A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russel

  Now the single only good thing in Angelo Soncini’s whole life is when he gets to go to Signor Brizzolari’s office at the Palazzo Municipale. The secretary has candy, and she gives Angelo some if he behaves. Behave means you have to sit right next to Babbo, and no talking or fidgeting. That’s hard because it’s so boring, but today it’s even worse than usual, because his mother had to come to Signor Brizzolari, not Babbo, and Mamma always gets all huggy in front of people. Angelo hates that.

  “But Signor Brizzolari, what are these families to do?” she asks. “How are they to live without bread? Without milk for their children?”

  Sure enough, she rests one hand on her big fat belly and reaches out to place the other on Angelo’s hair. He squirms away. “I’m not a baby,” he says. “I’m going outside!”

  Serafino Brizzolari has children and grandchildren. He cannot help smiling as Angelo, an unwilling prop in his mother’s performance, leaves the office to cadge caramelle off the department secretary. Even so, when the two adults are alone the bureaucrat shakes his head with ponderous regret. “Signora, I would like nothing better than to help you, but—” He drops his voice. “I’m not certain I can issue ration cards to Italian Jews now, let alone to foreigners!”

  “But surely there’s something you can do! Signor Brizzolari, a man of your compassion? Your importance! If you can’t help us, who can we turn to?”

  Like so many Italian women whose menfolk hide from German labor roundups, Mirella Soncini has been thrust into the public sphere despite her advanced pregnancy. She’s put together a classic combination of flattery and supplication that would normally bring this little drama to a satisfying conclusion, which Serafino does not fail to appreciate. Nevertheless…

  Stalling for time, he passes a white linen handkerchief over a heavy round face damp with sweat. Ordinarily he carries his great weight and his responsibilities well, but this breathless September heat is hard on him, and today he feels more burdened than usual by his body and his position. He removes his spectacles, rubbing at the sore spots they make on the bridge of his fleshy nose. “Signora, I am powerless.”

  “Signor Brizzolari, you can’t mean it!” she says, beginning to realize that he does.

  “Signora, you must understand my position—”

  Angelo steps back into the room, frowning as he chews. “Mammina, isn’t he going to give us the ration cards?”

  Easing to the edge of the wooden armchair, the rabbi’s wife uses both hands to push herself up, and when she speaks, the innocent, flirtatious teasing and operatic pathos have vanished. “Thank you, Signor Brizzolari, for all you’ve done for us in the past. You have nothing to reproach yourself with.” She motions for her purse and the empty shopping bag. For once her son does as he’s asked. “Angelo,” she says, “look carefully at Signor Brizzolari.” Sobered by his mother’s tone, the boy turns serious brown eyes toward the bureaucrat. “Shake the hand of an honorable man,” his mother tells him. “We are in Signor Brizzolari’s debt.”

  Alone in his office, Serafino Brizzolari shifts his weight to ease the ache where a buried chunk of Austrian shrapnel lies too near the femoral artery to remove. When the rabbi’s wife walked into his office, he had braced himself for tears, for outrage, for pleading. Nothing would have been more formidable than the grave and manly gesture of a small Jewish boy, shaking the hand that Serafino studies now.

  For twenty-six years, Serafino’s own clean hands have had the power to shock him, so certain was he once that he’d never be free of the mud and stink of the Great War’s trenches. His white cuffs are immaculate, his suit freshly pressed and spotless. His shoes gleam. His feet, once foul with wet rot, are dry and sweet, even in summer, even if he must bathe twice a day to keep them that way. All these years, and he’s still jolted awake at least once a week by shrieks and shell blasts. The dreams are so real that for a few moments after waking, he dares not breathe for fear of mustard gas.

  When he left his mother in 1916 and marched away to war, Serafino was a cocky kid, indestructible and convinced of his own courage. Bravado quickly withered under fire, but pride took its place. Determined to drive the Huns from his homeland, he was wounded twice for Italy and the king, but when he limped home from that bloodbath, he was spat on by Bolsheviks, jeered at by trade unionists. The king was a puppet dancing on capital’s strings, they said. Soldiers like Serafino had been duped by speculators who’d grown fat as ticks on labor’s blood.

