A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russel

  “You don’t trust me,” Messner replies to Santino’s silence. “I consort with Germans. I could be an informer. Maybe I’m using you to find the black marketeer, so I can denounce him for money. Fair enough. Would you like a hostage?” Messner spreads his hands and presents himself. “Like the inestimable Claudia, I am a Jew. I can drop my pants to prove it, but if you insist.”

  Santino crosses his arms. “What’s in the little boxes? The black ones that look like little houses?”

  A slow smile of appreciation spreads across Messner’s face. Closing his eyes, he speaks as though reading from a book in his mind. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Teach these words to your children. Speak them when you sit in your home, when you walk, when you lie down and rise up…” One eye opens. “Belandi. What comes next? Bind them for a sign upon your hand… and for frontlets between your eyes, whatever the hell frontlets are.” The other eye opens. “Et cetera. Close enough?”

  “I’ll watch for the man who’s selling things.”

  “Bravo.” Messner takes a last look out the window. “The Allies are bombing us, the Axis is starving us, and the Communists will grab whatever’s left at the end. Mondo boia! Executioners rule!” he swears softly, shaking his head at the destruction. “I need a bottle, and a whore whose politics can be trusted. Care to join me?”

  Santino shifts uneasily. “There are bad diseases. I don’t want to bring anything home. When I’m married.”

  Caught between amusement and envy, Messner smiles. “I’ll check back at the end of the week. If you need help before then, go to the basilica. Find a priest named Osvaldo Tomitz. Tell him you heard from a shithead that Don Osvaldo was a decent man. He’ll know what that means.”

  “Don Osvaldo,” Santino repeats. “A decent man.”

  “Don’t forget the part about the shithead!” Messner calls, disappearing into the hallway.

  Santino sits on the bed and bounces a bit. The mattress is better than any he’s slept on. He’s never had a room to himself before. Suddenly lonely, he returns to the window. I’ll save every lira, he thinks. No drinking, no cards. I’ll get work on the side. The moment there’s enough money, we can get married.

  Something white catches his eye: snapshots fluttering through the piazza in front of the boardinghouse. A lady wearing mismatched shoes scurries to collect them. German soldiers stand on the corner. Civilians hurry past, impatient, nervous. One photograph keeps tumbling just beyond the lady’s reach. The soldiers laugh. Santino tenses to run outside and help, but before he can put motion to the thought, a gust of wind blows the photograph decisively away.

  WAREHOUSE DISTRICT

  PORTO SANT’ANDREA

  Glissando, a harbor siren hits high A before its brief solo is lost in a chorus of inland Valkyries. German anti-aircraft fire provides percussion. Ears straining to pick out the sound of the approaching aircraft, Iacopo Soncini watches the warehouse rats. They are smart, and their hearing is more acute than his own.

  “What do you think?” he asks them. “Yanks or Tommies?”

  All winter, B-17s have flown over northwestern Italy, winging toward the Reich. Like wharf rats, many Sant’Andrese have learned to distinguish the engine note of the American bombers from that of the British planes. In mild weather, neighbors come outside to watch squadrons in the starlight. People chat in low voices, sitting together in dark courtyards or leaning out of windows. Then they go back to bed, hoping for a few hours of rest before sirens announce the Americans’ return to Corsica.

  When the rats dash for cover, Iacopo does, too. “RAF,” their skittering tells him. “Our turn tonight.”

  One of the rats creeps back into sight. A pregnant female, teats prominent, she balances on sturdy little haunches and begins to groom her soft brown fur. “False alarm?” Iacopo asks. He blinks, and she’s vanished.

  A thudding explosion a few hundred meters away. Dust sifts from the rafters. Iacopo’s eyes shift from floor to walls to roof, searching for signs of collapse. Ground-floor corners are the safest, left standing when the rest of a building goes down. The next detonation is so close, he feels the concussion in his chest.

  There is a mathematical pattern to a raid. No matter how tight the pilots’ formation, bombardiers vary slightly in the release of their cargo. The earliest of the explosions can be heard separately. Soon individual sounds merge into a toneless crescendo.

