A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russel

  He straightens and hits the priest high in the belly, under the rib cage, emptying the lungs so that no scream can mask the crackle of shattering cartilage and snapping ligaments. Torn out, lifted from behind, the balls of the shoulders spring from their sockets. The body falls abruptly, then hangs from its own muscles and skin and nerves and blood vessels. The dislocated arms are twisted high above the head.

  “Torture,” PierCarlo says to himself. “From the Latin torquere, to twist.”

  He watches, patient, emotionless. Soon the body’s need for breath wins its battle against gravity, and the screaming can begin. When the shrieks subside to a high, thin whine like a piglet’s squeal, PierCarlo begins to chant in the singsong voice of an adult wheedling cooperation from a reluctant child. “No one can hear you but me. Nobody knows where you are,” he croons softly. “Give me what I want, naughty worm, or I’ll never let you go.”

  March 1945

  PENSIONE USODIMARE

  PORTO SANT’ANDREA

  The office is makeshift: a cheap desk pushed into an entry that was once a modest receiving room for a prosperous family. After the war, Antonia Usodimare intends to fix the place up again, but for now it’s good enough. Her boarders are lonely men, too weary and dejected to care about threadbare upholstery and derelict draperies. She moves heavily on puffy, leaden legs, cooking plain meals for them, doing their washing. Between bouts of housework, she knits with red and swollen fingers, knobby knees splayed beneath the skirt of a faded black dress, bunioned feet stuffed into a pair of her dead husband’s slippers.

  This morning, she aches worse than usual. After all the boarders left, she added a long climb to the garret to her ordinary work, then punished her joints further by kneeling in the corner, prying up the boards, retrieving a bundle of clothing. One flight down, she wrapped the bundle in a thin towel, collected a few shirts, stuffed them into a sack with stinking underwear and socks. Layering them, like a nasty lasagna. Slowly, pausing on each stair tread, she made her way back down to the office, tucked the sack under the desk, and settled down to wait.

  She’s been promised that a staffetta called la vedova will give her an entire package of British cigarettes in exchange for the bundle. A princely payment, but justified by the risks Antonia takes for the resistance. The Gestapo will arrest anyone, even old women. If they search the Pensione Usodimare and find what hides under her desk, Antonia Usodimare will pay with her life.

  At midmorning, a young peasant knocks politely on the open door but stays just outside, one hand balancing the large basket she carries on her kerchiefed head. “Prego, signora,” she says with a slurry mountain accent, “have you any laundry for me today?”

  Antonia frowns suspiciously. She was expecting someone her own age, not this pregnant green-eyed girl. “I usually do my own.”

  “Prego, signora, I’ll do a good job, and I don’t charge much. I need the money. I am all alone. A widow.”

  As she realizes that la vedova is not just a nickname, the landlady’s lumpy old face changes. “Poveretta,” she murmurs, bending to retrieve the sack. The girl lowers her basket, secreting the bundle amid the sheets and shirts she’s already carrying. “Grazie tanto,” she says. “You are very kind.”

  She passes the cigarettes to Antonia when the old woman embraces her. “There are too many widows,” Antonia whispers. “Too many mothers alone.”

  “There will be more.”

  It is a promise, not a threat. Antonia draws back, chilled. La vedova pauses at the open door. “I’ll have the laundry back by Tuesday,” she says in a voice meant to be heard. “Mille grazie, signora.”

  At roadblocks and checkpoints, she can play her pregnancy either way. Italians, either sentimental or in collusion with the resistance, allow the weary young Madonna to pass without a thorough search. Germans are more dangerous. Their eyes linger on her swollen breasts. They pretend to be suspicious. Italy is filled with girls who survive by doing soldiers a favor for a few lire, a couple of cigarettes, a little food. To them, Claudia is a slut stupid enough to let herself get knocked up, as bitter and embattled as they themselves. “What have you got in that basket?” such men always ask. Sometimes she flirts with them. “A bomb,” she jokes. “Want to search me?”

  Sant’Andrea’s early spring has softened into real warmth; her blouse is half open beneath a rust-red cardigan. The waistband of a flowered skirt is shifted above her belly, and raises the hem over her knees. She shuffles forward in the queue, watching the older of two soldiers.

