A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russel

  “Alles,” the commander says, gesturing. “We require the whole farm.”

  “But the children? Die Kinder?” she asks helplessly.

  The officers climb into the backseat of the car. “We will return tomorrow,” the commander tells her.

  Mirella turns her back to the muddy gravel spun up by the staff car’s wheels. Those who’ve hidden until now gather in the courtyard, waiting in the rain for her to tell them what to do.

  Il maggiore is trapped in Milan— Allied planes swoop down and strafe any vehicle they spot. There hasn’t been so much as a note from Iacopo since January, and the last time she saw any of Renzo’s men was when Claudia was here. Was his band the one wiped out at Montebianco? Is it time to move everyone into the woods? How much longer will the fighting last? How many babies and old people would die of exposure? Are the woods any safer than the villa?

  Mirella hardly notices the strength leaving her legs, but she lets someone take Rosina out of her arms. I’m used up, she thinks, sitting in a puddle. There’s nothing left.

  Behind her, the contessa stands in the doorway, watching the German car disappear down the drive. “A Prussian of the worst sort,” she declares before addressing the crowd. “The Germans want this place for a hospital. They want us out by tomorrow.” She waits for the cries of dismay to die down. “My late husband,” she says clearly, “was an admiral when he died. I asked him once why he had chosen the navy and not the army as his career. He said, ‘If you’re going to be killed in battle, it’s better to sleep in a dry bed the night before.’ ” She folds her hands over a small potbelly swathed in silk. “You may do as you please, but I intend to stay right here.”

  Shrugging fatalistically, the others disperse, to make whatever decisions are left to them. Mirella leans back, propping herself on her hands, unspeakably weary. “Signora, why didn’t you help before?”

  The contessa looks down, brows arched. “You seemed quite capable.”

  Too tired for courtesy, Mirella says, “I thought you were crazy.”

  “Possibly,” the contessa allows, going back into the house, “but I am not the one who’s sitting in the mud.”

  Sometime that night, Angelo jostles his mother’s shoulder. “Mamma? Mamma!” he whispers. “Stefania wet the bed!”

  Mirella hauls herself upright, cleans herself and the children, turns the mattress over. Dry bed, she thinks, and falls asleep before she can laugh or cry.

  Troops arrive at dawn. Not hospital personnel but trucks, tanks, infantry, along with two donkeys laden with stolen goods, and one goat without much time to live. Germans surround the house and farm. Some fall asleep where they drop. Others tear the place apart, looking for hidden food and valuables, snarling at anyone in their way.

  Mirella gets the children up and dressed in layers. “Stay here with the girls,” she tells Angelo, “but be ready to go.”

  A young officer sits in the kitchen. Dirty, utterly worn out, he raises his head. “Guten Tag,” he says, and mumbles something she doesn’t understand.

  He seems civil and sounds reassuring. “Kinderheim,” she tells him. “Many Kinder. What should we do?”

  He looks beyond her. Mirella turns. Angelo is standing on the stairs behind her. The girls clutch his hands, wide-eyed. The officer pushes himself to his feet, approaches Rosina, cups her chin in a filthy palm. He says something Mirella can’t make out, but she catches the word Keller. She points toward the stairs.

  Knees buckling from fatigue, the soldier descends partway into the cellar and looks around. “Das ist gut.” He beckons. “Kinder, ja?”

  Something whizzes past the kitchen window with an eerie moan, and explodes an instant later in the garden. Shouting orders, the officer pounds back up the stairway and runs outside. A second shell explodes. “Angelo!” Mirella screams. “Take the girls downstairs, and stay there!”

  “Mamma, where are you going?”

  “To get the other children— they’ll be safer in the cellar!”

  “Mamma, don’t leave us!” Stefania begs. “Please, Mamma! Don’t leave me again!”

  Mirella’s heart jolts. She lifts Rosina, starts down the staircase. “Angelo, take Stefania’s hand!”

