by David Hewson
‘He shouldn’t drink so much,’ Oberg announced without looking up from his papers. ‘You too, Sachs. You’re officers. On duty always. I don’t want you lurching round stumbling drunk.’
Alberti reached for a pencil and began to sharpen it.
‘I’m aware of my position, sir,’ Sachs replied, looking hurt. ‘I trust I did nothing to bring my comrades into disrepute.’
‘If you had you wouldn’t be here,’ Oberg snapped.
‘In all fairness,’ Alberti cut in, ‘the hooch they were serving last night was not the best.’
Sander lurched through the door wiping his mouth.
‘Bad grappa is terrible on the stomach,’ the Venetian added. ‘This place smells a bit this morning too. Maybe someone’s been putting something they shouldn’t down the drains.’
Pale as a sheet, Sander glared at him as he sat down.
‘Giovanni and Mika Artom,’ Oberg said, looking at all three of them. ‘The terrorists. Are we any closer to understanding if they’re here?’
Alberti let the Germans stutter their way through that. They had their own sources in the city, informers they were unwilling to share, perhaps even with one another, certainly not with a local. All, it seemed, had been as short on news and intelligence as Alberti’s own.
‘Perhaps,’ Sander said, ‘they’re not in Venice at all. All we heard was that they were on their way.’
Sachs added, ‘Maybe they bumped into the wrong sort getting out. Those evil bastards will kill one another as readily as they’ll murder us. They are Jews. Some of the commies hate Jews too.’
‘But they’re Jews and commies,’ Alberti pointed out.
‘So what?’ Sander demanded.
Alberti shrugged.
‘Maybe you’re right. They never got here. For which we should be grateful.’ He tapped the folder on his desk. The intelligence file on the pair. ‘They seem quite … efficient.’
‘Dammit.’ Oberg looked positively furious. ‘You should be giving me more than this. There’s a string of atrocities that’s followed the two of them all the way from Padua. From what we got out of their murderous peers the woman seems to be the leader. As violent a criminal as we’re likely to face.’
‘A woman?’ Sander sniggered behind his hand. ‘We’re scared of a couple of Jews led by a woman?’
Oberg was always worrying at some problem, large or small. Alberti found his anxious state intriguing. The man seemed more agitated than usual.
He got to his feet, grabbed his coat and asked, ‘What happens tomorrow?’
Oberg looked up from his papers and said, ‘Tomorrow?’
‘Bruno. Leone. Whatever we’re supposed to call him. He told Aldo Diamante there was going to be a party.’ He shrugged. ‘If there’s something, some aspect of security I should know about …’
Oberg hesitated for a moment and glanced at his fellow countrymen. There was clearly something here they knew, intelligence that had yet to be shared with a local menial.
‘If you don’t want to tell me, sir—’ Alberti began.
‘No,’ Oberg interrupted. ‘There’s no reason you shouldn’t be party to the information. We do trust you, Alberti.’
‘I’m honoured.’
‘Don’t be. You’ve earned it.’ Oberg looked him up and down. ‘You know they’ll kill you as readily as they’d murder one of us. These people. As far as they’re concerned you’re one of us.’
Alberti nodded.
‘Then I’m honoured by that too.’
‘On Sunday we begin to sweep the city,’ Oberg went on. ‘Not bands of Black Brigade thugs out for vengeance. There’ll be soldiers. Ours. Raiding parties. For one week we focus on the Jewish problem and little else. Our orders are that by the end of the month every last Jew we can find must be in custody and ready to be shipped out. Salò is issuing the decree first thing in the morning. Everyone of Hebrew extraction will no longer be an Italian. They’ll have no rights. Not under the law. No business here. All their property, their money will belong to the state. Tomorrow night there’s a reception for all the senior officers. Black Brigades. Salvatore Bruno. We …’ Oberg didn’t like any of this and it was obvious. He was a soldier. He wanted to be fighting a war, not locking up civilians. ‘We mark the occasion.’
There was silence then. Doubtless Mussolini needed the money. Alberti had heard rumours that in the camps in Germany and Poland they murdered Jews by their thousands while those who remained were employed stealing the gold from the teeth of their dead brothers and sisters to fill the Nazis’ coffers. Perhaps it was inevitable such habits would one day find their way to Italy.
‘It must be quite the party you’ve got planned.’
‘I don’t want this known,’ Oberg said. ‘Any of it. Not outside this room.’
