“The Pope and the OSS are in cahoots, and you’re the go-between? All Mates cares about is the Soviets. What? The Holy See brokers a deal with the Germans. What?”
Deane’s face went blank. He said nothing, which Warburg took as a sure admission. But of what?
“It is the Germans,” Warburg said. “German Catholics? Austrian? A separate peace?”
“No. You know that’s impossible. Unconditional surrender. Washington has spoken.”
“But the Pope’s circling some kind of deal. He hates Stalin more than he hates Hitler. So does Mates. And the Pope wants to save Germany from utter defeat, that’s obvious. What’s he up to? If you won’t tell me, I have to draw conclusions from what I see.”
“All you see, David, is a man coming from confession.”
“Two men, Kevin. I knew that one was a liar. I didn’t know that both were.”
By the time Marguerite and Lionni drew near the place at dawn, a fierce rainstorm had begun, drumming the ash and charred flesh so that a general wet stench, stinging nostrils and souring the tongue, forecast what they would find. They had rendezvoused in Carpi with two dozen locals—men once vaguely associated with Partisan bands, perhaps, but by now a timid, poorly armed bunch. Once the Gestapo took Fossoli the year before, stuffing the camp with the true Partisans, the mere threat of the place had efficiently emasculated them. Even now, the prospect of approaching the doomed enclosure cast its pall. Inside the truck bed’s firmly shut canvas, the men had clung to the side slats as far as the crossroads half a mile back, where, under the last bottom of darkness, they were glad to offload.
In the barn where they had gathered earlier, Lionni had immediately imposed the force of his determination on the men. Marguerite had taken note of the relief with which they’d deferred to him. Across a bale of straw, he had unfolded a sketched diagram of the camp, and, taking into account the true character of the sorry band in front of him, he had improvised a plan. The dozen men with rifles were to position themselves, in squads of three, at the broad flanks of the camp entrance. Half a dozen others, carrying wire cutters, jerry cans of gasoline, and sticks wrapped at one end in paraffin-soaked rags, were to set up on the side of the camp where the canvas-and-board lean-tos stood, ready to break through the wire and torch the guard shacks. The rest, with handguns, were to follow the truck on foot, at a distance, ready to rush forward—which would, of course, be suicidal if the Germans were still there to resist. In that case, everything would depend on Marguerite and Lionni successfully presenting themselves as Red Cross relief workers, arriving with food and medicine—which, with luck, was all they were. So it was that she and he were first to behold the drenched ruins. The ongoing downpour had doused the fire, but thick, rolling clouds of steam and smoke still rose skyward.
The gate of the camp was wide open, which confirmed the locals’ report, given in the barn, that the Germans, once rail transport was stymied by the bridge collapse the day before, had been ordered to abandon the camp. Word was, they had left the remaining prisoners behind. Upon hearing that, tears of relief had come into Lionni’s eyes, but he had not allowed them to spill. His emotions were at home in the vise of his will. Now Marguerite downshifted and slowed the truck almost to a standstill. The one working windshield wiper slapped loudly at the rain, but because of the foul-smelling cloud, neither she nor Lionni could at first make out what they were seeing. They edged through the gate.
“Marguerite,” Lionni said. He and the tall woman were alone by now under the sheltering overhang of one of the only buildings not to have fully collapsed. He was soaked to the skin, face streaked with ash, body reeking—and so was she. Their hands were bloodied and scorched. The ferocious rainstorm continued to rage. Dawn had given way to a morning only somewhat brighter. What they had found was clear to see. A dozen naked chimneys stood in a row, each in its cone of rubble, the remains of torched ramshackle wooden walls and roofs that had housed inmates. Here and there, blackened upright beams and skeletal staircases smoldered, smoke still rising even in the rain.
An accidental pile of corpses, with others strewn around it, stood in a lane between the tall barbed-wire fence and the line of chimneys. Onto that pile Marguerite had launched herself, desperately clawing through the bodies, looking for life, not finding it. By the time Lionni pulled her away, she was whimpering with the effort to lift the dead, one off the other, as if untwisting limbs and disentangling bones would quicken breath. When she recognized Lionni, she said only, “Please, please.”
