A Thread of Grace Read online

  A sharp noise awakens him. Coughing and crapulous, Schramm struggles to sit up. His confessor hasn’t arrived, but chunks of stone have been neatly stacked by the door. Sweeping shards of colored glass into a pile, the Italian flirts gallantly with the novices. The pretty one flirts back, dimpling when she smiles.

  Schramm slumps over the back of the pew in front of him, cushioning his brow on folded arms. “I’m going to be sick,” he warns a little too loudly.

  The Italian snaps his fingers. “Suora Fossette! The bucket!” The newly christened Sister Dimples scrambles to deliver it, and only just in time. “Allow me,” the gentleman says, courteous as a headwaiter while Schramm pukes into the dirty water.

  Swiping at his watering eyes with trembling hands, Schramm accepts the proffered handkerchief. “Touris’, translator . . . now you’re a nurse!”

  “A man of endless possibilities!” the Italian declares, setting the bucket aside.

  He has a face off a fresco: bent-nosed and bony, but with a benign expression. Old enough to be tolerantly amused by another’s disgrace. Someone who might understand . . . Schramm wants to tell this kindly stranger everything, but all that comes out is “I was tryin’ t’make things better.”

  “Always a mistake,” the Italian remarks. “Where are you staying, Oberstabsarzt? Would you like to come back another day?”

  Schramm shakes his head stubbornly. “’Dammte Schpageddi-Fresser. Italians’re always late! Where is that shit of a priest?”

  “Lie down, Herr Doktor.” Schramm feels his legs lifted onto the pew. “Rest your eyes. The priest will come, and then we’ll get you back where you belong.”

  “No, thank you,” Schramm says firmly. “Hell exists, you know. Any combat soldier can tell you that.” The other man stops moving. “I knew you’d un’erstan’! So heaven’s real, too! Logic, ja?”

  Their moment of communion is over. “I myself am not a devout Catholic,” the Samaritan informs him regretfully. “My opinions about heaven and hell needn’t trouble you.”

  “Righ’ . . . righ’.” Almost asleep, Schramm mumbles, “You’re not a bad fellow . . .”

  Moments later, he is snoring like a tank engine, and does not hear the hoot of delighted laughter that echoes through the basilica. “Did you hear that, Sisters?” his intepreter asks. “The Nazi says I’m not a bad fellow!”

  “For a spaghetti chomper,” Suora Fossette amends solemnly.

  Musical giggles are quickly stifled when swift footsteps and whispering fabric announce a priest’s approach. “Grüss Gott, mein Herr,” he says, shooting a stern look at the novices. “I am Osvaldo Tomitz, secretary to His Excellency Archbishop Tirassa.”

  “Don Osvaldo! Piacere: a pleasure to meet you!” says a well-dressed civilian. “I’m Renzo Leoni.”

  Tomitz’s confusion is plain. Suora Marta undoubtedly told him that the man wishing to confess is an obnoxious German drunk. “How may I be of service to you, signore?”

  “Ah, but I am not the one who sought your services, Don Osvaldo.” Leading the way toward the confessionals, Leoni presents a Waffen-SS officer passed out cold on a pew.

  Nose wrinkling at the sour smell of vomit and brandy, Tomitz snorts. “So that’s the Aryan superman we’ve heard so much about.”

  “Yes. Disappointing, really,” Leoni concurs, but his eyes are on the priest. “Tomitz, Tomitz . . . You’re from Trieste, aren’t you? Your family’s in shipping!”

  Don Osvaldo draws himself up, surprised by recognition. In his early forties, of medium height and medium weight, with medium-brown hair framing regular features, not one of which is memorable, Osvaldo Tomitz must introduce himself repeatedly to people who have already met him. “My father was with Lloyds Adriatico. We moved here when the Genoa office opened a branch in Sant’Andrea. How did you know?”

  “The name is Austrian. The German is Habsburg. The Italian is Veneto. Ergo: Trieste! As for the rest? I cheated: my father was a commercial photographer. Lloyds was a good customer. I met your father when I was a boy. You must have been in seminary by then. How is Signor Tomitz?”

  “He passed away last year. I was teaching at Tortona. I asked for a position here so I could be nearer my mother.”

  “My sympathies, Don Osvaldo. My mother, too, is a widow.”