  He could give a lecture on the natural history of terror. Survive your first air raid, and you thank God, laughing and giddy. Survive your tenth, and the element of luck cannot be ignored. If we’d been there, not here; if the breeze had carried that fire a few meters closer… Funerals become a commonplace annoyance as you make your way through the city. The notion of luck begins to turn on you. What worked before may not save you this time. Dash through the street, and you could be crushed by falling masonry. Race to a shelter, and you could suffocate as the fires’ carbon monoxide sinks into the cellar.

  Survive your thirty-first raid, and you’ll sit tight for number thirty-two. You’ll waste no energy. You’re too tired, too familiar with the outhouse stench of your own fear to run from it. An abandoned, rat-infested warehouse next to a shipyard is as good a place as any, if your luck runs out.

  Hunched on the floor, the cool stone cobbles hard against his hips, Iacopo feels his shoulders rise and his head duck in a pointless involuntary effort to protect himself. He tries to think about his family. The exercise is fruitless. Mirella is no longer pregnant, but he cannot picture her any other way. Angelo exists as the memory of a little boy marching off, stiff-backed, hand in hand with a short, round nun. Rosina will be crawling by now, perhaps saying a few words as well. Changed beyond recognition.

  The only face he can picture clearly is a stranger’s. A girl, perhaps sixteen: fast asleep, eyes open, wandering along Via Massini. Sleepwalkers are common in cities under bombardment— no one understands why. Dreaming perhaps of a journey to some safe place, dressed only in a nightgown too short for her, the sleeping girl drifted through shreds of morning fog. She was so young that he could see in her face the infant she once was, the toddler, the schoolgirl. He ached to take her in his arms and kiss her with all the tenderness he still had in him. A delayed detonation shook the ground. In an instant she was transformed from lovely girl to terrified animal. She circled frantically, unable to decide which way to run. When he came toward her, she screamed and screamed, as though he were the embodiment of all that had blighted her childhood.

  The air raid’s thunder beats against him like a club. Puddles shiver and gleam in the pale light that pours through holes in the warehouse roof. Pesach’s full moon illuminates tonight’s coastal targets, and his own shaking hands. Coal dust draws black crescents beneath his nails, and makes intaglios of his knuckles. His forearms are muscled like a sailor’s. The back that bent over books now curves around the willow basket he uses to lug his stock-in-trade. The RAF is his business partner, he supposes, and the thought is vaguely funny. If he’s alive and reasonably whole in the morning, he’ll leave this leaky den, assess the pattern of bomb damage, choose a direction. The first hours of the day will be given not to prayer and study but to scavenging charcoal in wrecked buildings. When he’s filled the basket with chunks of fuel, he’ll deliver it to housewives who still have stoves to cook on, and who are sharing the little they have with fugitive Jews.

  At last, the explosions slow, become sporadic. Above him, tons lighter, British bombers wheel and begin their flight back to base unburdened by ordnance. One by one, the rats reappear.

  He listens to the shouts and secondary explosions outside. The rats make themselves tidy, combing dusty whiskers with delicate, pale paws. The sirens wail the all clear. Once again the angel of death has passed over him. He tries to thank God, but can’t help feeling like a thug’s wife who believes she is loved if a punch goes wide.

  Twenty minutes, he thinks. The trembling will stop
in twenty minutes.

  Running feet pound along the alley beyond the warehouse walls. Iacopo remains where he is. He’s picked up too many clumps of flesh and bone, found too many families cooked in the water from burst boilers, heard too many screams, smelled too much charred meat, seen too many corpses lying doubled up in pools of their own melted fat. Tonight he will sleep. In the morning, he will make his rounds, delivering courage with the charcoal.

  “Lo amut, ki echyeh, v’asaper ma’asei Yah,” he whispers with threadbare resolution. “I shall not die but live, and I will declare the works of God.”

  IMMACOLATA CONVENT

  PORTO SANT’ANDREA

  Suora Marta pulls out the handkerchief she keeps tucked into her tight black inner sleeve and hands it to Frieda Brössler. The woman must have been handsome once, but her pale skin has been spoiled by weather, and worry, and grief.

  “I told Steffi— don’t talk to anyone! Wait here, and we’ll come back for you. Then—”

  A white-veiled novice enters, eyes downcast, carrying a tray. Noiselessly, she sets out two glasses of water, two bowls of diluted milk flavored with roasted cicoria, some rolls that aren’t too moldy. “We can’t offer anything better,” Suora Marta apologizes as the novice backs away. “Dip the bread into the milk,” she suggests. “You won’t notice the mold.”