  Stepping up to the barricade, she glances at a gang of undersized urchins loitering just beyond. Ragged, barefoot, fearless. “Zigaretten,” such boys beg at every German checkpoint. For sport sometimes, soldiers flick a butt to the cobbles and make bets as children fight for possession. Claudia leans over to set her basket down. The older German watches a trickle of sweat slip between her breasts. She hands over her identity card.

  He may toss a cigarette toward the boys, beckon to her, demand a “toll” for her passage. He may see the signs of alteration on her papers and arrest her, or simply shoot her in the head because he’s hung over and knows the war is lost. She will not know why she died, except that she is following her orders: collect the uniform, deliver it to Schramm.

  “What’s in there?” He means the basket, but he’s looking now at her belly.

  “A little bastard,” she says in Schramm’s Italian-accented German. “Want to search me to be sure?”

  Pawing through the laundry, he gives the opportunity some thought. She’s pretty, even six months along— “Scheisse!” he hisses, leaping back as though his hand had been bitten by a snake.

  She apologizes, feigning surprise and dismay. Explains that such cleaning is part of her job. He swears again, face twisting with disgust, and tells her to move on. God knows how many people this man’s killed, but rags soaked with menstrual blood have the power to horrify him.

  She clears the barricade and follows a boy named Riccardo down a narrow alley, through a low plank door. The other kids filter in, delivering stolen purses, wallets, and guns. Riccardo decides what he can fence in town and what he’ll sell to la vedova. The bargaining is swift. Two packets of British cigarettes for identity papers. He wants two more for the guns, but she shakes her head. “One pack,” she says. “We’ve got plenty of guns.”

  “Bene.” Riccardo lights up.

  “Next Tuesday,” she tells him. “The Genoa gate.”

  The child’s cheeks hollow as he takes a drag. He coughs and nods, then raises a grubby hand in farewell. “Next Tuesday,” he agrees. “Ciao, bella.”

  NEAR BORGO SAN MAURO

  VALDOTTAVO

  Tonio lugs lead batteries. Maurizio totes the cumbersome generator. The twelve-pound wireless transmitter bumps against Simon Henley’s own chronically bruised back. Twenty-some men form a guard around the precious radio equipment. When the sun comes up, the tracks of this mixed multitude will be plain as day through melting snow and the mud beneath it. “Won’t the Germans follow us?” Simon Henley asks his guide.

  “Of course not,” Maria Avoni says.

  “Why not?” he asks in sincere ignorance.

  “Because they might find us.” She stands still, listening. Gets her bearings, and points. “There is a spring. We will drink some water and rest.”

  Mirella Soncini seemed an angel of mercy who made his first day in Italy warm and safe. Maria Avoni is an altogether different example of Italian womanhood. Last month, at Renzo Leoni’s order, Maria appeared at Villa Malcovato toting a machine gun, with ammunition belts criss-crossed over her lovely bosom: Boadicea as dressed by Pancho Villa. “How was your flight?” she asked Simon, as though he were a tourist on holiday, not a paratrooper behind enemy lines. “I will show you to your first camping place,” she said. “We will have an enjoyable walk.”

  She commands a band of two dozen partisans instructed to facilitate the British signalman’s work. Her English is competent, but Simon was bemused b
y her phrasing until she mentioned that her father was a mountain guide before the war.

  She picks out a flattish rock to use as a picnic bench, and extracts panini from a backpack. The other partisans nudge each other, smirking, when Simon sits next to her. He wishes their vulgar assumptions were correct. He’s spent hours pretending to care about Maria’s nature talks, watching her hips as she climbs in the moonlight.

  She is smart, and knowledgeable, and has volunteered for the thankless task of teaching him a bit of her language. Tonight’s topic has been the bewildering variety of Italian politics. As near as he can make out, the Garibaldi Brigades divide their time between ambushing Fascists and preparing for a Communist revolution after the war. Matteotti Socialists are left-wing laborites, but not Communists; they support trade unions and peasant agricultural cooperatives. Christian Democrats want to restore normality, a rather cloudy concept these days. Catholic Actionists differ from Christian Democrats in some way that even Maria is hazy about. “I think they’re more religious” was all she could come up with.