  Satisfied to have established a connection, Leoni returns his attention to the drunk. With an almost professional efficiency, he pats the Nazi down and removes the man’s wallet. “Herr Doktor Oberstabsarzt Werner Schramm is with the Waffen-SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, Hausser’s Second Armored Corps, late of the Russian front . . . Currently staying at the Bellavista. He’s in Sant’Andrea on two weeks’ leave.” Leoni looks up, puzzled.

  “Odd,” Osvaldo agrees. “To come from such a hell, and spend his leave in Sant’Andrea?”

  “Why not Venice, I wonder? Or Florence, or Rome?” Leoni glances apologetically at the frescoes. “No offense, Padre, but San Giobatta is not exactly a top draw.” Leoni replaces the wallet and resumes his frisk. Withdrawing a silver cigarette case, he offers its contents to the priest with exploratory hospitality. “Prego! Take half,” he urges. “Please—I’m sure the doctor would insist.”

  “He’s not a bad fellow,” one of the novices comments, “for a Nazi.”

  “Suora!” Don Osvaldo cries.

  Dimples disappearing, the white-veiled sister scrubs virtuously at the mosaics, but Leoni’s laughter fills the basilica. Disarmed, Don Osvaldo scoops his half of the cigarettes out of the case. Leoni offers a light.

  “American,” Osvaldo notes with some surprise, examining the fine white tissue paper. “I wonder where he—”

  “Smoking in a church!” Suora Marta grumbles, trundling down the aisle. Already annoyed, she smells vomit, and her mouth twists. “Swine!” she snaps at the insensible German.

  “Judge not, Suora!” Leoni reminds her piously. “I’m inclined to respect a soldier who has to get that drunk before confession. He must have an admirable conscience to be so ashamed.”

  She holds out a hand. “Give me the rest.”

  Leoni’s brows shoot upward. “Santo cielo! Do you smoke, Suora?”

  “Don’t waste my time, Leoni. Tobacco’s better than gold on the black market. We’ve got orphans to feed.”

  With a sigh and a shrug, and not so much as a glance at Tomitz, Leoni surrenders the cigarettes. Tucking them into a deep recess hidden in her dark blue gown, Suora Marta lifts the washbucket at arm’s length and waddles off to dump its contents. “If I find ashes on that floor,” she calls over her shoulder, “you’ll eat them!”

  “Sì, Suora,” Don Osvaldo says dutifully. He waits until the nun is out of earshot. “Priest. Monsignor. Bishop. Archbishop. Cardinal. The pope,” he chants softly. “And at the pinnacle of the hierarchy? Suora Marta.”

  There’s a muffled schoolboy snicker from his companion. “She hasn’t changed a bit. Taught me algebra in 1927. I’ve got ruler scars to prove it.” Leoni taps ashes into a cupped palm crossed with fine lines and gives Osvaldo a sidelong glance. “You looked convincingly innocent for someone concealing stolen goods.”

  “A sin of omission.” Osvaldo takes his half of the loot out of a pocket and divides it with Leoni. “Are you also a soldier? Home on leave, perhaps?” Leoni stiffens, though Osvaldo cannot imagine why. “Forgive me if—”

  “I am,” Leoni says coolly, “retired from military service.”

  Schramm’s snoring sputters and halts. “I suppose I should call someone about him,” Don Osvaldo says, glad to change the subject.

  “Don’t bother. I’ll get him back to his hotel.” Affable once more, Leoni makes a quick trip to the side door and brushes the ashes from his hands before returning to Schramm’s side. “On your feet, mein Schatzi,” he murmurs, cigarette bobbing between his lips. “Your Mutti’s going to be very unhappy with her Söhnchen, little man.”

  “Sen’ ’em t’ heaven,” Schramm mumbles. “Wha’s wrong wi’ that?”

  “Not a
thing,” Leoni soothes. Maneuvering the German down the aisle, he retrieves a wide-brimmed Borsalino from a pew, settles the hat at a careless angle, and glances back at Don Osvaldo. “Tell my brother-in-law I couldn’t wait for him, would you, Padre?”

  “Your brother-in-law?”

  “Tranquillo Loeb. The lawyer?” Leoni prompts, glancing in the direction of the basilica offices. “There’s a meeting with the archbishop, something about a clothing drive. I don’t need to be here for that.”

  Coming near, Don Osvaldo drops his voice. “But . . . Signor Loeb is with the Delegation for the Assistance of Hebrew Emigrants.”

