“Do you know who is here, Lucia? Do you? It’s your mamma—the pretty lady here with the curly hair. And your papà is here, too. You have your mamma and papà again. They came back to you, just as I said they would.”
Now Rosa began to cry. “What you both have gone through . . . I can’t even let myself think about it. The stories we’ve heard. And the photographs in the paper were enough to turn my blood cold.”
“We don’t have to talk about any of that today,” Nina promised her sister-in-law. “Not if it makes you sad. But we’re both very hungry, and I’ve been telling Stella about your soup for months and months.”
They were just finishing off their meal when Father Bernardi arrived, Carlo having taken it upon himself to run to the rectory as soon as he’d gobbled down his supper.
Poor Father Bernardi could barely speak for weeping, and Nina resolved, yet again, to save the details of what had happened to her and Nico for another day. Instead they gathered around the table, and Aldo brought out his best bottle of grappa, and all of them save Carlo drank a toast to the miraculous return of Nico and Nina, and the felicitous addition to the family of Stella.
Agnese and Angela then announced they were going to show their new sister around the farm, and when Carlo began to fuss at being left out Stella took his hand and asked him if he would introduce her to Bello, for she had heard all about him from Nina and wanted to see the world’s prettiest mule for herself. Paolo and Matteo were already upstairs, set to work by Rosa on rearranging the beds so everyone might have a place to sleep that night, Stella included.
“So you simply happened upon one another in Bolzano?” Father Bernardi asked, his composure restored by the grappa. “At the little station there?”
“We did,” Nina confirmed. “It was like something out of a book. I turned around and there he was. The hero of my story, and I didn’t have to go looking for him. Instead he came to me.”
“Wonderful, wonderful. You are both well? And dear Stella, too?”
“We are. A little too thin, but we’re in good health. I’d say it was a miracle if I still believed in such things.” Nico softened this last statement with an easy smile.
Father Bernardi nodded, and he opened his mouth to say something, but the words seemed to stick in his throat. It was the first time Nina had ever known him to be at a loss for words.
“Is anything the matter?” she asked. “Is there something else we need to know?”
“I don’t want to stain this joyous day in any fashion, nor bring up upsetting memories, but I think you should know that Zwerger is dead. His soldiers deserted him, right at the end, and he thought he might be able to escape back to Austria. Instead the partisans found him, and they brought him back here, to Mezzo Ciel. They’d already beaten him half to death, and likely they would have happily hanged him from the nearest tree, but someone remembered that Zwerger had very nearly killed Nico in the piazza. So they propped him up against the wall and shot him.”
“Did you see it happen?” Nina asked, grimly fascinated and yet still, somehow, appalled.
“I was too late to intervene, but I did go to him as he lay dying and offered him the sacrament of extreme unction. One final chance to repent of his sins. But he refused. He turned his head away, and he was dead a few minutes later. Unfortunately I find I cannot regret his having met his end in such a way. It is a failing of mine, and I have prayed upon it, but still. My heart is stubborn.”
Nico nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on Nina’s face. As if he weren’t quite certain of what he saw. “I don’t blame you for it, Father. If ever a man truly deserved to meet such an end, it was Karl Zwerger. The world is well rid of him.”
Lucia had been asleep in Nico’s arms, but now she stirred, her lacy eyelashes fluttering against her perfectly rosy cheeks, and this time Nina was brave enough to reach for her baby, cuddle her close, and revel in the weight of her sturdy little body, the feathery softness of her wispy curls, and the calming cadence of her steady exhalations.
“Since you’re here, Father, Nina and I want to ask if you will grace us with a blessing when we are married. The synagogues are still closed, so we will have to be content with a civil marriage for now.”
They had talked of it in the station on the night of their reunion, but she hadn’t expected him to bring up the subject so soon.
“I would be honored to do so,” Father Bernardi readily agreed. “When were you thinking?”
“As soon as possible. And we’ll have a celebration after. A proper festa for everyone.”
