Madonna! Did he just die?”
“I don’t think so,” the rabbi gasps, trying to keep a grip on a leg slick with blood. Landau catches up with them. “What happened?” Iacopo yells. “Why did—?”
“We had attacks planned all over the city. They must have thought the jailbreak was a signal.” A young man in laborer’s clothing tosses a pistol to Landau, who begins firing to give them cover. “Go, Rebbe!” he shouts. “Get to the truck!”
Around the corner, Giuseppe Farini waits with the Opel ready and running. He jumps out to release the tailgate when he spots Santino with a bleeding priest. “Gesù! What the fuck happened?”
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 nonna’s doctor!” Duno yells.
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 nonna’s house. The chalk sketches were almost beautiful. “In combat, you won’t see this,” Schramm warned. “Bullets make a mess.” Welling blood is venous; pulsing blood, arterial. “Get the bleeding under control first,” Schramm told him. “Find what leaks.” Put direct pressure on the wound—pad your hand with clean cloth if you have it. “Don’t cut a tubular structure,” Schramm said. “Never close the jaws of your scissors if you can’t see their tips.” A rapid pulse and pale blue gums? Shock: raise the feet, keep the trunk warm. Use iodine for disinfectant, liquor for anesthetic. When neck wounds bubble and chest wounds suck, stitching the blue-rimmed hole won’t help. Convulsions signal cardiac arrest. Fixed, dilated pupils confirm death.
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 planning, split up to carry out raids. There were awful casualties at first, but they’ve developed a strategy that’s been consistently successful. They choose a road, blow up the next small bridge over a stream, and take the high ground nearby. Then they simply wait for a German column sent to investigate. It’s always preceded by two soldiers on motorcycles. Just as they realize the bridge is out, you shoot them to pieces, collect their weapons, and take the bikes. A couple of hours later, two German trucks carrying twenty men and small cannons will appear. Hold the high ground, shoot them to pieces, collect their weapons, their ammunition, and the trucks. Four hours later, two Tiger tanks arrive. By that time, you’re long gone: better armed, and scattered into a dozen ravines. The Übermenschen never change their tactics, and it’s costing them the war.
“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 nonna or Nello’s aunt to repair. The entry wound is small, above and behind
the knee. There’s no exit, just a huge bruised lump halfway up the thigh, in front. “The bullet is lodged here,” Duno says, palpating the front of the thigh. “I’m going to cut across the skin and take it out from the front,” he warns the patient. “I’ll be quick.”
Concentrating, Duno hardly hears the shout of pain when he slices through the bruise. Two more passes through granulated blood, and the blade strikes lead. “Hold as still as you can,” Duno says, using the knifepoint to midwife a slug through his incision. The man gasps, shudders convulsively, goes limp.
“Just as well,” Duno remarks, popping the bullet out. “Easier to sew when they’re unconscious.” He cleans the entry and exit wounds again, painting them with iodine, suturing. “This isn’t so bad, really. I’ve seen bullets pulverize the bone, rip the arteries, blow big chunks out of the meat.” Duno glances up. “Sorry, Rabbino. Put your head between your knees.”
With the leg bandaged, Duno starts digging grit out of the face, hoping to be done before the man comes to. It’s tedious work. “Somebody told me this is la nonna’s son,” he says to pass the time and distract the rabbi.
“He is,” the rabbi says. “Was. She’s dead.”
Duno’s hands freeze. He looks down, and realizes that the wounded man is awake beneath his fingers. “How?”
“Cross fire,” Renzo Leoni says. “Finish wha’ you’re doing.”
They move him twice, maybe three times. Always at night. The moon is quartered once, gibbous the next time. For a while, he’s hidden in a wine cellar, where cool, moist air does battle with a fever that threatens to burn him to the ground. Iacopo seems never to leave his side.
“Where’s Mirella?” Renzo asks.
“Suora Corniglia found a place for her and the children. She sends her love. Drink this. Then rest.”