  Frau Brössler shakes her head: I can’t. Sighing, Suora Marta nods permission to the daughter Liesl, who stares at the bread but reaches only for the milk. “Frau Brössler,” Marta says, “if we are to find your other daughter, you must try to tell me as clearly as you can what happened.”

  “There was an ultimatum,” Frieda says, gripping the handkerchief. “Anyone caught after the deadline would be shot, and so would the owner of the property they were caught on. How could we put that farmer in danger, after he had been so kind? Duno— my son— he said we shouldn’t do it, but Herrmann was so sure! I don’t know where Duno is. He wanted to join the partisans. He left us the day before we went to San Mauro—”

  “One thing at a time,” Suora Marta says. “Please— take a little water. What happened when you reached Borgo San Mauro?”

  “At first, Italian soldiers put us in an armory. They were good to us— there was food, and they even let us go into town to shop. Then the SS came. They started beating people. Old people, women, children. They were shouting and pushing people onto freight cars. They had guns and dogs— savage dogs. A little boy started to cry, and a soldier hit him! That child couldn’t have been four! Steffi started screaming. I was afraid the soldiers would hit her, too. I took her to a side street. I told her, ‘Stay right there until we come back.’ My husband thought he might be able to trade his wristwatch for better seats on the train. He went to the Germans to inquire, and— and—”

  “The tall one shot him,” Liesl says, dry-eyed.

  Frau Brössler seems dazed. “One moment Herrmann was asking a perfectly sensible question, and the next, he was— He was on the ground. He was gone. Just like that. Gone! I couldn’t move. I just stood there. His blood… poured— just poured out over the cobblestones.”

  Suora Marta is the only nun whose German is good enough to speak to many of the Hebrews. The weight of these stories, the endless repetition… How does the rabbi stand it? She glances at the wall clock. Half past two, and he is long overdue.

  “A lady saw Papa on the ground,” Liesl says. “She pulled us inside.”

  “Signora Giovanetti, her name was.” Frieda accepts the glass of water the nun presses on her. “She hid us.” The wonderment almost dries her tears. “She was so kind, so kind! I asked, Perché? Why? She said, ‘Anch’io vedova.’ Something like that. What does that mean, Sister?”

  “Dear lady,” Suora Marta says gently, “it means: ‘I, too, am a widow.’ ”

  “Mutti looked for Steffi later, with Signora Giovanetti,” Liesl says while her mother sobs. “They couldn’t find the doorway.”

  “We were afraid to ask too many questions,” Frau Brössler continues, tears streaming. “The lady hid us for a month in San Mauro. Then she took us to her cousin’s house farther away. He kept us all winter, but in March there were German sweeps. It was too dangerous, so a priest brought us here.”

  “Bitte, Frau Brössler,” Suora Marta presses, “what did the doorway look like? Do you remember anything at all about the place you left your daughter?”

  The woman’s reddened eyes lose focus. “The door was very short. Even Liesl would have to duck to go through it.”

  “Nothing else?”

  The daughter speaks. “There was a statue of a little man. He was wearing that kind of hat with the two points.”

  “A miter.” San Mauro, most likely, the town’s patron saint. “A short door, near a statue of San Mauro.” It’s not much to go on, but it’s a start. Suora Marta once again pushes the plate of bread toward the Brösslers. “Please— you must eat!”

  “We can’t eat that,” the girl says firmly.

  “Don’t be fussy, child! I know there’s some mold, but have—”

  “It’s almost Easter. So it must be Passover now. We don’t eat bread during Passover.”

  “Of course!” Marta says. “The Feast of Unleavened Bread!”

  “We’re supposed to eat matzoh,” the girl says.

  “They won’t have matzoh, Liesl.” Her mother glances toward the door, then at the bread. “Someone said a rabbi visits? He could tell us what to do.”

  Suora Marta looks again at the clock. “He must have been delayed, but I’ve heard him help others when they must make a decision. He always says, ‘Choose life.’ In my village there was a saying, Frau Brössler: ‘Bread is life.’ ”

  When the two have eaten, Suora Marta leads them to the novitiate dormitory. There are no rugs on the floors or pictures on the walls, but the room is large and airy, divided into cells by posts and clotheslines, from which hang a series of canvas sheets. The novices themselves have mostly moved to Roccabarbena, their places taken by Jews. Mother and daughter will sleep side by side, in the last bed left. Safe from the Nazis if not from Allied bombs.