“They’ll be shocked if they learn the reason why,” Rosa commented with a smile.
“I think that can remain our secret,” Nico said. “Let us tell them, instead, that it’s to celebrate our homecoming. As indeed it will be.”
The others talked of the farm and the village for a while, and though Nina tried at first to listen, it was easier, and far more pleasant, to simply sit and be. Everything around her was so ordinary, so familiar, and so wonderfully precious. No place would ever again be so welcome to her as this plain, homey kitchen; no people would ever be so dear to her as those gathered around its table.
The sun had begun to set when Father Bernardi took his leave, extracting only a promise that they set a date for their civil marriage as soon as bureaucratically possible. “Humor an old man, will you? If only so I may know the joy of blessing your marriage all the sooner.”
Nico and Nina, still holding Lucia, came outside to say goodbye; and then, rather than retreat to the kitchen, Nico led them in the direction of the stables. With Selva glued to their heels, they enjoyed a brief reunion with a sleepy Bello before moving on, Nico stopping now and again to greet the friendlier among the barn cats, until they had come around the back of the house and were looking out over the fields.
They had returned to the place where, only two years before, he had introduced her to his world. He had shown her the land where he worked; he had told her of the ordinary life he had chosen to embrace. And it was then, in that moment, when she had begun to fall in love with him.
“I was so afraid I’d never see this place again,” he said, turning to her. “But that alone wasn’t enough to keep me alive. It was you—you and our child. The memory and the hope of you, and the vows we made.”
“‘I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,’” she said, remembering.
“There was one night in Flossenburg, early on, when I was close to giving up. And then it came to me—a memory from before. From here, when I was safe with you. It was in August, I think, and I’d come home late from my uncle’s farm. I was so tired I could hardly move, but I was too restless to sleep. And so we lay in bed, and rather than turn down the lamp you fetched my Bible and read to me from the Song of Songs. ‘My beloved speaks and says to me: Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come.’ Those were the words that sustained me on those long nights when I couldn’t sleep. When I’d forgotten how to hope.”
She was still wiping away tears when he spoke again, his voice hesitant, even fearful. “How did you face those nights?”
“Without the hope of you?”
He nodded, and then he gathered her and their daughter into the shelter of his arms.
“Lucia was waiting for me,” she answered, not wishing to tell him how deeply she had despaired. How lost she had been to the promise of hope. One day she would share it all with him, but not until they’d both had a chance to heal.
“I would give anything to take that suffering from you. To put myself in your place.”
“I know, my darling,” she soothed him. “I know. But now the night is over.”
He bent his head to kiss her. “The winter is past.”
“The winter is past,” she echoed. “The rain has gone, and our days of joy? They have only just begun.”
Epilogue
3 July 1946
Nev
er had she known a more perfect day.
They had arranged for Nico’s cousins to come and take care of the farm, and everyone—she, Nico, Lucia, Aldo, Rosa, and all the children—had piled into Zio Beppe’s ancient truck the evening before and made the journey, far shorter than if they’d gone by mule cart, to Cousin Mario’s farm in Campalto.
That morning they’d risen at first light, the children more excited than they’d been at Epiphany, and one of Mario’s neighbors, whose daily delivery route took him from the mainland farms to the Rialto market, had ferried them to the Fondamente Nove and its hourly vaporetto to the Lido. They could only afford two days away from the farm, and as this was their one day at the seaside, they were all determined to make the most of it.
They would never be wealthy people, but the recovery of Nina’s parents’ savings some months earlier had been an unexpected, and altogether providential, windfall. Of her family’s home and its contents she had received nothing: the house had been seized by the fascists and sold to Gentiles; her parents’ possessions had vanished, and no accounting had been made of their dispersal. All that remained were the few things she had packed into her rucksack on the day she had said goodbye to her mother and father.
The savings, though modest, would be enough to pay the wages of a farmhand while Nico returned to university; he was set to begin his studies at the University of Padua in September. They had found a little flat that would be just big enough for the three of them and, before long, a fourth; their baby was due in the new year.