“Go home. Go . . . wherever they are. Leave me alone.”
An outdoor bivouac, next. Shards of sunlight shattered by twisting leaves, falling like glass into eyes emerging from bruised lids. The Austrian boy comes and goes. Once Jakub Landau visits with a delegation from the CNL, hoping to recruit la nonna’s son; it is a mistake il polacco will not repeat.
Days become weeks. She sends her love. Mirella? Or Sister Dimples . . .
He hears conversations. Actions taken, casualties sustained and inflicted. Now and then, an adolescent comes near, pats his shoulder, and says, “I got one for her, comrade.”
By August, he can walk with a crutch. They move to Castello Ritanna, a long-abandoned hilltop fortress. “Some of the smaller rooms are intact,” the Austrian kid tells him. “We’re using them as a more permanent hospital.”
One day Schramm appears in a stone doorway, comes close, kneels at Renzo’s side. The German is professional at first. “Straighten the leg. Good. Flex it, so . . . Yes. Excellent.” Fingers probe the wounds. Renzo’s face is turned from side to side, its pitted, livid surface inspected. “The boy did a good job.” Schramm rocks onto bony haunches. “I am sorry about your mother, my friend. She was a remarkable woman.”
What is there to say?
September 1944
FRAZIONE SANTA CHIARA
VALDOTTAVO
16 SEPTEMBER
The first time she saw the blood, she thought that she was dying. Her father was still alive then, and Claudia ran to him, weeping, but he turned away from her distress. Tercilla Lovera rushed from the henhouse to see what the trouble was. Albert Blum elbowed his daughter. “Tell her,” he mumbled, and hurried off, embarrassed.
Tercilla listened, wiped her rough hands on a worn apron, and put horny palms on either side of Claudia’s wet cheeks. “Cara mia,” she said, “nobody ever dies of a nuisance.” That was the good news. The bad news was, it would happen every month, over and over. For years. “If it stops,” Tercilla warned, “you’re going to have a baby.”
Wonderful, Claudia thought while Tercilla taught her how to fold the rags. War isn’t enough? I have this to worry about, too?
A day or two later, Pierino brought home a set of safety pins he bought at Tino Marrapodi’s store. The pins made things easier, but Claudia couldn’t look Pierino in the eye for a week.
From then on, when she and Bettina walked down to barter cheese for pasta at Marrapodi’s, old men looked up from their cards or touched their caps when Claudia passed. Sometimes if she looked over her shoulder, she saw them measuring her hips with their eyes. “You’re a woman now,” Zia Tercilla told her. “Like Caesar’s wife, you must be above reproach, or men take advantage.”
The month her father died, Claudia herself was so sick with typhus that the bleeding didn’t come. Bereft, feeble, wretched, she sobbed, “I don’t . . . want to have . . . a baby. Papa’s gone! And I’m . . . too young!” So Zia Tercilla explained the rest. “Is that all?” Claudia demanded with soggy resentment. “Are there any other little surprises?”
“Wipe your nose,” Tercilla said. “The surprise is, it can be nice, if you have a good man like my Domenico.”
By late spring, things were back to normal, and while Claudia wasn’t exactly glad, she welcomed evidence that she had her health back. Kneeling now on a broad, flat rock at creekside, she weights her rags with stones and lets the water start her work. Washing them is a distasteful chore, but she’s gotten used to it. Like squatting on a pair of planks to relieve herself above a public cesspool, the nuisance and mess are simply part of life in Valdottavo.
It’s a life she’s made peace with, a life she feels ready for. She’s worked beside Tercilla and Bettina for nearly a year, kneading bread dough, sorting dried beans, beating flax, spinning wool. Since Claudia’s engagement, Tercilla’s constant instruction has become more emphatic. A housewife must know how and when to plant each kind of vegetable in the kitchen garden, what pests to watch out for. How to fertilize with chicken droppings without burning the crops. And how to preserve and store produce, and make cheese, and—
There’s time, Claudia tells herself firmly. I’ll learn what I need to know.