  “So am I, as of this morning.” Leoni hefts Schramm higher and confides, “I just got out of jail, and Tranquillo decided my varied talents would be best applied to the Jewish problem. Something constructive, you understand.” Leoni reaches around the German to shake the priest’s hand. “A pleasure, Don Osvaldo, and if you would be so kind as to give my regrets to Rabbino Soncini as well—”

  “Rabbi—? Dio santo!” Darting a look at the SS officer draped half-senseless over Leoni’s shoulders, Don Osvaldo mouths, “You’re Jewish?”

  “A congenital condition,” Leoni says, conducting his stuporous ward across the still wet floor.

  “Pazzo!” Osvaldo blurts. “You’re crazy!”

  “That runs in the family, as well, I’m afraid. Ladies,” Leoni murmurs, managing to tip his hat to the novices on his way out.

  Sunlight outlines the two men when the side door opens. Osvaldo throws down his cigarette, crushing it decisively under his shoe. “Leoni, wait! Let me—”

  “Don Osvaldo!”

  The priest turns to Suora Marta, expecting to be yelled at for the cigarette butt, but the portly nun is running, bucketless, down the center of the nave. “Don Osvaldo! Sisters!” she calls, her dour homeliness transformed by joy. “It’s on the loudspeakers—!”

  The basilica air first trembles, then quakes with the peal of great bronze bells, drowning everything she says, until at last, substantial bosom heaving, she reaches the baptistry and leans on the arm Don Osvaldo offers and dissolves into sudden tears. “The war,” she cries. “The war— Thanks be to God! The war is over!”

  SAINTE-GISÈLE ON THE VESUBIE RIVER

  SOUTHEASTERN FRANCE

  West of the Maritime Alps, beyond what used to be the French border, soldiers of the Italian Fourth Army loiter on a street corner, pausing in their discussion of the armistice to watch a girl dash past. Sharing a match, they bend their heads over army-issue Milites and raise eyes narrowed by smoke. “Another year, and Diobòn!” a Veronese private remarks. “That one’s going to be trouble.”

  The others grunt agreement. The Italian Fourth has occupied this territory only since the end of ’42, but that’s been time enough to see her flower. “The features are still a bit too large for the face,” a Florentine sergeant says appraisingly, “but the eyes are quite good, and she’ll grow into those ears.”

  “Minchia!” a Sicilian swears. “If she was my sister, Papa would marry her off today.”

  “To keep you from getting your hands on her?” a Roman corporal asks, smoothly ducking the Sicilian’s punch.

  Flushed with late-summer heat and the importance of her news, Claudette Blum is fourteen, and splendidly unaware of her effect on others. Boys and girls her own age cringe at her infantile exuberance as she pushes and skips and dodges through the crowds that jam the streets of this mountain resort. Old men grumble darkly in German, French, Polish, Yiddish. Their elderly wives shake fingers. Those who could be her parents shake their heads, wondering when that gawky, thoughtless child will settle down. Only the kindest bless her heedless elation. They felt it themselves, briefly, when they heard the news. The Axis has begun to crumble.

  They are all Jews—in the cafés and shops, the parks and pissoirs and bus stops of Sainte-Gisèle-Vesubie. The whole of Italian-occupied southern France is awash with Jews: the latest in the flood of refugees who’ve poured into Mussolini’s fragile empire since the early thirties. Word’s gone out, in whispers, and in letters passed from hand to Jewish hand. Italians don’t hate us. The soldiers are decent men. You can walk openly in the streets, live like a human being! You’re safe, if you can get behind Italian lines.

  A few months ago, those lines were still expanding. When the Fourth rushed across the border, Police Commissioner Guido Lospinoso arrived from Rome with orders to take care of the Jews in Italy’s French territory. Lospinoso did precisely that, commandeering hotels, filling tourist chalets and villas with refugees from across the continent. He encouraged the Hebrews to organize refectories and synagogues, schools for their children, nursing homes for their elderly and disabled. And then? Commissioner Lospinoso left France. He is, to this day, “on holiday,” and therefore unavailable to countermand his orders placing all Jews under the protection of Italy’s elite military police. Specially selected for imposing size and commanding presence, the carabinieri are, to a man, disinclined to be intimidated by their French or German counterparts.

