Once Night Falls

by Roland Merullo

  Sarah put her face down close to Maria’s and took hold of one shoulder. “Maria! What happened?”

  “Burn!” Maria said, barely above a whisper. She was breathing with great effort, the muscles of her face squeezed tight in agony.

  “Let us help you. Let us take you to the house.”

  Maria closed her eyes and shook her head in two tiny movements. “Burn!” she said again.

  “Who, Maria? What?”

  “The house. Germans.”

  “I don’t understand! Let us—”

  “Have to . . . Now! Rossos’. Go. Matches in . . . pocket. Vai!” Go!

  As if she were outside her own body and watching, Sarah hesitated, took one breath, and then pushed her fingers into the bloody pocket of Maria’s dress and found a small box of stove matches. By then her mother had reached Maria’s side. She knelt hard in the dirt and put both hands on her friend’s arm. “She’s bleeding,” her mother said. “Maria, what happened?”

  “Poison. Burn them!”

  “They’ll kill everyone,” Rebecca told her.

  “Make it,” Maria grunted, closing her eyes. “Accident . . . Fire.”

  “The whole house?”

  Maria breathed one last unintelligible syllable.

  Confused, shaking with fear, clutching the matches in her bloodstained fingers, Sarah made herself go across the lot. Any second she expected a soldier to run out of the house and start shooting at her. In the weak light from the Rossos’ kitchen, she could see that the door was open, a body lying there. A German soldier. When she reached him, she saw that he was holding one of their pistols, a thin-necked tool of the Devil, black as coal. She stopped, stared, and then, moving in a dream, pried the gun from his stiff fingers, pushed it down into the pocket of her dress, and dragged the body farther into the house. Inside, it was a scene from a painting of The Inferno, men and one woman lying in poses of agony. Some had fallen by the table, others in the kitchen, arms and legs splayed, faces contorted. The woman was sprawled at the bottom of the staircase, her left arm stuck between the balusters and broken at a horrible angle. All of them seemed to have been trying to make it to the door, as if eternal salvation lay beyond it. Sarah stood there for a few seconds and then, in a hypnosis of terror, lit one match with trembling hands and touched it to the tablecloth. She stood still, shaking, watching the fire catch and spread—the tablecloth, the clothing of a man who’d fallen facedown at the table, then a Nazi flag on the wall just beyond him. She backed away, holding one hand to her belly. There was a glass jar of grease on the stove. She poured it over the nearest body, lit it with another match, turned on the stove gas, and hurried outside.

  By the time she reached Maria again, her mother was weeping, her head pressed down against Maria’s shoulder. No movement at Maria’s chest. No sign of life. Sarah hesitated only two seconds, then yanked her mother to her feet and dragged her toward the trees.

  Seventy-Seven

  Luca stood beside the cart for a full minute, making sure no one was about to step out of the darkness. He carried the heavy candlesticks over first, then pulled the branches, stove wood, and blanket to one side and, with Don Claudio’s help, lifted the wrapped body and brought it over to the boat. It took some work—the corpse seemed impossibly heavy and, for the millionth time, Luca cursed his weak arm—but they managed to slide the booted feet under one wooden slat and the head under another, then they covered the corpse with the blanket, rinsed their hands in the lake, and settled themselves on the seats, facing each other. A three-quarter moon was rising over the mountains beyond the lake’s far shore. In the boat, as Mentone had promised, was a fishing pole, a cheap model with a lure attached. Luca shoved off and began straining at the oars. In order to keep the boat moving out into the lake in a straight line, he had to make two strokes with the weak arm for every one with the strong. Hard as it was to row the extra weight, he decided not to turn on the small motor: the noise would attract attention.

  “Pretend to fish,” he told the priest, nodding down toward the pole.

  Don Claudio had to be told twice.

  “Padre, take the rod, pretend you’re fishing.”

  The priest lifted it awkwardly into his hands and, after struggling for a few minutes, managed to straighten out the line, toss the lure over the side, and offer a fair imitation of a man fishing. Once they were a hundred meters out into the lake, Luca asked him what had happened at the church.