  Stunned by the hostility, half-convinced the Reds were right, Serafino took off his uniform and locked his medals in a drawer, obscurely ashamed of the deaths and the maimings, the suffering and sacrifice he had witnessed and inflicted. He forgot courage, and remembered terror. He forgot the cause, if there ever was one, and remembered the catastrophe.

  Benito Mussolini changed all that. “Better one day as lions than fifty years as sheep!” il Duce cried, and Serafino is still grateful for the pride Mussolini restored in the soldiers who came home from the Great War and were made to feel ashamed. Even so, Mussolini has a great deal to answer for. Three hundred thousand Italian casualties in Greece, Yugoslavia, Libya, Russia. The nation occupied by Germany, invaded by the Allies. The king in exile, the economy in ruins. And Mussolini himself is the principal marionette in a puppet government Berlin has named the Republic of Salò.

  Early this morning, there was a call from Salò: il Duce’s representatives will be in Sant’Andrea this afternoon, accompanied by German authorities. Serafino was reminded that he has prospered in government service, that his family has come through this war secure, well-housed, well-fed. The only thing required to ensure the continuation of this good fortune is a simple change of political label, from Fascist to Republican.

  My sons are petty tyrants, he thinks. My daughters are vain, my wife is cold and house-proud. My mistress is a grasping slut. And I? he asks himself. I am a fat, powerless bureaucrat in a vassal state, taking orders from an Austrian corporal’s lackeys.

  Mirella Soncini and her son are already past the mezzanine when Brizzolari shouts. Standing on the landing outside his office, he waves the rabbi’s wife back, then changes his mind. “Stay there,” he calls, and reappears a minute later with a large and bulging envelope.

  He knows he is elephantine and graceless but feels lithe as a leopard descending the long marble staircase. Beckoning, he directs the rabbi’s wife into a recessed doorway in a deserted corridor. “So many have left the city because of the bombing,” he observes airily. “Who knows where they are now? In the mountains? Dead?” He lowers his voice. “If anyone comes back to claim these, I’ll think of something. Sell them for cash, signora. Use that on the black market.”

  Mirella presses the package of ration cards to her breast and beams at her small son. “You see, Angelo? I told you he’d find a way to help! Signor Brizzolari, I don’t know how to thank you—”

  He raises a clean, dry hand, swallowing nervously. “Just don’t tell anyone where you got them!” he pleads. “It’s a capital crime to aid enemies of the state.”

  Enemies of the state? Mirella shakes her head, refusing to believe it. Did Serafino Brizzolari just call us enemies of the state—

  “Mamma?” Angelo digs his heels in. “Mamma! You’re not listening!”

  She stops and looks around, amazed to see how far they’ve walked. “I’m sorry, Angelo. What did you say?”

  “I said I don’t see why we have to help the refugees anyway. They talk funny! They touch our stuff! I’m tired of them.”

  “I know, Angelo. I am, too.” Tired of the war, of being pregnant, of sleep broken by air raids and a crowded bladder. And, yes— tired of strangers trooping through her home. For the past three years, Scuola Ner Tamid has made a place for Jewish refugees who’ve somehow found their way to Sant’Andrea. The Germans are cultured and urbane, but O Dio! The Poles… Bearded men with bizarre side curls, dowdy women with awful wigs. Thoughtlessly conspicuous, regally unconcerned that Sant’Andrese Jews must bribe offic
ials like Brizzolari to keep them out of the camp for illegal aliens at Ferramonti. They refuse to enroll their children in Talmud Torah because Italian boys and girls study together to become b’nai mitzvah. Iacopo says Hasidic theology is the bel canto opera of Judaism: gloriously ornamented, astonishingly elaborate, breathtakingly beautiful. To Mirella, Polish Jews seem obsessed with cutlery and dishes. And they’re scandalized that Mirella dresses like any other stylish Italian woman. Are Polish men so oversexed that a glimpse of a woman’s hair can plunge them into ungovernable lust? It’s absurd.

  “I hate them,” Angelo told her once. “I wish they’d all go away.” Mirella was distressed, but Iacopo was amused. “Ah, the brutal honesty of the very young! It takes time to learn hypocrisy. Our guests steal our time and attention. It’s normal to feel outrage at theft. And you, Mirella? They’ve stolen me away from you as well.”

  “I’m proud of your work,” she said, “and I’m proud of you.”

