Our Darkest Night

by Jennifer Robson

  The neighbor’s boy had left the door on the latch, and an oil lamp, its flame turned low, waited on a high windowsill. Her father collected it in one hand, gathered his cloak in the other, and together they began the slow trudge to the top floor. They paused at each half landing, waiting for the pain in her father’s arthritic feet to subside. It was the price he had to pay, he often said, for living in the most beautiful city in the world.

  “I fear I am even slower than usual. A tortoise would surely take less time.”

  “I don’t mind. And it’s better than arriving even more short of breath than Signora Mele. I cannot imagine how she manages all these steps.”

  “I suspect she doesn’t. I know she relies on Signora Spagnolo downstairs to do her shopping.”

  “And the housework?” Antonina asked.

  “We shall see. But if her home is less than pristine we mustn’t take any notice,” he cautioned. “It would only shame her, and in turn make her less likely to ask for me when she’s poorly.”

  They knocked at her door, paused to listen for footsteps, and when none came her father entered the apartment. “Signora Mele? It is Dr. Mazin. May we come in?”

  A muffled response came from the far end of the apartment—the bedroom, Antonina remembered from their last visit. Following their ears, they found Signora Mele sitting in an upright chair next to her bed, a shawl around her shoulders. Her feet, just peeping out from the hem of her nightgown, were bare. She was clutching at the wooden arms of the chair, her fingers tinged with blue, and Antonina could easily hear the shallow rasp of her breathing from across the room.

  “My dear Signora Mele,” her father began, his tone a practiced mixture of warmth and concern. “It was very brave of you to get out of bed to greet us, but I would be happier to see you settled and comfortable. Will you allow Antonina to assist you? I shall wash my hands in the meantime.”

  Once his patient was sitting up in bed, the pillows arranged carefully at her back, Dr. Mazin examined her with meticulous care. When he was finished, he tucked the covers around her. “We don’t want you to catch cold. There. Now I am going to give you a tincture—it will help with your breathing tonight. Antonina, will you bring over the bottle I set out?”

  Signora Mele swallowed the medicine without protest, but even that small effort seemed to exhaust her. “What is wrong? Why am I so tired?”

  “Your heart is tired,” he explained, “and having to work harder than usual to keep you going, and that is why you feel light-headed at times.” He looked in her eyes as he spoke, and when she began to clutch at the bedclothes, pulling and twisting, he calmed her hands with his.

  He gave her a moment to take it all in, and when she began to cry he offered a clean handkerchief from his pocket. “I know you hate the idea of it, but I do think you must consider a move to the Casa di Riposo. There you will have help. You won’t have to waste your energy on housework and the like. And the food is excellent.”

  “But I have lived here for almost fifty years,” Signora Mele protested. “Ever since Daniele and I were married.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she didn’t attempt to wipe them away. “All my memories are here.”

  “Where are your daughters?” Antonina’s father asked.

  “Giulia is in Austria with her husband. They moved long before the war. I haven’t heard from her in months and months. And my Mara is in Bologna, but she is busy with the children, and her husband has been out of work for so long . . .”

  “Of course. I understand. Well, let me see what I can do. Try to eat as much as your appetite allows, but not too much soup. Not too much water either.”

  “Thank you, doctor. I have a few lire—”

  “No, no. None of that. Is there anything else we may bring you before we go? No? In that case we will let ourselves out, and Antonina will come in the morning to give you another dose of the tincture.”

  The walk home took an eternity. Her father was exhausted, and leaned ever more heavily on her arm as they moved from shadow to shadow, and by the time they were safely inside their own house, Antonina wanted nothing more than to retreat to her bedroom and bury herself under her eiderdown and blankets.

  But her father always found it difficult to sleep after such calls, and without her mother at home Antonina was the only person who might offer him comfort. So she helped him out of his coat and crouched to unlace his boots, and once he was settled in his favorite chair in the study, she went to the kitchen to fix a hot water bottle for his arthritis and a dose of grappa for the rest of him.

  He sighed happily when she set the earthenware bottle under his feet and the glass of spirits in his hands. “Thank you. For this, and for your help tonight.” He sipped at the grappa, his gaze intent upon her. “What do you think? What diagnosis would you offer?”

  “Congestive heart failure?”

  “Yes. Hence my insistence that she move to the rest home.”

  “Only if her daughter won’t take her in.”

  “The one in Bologna? I doubt it. My guess is that she will plead distance, or poverty, or some such combination, and Signora Mele will have to move. If she were truly interested in helping she’d have fetched her mother away years ago.”

  “I’ll visit her there when I go to see Mamma,” Antonina offered. “That will help.”

  “It certainly will, and she’ll be far safer there than alone in her apartment. All the same, I doubt she’ll be alive in six months. Not with her heart failing as it is.”

  The way he said it, so baldly, and with such certainty, tore at Antonina’s heart. “Can’t it be treated with a diuretic?”

  “Not when the heart is failing so rapidly. And it would only serve to make her miserable.”

  “What was in the tincture?”