  Don Claudio couldn’t meet his eyes. He held the fishing pole still and stared out over the black water. “A confession,” he said. “The man came, confessed to . . . hitting . . . your mother. He was drunk, I think. His breath smelled. Drunk, rude. I tried to tell him to make a penance, and he stormed out. There were guns in the cloakroom.”

  “Guns?”

  The priest nodded. “A pistol. Three rifles hanging in the closet. I was waiting for someone to come for them. You, Masso, someone . . .”

  “Still there? Now?”

  A nod.

  “Who brought them?”

  “I have no idea. The archbishop only—”

  “You should’ve told me. We have to get them out of there before the Germans come and search.”

  Another nod. The priest seemed in a trance, a drugged man. “I was holding the pistol—as a boy I used to shoot them. I . . . was standing there, holding the pistol . . . I looked up and there he was again. He had come back for some reason. I—I shot. I didn’t even think to do it; I just . . .”

  Luca went silent then, pulling hard on the oars, feeling a coating of sweat form on his face and neck. He watched the shore fade slowly behind him. “They’ll realize he’s gone,” he said in the same cold voice. “They’ll give it a day, thinking he’s out carousing somewhere. Then they’ll come looking.”

  “I’m not sure I cleaned up well enough. There will be blood. They’ll see it. They’ll find the rifles . . . My God! I dropped the pistol!”

  “We’ll go back. We’ll fix it. I can use the weapons.”

  Luca gave three strong pulls at the oars, two more with his weak arm to straighten their course, and then let the boat glide. Well to the north, he saw a light moving across the surface, a small craft silhouetted by the rising moon. The Germans weren’t known to patrol these waters—no military activity here—but the Italian police would be out, checking for smugglers, looking for bribes. “I’ve decided not to give Mentone and the others the money in the Saint Jude,” he said, looking across at the priest’s tormented face.

  “Ah.”

  “I don’t know why . . . I stopped trusting them. I can use it to get Sarah and our mothers to safety somewhere.”

  “Once they find out, we’ll both be hunted. The Nazis, the mountain fighters. Everybody will be after us.”

  Luca peered into the distance, trying to guess how long it would take for the small boat to reach them, how much the carabinieri would ask for. He could feel the statuette against the top of his thigh. He rowed another few strokes with both arms, several extra with the left, and let the boat glide again. “Masso says Scutarro is a spy. I don’t know who to believe anymore.”

  “Five decades I’ve known Gennaro Masso. I would trust him with my life.” The priest considered the remark for a moment. “I already trust him with my life. So do you.”

  Luca grunted, cupped a handful of lake water, and splashed it on his face. “What’s the depth here, Father?”

  “Fifty meters. Maybe more.”

  “Hand me the candlesticks.”

  Using all his remaining strength, Don Claudio slid one candlestick and then the next toward Luca’s feet.

  Luca handed over the oars, lifted the blanket off the man’s body, then unwrapped the heavy bloodied rug and priest’s robe enough so he could see the face. It was pale and stiff in the moonlight, half-hidden under the wooden plank on which Don Claudio sat. He looked at it for a moment, studying the bald head, the ragged wound in the throat, then he tugged on the legs to bring it closer, choked up a load
of mucus, and spat it into the dead man’s eyes. He ripped open the man’s pants, jammed one candlestick upside down in the right leg, one in the left, tore two strips from the blanket, and tied the candlesticks in place, making certain they wouldn’t fall out. He looked north. The light was closer.

  “Father, move over to that side of the boat. To your right. Get over as far as you can. Hurry!”

  The priest slid sideways. The boat tilted at a precarious angle. Luca lifted the German’s legs—heavy now, with the brass—and positioned them so that they hung over the side, heels in the water, back of the knees resting on the gunwales. Every move made the boat wobble dangerously left and right. He slid to his left to compensate for the weight. “Press that oar down flat on the water so we don’t flip.” When the boat was more or less stable, he lifted the German’s upper torso, balanced it, put his feet flat on the man’s shoulder blades, pushed hard, and toppled him over the gunwale.