  The Committee for National Liberation’s brief is to coordinate the actions of such groups for the common good— broadly defined as making the Germans leave Italy. The British SOE’s mission, in turn, is to encourage CNL cooperation with the Allies by dropping medical supplies, weapons, ammunition, money, and cigarettes, all in exchange for intelligence on enemy troop movements. Simon’s own orders are to transmit said intelligence, an activity the German SS and Italian Black Brigades wish devoutly to discontinue. By day, squads of them comb the district on foot or motorbike, searching in general for partisans and in particular for an Englishman with a wireless. Maria guides him to a new transmission location every seventy-two hours.

  “And what are your political views?” he asks Maria, trying to sound worldly while chewing a cheese sandwich.

  She licks olive oil from her fingers. “See those two farms? There, and there.” Hints of a rosy dawn flush the eastern sky. He can just make out the blackened ruins high on either side of the main valley. “The Fascists say Attilio Goletta helps the resistance. The Communists say Battista Goletta is a Fascist informer. Broken clocks are correct two times a day. The Black Brigades and the Garibaldini— they are both correct this time.” She shrugs, and with an act of will, he does not watch her breasts move beneath her battle jacket. “Most of the time, they are wrong. Fascisti think all peasants help the partisans, so they burn houses. Communisti think if a farmer’s house isn’t burned, he must be a collaborator. So they burn houses.”

  “And your group?”

  “We just want all these bastards to leave us alone. Germans, Fascists, Communists.”

  Relieved the British are not yet on her list of bastardi, Simon clears his throat self-consciously. “Maria, I heard that there will be a dance. A lot of the partisans are inviting staffette… I was wondering if you would—”

  Her face goes still. She moves her head from side to side, listening to a faint thumping on the other side of the low mountains to the south. Mortars, a valley or two away. “I’ll dance when the war is over.”

  She stands, giving orders. Maurizio does as he’s told, hefting the generator, but Tonio mutters “Rompacoglioni” in a tone intended to provoke. Maria replies, a whiplash in her voice.

  Simon straps the wireless onto his back but looks to Maria for an explanation of what just happened. She pumps the air near her crotch with both hands and jerks her head toward Tonio. “Ambidestro,” she says with a sneer.

  He stifles a laugh when he works it out: two-handed wanker.

  “He calls me ballbuster,” she tells Simon casually. “I say to him, ‘Lucky I hate the Germans more than I hate pricks like you.’ ” She studies Simon, knowing— the way women always seem to know— that his intentions are every bit as dishonorable as those of any other man. His tactics, at least, are more gentlemanly. “When war came, there were fewer tourists, and my father’s business went down. After the Germans? No tourists at all. From then on—” She meets Simon’s eyes with a level gaze. “I supported my whole family. Parents. Nonna. Three brothers, a sister.” She watches his reactions. Admiration. Puzzlement. The shock of understanding. He searches for something to say, but she says it for him. “I was a whore, but I am also their superior officer. So they obey.”

  They have begun to climb again when a small girl appears out of nowhere. She chatters and points toward a farm building about a mile down the mountainside. Simon sees a German soldier exit a barn.

  Unconcerned, Maria sends the child off and leans again into the slope. Simon stumbles, looking over his shoulder. There are several Germans now, heads bowed over a map. One raises binoculars. “Maria,” Simon says with all the urgency he can muster, “if they spot us, they’re not likely to mistake this for a shepherds’ convention.”

  “You worry too much,” she says, her pace unaltered. “They will stay there and have a breakfast.”

  He has never been in combat. Maria has led ambushes, survived firefights, won skirmishes. She knows the country and the people. He trusts her judgment. With the war nearly over, many ordinary German and Italian soldiers merely go through the motions of pursuing partisans, but the SS have lost none of their zeal for hunting down unarmed Jews. In the past few weeks, Simon’s seen massive operations sweep through valleys like this. Barking mad, really, given how much those troops are needed elsewhere.