  “A mild dose of digitalis. As I said, you’ll need to return tomorrow morning and again at supper to give her more. That will help a little.”

  “But not enough to keep her at home?”

  “No. And that small bottle is all I have. I doubt I’ll be able to procure more.”

  “So we do nothing?” she asked, her voice rising. It was unsettling to see her father so resigned to a patient’s fate.

  “No. Never nothing. We visit her, show her compassion, offer her help. That is very much more than nothing. And we will see her safely moved to the rest home.”

  “I wish there was more we could do,” she fretted.

  “Is that not the refrain of every decent doctor, every day of his—or her—working life?”

  “I suppose. It’s only that . . .”

  He waited for her to finish, though she was certain he already knew what she was going to say.

  “You shouldn’t have to practice medicine like this. As if you’re some sort of criminal. Creeping through the dark. Having nothing to offer your patients beyond your attention and your sympathy.”

  “I agree, but to do more is to risk arrest. And I can do nothing if I am confined to a prison camp.”

  He was right, of course he was right, but the knowledge rankled. To stay, to wait, to let themselves drown as the waters rose around them?

  “Why can’t we leave? Find our way to Spain? Or across the border to Switzerland?”

  “I think of little else,” he said, regret shadowing his eyes. “But I cannot imagine how we might take your mother safely. The Swiss would certainly never let us through at one of the official crossings. Not with her so clearly unwell.”

  “Then Spain—”

  “No. They would be equally unwelcoming, and the journey across the sea is far too dangerous.”

  “Then we sneak across the border. We’ll hire someone to help us—to help carry her. Mamma weighs hardly anything now.”

  “No. It’s too great a risk. I know you’ve heard the stories. People pay for safe passage and then are delivered into the hands of the fascists.”

  “You have friends everywhere,” she pleaded. “You can ask them to help us.”

  “Only to
put their lives at risk. And that is something I cannot ask of anyone.”

  Her father had been staring at something over her shoulder, his gaze unfocused, and she didn’t have to turn to know what was drawing his attention. It was a photograph of the three of them, taken on her eighteenth birthday, not long before Mamma had fallen ill. It had been the spring of 1938, before the racial laws had stripped away nearly everything that mattered. Only a few scant years, but it might as well have been a century.

  “Papà?”

  “Yes?” he answered, his eyes upon her again, and for a heartbeat she saw it—the absence of hope. It was there, and then he blinked it away, and even tried to smile, but she had seen it and he knew.

  She ought not to have questioned him like that, needling away, ignoring how tired he was, for of course he had considered everything. Of course he had lain awake, night after night, slowly smothering under the crushing weight of their plight.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right—of course you are. We’ll be safe here. We only need to keep on as we’ve done. I was wrong to panic just now.” Useless, weak, impotent words, but what else did she have to give?

  She crouched next to his chair and set her head upon his knees. And she waited, her breath catching in her throat, for the moment when he would smooth her hair from her brow, his hand so cool and comforting, and tell her that all would be well.

  She waited, and after a while he did brush his fingers across her temple, and he bent his head close to hers, and she thought he might say something. She waited, but he had no words of comfort, and so she got to her feet, moved the now-cool hot-water bottle out of the way, and helped him stand on his poor, aching feet.

  “Good night, Papà.”

  “Good night, my darling girl. I—”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Only that I hope you sleep well.”

  Chapter 3

  21 September 1943

  Are you all done?” Antonina asked, waiting—hoping—for a spark of acknowledgment in her mother’s eyes.

  It was nearly seven o’clock, and she’d spent the last hour helping her mother eat her supper, one scant spoonful after another, just as she did every day. Every morning and midday, too, for the attendants at the casa were hard-pressed to spare the time for the task, and she never found it a chore to spend time with her mother.

  Yet for all the hours Antonina spent at her mother’s side, the moments of connection they shared were growing ever more elusive, and there had been one awful day, not so long ago, when her mother had not recognized her at all.

  Today, however, had been a good day, or something close to good, and her mother had allowed Antonina to feed her nearly the entire bowl of soup. “Let me wipe your face and hands with this cloth—isn’t the water nice and warm? There. That must feel good. And what if I were to read to you for a while? We can pick up at—”

  “Hello, Devora. Hello, my Nina.”

  “Papà! Look, Mamma—it’s Papà. We weren’t expecting you.”

  “I know, I know,” he said, crossing the room so he might press a kiss to his wife’s temple. Then he turned his head a fraction, just so he might look Antonina in the eye. “Will you come into the hall with me?” he asked, and the tone of his voice, so careful, so measured, alarmed her more than if he had screamed in her face. “We’ll let your mother rest for a moment.”

  There was nothing for it but to follow, her hands clammy with apprehension, and wait for him to share the terrible news with her. And she knew it was terrible, for it was hardly likely to be good news. Not with the newborn Republic of Salò so desperate to please its allies in Germany.

  “I am sorry for the haste. For frightening you. It’s only that something has happened, and I . . . I hardly know how to begin.”