By that time, Lionni and others had, with cold efficiency, raked through the burned-out buildings, a similarly futile search for survivors. The rain had doused the fires enough to stall the general cremation—an interruption that, given the condition of the cadavers, was less reprieve than further insult. In the stupor of his willed detachment, Lionni had taken refuge in the act, yes, of counting. Enumeration had defined his entire last year, and once again he was counting Jews.
Lionni was certain to have come across some of these people before, but there was no question of recognition. Within the boundaries of the former buildings, he had made a rough estimate of the human remains able to be identified as such—more than a hundred. Then, in the lane, he had quickly surveyed the corpses piled and strewn there—somewhere between seventy and a hundred people, apparently killed with bullets. Many seemed to have been shot in the neck and head at close range.
By now Lionni and Marguerite were a long time standing in their sheltered corner, not speaking. Most of their failed rescue party had drifted away from the charnel camp, theoretically to alert Carpi and to retrieve the carts, tools, and tarps necessary, once the lashing rain eased up, to dignify the grotesque remains of the dead. All dead. Unless some had been able to flee into the surrounding woods, which seemed unlikely. Every prisoner had been burned or shot; every woman, every child, each of the few males. Dead.
“Marguerite . . . ,” Lionni repeated. She seemed hardly aware of his presence.
“Yes?” she finally said, but from the underworld into which she’d first fallen from that hilltop overlooking Sisak. When she moved her head to look at Lionni now, it seemed to her that his upper lip was misshapen, and she expected him to wipe it with a handkerchief.
Lionni said, “I cannot think how to speak of this . . .”
“Then don’t,” she said.
“But we must. If we don’t speak of it, the evil here will swamp us, too.” He paused, then said, “I found bodies of Germans, Wehrmacht uniforms. There were Germans killed here also.”
“By whom?”
“Other Germans. They fired into the crowd, but from both sides. Stupidly. They shot each other. Their bodies fell on both sides of the penned-in prisoners. I see that the Germans themselves are young, very young. Almost children. The left-behind German guards were boys.”
“Not Gestapo? Not SS?”
“No. Youths. Not Oberführers—not one. The fools shot each other because they had no idea what they were doing or how to do it. They had guns. That was all. And hatred, of course. The frenzy of hatred. Guns against half-dead weaklings with no way to resist. Who knows if the soldiers were even ordered to do this?”
“Then why would they?”
“Because these people were Jews.”
The rain drummed.
After some moments Marguerite said, “You were wrong about the bridge. If the train could have gone, these people would still be living.”
“On the way to certain death. Probably they were already dying. Typhus. If I was wrong, it was only in expecting that normal German soldiers would not behave as beasts. So yes, I was wrong.”
“Normal Germans?” Marguerite repeated, but she was thinking—Croatians. The Sava River. The laughing guards racing their trucks in the great oval. The presiding priest, Vukas. “Normal? What is normal?” she asked dully, not expecting Lionni to answer. Nor did he.
Instead, Lionni led Marguerite out, thinking they should go to the truck now. As they crossed back int
o the narrow lane where the dead were strewn, he saw a figure in black stooped over one of the corpses, a man wearing a cape and an odd hat. Lionni approached the man, slowly at first. When he realized what the man was doing, Lionni, with his limping gait, began to run. He was screaming, “Fermo! Fermo! Stop! Stop!” It was a biretta the man wore, and under his cape was a cassock. A purple stole draped from his neck. A priest. In the rain and mud he was kneeling in prayer, performing last rites. “Stop!” Lionni screamed again.
The priest had barely come to his feet when Lionni crashed into him, knocking him back, almost making him fall. As it was, the priest dropped the small black case he was carrying, and vials spilled to the ground—the sacramental oils, holy water.
“How dare you! How dare you!” Lionni screamed. “Get your filthy prayers away from here! Get out! Get out!”