  Mild eyes amused, Iacopo considered this. “Not brutal honesty, but no hypocrisy either. Instead, discretion!” He kissed her forehead. “Discretion will do nicely.”

  Two thirds her husband’s age, Mirella often feels closer to her son’s resentment than to Iacopo’s generosity of spirit. The wellspring of Ner Tamid, Iacopo provides a reliable flow of reason and diplomacy during endless meetings with destitute foreigners and bombed-out congregants. He expresses genuine sympathy for religious instructors whose restless students are delighted when an air raid interrupts their reluctant study of Hebrew. He soothes the wounded pride of college professors teaching in Jewish day schools after the universities were closed to them. And then there is the ordinary work of a rabbi: making halachic rulings, preparing divrai Torah, conducting services. Iacopo works and works and works, and when his public day is over, there is his own need to study, to be off in his own world—

  “Can we?” Angelo pulls his hand out of hers. “You said you’d think about it, so can we?”

  “Can we what, Angelo?”

  “Get a puppy! Please, Mamma? I’ll take care of it myself.”

  “O caro mio! We’ve been over this, and over this. No. The answer is no.” Panting, she quickens the pace, even though hurrying makes her look like a foie gras goose. “They’re treyf, Angelo: they’re unclean. They have fleas. They carry diseases—”

  “But you promised!”

  “I promised to think about it, and I did, and it’s just impossible. We hardly have enough food for our family and the guests, and now with the new rationing rules, there’s nothing extra for a great big dog.”

  “It wouldn’t be a great big dog. It would only be a little puppy—” Angelo moans when he sees the gate of the cemetery. “Oh, Mamma! Do we have to go here again?”

  “You ask the same question every time, and the answer is always the same. Caring for graves is a great mitzvah because it’s a good deed we can never be thanked for. Keeping your sister’s resting place clean is all we can do for her now.”

  “But do we have to go every week?”

  “We don’t have to. I just like to…”

  Mirella’s steps slow, and stop. Angelo, too, takes a breath.

  The cemetery is an enclave of peace in a clamorous, dirty city. Stately cypresses guard the gate. Inside, the long strong limbs of six-hundred-year-old chestnuts stretch over neatly swept pathways, sheltering the dead, enclosing their families in hushed dignity. Leaves in unnumbered multitudes are renewed each year. Gnarled roots grip the ground. Generation after generation of Jews have come here to mourn and be mourned. To remember and be remembered.

  How long did it take, Mirella wonders numbly, to desecrate a graveyard tended for centuries?

  “Mamma,” Angelo whispers. “Someone made caca on Altira’s stone!”

  Swastikas are scrawled in dripping black paint. Nearby: a shout of triumph, roars of drunken laughter. They’re still here, Mirella thinks. Men capable of shitting on a baby’s grave. In Sant’Andrea.

  She grab’s Angelo’s hand, and together they back away. One of the men looks up and points. “Run,” she says, and they do: through narrow streets and alleys, past Tranquillo Loeb’s shuttered law office, past the cobbler’s where Iacopo’s dress shoes are being resoled, past the barbershop where Angelo had his first haircut. In the market, she becomes one housewife among many carrying string bags and little parcels, accompanied by a child or two. She works her way through the crowd, around pushcarts with paltry displays of spoiled fruit and withered vegetables— all that’s escaped confiscation by the Germans.

  Vision blurred by tears, Mirella drags her son along, wrenches away from hands that reach for her, hears nothing of what her neighbors say. Heart hammering, she turns down the narrow passage that leads to the synagogue. Shouting breaks out ahead. Everyone stops, trapped by a checkpoint—

  “Thank God! I thought they’d gotten you, too.”

  The low, startling voice is directly behind her. “Renzo!” Mirella cries softly, finding herself all but in his arms. “They’re desecrating the—”

  He shakes his head. “Brace yourself,” he whispers. “Iacopo’s been arrested.” Mirella moans. “Don’t upset Angelo.” Eyes shut, Mirella nods. “Rina Dolcino told my mother. Mamma told me. The whole neighborhood’s been watching for you.”

  The queue shuffles forward toward a pair of pimply soldiers. “Dokumente!” one shouts every few moments, brandishing some sort of machine gun. The other boy is younger, less sure of himself, fumbling as he studies each person’s identity papers.