Too late, chum, Alberti thought. The way the Germans boasted and gossiped with women they wished to impress, half of Venice probably understood something was afoot. Where and when too. That was why Oberg was so worried. Arrogance was a constant weakness of the Nazis, one they consistently refused to recognize. The partisans probably had got wind some further crackdown on the Jews was on the way too. Now they’d been given a target to aim at, a chance to get their vengeance in first.
The Gioconda. All dressed up for a glittering Saturday night with a guest list of top Nazis and Fascists. What a target.
He got his hat.
‘That goes without saying, sir. Rest assured. If this murderous pair are here, I’ll shake this city till they fall out of her pockets, straight into our lap.’
Late lunch in the Uccello house at the back of the Giardino degli Angeli. Half a tumbler each of Prosecco spento, white bread and dry provolone cheese from the shop in via Garibaldi, fetched by Paolo that morning in a brief, rushed excursion from home. Just the three of them. Chiara said she had to make a brief visit to a sick parishioner with food. Paolo suspected she hadn’t taken to Mika Artom and simply didn’t wish to be around.
Thanks to Vanni the work was now on schedule.
Mika only got out of bed when she heard them putting plates on the table. She sat next to her brother wearing a baggy black wool overcoat from his parents’ wardrobe. It seemed odd and unnecessary. He’d lit the fire. The place wasn’t so cold. This was practical as much as for comfort. It was impossible to work the Jacquard accurately if you were freezing and there was no room for mistakes.
He’d heard the two of them arguing into the small hours, shouts and shrieks, angry, accusing. For a while he’d hidden his head beneath the pillow hoping to drown them out. To drown out everything if he could find a way. His fears about harbouring two dangerous fugitives. His worries about delivering the strange commission the following day. His feelings too which were odd and conflicting, some disturbing, others pleasant in a way.
Vanni was nothing like the men he’d come in contact with over the years. He seemed gentle, intelligent, exotic somehow. In a different world, Paolo would have invited him to explore the city and see some of the sights he loved so much. Carpaccio’s unfortunate dragons being slaughtered by a heartless Saint George in the scuola of the Schiavoni. Mantegna’s tortured Saint Sebastian in Ca’ D’Oro, naked except for a flimsy loincloth, his athletic body pierced by a thicket of arrows, wounds open and bleeding, face turned to heaven, a mysterious message written round a candle in the corner: Nihil nisi divinum stabile est. Caetera fumus. Nothing is stable if not divine. The rest is smoke.
A sight that had moved the young Paolo ever since his mother took him to see it as a boy. Most tourists flocked to the obvious places, the Rialto, San Marco, the Accademia, and missed the smaller, more intriguing sights of the city. Vanni Artom, he felt sure, would appreciate them just as he did.
If only there was the opportunity.
If only they could walk the streets together free of fear.
‘We shouldn’t eat in silence,’ Mika Artom declared, breaking the awkward peace with a sweep of her arm. ‘If you’re mad at me out with it.’ S
he pointed her lump of bread across the table. ‘You too.’
‘Mika,’ Vanni said. ‘I’ve said this a million times already. We promised we wouldn’t leave the house.’
‘No, no, no.’ Her hair shone and waved as she spoke. He couldn’t stop staring at it. She did seem a different woman. Attractive, sexual, even in his father’s overcoat. ‘I promised nothing.’
‘We said—’
‘Please,’ Paolo begged them. ‘No arguments. We have to go back to work. The commission …’ The two of them shared glances he didn’t understand. ‘We have to finish the banners. I must deliver them. Then …’
‘Then what?’ Mika asked.
‘I was told you wouldn’t be here long.’
She grinned.
‘My brother seems to like this place. He’s taken to it. The loom.’ Her smile grew broader. ‘Taken to you, Paolo.’
Vanni tried to shut her up but it was impossible.
‘And you like him too. This is good. He always has need of friends. Me, not so much. Still, I approve.’
‘Father Filippo … the priest … he told me—’
‘I’ll be gone by Monday. At the latest. There. What Vanni does is up to him.’
‘We’ll both leave as soon as we can,’ he said. ‘The moment we hear there’s somewhere to go. We’re grateful for your courage in sheltering us here. I’m sorry if we haven’t made that clear.’
Mika kept toying with her hair. Then she reached into the pocket of the overcoat and pulled out something Paolo hadn’t seen since his mother was around. Lipstick and a small mirror. He watched, fascinated, as she pouted at the glass and ran the bright scarlet stain, as glossy as fresh oil paint, all around her mouth.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Paolo asked. ‘Why change the way you look?’
Mika laughed at him.