She and Santino will always be different—a Jew, a Calabrian. They will be without blood ties in the valley, but they won’t have a legacy of grudges and suspicion to overcome either. After the war, Santino will be a sought-after mason. Claudia is already a member of the community: Tercilla’s honorary niece, cousin to Bettina and Pierino. People on Pierino’s postal route say, “Ei!, postino! Send your cugina Claudia to write for us!” Pierino can read, haltingly, the rare letters he delivers—you don’t need a right hand for that—but Claudia does the writing.
The letters are nearly all the same. “Dear Son, we have no word of you since 1942. It’s summer, so we don’t worry now that you have no blanket. We pray to the Madonna you’ll come home from Russia before winter.”
Parents nod gravely when Claudia reads their words back to them and watch solemnly as she folds the letter into its flimsy envelope, inscribing it with the last known address of their missing boy. In return for the paper, the ink, and her trouble, they give Claudia an egg or a bit of cheese, and offer prayers for her fidanzato Santino. Claudia, too, has a man at risk.
She worries about Santino, naturally, but in a way that feels pleasingly adult and serious, and anyway, the war will be over by Christmas; that’s what everyone says. Sitting back on her heels, she lays a sliver of soap next to twists of cloth, stacked like cordwood on a dry rock. “Ecco!” she says to no one. “That’s done for another month.”
The skin beneath her breasts is greasy with sweat. She looks around, listening, but hears only the raucous rattle of cicadas. Satisfied that she’s alone, she quickly strips off her blouse and leans out over the creek, still slightly amazed by her own body. She scoops cool water over her breasts, onto her face, down her neck, into her armpits. Hiking up her skirt, she squats to soap between her legs. This is why Mama went to the mikveh every month! she realizes. To feel clean. To start time ticking again.
In no hurry to get back to the village, she sits on a boulder and watches leaves flutter and tw
irl on their stems as her fingers work at the buttons of her blouse. Once anonymous, the plants around her are familiar now; she knows Don Leto’s book from front to back. Laburnum alpinum, typical of subalpine mountains, she thinks. Rosa pendulina. Geranium sylvaticum. Saxifraga rotundifolia. The Latin binomials are like poetry. All the creekside plants are native, but nearly everything in the gardens is from America: tomatoes, potatoes, corn, squash, peppers. What on earth did Italians eat before Columbus?
Closing her eyes, she listens to the creek. Its hushed noise reminds her of applause for a symphony heard on the shortwave. The mountain is her orchestra now. She knows its music well—
Her eyes snap open. The first cry sounds almost like a birdcall, but so many songbirds have been trapped for food . . . She stands, straightens her skirt, moves away from the water’s babble, listens harder. A squeal this time. Or a bleat, like a lost goat might make.
Curious, cautious, she steps from rock to rock, crossing the creek to the other side of the ravine. She hears rough laughter, and she knows—already, she knows—but she makes her way to the top. Heart pounding, she raises her head just high enough to see, just long enough to be sure. Then she runs for home.
“The Germans were kicked like dogs south of Rome, but they pulled back in good order to the Trasimeno Line,” Santino says, drawing a finger across his shin. “They held the Allies there two weeks, but pulled back again to Arezzo.”
“We hhheard they’re d-d-dug in along the Aaarno,” Pierino says.
“The Gothic Line, they’re calling that one. A lot of men from Liguria and Piemonte were sent there to build walls, gun emplacements, watchtowers. That’s probably where your husband is, signora. I hope he’s all right.”
Tercilla nods, flattered by the attention. She’s heard that southerners are almost Arabs and keep their wives locked up, but Santino is respectful, full of news yet calm and steady. He always brings something from the city for Tercilla and Bettina. Little cubes of sugar this time, each wrapped in tiny pieces of paper with German words on them.
A Thread of Grace Page 36
