Our Darkest Night

by Jennifer Robson

  “I surrender,” she called out.

  Zwerger whirled around, triumphant, and closed the distance between them.

  “It took you long enough.”

  “I was asleep when you arrived. I had to dress.”

  He stepped back, looking her over, and his expression curdled into disgust. “What is that?”

  She looked down and saw the two dark stains against the pale blue fabric of her bodice.

  “Where is the child?” Zwerger demanded.

  “Dead. Born dead because of you.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Why? Because my breasts are leaking? Don’t you know that a mother still produces milk for her dead child? Yet another horror you have laid at my door.”

  Zwerger whirled around, his gaze settling on the children. A few paces led him to Angela

  “Does she tell the truth? Was the child born dead?”

  Angela looked to her father, her entire body quaking with fear, and then to Nina. “Yes,” she said carefully. “The baby was dead. Rosa said it was because of the shock.”

  “Very well. And yet I think a search of this house is still worthwhile.”

  Zwerger barked out his orders; all but two of the soldiers rushed inside the house. The sound of crashing furniture soon followed.

  They were making such a racket. Surely it would wake the baby. Surely they would hear her wails and learn the truth of the hiding place. Nina held her breath, not daring to hope, but eventually the soldiers filed out and made their report to Zwerger.

  “But that is impossible!” he raged. “That sister of his—the one who spat in my face. What about her? Where has she got to?” He spun around and advanced on Nina again. “You are hiding something—I know it!”

  “I am not.”

  “But you are,” he insisted, and he took hold of her arm and dragged her across the courtyard until she stood before Aldo and his children. “Look at her—a Jew! All along she’s been hiding here, a cuckoo in your cozy nest, and she is the reason your Niccolò is lost to you. She brought this to your door—can you not see the truth of it?”

  “You lie!” Aldo shouted, and only the threat of the soldiers’ guns kept him pressed against the wall.

  “But I can prove it,” Zwerger insisted.

  “That she’s a Jew? What of it? She is my son’s wife. And that makes her my daughter. Nothing can change that. As for your other accusation, we both know that you are the reason my son is not here today. You alone are responsible for taking him from us.”

  Zwerger’s face was almost purple with rage. “What is wrong with you people? Are you simpletons? Is that it? She is your enemy!”

  Nina pulled at Zwerger’s sleeve until he spun round to face her. “You have me now. Why torture them further?”

  “I do have you, and I’ll see you dead, here and now! You know I’ll do it!”

  The children were wailing again, and Aldo had broken down, too, the tears streaming from his face. For their sakes she had to stop it.

  “Stop!” she screamed. “Enough! It’s me you want—only me. Why torment them now? Haven’t you sinned enough?”

  Zwerger pulled his arm from her grasp. “I am not the sinner here,” he snarled. “You brought this on yourself.”

  One of the soldiers came forward to bind her, but Aldo surged forward and slapped his hands away. “Leave her—just leave her!”

  In an instant, Zwerger’s pistol was at Aldo’s temple. “Stand back and shut up, old man.”

  “Papà, no!” Nina cried out. It was the first time she had called him by that name. “You must let me go. The children need you. Rosa needs you.”

  “How can I bear it?”

  “You can—you will. Now let me go, and I pray I will see your kind face again one day.”

  Her vision blurred by tears, she couldn’t see him or the children as the soldiers dragged her into the back of their truck. She could no longer see, but she could still hear, and their cries rang in her ears long after the truck had rumbled onto the road and away from Mezzo Ciel.

  Chapter 25

  The soldiers made her lie on the bottom of the truck, and they laughed whenever there was a bump in the road that jostled her about, and by the time it finally screeched to a halt she couldn’t think beyond or around the pain.

  They were at the rear of an enormous building, though in which city she had no idea. She was hauled from the truck, her body pawed by one bruising set of hands after another, and it was those same brutal hands that half carried, half dragged her inside and along a snaking corridor to a large interior courtyard.

  At its center was a gallows. A man had been left hanging there, his body swaying gently in the late afternoon sunshine, the sky above him achingly blue. The man’s head was covered by a black hood, but she recognized him still.

  It was by his clothes she knew him, for she had mended the trousers herself, many times, and the dark blue coat he wore was familiar, too, with its faded hem and the bottom button that didn’t match. She recognized those trousers and that coat.

  They belonged to Nico.

  She fell to her knees, and she tried to stop herself from looking again, but she had to do it. Had to know, truly and finally, that it was him.

  She stared at the body of the man she loved, her eyes dry, her scream trapped in her throat, and she ignored the men who kicked her and told her to get up, get up, dumb bitch, just get up.

  Only when one of them took a great fistful of her hair and dragged her to her feet did she let them pull her away from that place of death and the lonely, hanging body of her beloved. They took her along another corridor and down a flight of stairs, and then they pushed her into a room that was painted a horrible dark red, the exact color of dried blood, and locked her in.

  They left her prostrate on the floor, unable to rise, her hands still bound. Her breasts became engorged, the pain startling and fierce, and before long her bodice and brassiere and the pads Romilda had given her were all soaked through with milk, its scent inescapable and heartrending.