  Moving forward, Renzo takes Angelo’s hand and grips Mirella’s arm. There are only two people ahead of them. “Renzo,” she whispers. “Our papers say we’re—”

  “Cry!” he says. Confused, she starts again to protest. “Oh, for God’s sake!” he shouts angrily. “You stupid woman!” She backs away, shocked. “How many times do I have to tell you? God in heaven! You have the brains of a chicken!”

  By the time they reach the barricade, Mirella is weeping, and Angelo wails as well. “My apologies,” Renzo tells the younger soldier in excruciatingly embarrassed German. “My wife is Italian, and therefore an idiot. I never should have married her, but what can you do? It was a lapse in judgment, but it’s too late for regrets! Ugo Messner,” he says, introducing himself and handing over a fine leather document case. “We’re down from Südtirol for a few days, and my wife has forgotten her papers in our hotel. I’ve told her a hundred times. Carry them always. Women! Might as well talk to a bag of sand. Italians are so lax about this sort of thing. They honor the law when convenient or necessary, and ignore it on precisely the same grounds. We Germans will put things right, though, won’t we!”

  A few months out of basic training, the soldier probably misses his mother. Faced with a sobbing woman and a squalling child, he hesitates. “All right,” he says, relieved to be speaking German. “But she must carry her papers at all times from now on. Next!”

  “Bravissima!” Renzo whispers delightedly as they walk on. “I really thought you were going to faint! That would have been as good as crying, now that I think of it.”

  “You pinched me!” Angelo says, sniveling. “And you were yelling at Mamma!”

  “We had to fool the Germans, caro, and we did it!” Mirella says, as though it were a thrilling episode in a grand adventure. “Renzo, where did you get those papers?”

  “From a friend who lives up in Bolzano. Her older brother died last year.” Steering them quickly down an alley behind his apartment building, he raps twice, then once more, on the service entrance.

  Rina Dolcino flings the door open. “Mirella! I saw the whole thing. Dragged him off like a common criminal. And when I came out to stop them, they—”

  “Thank you, Signora Dolcino,” Renzo says smoothly, cutting Rina off before she can frighten Angelo.

  Upstairs, his mother is waiting for them at her door. “Catch your breath, Mirella,” Lidia says, pointing to a chair. “Angelo, come with me. I have a treat for you.”
/>   “O Dio!” Mirella moans, once Angelo’s out of earshot. “Tranquillo Loeb told us this would happen!”

  “Fear is what they want, Mirella.” Renzo pulls up a stool and sits at her feet. “Don’t give it to them.”

  “But, Renzo, what about Iacopo?”

  “Mammina, come and look! Signora Leoni has cheese!”

  “Angelo, let your mamma rest.” Renzo covers Mirella’s hands with his own. “Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?” She swallows and shakes her head. “Va bene,” he says. “Stay here while I get things sorted out.”

  He gets to his feet and leans over, his lips grazing her cheek just as Angelo reappears in the hallway, a generous lump of fontina in his hand. “Mamma!” the child says, scandalized.

  Mirella stares at her son, then raises her gaze to meet Lidia’s knowing eyes. “Signor Leoni was just being courteous, Angelo,” Lidia says firmly. “That’s how gentlemen treat ladies in distress.”

  Hours later, resting on Lidia’s bed, Mirella dozes in the brief, heavy sleep of late pregnancy and dreams of Iacopo. “Mirella,” he croons softly, “it’s time to go home.”

  She was sixteen and Iacopo almost thirty when they met. Hired away from the scuola in Turin, Rabbino Soncini came to Sant’Andrea to serve her congregation as rabbi and cantor. The entire congregation attended his inaugural service, even families like Mirella’s that weren’t very observant. With a scholar’s beard and pallor, Iacopo Soncini had the soft, boneless look of a man who’d never lifted anything heavier than a volume of the Talmud. But that voice! Effortless, melodious. Chanting the ancient prayers, commanding attention, drawing her in. The moment Mirella heard him sing, she became the most devout Casutto in three generations.

  Cool lips kiss her cheek. Unfamiliar hands grip her arms. She smiles in her sleep, and Renzo sings to her again with Iacopo’s velvety baritone. “Mirella?” An aria in three notes. “Wake up, cara mia.”