When her children were a little older Nina, too, would return to school, for she was determined to fulfill the dream that she and her father had shared. Until then, she would savor every kiss, every laugh, and every sun-drenched day as the gifts they truly were.
They had rented beach chairs and umbrellas on the same stretch of sand where Nina had once spent long, golden afternoons with her parents, and they’d all changed into the bathing suits she and Rosa had sewn and knitted in anticipation of this one glorious day, and then they had tiptoed into the water, Lucia held high in Nico’s arms, the girls clutching each other’s hands. They’d cringed when the first startling waves had lapped at their ankles, and then, laughing, had plunged forward, heedless of the cold, and welcomed the sea’s embrace.
They’d brought baskets of food from home, bread and cheese and hard-boiled eggs, and chunks of sopressa for everyone but Nina and Stella, and Mario’s wife had surprised them with bottles of tart homemade lemonade. They’d eaten their lunch with sandy fingers, their noses already pinkened by the sun, and with the last crumbs devoured, the children had rushed off to build castles in the sand.
“But not a toe in the water until your lunch has settled,” Rosa had ordered, and Stella had run back to give Rosa a quick hug.
“Don’t worry, Zia Rosa,” she’d promised. “I’ll take care of Carlo while you rest.”
“Such a good girl,” Rosa had said lovingly. “I don’t know what I’d do without her. It’s hard to remember life without my three girls all together.”
“I think she would say the same,” Nina had agreed, though it wasn’t entirely true. Stella was healthy and happy now, and she seemed to feel secure and content, and she was devoted to everyone, Rosa most of all. Agnese and Angela called her their sister, and the three of them were never apart. But she still had nightmares; she still wept for her parents, who, like Nina’s, had vanished into the abyss of Birkenau. All that remained of Stella’s life from before the war were a few battered copies of her parents’ tourist guides. They were gifts from Nico, who searched for them in every bookstore he passed.
The day was more than half over now, and Nina resolved that for the rest of it she would think only of sunshine and blue skies. It was easy to do with those she loved at her side, the joy of another baby on the way, and the promise of brighter tomorrows to come.
After lunch, Lucia had fallen asleep in her grandfather’s arms; now she sat up and began to rub at her eyes.
“Mamma?” she asked, pouting a little.
“Yes, darling?”
“Where my papà?”
“Here I am,” Nico answered, plucking her from Aldo’s arms. “Do you think it might be time for some gelato?”
“Gelato!” Carlo roared, forgetting his half-constructed castle in his haste to join them. “Gelato, gelato, gelato!”
“Let’s find the man who sells gelato, and we’ll see if he’ll bring his little cart along the beach so we can all choose our favorite flavors. Shall we go? Who’s with me? Girls? Paolo and Matteo? Off we go!”
Nina watched the little procession skip along the beach, heading toward the gelato seller with his brightly painted cart, and tried not to think of how much she would miss the children when she and Nico moved to Padua in September. They would return home each summer, of course, and there would be visits as often as they could manage; but it would be four years, if not longer, before they came home to Mezzo Ciel for good.
Tonight they would return to Mario’s house in Campalto, and in the morning, at dawn’s first light, she and Nico would go back across the water to Venice. Back to the house that had once belonged to her family, but whose door was forever closed to her now.
No one would notice the two small stones, scarcely more than pebbles, smooth and warm in her hand, that she had found under the olive tree at home. She would set them near the green door, tucked close to the crumbling stonework of its lintel; no broom would find them there.
She would close her eyes and say a silent prayer for her parents, for those whose lives had been stolen, and for those who had been left to go on alone. Then she and Nico would return home, but she would not forget. She would always remember.
And one day, once they were old enough to understand, she would beckon her children, hug them close, and tell them of the family she had lost, the family she had been given, and the love story that had brought her to a place called Mezzo Ciel.
