A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russel

  She cuts wedges of tomatoes, thick slabs of chestnut bread and thin slices of cheese, and sets them on the table between the men. “Would you like some wine?” she asks them. Stretching, she takes down a bottle, and her new wineglasses.

  Tercilla wouldn’t like to think of herself as a war profiteer, but a lot of city people snuck into the hills this summer, hoping to swap small treasures for food. She took a silver spoon for a half liter of olive oil. That’s been a disappointment, darkening day by day until the only nice thing about it is the fancy design on the handle. But the crystal glasses she got for a small wheel of goat cheese! Those sparkle like new snow when the morning light hits them.

  “The Germans pulled four divisions out of Italy to fight in France,” Santino is saying. “That should make things go faster here. But the British generals are…” He shrugs and shakes his head. “The Canadians broke through the Gothic Line in August. They lost four thousand men, but the British Eighth didn’t back them up, and when the weather got bad, the Canadians had to withdraw. The fascisti I work with thought it was a gift from God!”

  “Th-the G-germans’re d-drrrilling hhhh—” Pierino holds up his hand, to ask for time. “Hhhholes! Under th-the P-p-ponte Antica.”

  “The Roman bridge at Roccabarbena,” Tercilla clarifies, pouring the wine.

  Santino takes a sip and nods his compliments. “Whenever they pull back, they blow up bridges behind them, to slow the Allies down.” He brightens. “That means they don’t think they can hold the Gothic: they’re getting ready to retreat north.” He addresses Pierino, one soldier to another. “Germans are dangerous, even after they’re gone. They leave booby traps everywhere. Mines hidden under cans of food, or pieces of chocolate, or soap. Even under dead bodies! Pick something up, there’s an explosion. You should watch them up here, so you know where the traps are.”

  “Wwwwhy exp-p-plosssives?” Pierino makes an arc through the air, and then points underneath it.

  “Under the bridge?” Santino recites from memory. “ ‘An arch is two weaknesses that, leaning together, become a strength.’ That’s what Leonardo said. Bridges are built for a load from the roadbed, so they’re hard to damage from above, like when planes drop bombs. But if you weaken the span from below—” He stops, his homely face almost breaking in half around his gappy grin. “That’s her!” he says happily. “I just heard Claudia outside!”

  She bursts into the house, rushing past them for the rifle Santino gave her to seal their engagement. “Pierino! There are soldiers—”

  Both men are on their feet when she turns, the carbine heavy in her hands. “Santino!” she says, astonished. “Thank God! There are soldiers doing something terrible to a girl!”

  Santino reaches for the ’91 to check the chamber. “Where? How many are there?”

  “Six of them. I’ll show you where.”

  Pierino grabs a second strip clip of ammo from a shelf. Bettina appears in the doorway, eyes like eggs. Tercilla grips her daughter’s shoulders roughly and spins her back outside. “Go tell Cesare Brondello,” she says. “Then hide, Bettina! And stay hidden!”

  They are working in pairs. One kneels on the girl’s shoulders while the second pumps away. Two are done. A blond corporal smokes. A private buttons his pants. Both call encouragement while the next, slack-mouthed and rapt, waits his turn. The youngest hangs back, and the blond corporal punches him in the shoulder. “What’s the matter?” the blond asks. “You some kind of queer?”

  Twenty meters above, Claudia urges in a tiny, frantic voice, “Shoot them, Santino! Make them stop!”

  Tercilla shakes her head. “He’ll hit the girl.”

  “The b-b-blond first,” Pierino whispers.

  “Second,” Santino says. The carbine’s well oiled: the bolt slides back noiselessly. Motionless as the rocks that hide him, Santino braces against a tree trunk. Listens to the blubbery little noises the girl makes each time the boy rams into her. Watches, unblinking, until the soldier sags.

  Santino breathes out, finger tightening on the trigger. The other Germans give a ragged cheer when their comrade grins for the last time, rolling away from the girl. The side of his head sheers off.

  Before anyone can react, the blond’s jaw disappears. Bone and blood fly from his neck. He tumbles backward, hair like ripe hay in a patch of sunlight.