  For a moment, it seemed the body wasn’t going to sink. It floated there, upright, as if the man were standing on a hidden ledge, just the forehead and skull showing, and then there was a wet belch, bubbles beside him, and down he went. The top of the bald head, a shrinking circle of skin, rings of dark water.

  Using his small flashlight, Luca checked the bottom of the boat for blood. A few drops. He tore off and wet another scrap of blanket, wiped the boards clean, then threw the cloth, the priest’s robe, and the soaked rug over, too, hoping they’d eventually sink. He took the oars back from Don Claudio and pulled hard on them, turning the craft toward shore. Don Claudio pretended to be casting and reeling in. The light to the north moved closer, but now they were just two innocent fishermen, hoping for some unlikely late-night luck.

  “We’ll take the cart and go to the church,” Luca said. “Make it look the way it looked before he came to see you. Hide the rifles under the altar; they should be safe there. I’ll find out who’s supposed to come for them. I’ll bring the cart back to Masso tomorrow. Tell him I’ll pay him later for the produce.”

  “He won’t care.”

  Luca rowed in silence and then, “I ask you again, Padre. What you told me about Sarah and Rebecca and you. The truth?”

  “Yes. My great sin.”

  Luca shook his head. “A sin produces evil, not good . . . You know my mother’s hiding her, yes?”

  “I’ve always known. From the first.”

  “They’ll search every house. They’ll find her there. I have to get them out now, take them someplace safe.”

  “No place will be safe now.”

  Luca was about to tell him that Sarah was pregnant, that he had to find a safe place for her as well, but at that moment, he saw the priest’s face change. “Turn, look,” Don Claudio said.

  Luca turned to look over his shoulder and then used a single stroke with his right hand to swing the boat around parallel to shore. High up on the hill, he saw flames lighting the night sky.

  “Sant’Abbondio,” the priest said. “My church. They’re already taking their revenge.”

  Seventy-Eight

  Sarah and Rebecca had made it only a short distance into the trees when they heard the explosion. They turned in tandem and saw an eruption of flame leap through the roof of the house. “Ammunition,” Rebecca said.

  “Or the stove gas, Mother.”

  The roof was covered with ceramic tiles, but there was wood beneath them, and the rafters were wooden, and they were already ablaze. Flames poured through the open kitchen doorway and licked out of the windows. Sarah wanted to stand there and watch, to see how long it would take the fire department to arrive. A long while, she guessed; they knew who lived in the Rossos’ house now, and most of the firemen—old men who hadn’t been called into military service—wouldn’t be anxious to race up the hill to save them. But her mother was struggling along at such a slow pace, she guessed it would take five or six hours to get to the Swiss border. She kept them moving.

  Every ten steps or so, Rebecca had to stop and catch her breath. In her youth, she’d been an athlete, a superb swimmer, but she wasn’t young any longer, and two months in the attic had taken a heavy toll. Sarah went along behind her and tried not to focus on the bony legs and thin hips, the heaving of her back and shoulders. She herself was exhausted from the long day and worried about the baby. They took it very slowly, one foot after the next, grateful for the three-quarters moon.

  There wasn’t enough energy for conversation, but they stopped every ten minutes and found a place to sit and catch their breath. The second time they stopped, her mother wondered aloud what would happen to Maria’s body and if they should have carried it inside. “Such a brave woman,” she said. “Such a friend. She must have found a way to poison the Germans.”

  “Luca gave her mushrooms.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  Sarah nodded. “He went someplace to try to get me false papers, too. I wanted to help, Mother. I wanted to be a courier, at least. And now all I want is to be away from this hell.”