  There’s machine-gun fire, shockingly loud, just beyond the kitchen. Another Allied shell hits, nearer. They say you never hear the one that gets you, but how could anyone alive kno

  May 1945

  SANT’ANDREA BLUFFS

  Renzo is chain-smoking Gold Flakes, but his eyes are clear and he is not so lame now that they’re close to the coast. He grins at Claudia’s unspoken assessment. “Peak of condition, relatively speaking.” A good thing, too, given that the brigade is under attack, and badly outnumbered.

  They’d have been in real trouble, if not for her. Camped in yet another stone ruin crumpled atop yet another scrubby mountain, the brigade posted sentries, and everyone else went to sleep. Claudia woke up, queasy with cramps, and went to the makeshift latrine. There, she squatted, watching starlight sparkle on Porto Sant’Andrea’s bay. Something nearer caught her eye. Noiselessly, she pulled up her trousers, grabbed her submachine gun, and found a vantage behind the low stone wall.

  Several platoons of Republican soldiers had slipped past the guards and crept, heavily armed, toward the hilltop. She opened up on the nearest, all of whom had their hands full with climbing. A minute later, two hundred partisans were running to join her attack on what has turned out to be some thirteen hundred fascisti, supported by heavy and light machine guns, mortars, artillery, three armored cars, and two tanks at the bottom of the hill.

  With surprise gone, the Republican assault troops have been pinned down for two dark hours by random fire. Now that dawn has exposed their positions on the hillside, they can do little more than cower and pray as they’re picked off.

  Behind the brigade’s line, young women and younger boys break open airdrop packing, make aprons of their shirts, scuttle forward with their deliveries. In the shelter of a stone wall, partisans salute their Englishman with raised chins, grins, small waves of appreciation. Since Simon Henley jumped into the thin air over Piemonte in February, arms and ammo and crisp pound notes have dropped like confetti on this unit.

  Renzo draws deeply on the butt of one cigarette and lights the next with its glowing end. “Grenades,” he coughs, “on my command.” Claudia runs crouched in the shadow of a stone terrace, relaying orders. At Renzo’s shout, a veritable orchard of pineapple grenades fly downhill. One-sided slaughter continues until a no-man’s-land is established.

  Again Claudia moves along the line. “Shoot now only when you see a good target,” Otello tells Simon, although the lovely green-eyed girl has said considerably more than that. Before she finishes her route, Renzo yells something even Simon understands.

  “Conserve ammo?” Simon asks. “But why? We have crates of the stuff—”

  “Don’t worry, Simon! The boss knows what he’s doing.”

  Renzo closes his eyes, concentrating on the topographic maps he sees in his head. Claudia summons three men to his side, and he sends their squads into the wooded ravines that rib the mountain. By Simon’s count, this move leaves 120 or so to hold the high ground. Splitting your forces is rarely wise, and the odds against them are of Agincourt proportions, but none of the others seems concerned.

  Now taking only light resistance, enemy troops move past the survivors of the first assault group, advancing to within sixty paces of the crumpled castle’s defenses. Encouraged by the lull, a Republican officer shouts into a megaphone.

  “He says we must surrender!” Otello reports gleefully. “We are surrounded. Our position is hopeless.” An accurate description, as far as Simon can see, but everyone else seems amused, and the merriment is more raucous when Renzo shouts something in reply.

  Roaring, the fascisti rise to charge. The boss’s voice cracks like a rifle shot. Bullets, grenades, and body parts fly, until the Republicans can neither advance nor retreat.

  Renzo cal
ls, “Cease fire!” There are cheers along the line. Otello giggles happily. “Their artillery is no good now! The gunners would kill their own men!”

  Far below, on the road skirting the base of the bluffs, a new and larger detachment starts upward. This time the Republicans are burdened with machine guns they hope will give cover while their casualties are extricated. Their climb will take hours.

  Staffette hand out wine and cheese and British battle rations. Sitting with Claudia and the brigade medic, the boss waves off food, but accepts the grog. Duno glowers disapproval. Claudia shrugs. Renzo ignores them both.

  From a distance, Simon considers the three of them. Jews, he thinks. Clannish as Scots, and just as canny. The only man who enters their charmed circle is that one-armed postman who delivers directives from the Committee for National Liberation to autonomous bands like this one. Renzo is as deferential to the messenger as he is dismissive of the messages.