  The girl on the ground convulses, scrabbling away on her elbows and heels like a crab. The third bullet goes high. The fourth smashes into a knee and travels straight up the leg. The wounded soldier shrieks. Panicking, the others return fire, but can’t work out where the rifleman is.

  One grabs the girl, jerks her onto her knees, crouches behind her. Two others race for cover. Tracking ahead of the slowest, Santino brings him down with a lucky shot. The youngest disappears into the woods, and keeps on going.

  Pierino lifts a rock the size of a loaf of bread and scuttles along the ridge. Santino loads the second clip, and nods. Pierino pops up, flinging the rock like a discus. It smashes down through leaves and brush. The German with his arm around the girl’s neck wheels to face the noise.

  It’s a poor angle. Santino goes for a body shot. The round goes sideways through the boy’s back. His grip on the girl flies open. His screams join hers, and those of the castrato.

  “How many more?” Santino asks. “Where are the others?”

  “Two dead, three wounded,” Tercilla says grimly.

  “One ran,” Claudia tells him as Pierino returns.

  “Fffinish them,” Pierino advises.

  The girl is rigid with fear, her half-nude body gaudy with brilliant red and sickly yellow. It can’t get worse for her. Santino takes a deep breath. Lets it out slowly. Sights. Squeezes. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Claudia and Pierino bolt down the slope. Pierino kicks bodies and collects sidearms while Claudia leads the girl up the slope. It’s Maria Avoni, Tercilla realizes, disgusted. Blouse ripped, legs bare, Maria’s face is all open mouth and dirt and tears. Everybody knew something like this would happen, and the little tramp has put the whole of Santa Chiara at risk, coming up here to do her dirty business.

  Neighbors arrive in groups of two and three. Some carry knives. Old Cesare Brondello has a shotgun. When he sees the bodies, Cesare sends his granddaughter back for picks and shovels, and goes to Claudia’s fidanzato, digging a rag out of his own back pocket.

  “Wipe your mouth,” he says, when the Calabrian’s done emptying his stomach. “You never killed before?”

  Pasty-faced, Santino shakes his head. “Only animals.”

  “Then nothing has changed,” the old man says. “We’ll bury the bastards, but you’d better say good-bye to Claudia. You can’t stay here.”

  Five minutes, Claudia thinks. We had five minutes, and now he’s gone off somewhere with Pierino, and who knows when we’ll see each other?

  She and the girl are ankle-deep in the creek. The other women stand at the edge of the water, talking behind their hands while Claudia sluices soapy water over a young body frighteningly like her own. “Sit down,” she says. “I’ll wash your hair.”

  “I’m dirty,” the girl says angrily, nails scraping at her thighs. “There’s still dirt.”

  “Those are bruises.” Claudia dips the rag into the water over and over, searching for blood and brains in crevices, behind ears.

  “I want to confess!”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Claudia tells her, glaring at the village women, whose eyes shift away. “My name is Claudia. What’s your name? Tell me your name.”

  “Maria,” the girl says, breaking down again. “Like Our Lady. Like the Virgin!”

  Tercilla waits with a dry cloth. “Get dressed. You’re clean.”

  “No! I’m still dirty. I want Don Leto! I have to confess!”

  “Maria, listen to me!” Claudia cries. “You didn’t do anything wrong! It was the soldiers—”

  “But I agreed!” Maria wails. “He promised— We were hungry, and I agreed!” She look
s at the others, her eyes pleading. “But just to one— not to six! Not to six!”

  Old and young, the women of Santa Chiara look at one another, and then at Claudia, who is still pure. You see? their faces ask. You see what happens? Guard your virtue, or you’ll end up like that little slut Maria Avoni! Maria can see it in their eyes. “You think I don’t know what you’re thinking?” She wipes her nose on the back of her hand, defiant now. “Puttana tedesca! Go on, say it! German whore!”

  Suddenly furious, Tercilla Lovera splashes into the creek and hits Maria hard, twice, across the face. “God help you!” she snarls. “God help us all, when the Germans find out what you have caused!”