The priest backed away, terrified of the lunatic who’d attacked him. The priest clutched a crucifix in one hand and held his biretta down on his head with the other. One of the Partisans appeared and stepped between the priest and Lionni. “What’s wrong with you?” the man asked Lionni. “Prayers for the dead. What’s wrong with that?”
“Not these dead! Not Christian prayers! Leave them be.” Lionni lunged at the priest. The Partisan, a much bigger fellow, held him back. “If you want to pray,” Lionni shouted, “pray for the Germans. Go to the corpses in uniform. Kiss your cursed cross to their lips. They are yours. They are the ones who did this! They are Christ’s! Not the Jews. Don’t you dare go near the Jews!”
Marguerite was stunned. Only moments before he was comforting her. Now he was mad.
Lionni struggled to get free, apparently to attack the priest. The Partisan threw him roughly back. Lionni accidentally stepped on one of the sacramental vials, and when he saw what it was, he stomped on it again, and on the case, the candles, the sacred cloths. He jammed his heel down on the second vial, crushing it all. He stomped and stomped, kicking up rainwater in a frenzy of curses and sobs. Then he slowly sank to his knees, to all fours, banging the soggy earth with his fists, splashing the mud so that it bounced up into his face. “Cristo!” he muttered. “Cristo! Cristo!”
Marguerite stooped to him, cloaked his shoulders with her arm. In Lionni this hatred was ancient, but it was entirely new to Marguerite. Christ! Diabolical Christ! Christ had done this! That once unthinkable recognition was new to her, yet she also realized that at some point in the past she had felt this. But when? She closed her eyes against the question.
But the answer came anyway, in the form of his face—the brilliantly red-bearded Carlo Capra, his irresistible toothy smile. Amore! A Partisan hero. An anti-Nazi. The one who’d plunged her into the abyss to which now she had found the bottom, the absolute ground of her great split—the two distinct women who would live on as bedeviling ghosts of the girl she was: Marguerite before and after, outward and inward, alive and dead. The pressure in her right forefinger came back to her, her body’s memory more than hers. In her tensing finger was the answer.
“Normal? What is normal?” she had asked Lionni. Even holding Lionni now, Marguerite curled that finger again—the slight movement of knuckle and muscle required to pull the trigger of a gun. She herself was normal. She saw it. A normal beast.
The Pontifical North American College was established by the Vatican as a counterbalance to the slyly undermining influences of Protestant—and democratic—dominance in the United States. Since the turn of the century, nearly all of America’s bishops had been alumni of the elite Roman theologate, and they had shown their gratitude to their alma mater by lavishly funding it. That was why the college, with its palatial main building and elaborately tended gardens and fields, was so beautifully set on the crest of the Janiculum, the second-highest hill in Rome. A view of the city spread to the east, across the Tiber, a panorama of bell towers and domes. In the late-afternoon sun, shadows emphasized the dominating ocher of the ancient clay from which so many of the visible structures had taken form.
Since the outbreak of the war, the American seminarians’ sojourn in Rome had been suspended, and the place had essentially been empty for three years. But it had been maintained by its faithful Roman staff as if the boys were coming back tomorrow. The broad playing field nestled between the two wings of the building was a carpet of closely mowed grass, and to one side was a paved basketball court—a tip-off to the American character of the institution, since that sport was played almost nowhere else in Rome. But now, on that court, a pair of grown men in undershirts were engaged in a fierce competition, the one-on-one adaptation that distilled team basketball into a kind of hand-to-hand combat.
Deane and Warburg had not come up to the Janiculum intending to play ball. Little more than an hour before, Deane had shown up at Warburg’s office. “I want to show you something, David,” he said. “That I am serious about refugees. Will you come?”
Warburg did not answer at first. Then he said, “Yes.”
Deane led the way out to his car. It had the same papal flags on the bumper and the same black-uniformed driver beyond the glass screen. Deane started to explain, but Warburg interrupted him. “I saw this morning’s L’Osservatore Romano. I don’t read Latin, and my Italian, as you know, leaves something to be desired, but I didn’t see any mention of Fossoli. The bridge was dropped yesterday. You said the notice would run the day after.”