  “Say it,” she implored. “Imagine I’m one of your patients and you’re giving me bad news. You have to say it, no matter what, otherwise how can the cure begin? Go on, Papà.”

  He nodded, hesitated for a further heart-tearing moment, and then, finally, whispered in her ear. “Arrests are imminent. Any day now. Any hour.”

  Since the moment German troops had first occupied Italy, only weeks before, she had known this moment would come. She’d been as sure of it as her next breath. And yet she still could not bring herself to believe. “How can you be certain? People have been worrying for weeks—why now? Why today?”

  “They came to Dr. Jona. The Gestapo. Because of his presidency of the Jewish community. And they demanded he provide them with the names and addresses of every Jew in Venice.”

  “Has he given them the lists?” Dr. Jona was her father’s friend. He was a good man. It was inconceivable that he should do such a thing.

  “No. No, he told them it would take a day or two. For him to gather the information they needed. At least I believe that’s what he said.”

  “Then we have—”

  “Let me finish. He sent them away, and then he destroyed the records, all of them. And when he was done he killed himself.”

  The horror of it swept over Antonina, engulfed her for a moment, and rushed away like the ebbing tide. She was left shaken, and grieving, and utterly certain of what they must do next.

  “We have to go now. It won’t take long to pack, and if we leave things behind it doesn’t matter. They’re just things, you see, and not nearly as impor—”

  “Antonina.” Her father took hold of her shoulders and pressed his forehead to hers. “Listen to me. I cannot leave. Too many people depend on me here. And I will not leave without your mother.”

  “But we could—”

  “No,” he insisted. “She is not well enough to travel. You know that as well as I do.” Now he enfolded her in his arms. “But you . . . you can leave.”

  “I could never,” she protested. “How could you even ask me?”

  “I have made all the arrangements. I had hoped this day would never come, but now it is here—no. No, my Nina. Stop shaking your head and simply listen to me,” he begged her.

  He was crying, she realized suddenly, and that was far more frightening than anything he had yet told her.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked, defeated.

  He looked over his shoulder, back down the corridor, but it was empty. “Father Bernardi has sent a man he trusts, a good man, and with his help you will go into hiding until this is over.”

  “You would send me away with a stranger?”

  “No. Not a stranger. A friend of a friend. To the village where Father Bernardi lives.”

  She wanted to scream, to shout, to beg him to consider something else, anything else, but then he pulled away, just enough that she could see his ashen face and the fear carved upon his beloved features, and her protests withered to nothing.

  “I understand,” she said, and it was true. At last she understood. “Is there time to say goodbye to Mamma?”

  “Of course. Don’t say anything, though. Just your usual farewell. But first . . .”

  He took out his handkerchief and wiped away her tears, and then she returned to her mother’s bedside for the last time.

  “I have to go, Mamma, but Papà will return later.”

  Antonina bent low to embrace her mother, and for an instant the desire to gather her up, as if she were the comforting parent and her mother the child, overwhelmed her. She would steal Mamma away, bear her weight for any distance, carry her over any mountain they were forced to climb. For her mother she would do it, and they would drag Papà along, too, and they would be together once more, and happy at last—

  “We must be going,” her father said, and sanity of a sort descended again.

  “I love you, Mamma,” she whispered, kissing her mother’s face, her hands, her soft and shining hair. “I love you so much.”

  Then she stepped away. One step, another, another, and with her father’s help she turned and walked along the quiet corridor, down the echoing stairs, and into the fading warmth of the setting sun.

  She
walked home calmly, arm in arm with her father, as if it were an ordinary evening and not the end of the life she’d always known. And since silence was painful and honesty even worse, she filled the journey with forced chatter that likely felt as awkward to his ears as it did to hers.

  “When you arrived I was about to read to Mamma. I left the book on the table next to her bed—I Promessi Sposi. We’re about halfway through. There’s a page marker, one of those little ribbons that are glued to the spine, so you won’t have any trouble finding where we left off. I think it was at the bottom of the left-hand page. You will read to her when you visit, won’t you?”

  “Of course, Antonina. Of course I’ll read to her. Every day.”

  “And you mustn’t rush her when she’s eating. Sometimes she won’t open her mouth, but it isn’t always because she’s done, or because she isn’t hungry. I think she simply needs a few minutes, just the way anyone else would if they were having a meal and wanted a sip of wine or a moment to let the food sit. So don’t give up right away, otherwise she’ll never eat anything, and you know she can’t afford to lose any more weight.”

  “I promise I will take my time,” her father said. “I promise.”

  On and on she went, her father dutifully nodding and acknowledging her requests, and it dawned upon her that in no time at all she would have to say goodbye to him, too, and her mouth went dry with the knowledge and weight of it.

  All too soon they were standing at the green door, so shabby and so dear, and her father’s steps were even slower than usual as they climbed the stairs. He was clutching at the banister, his knuckles white against his skin, as if it were his only lifeline in stormy seas.

  The house was cold and silent. “Marta?” she asked fearfully.

  “I sent her home. Her husband is a Gentile. She doesn’t have to worry. At least, not yet.”

  “But I wanted to say goodbye.”