  The British are notorious for emotional constipation, but Simon has never seen a man drink with less emotion. The boss doesn’t get sentimental, or sloppy, or mean, or happy. He is businesslike and practical about drinking, as though getting blotto were a job he means to do, and do well. Renzo plays at war the way another man might play tennis: with careless grace, with thoughtless skill. Claudia works at war the way another woman might do housework: without protest, without complaint. If her own chilly quiet weren’t enough to discourage suitors, Duno has made it clear to Simon that Claudia is under the boss’s protection, though she is not his lover, nor is she Duno’s girl.

  Crows and seagulls converge to bicker over bodies. Renzo passes the time plinking at birds that come too close to the Fascist wounded, but his hands shake and he’s a poor shot. The sun moves overhead. Fed and relaxed, oblivious to the moans and cries of the enemy wounded, some of the men settle down to nap. Others talk quietly. Simon’s own eyes begin to drop…

  “Simon!” Otello whispers, shaking him.

  Waking in an instant, Simon shades his eyes against the afternoon light. The Republican reinforcements are just out of range, setting up machine guns. They’re determined to get to their fallen comrades, but this will be the proverbial uphill battle, and they’ve learned to respect the commander of this brigade.

  On some signal Simon does not detect, a partisan squad that’s moved to the enemy rear rises to let loose volley after volley. The Republicans turn to face the threat, only to be raked from their left. Those who survive the first fusillade wheel. That platoon drops out of the line of fire from a third platoon on the enemy right.

  With a perfect view of the battlefield, Simon begins to feel like a guest sitting in the Royal Box at a Wimbeldon match. Holding the whip hand, he discovers, produces warm, happy feelings of invulnerability and power. This, he realizes, is what it must have been like for the Jerries when they started all this.

  Gray-and-black uniforms turn red. Helmets cartwheel downhill. Rock and weed take on the color of oxblood. Junior officers bellow conflicting commands as men crumple and fall around them. Nobody knows who’s in charge, and the Republicans can expect no help. Surely, their officers won’t risk more pointless casualties.

  Renzo calls for another cease-fire. Before long, the wounded are begging for water, for help, for mercy in late afternoon heat.

  “Look,” someone yells. “They’re leaving!”

  On the road below, the artillery units begin to withdraw. The guns are left behind, and the remaining troops begin to melt away. Some of them throwing off their uniform jackets.

  Alone, a Republican officer begins to climb in the diminishing light. His face is in shadow when he arrives at the edge of the battlefield, where his batallion lies dead or dying. With a strip of white bandage in his hand, he steps into range and calls to his partisan counterpart.

  Passionate argument breaks out among the brigade officers. Paying no attention, Renzo walks into the open to meet the Republican.

  Mesmerized, Simon hardly breathes while both men pick their way awkwardly through the carnage. Either side could break this truce at any moment, but their officers speak at length, shake hands, and part.

  Down in Sant’Andrea, bells begin to ring, and the sound spreads from church to church across the city. No one says a thing until Renzo has made his slow and painful climb back to the brigade.

  Claudia is waiting for him with a bottle. His hard, scarred face unmoving and wet, Renzo shakes his head and starts to fall. Duno provides an arm to slow the collapse. Claudia bends to listen to the barely audible voice, then straightens to address the brigade. “The Germans have surrendered,” she says without emotion. “The war is over.”

  Simon is sure he’s understood, but no one moves while she continues with something he can’t follow. “The Republican commander asks us to help with the dead and wounded,” Otello translates. “The boss says: they’re our countrymen. Honor them.”

  Duno is the first to venture toward those still living. One by one, partisans put down their guns and follow.

  PORTO SANT’ANDREA

  Delirium. There’s no other word for it. Half-wild and half-starved, dressed in rags with flour bags tied around their feet, partisans march into the city, singing anthems of resistance. Their pace slackens to a saunter to accommodate cheering crowds, ten deep on either side of the street. Women and girls rush forward to embrace them and plant kisses on their cheeks. Old men push bottles of wine into their hands. Accordions and guitars appear. Everyone is singing at the top of their lungs.

  Palms blistered and backs aching from a long grim night as grave diggers, the boss’s tattered men are very late to the party, but no one resists the joy for long.