  HEADQUARTERS, SS-PANZERGRENADIER

  2ND REGIMENT

  12TH WAFFEN-SS WALTHER REINHARDT DIVISION

  ROCCABARBENA

  The sun sets. Europe’s airwaves fill with coded transmissions. Snow on flowers; grass on high hills; bright birds sing. The images of poetry, drafted for war service. Opera, too, has been dragooned. On Radio Berlin, Siegfried sings of reforging his father’s broken sword: a German counteroffensive is cleared to begin twelve hours later. Tonio declares his love for the Daughter of the Regiment on Radio London: some partisan band can expect a British airdrop, this time tomorrow night. The telephone exchange between Erhardt von Thadden and Helmut Reinecke seems an ordinary conversation about Reinecke’s baby daughter, by contrast.

  “Ach! I almost forgot,” von Thadden says. “My Martina sends greetings to your dear wife, and apologizes for a missing line in that recipe she sent on Wednesday. It should begin, ‘Boil the macaroni.’ ”

  “Thank you, Gruppenführer,” says the recently promoted Standartenführer Reinecke. “Will you be joining us for dinner on Sunday?”

  “Nothing would please me more.”

  Kinder und Kuchen conscripted for war work now.

  Allied commanders have finally learned Blitzkrieg. Fluid lines, fluid operations. Commanders encouraged to be bold, to let armored columns break through wherever possible without worrying about flank protection or supply. Vast numbers of Wehrmacht troops have been encircled. The Red Army is on the Prussian border, the American fifty kilometers from Köln and the Ruhr. Soviet factories churn out three thousand planes a month, and nearly as many tanks. American armament plants run around the clock. “They can add rooks and knights and bishops to the board on every play,” von Thadden said, “and Germany has no pawns left.”

  The two men have been close from the day Reinecke became von Thadden’s adjutant. Not quite father and son but kindred spirits, they’ve disagreed on one issue alone: conduct of the antipartisan war. Reinecke argued for the lure, hoping to win anti-Communists to their side. Von Thadden gave it a fair trial, but every kilometer lost to the Allies has given comfort to the insurgents. Bolder by the day, they’ve accounted for thirty thousand German casualties since May, nearly matching the numbers lost to the British Eighth and American Fifth Armies. “It’s time for the cudgel,” Reinecke conceded. “Allow me to wield it, Gruppenführer.”

  For the first time since he left Russia for Italy, Helmut Reinecke is back in the field, no mere lieutenant but a Standartenführer at the head of a panzergrenadier regiment. With five thousand of von Thadden’s men under his command, Reinecke has used the early weeks of his new rank well: deploying troops, positioning artillery. “We are to hold northern Italy, at all costs,” he told his company commanders, and he read to them Kesselring’s latest orders, with particular emphasis on their final lines. “The situation in the Italian theater has deteriorated to such an extent that it constitutes a serious danger to fighting troops and their supply lines, as well as to the war industry and economic potential. The partisans are a motley collection of Allied, Italian, and Balkan soldiers, and even German deserters who lead native civilians of both sexes, of different callings and ages. The fight against them must be carried out with the utmost severity. I will protect any commander who exceeds our usual restraint in the methods he adopts against the partisans. A. Kesselring, Field Marshal.”

  Gruppenführer von Thadden will arrive on Sunday evening. The action is scheduled for the following Wednesday. Everything is settled, but the plan receives added impetus when Reinecke’s own adjutant— a laconic man named Scheel— appears at the office door with a dispatch. On a routine patrol this afternoon, German soldiers from the San Mauro garrison were ambushed by local farmers. A savage firefight ended with five Germans dead. A sixth escaped to report the squad’s massacre.

  The Geneva Convention could ask no more. Quickly Reinecke dictates the wording of the notice to Scheel. “Print five hundred,” he orders. “I want them posted by dawn.”

  CHURCH OF SAN MAURO

  17 SEPTEMBER

  Leto Girotti lifts his eyes, extending, raising, and joining his hands together. Bowing his head, he turns to face the congregation once more and makes the sign of the cross over them. “Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus: Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus.” Some six hundred of the faithful sing their “Amen” with the choir.

  “Et verbum caro factum est,” Leto chants. The congregation genuflects as a body, except for one man at the back of the church. Sixtyish, nearly bald, shoulders heavy with ax-muscle, his face the color of roasted chestnuts, the leathery skin gullied by sun. Battista Goletta is not here to worship.