  When Vichy authorities wave Gestapo orders for the removal of undesirables, the carabinieri shrug diplomatically, all ersatz sympathy and counterfeit regret. Artistically inefficient, they shuffle papers and announce that another permit, or a letter from Rome, or some new stamp is required before they can process such a request, and no one has been deported. But now—

  Claudette Blum gathers one last burst of energy and sprints down a hotel hallway, schoolgirl socks bunched under her heels. “Papa!” she cries, flinging open the door. “General Eisenhower was on Radio London! Italy has surrendered!”

  She waits, breathless, for a whoop of joy, for her father to embrace her—perhaps even to weep with happiness. “Thank God you’re back” is all he says. The room is dotted by small piles of clothing. Two valises lay open on two narrow beds. He lifts a pair of his own shoes. “See if these fit.”

  Deflated, she takes the worn black oxfords. “Papa, you never listen to me! Italy surrendered!”

  “I heard.” He picks up a shirt, puts it down again. “One to wear, one to wash. If those shoes are too big, put on extra socks— Wait! Go downstairs first. Borrow trousers from Duno.”

  “Trousers from Duno? I wouldn’t ask him for the time of day! Why are you packing?”

  “I blame myself! Your mother wouldn’t tolerate this arguing!” her father mutters, reducing socks and underwear to tiny bundles. “Do as you’re told, Claudette! We have three, maybe four hours!”

  She flounces from the room with a sigh of pained tolerance for a parent’s unreasonable whims, but on her way back through the corridor Claudette grows uneasy. Family disputes in half a dozen languages filter through closed doors. Everyone seems angry or scared, and she cannot understand why, today of all days, when the news is so good.

  “Believe nothing until it’s been officially denied,” her mother always said. “The only thing not censored is propaganda, and the British lie as much as the Germans.” All right, Claudette concedes, clumping down the stairwell. Maybe the BBC exaggerates Axis losses, but even Radio Berlin admitted that the Wehrmacht gave up ground in Africa and Russia. Mussolini really was deposed in July! The king of Italy replaced il Duce with Field Marshal Badoglio, the Fascist regime was abolished, and Badoglio let all political prisoners out of jail. The Italian soldiers said that was true! The Allies conquered Sicily last month and landed on mainland Italy just last week. Could that be propaganda?

  Veering between confidence and fear, she settles for adolescent pique, which splits the difference, and knocks on the Brösslers’ door. No one answers, but she can hear Duno’s father yelling. “Herrmann Brössler’s lost everything but his voice,” her own father said the first time they listened to an argument in the room below. “He was a big macher in Austria. An impresario! Now he’s got nobody to boss but his family.”

  Claudette knocks again, jumping back when Duno suddenly appears. “What do you want?”

  Rising onto her toes, s
he peeks over his shoulder. Frau Brössler’s packing, and little Steffi’s stamping her feet. “You can’t make me!” she weeps, while her nine-year-old sister, Liesl, insists, “Mutti, we can’t leave Tzipi!”

  Duno grabs Claudette’s arm and shoves her back into the hotel hallway. “Ow! Let go of me!” she cries. “Has everyone gone crazy? The war is over! Why is Steffi crying?”

  Duno stares with the arid contempt only a fifteen-year-old can produce on such short notice. “Stupid girl. Don’t you understand anything?”

  She hates Duno, hates his condescension, hates his horrible red pimples and his big ugly nose. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, rubbing her arm.

  “When the Italians pull out of southern France, who do you think is going to march in?”

  Her heart stops. She can feel it actually stop. “The Germans?”

  “Yes, moron. The Germans.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” she says, dazed. Duno rolls his eyes. “Where can we go now? There’s no place left!”

  “We’re going east. We’ll follow the army into Italy.”

  “Over the Alps?”

  “It’s the mountains, the sea, or the Germans,” Duno says, relishing her fear because it makes him feel commanding and superior. “It’s Italy or—” He makes a noise and draws a finger over his throat.

  “Duno!” His mother pulls the door closed behind her. “What is it, Claudette?”

  Claudette has seen a photo of Duno’s mother from before the war. Frau Brössler’s prosperous plumpness has gone to bone, but if she had any decent clothes now, she’d look like Wallis Simpson: willowy, well groomed. Claudette tucks her wayward blouse back into a skirt she outgrew last spring and decides to cut her bangs. “If you please, Frau Brössler, my father said to ask if I may borrow trousers from Duno.”