  Green, white, and red flags, stitched together from curtains and tablecloths, fly from every window. To Simon’s delight, a few makeshift Union Jacks wave in recognition of Britain’s real, if belated, aid to the Resistance. In every church, giddy young men clamber drunkenly into belfries, banging on the bells with mallets until their arms are rubbery and someone else appears, ready to do the same.

  Soon Simon himself is crocked enough to take a turn. “Viva l’Italia,” he shouts over and over, until he’s too hoarse to go on. When his replacement arrives, Simon fills his chest with Italy’s soft coastal air and looks out over the Mediterreanean, listening to the rapturous noise around him. By God, I’ve justified my little life, he thinks. I did my bit to bring this day to Italy and these wonderful people.

  Suddenly it seems like a hilariously good idea to slide down the church roof, and the wild applause Simon receives for the stunt makes up for the thump his tailbone takes. “You forgot to roll!” Otello wails, and the two of them howl with laughter until they’re too weak to stand. “Have you seen the boss?” Otello gasps, wiping his eyes.

  “Not since this morning,” Simon tells him. He looks around, hoping to find Claudia, but the thought is lost when two fine young ladies present themselves for his approval. “I’ll dance when the war is over,” Maria Avoni said just before Simon saw her killed. In her honor, and with a paratrooper’s red beret on his head at long last, he drinks and dances with every girl he can grab.

  All too soon, a British officer picks him out of the crowd, and waves him to the sideline of the carnival. “Powell, S.O.E.,” this captain says, shouting to be heard. “We landed by Lysander at Vesime. You were ordered to keep these men out of Sant’Andrea!”

  Concentrating mightily, Simon struggles to recall such an order. Yes— there was a transmission from Field Marshal Alexander in Tunis, sometime in the past few days. “Under no circumstances are the irregulars to attack the northern cities until Allied forces arrive to lead them. They are to hold their positions and limit their actions to harrying missions.”

  For a year and a half, the partisans of northern Italy fought the Fascists with minimal outside help. Carpenters and lawyers, farm boys and shopkeepers, carabinieri and theology students, butchers and musicians and railway workers put aside every social and political difference among them. Together,
they swarmed over roads, bridges, train tracks, airports, wiping out German columns sent to demolish Italian infrastructure, attacking every remaining Fascist garrison. They endured hunger, brutal weather, thousands of casualties, untold grief and suffering, and on the brink of victory, Alexander wanted them to stand down. Simon knew the boss well enough to anticipate his response to that. Rather than deliver the decoded message to Renzo, Simon had simply tossed the crumpled paper into a campfire.

  Now, with a smart salute, he gathers all the bleary dignity he can muster and lies. “Like King Canute, sir, I tried to stem the tide. Regrettably, it did no good, sir.”

  “Yes, I see the difficulty,” Powell says, himself distracted by a lovely brunette offering a bottle and an open-armed welcome. “Mille grazie, signorina. Too kind,” he says formally, adding, “Carry on, Corporal,” before plunging into the crowd for a dance.

  PENSIONE USODIMARE

  PORTO SANT’ANDREA

  Above the city proper, Antonia Usodimare turns toward the footsteps behind her. Looking better for a bath, twenty hours’ sleep, and a change of clothes, the man she knew as Ugo Messner joins her in the doorway and listens to the bells. “They’re still having their fun,” she says. “All night, they’ve been drinking.”

  “A gigantic national hangover in the making,” he remarks.

  “But I’ll be the one with a headache.” Everyone knows what happened when the Reds took over Russia. Before long, boys with guns will pronounce sentences on Republican officials, landlords, bankers, anyone faintly aristocratic, anyone with money, anyone whose death will profit a personal enemy. Antonia survived this war by taking German and Fascist boarders, and she knows she’s in for trouble. “I’m an old woman,” she says. “A widow with no sons. All I have is this pensione. How long before a mob comes to burn me out?”

  “Duno and Claudia will be awake soon, signora. They’ll vouch for you. I left British cash and a letter that should help as well. In the meantime?” He takes her hand, raises it to his lips. Kisses it respectfully, and winks. “Make a flag, signora. And practice looking happy.”