  The guard returned after a few hours, though it might have been far longer, and took her to another room, and there she was made to sit at a table, her arms still bound behind her, and the lights had been left on to stop her from falling asleep.

  She sat and waited, and she wondered if she was prepared to die. If she would find the strength to face it as courageously as Nico had surely done.

  Hours passed, and she rested her head on the table, hoping to sleep, but her thoughts were such a tangle, and the lights were so shockingly bright. She would never sleep again. That was one way to die, wasn’t it? To be kept awake until madness beckoned.

  The door crashed open and Zwerger entered. He sat across from her, and for the next minute or two he occupied himself with opening a file folder and arranging its contents as neatly as chess pieces on a board. There were letters and forms and photographs, and a small booklet that he set to one side, and a single identity card. Her identity card.

  Then he adjusted his chair, smoothed back his hair, and steepled his hands on the table that separated them.

  “A little more than a year ago, Niccolò Gerardi astonished his family and neighbors by bringing a wife home with him to Mezzo Ciel. They’d always assumed he would return to his true vocation once his brothers were grown and able to take over the farm, but instead he did something very different. He brought home a girl he’d met in Venice, a complete stranger who—and here I quote one of his neighbors—‘couldn’t tell one end of a bull from the other.’ Does any of this sound familiar?”

  Unwilling to look upon Zwerger’s loathsome face, Nina fixed her attention on the tabletop that separated them. She would not respond. She would not give in.

  “Very well. I doubt you will be surprised to learn that not a single church in Venice has a record of his marriage to Nina Marzoli—that is the name you gave me, is it not? Nor is there a Nina Marzoli registered at the nursing school attached to the ospedale. Nor has th
e director of St. Anthony’s orphanage in Padua ever heard of a girl named Nina Marzoli.

  “You can see where this has led me, of course. To you. To the whore who wormed her way into Niccolò’s confidence, his bed, and his heart. And it does make me curious. How were you able to turn him away from his vocation? Away from God?” He waited, his fingers tapping an arrhythmic beat against the tabletop. “You truly have nothing to say?”

  “What would a man like you know of God? You were jealous, and so you sought to destroy what you could not have—what you had no hope of ever becoming. A good man. An honorable man. A man who was loved.”

  “Silence!”

  “Nico told me about you. About the reason you were sent away from the seminary. It had nothing to do with your wanting to return to Austria, did it? You were asked to leave because you’d been bullying the other boys. Stealing from them, hurting them, making their lives a misery. Nico stood up to you, and he went to Father Superior and told him everything, and that was it for you and your dreams of becoming a priest.”

  “Shut your filthy mouth!”

  It was reckless to goad him so, but she could not bring herself to stop. “When you are on your knees and alone with God, what do you pray for? It can’t be forgiveness, for you are blind to your sins. What do you pray for when you are alone in the dark?”

  “Victory,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Victory over you and your kind.”

  “You will never have it. Don’t you know the war is all but lost?”

  She waited for him to strike her, to scream in her face, to kill her with the same pistol he’d already used to terrorize her family. Instead he began to laugh.

  “You stupid, stupid woman. Do you know nothing of what is taking place at this very moment? I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and I know what awaits you. Go on—sneer away. I have all the proof I need. And all it took was this little card.”

  Her identity card. Zwerger now tore it in two, then tore it again, and again, until the pieces lay like confetti on the table.

  “Last month we arrested a notary in Padua. The wretch blocked his door and tried to burn his files, but he wasn’t fast enough. We recovered almost everything, including this little ledger. A list of every man, woman, and child for whom he’d made up false papers. It was locked in his safe, but few men will keep secrets with a gun to their head.”

  She would not look. She would say nothing more.

  “I have it here, and if I open it to just the right page . . . yes, here you are. Nina Gerardi, née Marzoli, along with the fee that was paid for your papers. Five hundred lire—a bargain for the price. And can you see, just here, at the end of the notation?”

  He pushed it under her nose, but she closed her eyes. She would not look.

  “A set of initials. NG. You really should look, because—and this really is very interesting—those same initials appear next to nearly fifty other names. Not their true names, mind you. The names that went along with their false papers. And one of those names was familiar to me, for it was the known alias of an escaped prisoner of war. An Englishman.”

  He paused, letting it all sink in. “Now do you see? I had enough to draw a line between Niccolò, the false papers, and scores of enemies of the state—your traitorous self included. That much I knew when I put him to death, but I was sure there was more. I knew you were guilty of more.”

  Why would he not stop talking? It would be so much easier if he’d just take out that pistol and shoot her.

  “It took only a few days of diligent research on the part of one of my men. He was following a hunch of mine, for I knew you had to have come from somewhere. And I had another hunch—really this was so easy. Too easy, if I’m honest. I told him to begin with the census of Jews. You do remember it, don’t you?”

  Zwerger set his fists on the table between them, his knuckles popping, and rose to loom over her. She sat ever straighter, refusing to cower, and still she did not look up at him.