“It will run. I told you. One of the Holy See’s ‘Daily Acts.’ Patience, David. You must wait and trust.”
Warburg ignored the hint of condescension. The Vatican newspaper ploy was aimed at the Army Air Corps commander, who had already done his part. Warburg wasn’t sure what else to make of it.
“Fossoli is why I wanted to see you, in fact,” Deane said. “Hoping those people make it, I want to show you where they can go.” As the car purred through the bustling streets of the city, he told Warburg about the unused North American College—its dozens of outfitted bedrooms, spacious halls, fully equipped dining facilities. “A true refuge,” he said, “for the Fossoli survivors.”
Warburg was surprised. “But it’s been vacant all this time?” he asked. “Why would the Pope let refugees use the college now?”
“First of all, David, don’t believe what you hear about His Holiness. He cares for beleaguered Jews.” Deane stifled the contradicting converso memory of the cellars beneath the Santa Marta hospice. “Second, the Holy See credentials the college, but it’s owned by the organization of American bishops. That means Spellman, which means me. I control it.”
“Really?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “The college is the perfect place. And the first guests can be the Jews from Fossoli.”
“We haven’t heard yet—”
“I mean, with any luck,” Deane said.
“But what about Budapest, Father? I told you what’s happening in Budapest.”
“That’s five hundred miles from here. What did you think I could do there?”
“You were going to see about the Vatican’s nuncio in Budapest.”
“His name is Archbishop Angelo Rotta. I know that he has sent descriptions of the impositions on Budapest Jews to the Holy See. I’ve asked to read his dispatches, but so far—”
“You don’t need to read dispatches. We know what’s happening.”
“Nuncio reports are closely held, David.” In fact, His Most Reverend Monsignor Tardini had taken offense even at Deane’s inquiries. Tardini’s assistant, that Dominican nun, had simply walked away from him without speaking. “I’m working on it,” he said now.
“Last week,” Warburg said, “the Germans ordered parish priests throughout Hungary to open baptismal records, to establish who is and isn’t Jewish. Four thousand mother churches. Four hundred dependent churches. Two hundred abbeys. Twenty-one cathedral chapters. That’s a lot of baptismal registers.”
“Abbeys don’t baptize. Otherwise, you are well informed.”
“I’m told the priests are doing it, helping the Gestapo comp
ile lists. Couldn’t the Pope forbid that?”
“Forbid the Germans?”
“No. The Hungarian priests. Couldn’t he order them to refuse to cooperate? Couldn’t the Pope command them to destroy all baptismal records? Just burn the damn stuff. That way, no one could be identified as anything. Apparently the civil birth registries depend on the Church.”
“For Catholics.”
“Right. And the Protestant and Orthodox have their records, too.”
“And they cooperate.”
“So far. But they couldn’t possibly continue if the Pope spoke. This isn’t about neutrality. Helping with Nazi identification according to race makes the Church actively complicit. Don’t you see that?”
Deane had no answer.
Warburg pressed, “If you shut down all the birth records, two hundred thousand Jews are safe. Like that.”
“Don’t kid yourself, David.”
Large wrought-iron double gates suddenly loomed before them. Hung from a pair of Tuscan pillars, the gates opened at their approach, an invisible pulley handled by an equally unseen attendant. The two men fell silent, the air between them curdled. A long serpentine driveway took the car up the hill, winding among perfectly trimmed hedges and sprawling lawns.
Finally, in the voice of a man revealing himself, Deane spoke. “I loved being a student here, a one-toilet Irish boy from the Bronx. A long way from the cracked sidewalks of the Grand Concourse. Opened my eyes, wide.” Almost self-mockingly, Deane shot the French cuff out of his jacket sleeve, tugged on the gold cufflink. “Never looked back.”
When the car pulled up at the entrance, Warburg got out while Deane gave instructions to the driver in Italian. As the two Americans ascended the grand entrance staircase, the car drove away.
“Janiculum,” Deane said as they turned to take in the view. “For Janus.”
Warburg in Rome Page 16