  Marta climbs the back stairs to the professed sisters’ quarters and opens the first door on the right. Sitting at a small desk, she takes out a piece of white stationery, now half its original size, makes a sharp crease along the top, and carefully strips away another bit of paper. Uncapping a fountain pen, she writes a few words, blows gently to dry the ink, and folds the note twice. Reaching through a slit in the side of her outer gown, she buries the note deep in the black cotton pouch that serves as a pocket.

  Suora Marta stops by the linens room for a handkerchief to replace the one she gave Frau Brössler. The refectory next. The kitchen is deserted: dinner long over, supper not begun. A packet of food waits on the scrubbed wooden table, and it joins the note in her pocket. Hands under her scapular, Marta proceeds to the mother superior’s office. The door is open, and Suora Marta sticks her head inside. “Reverend Mother, may I take Suora Ilaria for a walk to the basilica?”

  Mother Agata smiles coolly. “Give my best to our friend in the cleaning closet, Suora.”

  Suora Ilaria has no idea why she serves as Marta’s companion on such errands, but she asks no questions as they cross the piazza. When Marta tugs the side door open, the elderly nun peeks into the basilica. “I’m going to die soon!” she confides with a girlish grin.

  “How wonderful!” Suora Marta replies, propping the door open with her foot. “Watch your step, Suora.”

  Ilaria points her head toward the ground and takes a big step over the threshold, as though it were a sleeping dog that might jump up and knock her down. “Soon I’ll be with our Lord, and his Blessed Mother!” she says cheerily. She grips Suora Marta’s arm. “I don’t mean to brag.”

  Marta pats the spotted hand. “Pray for me when you see them, Suora.”

  In middle age, Suora Ilaria was the convent’s Living Rule— the very embodiment of the order’s customs and laws in all their myriad
minutiae. Her meticulous observance was a silent reproach to her less scrupulous sisters in Christ, and earned her the nickname Suora Malaria. For years, the principal result of Suora Marta’s weekly examination of conscience was a tabulation of uncharitable thoughts about the woman at her side. Thirty-four years later, Marta’s a little sad at the thought of losing the old girl.

  Not that I’d begrudge her a moment with You, Lord, she thinks with a pious glance toward the crucifix.

  The basilica is dressed in Lenten purple, nearly deserted this time of day. Two poorly dressed, thin-faced laywomen kneel in the vaulted silence, lips moving as each prays a solitary rosary. A skinny laborer rests his bony rump against the pew behind him and stares vacantly: too tired to pray but comforted to be in church. Sitting in the back of the basilica, apparently lost in thought, a heavily mustachioed gentleman in an expensive suit strokes a long jaw, blue with the kind of beard that needs shaving twice a day.

  Marta supports Suora Ilaria’s creaky genuflection and leads her to the left. When the old nun settles in to pray near the Virgin’s altar, Suora Marta slips away.

  Until a few weeks ago, Rina Dolcino brought meals to Giacomo Tura. Sometimes Suora Marta was in the basilica when this happened, and it did not escape her notice that Rina seemed more vivid, somehow, when she emerged from the scribe’s small room. If either of the pair had been under seventy, Suora Marta would have put a stop to the visits at once. Perhaps she should’ve been more suspicious. Giacomo Tura has mourned like a widower since Rina was killed.

  Naturally, the old gentleman is lonely. Suora Marta passes some time with him, discussing war news. South of Rome, the front is quiet. The Red Army has taken Odessa. The Allies control the air over western Europe and Germany. By the time Marta returns to the nave, Suora Ilaria has fallen asleep kneeling, forehead on gnarled hands still folded in prayer.

  Palming the note concealed in her habit, Marta removes the handkerchief from her sleeve and steps forward as if to dust the base of the Madonna’s statue. She gives the plaster feet a bit of a rub to remove some smudge and slips the piece of paper under a vase of flowers. Turning, she sees the gentleman with the mustache note her attention to the altar’s cleanliness. Suora Marta nods slightly, acknowledging his approval.