  Even in the frail moonlight, Sarah could see that her mother’s eyes were sunken in nests of wrinkles, her lips festering with sores, her hair filthy and hanging from her head in sticky strands. She wanted so badly at that moment to tell her about the pregnancy, but she held the news inside her like a secret treasure. Sitting there beside the woman who’d given birth to her, she realized she wasn’t yet quite able to believe that she herself would soon bring a child onto this earth. Lately, the world had seemed like a prison of horrors—seeing Maria with the German, then finding her in her last moments before death, then—it still seemed unreal—the scene in the Rossos’ house and the merciless act she had forced herself to commit there. The smell of smoke and death had found its way inside her skin.

  “What will we do if we ever make it to the border?” her mother asked.

  “Luca will be at the cabin, or he’ll be out looking for me. He’ll help us.”

  “And if we’re caught?”

  “Then we’ll die. Or worse.”

  “It’s the ‘worse’ that frightens me. Sometimes I thought I’d lost my mind up there, thinking about what that ‘worse’ might be.”

  They got to their feet and went on. After more than an hour of intermittent climbing, they came to a place Sarah didn’t remember. She wondered if they’d taken a parallel path. In front of them stood a dark wall of foliage she thought not even an animal could penetrate. She stood and looked to see if there might be a path to either side, and after a minute of studying the terrain in the moonlight, she thought she did see a thin line of stones ahead and to the right. They had to crawl beneath a bush to reach it. They arrived on the other side scratched and bleeding, her mother breathing very hard, but now they could see a more or less walkable trail, little more than an erosion trough, leading upward and to the northwest. They followed that for a while, then found another stone and sat.

  They had two small bottles of water, Sarah carrying both. “So many things I haven’t ever told you,” her mother said as they sat there.

  Sarah waited. Her mother had always been a secretive woman, private in the extreme, constantly worried about what people thought of her, what they might say, what they had said. “Should I tell them to you now?”

  “I think later, Mother. I have things to tell you also. I think we should save our energy, focus on getting to the cabin. Luca will be worried.”

  “Before I went into the attic, I heard that even the Swiss weren’t taking any more Jews.”

  “The Swiss are human beings. What are they going to do, Mother, turn us back to the Nazis?”

  “Exactly what I heard they would do. Assuming the Nazis don’t catch us first.”

  “I have a pistol,” Sarah said. She took the gun out of her dress and showed it to her mother. “I took it from the dead German in the doorway.”

  “Please shoot me if we’re going to be captured,” her mother said. “Please promise me you’ll do that.”

  Seventy-Nine

&n
bsp; As they were moving back toward the western shore, Don Claudio felt a tug on the line. He pulled the rod’s tip back gently and then more firmly. The tip bent down almost to the surface. “I have one!” he said. “Luca, I caught something!”

  “Perfect, Padre. Reel it in if you can. A good excuse in case someone stops to ask why we were out on the lake.”

  “A whitefish,” Don Claudio said when, after a few minutes of pulling and reeling, he’d brought the fish aboard. Un coregono. “A big whitefish.” He slipped it expertly from the hook, then smacked its head twice on the middle slat to kill it.

  Luca watched the light to the north drift away, east, toward Bellano. After making doubly sure all the blood and evidence had been cleaned from the boat, he guided the small craft toward Lenno and up the inlet. Don Claudio helped him tie the boat securely, bow and stern, and then they stood looking into it for another full minute, searching every board, making absolutely sure there was nothing, not so much as a thread of gray uniform or a scrap of blanket or a dried drop of blood that could incriminate them.

  When Luca was sure the boat was clean, he and Don Claudio walked over to the cart, climbed aboard, and sat there in silent exhaustion. The priest laid the fish on the seat between them and kept one hand on it as if it were a restless child who’d finally fallen asleep. Culillo II refused to move. Luca lifted the reins and tapped them on the donkey’s hindquarters, nudged the beast with his boot, tapped again with the reins, promised it food. Hopeless.

  They were locked in that dilemma when they heard a vehicle come swerving around the corner. A German jeep, Luca thought, until he saw the blue and silver fenders. The car screeched to a stop, leaving its headlights on and pointing directly at the cart. Out stepped two burly carabinieri officers Luca didn’t recognize.