Acknowledgments
This book was a labor of love, in both its research and its writing, and though I could not have completed it without the help and advice of the people below, any errors of fact or judgment that remain are my responsibility alone.
I owe an enormous debt of thanks to my husband’s family, in both Canada and Italy, for so graciously sharing their memories with me. I would specifically like to acknowledge Lucia Bizzotto, Guerrino Crespi, the Gazzola family (Angela, Mario, Carmen, and Oscar), and Maria Zardo. I am also very grateful to my husband’s late uncle, Francesco Crespi, for the memories he shared in his unpublished memoir. My sister-in-law, Michela Jach, helped me with translations and added immeasurably to my knowledge of her grandparents’ way of life, and I am so very grateful to her.
In Borso del Grappa I was fortunate enough to interview Domenico Salvalaggio, an Italian survivor of Buchenwald. His recollection of his imprisonment, and his grace and fortitude in describing such difficult memories, were profoundly important to my understanding of the suffering he and others endured. I am sincerely grateful to him, and to Professor Zuglio Gigliotti, who facilitated our meeting.
In Venice, Dr. Chiara Ponchia generously shared with me her unsurpassed knowledge of the Jewish ghetto and its people; she then spent many hours reading and commenting on this novel in manuscript form. I am deeply grateful for her wisdom and guidance.
Edward Trapunski and Dill Werner Brice were both gracious enough to offer their informed and expert opinions on my depiction of Jewish life in Italy in the 1940s, and I thank them sincerely for their patience and understanding.
I would also like to thank Dr. Madison Lyon and Dr. Aaron Orkin for patiently answering my questions relating to medicine; Dr. Julie Downer for checking my description of veterinary emergency medicine; and Natalie and Sean Macdonald for their assistance with German terms and phrases.
In the course of researching Our Darkest Night, I relied upon the collections of a number of libraries, archives, and museums. I would particularly like to acknowledge the Ass
ociazione Nazionale Ex Deportati Nei Campi Nazisti (ANED), the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the Bodleian Library, the Bolzano Municipal Archives, the archives of KZ-Gedankstätte Flossenbürg, the Museo Ebraico di Venezia, the Toronto Reference Library, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the World Holocaust Remembrance Center at Vad Vashem.
Once more I am indebted to my editor, Tessa Woodward, for her understanding, sensitivity, patience, and encouragement. This book would never have been finished—or indeed begun—without her.
I also wish to thank my literary agent, Kevan Lyon, for her wise counsel and warm friendship, as well as her colleagues at the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, among them Patricia Nelson, for their support.
I am so grateful to Jessica Lyons and Dave Knox, my publicists at HarperCollins, along with my personal publicist, Kathleen Carter, for their untiring efforts on my behalf.
My thanks as well to the wonderful people at William Morrow, in particular Robin Barletta, Carolyn Bodkin, Jennifer Hart, Martin Karlow, Elle Keck, Mumtaz Mustafa, Carla Parker, Shelby Peak, Mary Ann Petyak, Elizabeth Semrai, Alison Smith, Liate Stehlik, Diahann Sturge, and Amelia Wood. The producers at HarperAudio have once again created a beautiful audiobook. I’m also grateful to the HarperCollins sales team in the U.S., Canada, and the international division, as well as everyone at HarperCollins Canada who supports me so ably.
As always, I would be lost without my friends, among them Amutha, Denise, Jane D, Jane E, Jen, Kelly F, Kelly W, Liz, Mary, Michela, and Rena. Nor would I have emerged from the fog of Book 6 without the counsel and group texts from the Coven: Karma Brown, Kerry Clare, Chantel Guertin, Kate Hilton, Elizabeth Renzetti, and Marissa Stapley. My sincere thanks as well to fellow authors and friends Janie Chang, Karen Lord, and Kate Quinn for their unwavering support, advice on conquering Scrivener, and readiness to share virtual cocktails at the drop of a hat.
As with all my books, I end these acknowledgments with thanks to my family.
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