  Suddenly, and for no reason he can identify, he feels… exposed, and very frightened. He sidesteps, not knowing why, moving to Maria’s left just as the machine guns open up.

  Startled by the noise, he dives for cover, rolling behind a log in time to see Maria’s blouse stitched in red by a neat row of bullets. Four more partisans are hit before she topples to the muddy ground.

  Three rounds zip over the log, their draft riffling Simon’s hair. They’re shooting at me, he thinks stupidly. Those people are trying to kill me. In the next instant, all the tedious months of SOE training and discipline take over. He looses a burst from his Marlin in the general direction of the gunfire and motions for Maurizio to move uphill.

  Wide-eyed, Maurizio tightens the generator’s straps, scrambles through the muddy melting snow, then fires a burst of his own while Simon runs crouched and at top speed. Soon all the partisans are moving upward in pairs, alternately keeping the Germans’ heads down with covering fire and scrambling like hell for cover on higher ground.

  They’ve made fifty meters when the noise and the immediate danger begin to recede. Mouths open, they pause to reassess their line of retreat. The ground suddenly leaps to life beneath Tonio’s feet. A machine gunner on their left flank quickly corrects. Tonio screams— legs, thighs, hips spattered with slugs. Another partisan grabs his arm, trying to pull the wounded man along. The gunner finishes them both.

  Sprinting now like startled goats, the surviving partisans dash toward the trees on their right, struggling through the treacly surface. A third machine gun opens fire directly in front of them. Three men go down, shot or maybe only slipping in the mud. Simon scrambles into a shallow gully with Maurizio. Maurizio yells to the others. A few shout back. Simon tries to count the voices. Seven left? Eight? Scattered over a fifty-yard field of overlapping fire. In the numberless western serials Simon watched as a child, this was when the 7th Cavalry would gallop over a ridge, bugles blaring, sabers flashing.

  The shooting becomes sporadic. Partisans periodically pop up to keep the Germans at bay. The Jerries return fire halfheartedly, knowing they need only remind their quarry they’re still pinned down. Eventually, the Italians will run out of ammunition.

  It’s going to be a beautiful spring day, Simon thinks as the sun rises. He can see a small copse of chestnut trees in a rubble of boulders, about two hundred yards uphill.

  He nudges Maurizio and jerks his head toward the trees, hoping that eyes and expression can convey his thoughts: Stay here, and we’re fish in a barrel. Run, and we’ll be cut to pieces. Understanding, Maurizio shrugs, pulling the c
orners of his mouth downward as if to say, Six of one, half a dozen of the other. “Andiamo,” he says.

  They take another count of the survivors and relay the plan to make a run for it. Tensing, Simon has gathered himself for the dash when the noise suddenly triples, and military clichés explode around him. Withering fire. A hail of bullets. All hell breaking loose. A vaguely familiar voice shouts in English from somewhere uphill. “Ei! Simon! Get ready! We give you cover!”

  Laughing crazily, Maurizio directs Simon’s wild-eyed gaze toward a man waving behind a tree stump. It’s the one who visited England. What was his name? Something Shakespearean…

  Before Simon can remember more, Renzo Leoni strolls out from behind a boulder. (Cool as a cucumber. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.) With the Germans preoccupied by this astounding display of joie de morte, Simon jumps up to spray the woods with his Marlin, thinking, Run like a rabbit. Run for your life.

  Vaulting a fallen tree behind a low rock outcrop, he flops onto his belly and watches for muzzle flashes. This time he aims and picks off a man feeding ammo into one of the machine guns. Rewarded with a scream, he feels for the first time the sheer unholy joy of survival at another’s cost, and looks for someone else to kill.

  A partisan scuttles over and hides behind the rocks with him. “Ei! Simon! Remember me?” he asks cheerily. “I am Otello. I visit England for one year!”

  Living proof that God protects drunks and lunatics, Renzo Leoni joins them, groaning like an old man when he kneels. He speaks in a low, quick voice, his appraising eyes on Simon. “The boss is happy you still have the radio,” Otello translates. “He says: you did well. He says: a corporal in the paratroops is worth a colonel in any army!”