  “In that census, in the records for Venice, he found a young woman by the name of Antonina Mazin. Her parents, Gabriele and Devora Mazin, were deported in August—but she was not among those who were rounded up. She had vanished, and no one in Venice could say what had become of her.”

  Zwerger sidled round the table to stand behind Nina, and though he didn’t touch her, his hot breath still fanned repulsively against her ear.

  “You might as well admit it, Antonina. Else I’ll be forced to bring in the rest of the Gerardi fam—”

  “They didn’t know. To them I was Nina Marzoli. Nina Gerardi.”

  “That I doubt. Signor Gerardi didn’t even flinch when I told him you were a Jew, nor the others. That tells me they did know.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I certainly can. I’ve already furnished the brothers’ names to the authorities, and I promise we will make good use of them in Germany. Even that father of theirs looks strong enough. We might be able to wring out a few years of hard labor from him as well.”

  “His sister will never be able to manage on her own.”

  “So?” he spat. “What are her worries to me?”

  It was a mistake to listen to his threats. Rosa was strong and tough and fierce. She would never let anything happen to the children. Father Bernardi would help, and the village would rally round, and there were so many cousins. Surely they would—

  “Antonina? Are you still listening? Good, because I haven’t touched upon the best part. Do you want to hear what it is?” He edged ever closer, his mouth now grazing her ear, and it took the last of her strength not to flinch.

  “It really was your fault,” he hissed. “I first came to Mezzo Ciel because I wanted to know what had become of my old friend. Nothing more. I was prideful—I’ll admit it—and I wanted him to see how I’d risen in the world. Not least because I’d always suspected he’d been the one to rat me out to that old fool in charge of the seminary. But can you guess what happened next? It’s really quite delicious. I saw you and I knew something wasn’t right. You were the reason I grew curious. You were the reason I returned. And so you are the one who led him to his death. Tell me you see it.”

  She would not believe it. She would not.

  “Nothing to say? What if I told you the promise I made to your beloved Niccolò as the noose was placed around his neck?”

  No. No.

  “I told him I would find you, and the mongrel you carried, and I would send both of you to the place where every Jew belongs. A place from which there is no escape and no end but death. A charnel house for those who have earned oblivion. My words were the last he heard.”

  Traitorous tears flooded her eyes, spilling down her face, but she ignored them. With her hands still bound there was little to be done.

  “Oh, come now. Where are your insults? Your demands? Your pleas for mercy?”

  She would not think of Zwerger. She would remember, instead, one of her last evenings with Nico. It had been a week or so before the attack on Monte Grappa had started, and they’d all squeezed around the kitchen table after dinner. The electricity had fizzled out at dusk, but they’d lighted enough lamps to brighten the room, and Nico had read from the Divine Comedy, and the poetry had been so beautiful. So lovely, and made lovelier still by his narration. They had all been so happy. Before she could stop herself the words slipped from her mouth.

  “‘The soul unto its star returns,’” she said, remembering.

  “What? That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It does, but a man like you wouldn’t recognize it.”

  “Shut up—”

  She would not shut up, for she had found her voice again, and with it her courage. She would not be quiet. “You are caught up in a nightmare of your own making, and the evil you do will bury you, as it is sure to bury every man who stands at your side. The poet knew that, but do you?”

  “I don’t need to listen to some corrupt Jew text—”

  “It was from the Divine Comedy. The fourth canto
of Paradiso. But what would a man like you know of Dante?”

  Zwerger overturned the table and dragged her from the chair. He shoved her against the wall, his hands encircling her throat, and his breath was so rancid against her face she wanted to vomit. Yet still she found her voice.

  “What more can you take from me? You murdered the man I love, my baby, and my parents. They’re gone, and with them any power you have over me. You have made martyrs of us all—can you not see it? History will remember men like Niccolò and my father, but darkness is all that awaits you and your kind.”

  His hands tightened around her throat, choking the life from her, and it was almost amusing, in that moment, to see how enraged he had become. She had maddened him and there was nothing he could do to stop her. What was death in the face of such truths?

  She heard, dimly, the crash of the door. Advancing footsteps. Zwerger’s hands were wrenched from her neck. She fell to the floor, her throat on fire, but no one came to help her.

  “Zuerst der Partisan, dann die Jüdin? Wann lernst du es endlich?” First that partisan and now this Jew. When will you learn?

  “Sie hat mich provoziert—” She provoked me—

  “Schick sie nach Norden. Läßt jemand anderen deine Probleme wegräumen. Das ist ein Befehl!” Send her north. Have someone else clean up your mess. That’s an order!

  Retreating footsteps. A muttered curse. A boot prodding her side.

  “Get up,” said the officer who had argued with Zwerger, and he kicked her just hard enough to propel her to her knees, and from there, somehow, she managed to get to her feet. He drew a knife from his belt, and she held her breath, waiting for him to strike, but he only cut the rope that had bound her wrists.

  He grabbed her arm and dragged her from the room, along a hall, and outside. Into the night.

  A truck was waiting, idling, and he pushed her forward until grasping hands pulled her into the truck. It was filled with other prisoners, nearly all of them men, and they stared at her, their jaws agape, their expressions a mix of horror and pity and disgust.