  Leto finishes the service by rote and returns to the sacristy to devest. He is in no hurry to deal with Battista, but when the time comes, Leto musters warmth and welcome. “Battista! How wonderful to see you at Mass. I have prayed for this day, figlio mio.”

  “Don’t give me that crap, Girotti.” Battista thrusts a printed notice into Leto’s face. “This is your doing, priest!”

  By the time he’s finished reading, Leto’s voice is steady. “These are lies. Those soldiers were violating a girl. A good man caught them in the act— I won’t say who, but it’s someone you know yourself, Battista.”

  “Whoever he was, it’s him or the whole valley.” A short, thick finger jabs hard into Leto’s chest. “Give the Germans what they want,” Battista says softly, “or I’ll tell what I know about you and that Commie cousin of mine.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Leto says as firmly as he can. “Attilio Goletta is your own flesh. His son Tullio is your godchild! You wouldn’t betray them!”

  Battista’s eyes bore into Leto’s. “When il Duce made me a Knight of Labor, I took an oath to support him. I don’t go back on my word just because the Allies are winning.” He glances up the mountainside. “And tell those Communist bastards this: I’ve already made a statement to someone reliable. If anything happens to me, he’ll make sure they pay.”

  Six months ago, Leto knew every partisan by name. No longer. Volunteers have poured into Valdottavo. Some are from other valleys, or Milan, or Turin. Some are deserters from Mussolini’s Black Brigades. Others wear squares of red cloth tied around their necks. Few know the priest by sight, and a cassock guarantees nothing. Ragged and underfed, each eats time with suspicion, but Leto dares not hurry them. Fail to convince a sentry of your honesty, and from where he sits, he can detonate an explosive around the next bend.

  The cutoff to the crumbling little castle is hidden by trees and vines, netting and brush. By the time Leto reaches it, his leg and a half ache enough to distract him from both worry and prayer. Another sentry challenges him, and with patience born of exhaustion Leto explains his business once more, and then again, to a boy guarding the heavily camouflaged gate. This time, at least, it’s a local kid— one of the younger Brondellos. “Sì, certo, Padre,” he says. “See that doorway? He works in the hospital.”

  Inside half-ruined walls, Castello Ritanna bustles with more activity than it’s seen since the fifteenth century. Leto stumps across the courtyard, determined to beg forgiveness humbly and accept whatever help or advice the other man is willing to give.

  He enters a cool and shadowy stone chamber where men rest on pallets, recovering or dying. A frightened boy begins
to cry, believing a priest’s been called to administer the last rites. From the back of the room comes a low, familiar voice. “Relax, kid, he’s not here for you.”

  Sitting on a milking stool, Renzo is feeding soup to a man whose hands are bandaged. Spoon poised, he waits for the priest’s eyes to adjust. “Don Leto,” he says with soft mockery, “you’ve been avoiding me.”

  Swallowing, Leto asks, “May I speak to you in private?”

  Renzo hands the spoon to one of the walking wounded and slowly pulls himself to standing. Together, they limp across the courtyard, Renzo asking clipped questions, Leto providing brief answers. The Soncinis? The rabbi and his family are reasonably safe; Leto won’t say where. Tomitz? Leto hasn’t heard from him recently, but Osvaldo surfaces only when he has to. The refugees? More German pressure— three sweeps last month, but no one caught. Italian bus drivers have refused to transport Jews from a concentration camp north of Florence; with attacks on the Gothic Line, the Germans have let that situation go for now. Money? Still coming across the Swiss border.

  The tension between them does not ease until they each use the same maneuvers to sit on a crude log bench without putting pressure on a bad leg. Renzo shakes his head and waves a hand at the tumble-down castle. “An appropriate setting for a couple of wrecks like us.”

  Leto tugs a sheet of tightly folded paper from beneath his cincture. Printed in German and Italian, the ultimatum is blunt. “Five German soldiers were murdered by assassins near the village of Santa Chiara, district of Borgo San Mauro, on 16 September 1944. The killers must be handed over to German authorities, along with the bodies of the fallen German soldiers, by noon 19 September 1944. Failing that, the harshest of reprisals will fall upon Valdottavo. Order issued and signed, Standartenführer Helmut Reinecke.”