‘Silly boy. Why do you think? If they have a picture of me it won’t be much use now, will it?’ She reached out and touched her brother’s long dark hair. ‘I’ve met a friend who can do this for you too. Strawberry blonde maybe. Curls too. I think curls would look good. We’d be a pair of beauties.’
Vanni grunted and gulped at his coffee.
‘What do you think, Paolo? What colour would suit him?’
‘I think he’s fine as he is. If you two stay out of sight here, like I was told, no one’s going to know. Keep going outside—’
‘I’m a fighter,’ she interrupted. ‘Even if my brother isn’t. You can’t do that inside a damned … damned greenhouse, playing around with a needle and thread.’
‘What we do’s a little more than that,’ Vanni told her.
‘Would you like me to move out now, Paolo?’
‘No. That wouldn’t be safe at all. Where would you go?’
The smile vanished. Her eyes darkened.
‘People like us always have friends. Somewhere. It’s just a matter of finding them. If you want me to try—’
‘Mika!’ Vanni’s voice was loud and angry. ‘We gave our word. We owe him that.’
‘And what do we owe our dead parents? All those thousands of Jews getting shipped off to camps in Germany never to return? To our dead comrades we left in the hills? To unborn children who’ll grow up under Mussolini’s thumb if we let them?’
‘Perhaps you owe them a duty to stay alive and one day make things better.’ Paolo wasn’t sure where that came from. Maybe it was the same inner outrage that had spoken up when they’d dragged the body of Isabella Finzi out of the canal across the way. A dangerous voice he realized. Had he kept quiet, then the Artoms would surely never have found their way to the Giardini degli Angeli.
Not, he thought, glancing at Vanni, that he regretted his interjection at all.
‘I have a job to do,’ Mika announced, getting to her feet and throwing off the heavy overcoat.
Beneath was a shimmering silk dress, almost the same scarlet as her lipstick, the front cut low to show off her breasts. The fabric hung loose on her. A poor fit, he thought. It was made for someone else. All the same, in the bleak, drab greyness of wartime Venice she surely stood out. No one wore clothes like this, not in any of the places he knew. It was unthinkable.
‘Don’t fret, young Paolo. Don’t stare at me like I’m a whore.’
‘So don’t look like one,’ her brother shot back.
She patted down the fabric, checked her face in the mirror once more, then dragged the baggy coat back on.
‘I’ll leave by the back. No one will see me. No one will know I come from your quiet little paradise. Nor will I be taken.’
Mika reached down to the floor, pulled up a large fabric handbag and slammed it on the table. It was old, battered, the kind of thing Chiara might once have owned and thrown away. Paolo’s breath caught as she opened it up and retrieved a handgun, placed it on the table, stroked the butt with her fingers.
‘If by chance the Crucchi do find me …’ She picked up the weapon, held it in her fingers as if she loved the thing. ‘You needn’t worry.’
‘Please …’ Vanni was begging and from the sound of his voice it seemed clear he knew this was pointless. ‘For once listen to me. We should stay inside.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes. Here.’
‘Here is warm, brother. Here is comfortable. Here the Crucchi will never come. Or so you’d like to fool yourself. I can’t. There’s a world beyond these walls and every day those bastards drench it in our blood. War is where I belong. You too or so I thought. Still …’ She glanced at Paolo. ‘Go back to your needle and thread. Fool yourself that’s all there is.’
The outside conservatory door opened and closed. They all heard it. Chiara Vecchi returning. It could be no one else. Only she had a spare key to the door by the bridge.
Mika shoved the pistol back in the bag, stood up and brushed the breadcrumbs off her chest.
‘Ciao, boys,’ she said. ‘Behave now. And don’t wait up.’
Not that Filippo Garzone would admit it to his flock, but the basilica of San Pietro di Castello he found unlovable. It was a leviathan of a building, the vast dome impressive, the rest not so much. Too large for the congregation of the tiny, half-deserted island on which it stood and, in winter, as chilly as the grave. Once, on paper at least, San Pietro had been the most important place of worship in Venice, the city’s official cathedral, superior to the Doge’s bejewelled San Marco posed gloriously on its piazza next to his palazzo. But the truth was that popes and kings and politicians much preferred San Marco in the very heart of Venice to distant, humble Castello. Early in the nineteenth century the basilica was toppled from its shaky place at the top of the church hierarchy and San Marco given the crown it had long worn in all but name.
The monied and the powerful then gathered all the more round the famous piazza, with its elegant cafes, its galleries and museums while the far reaches of Castello fell further into poverty and seclusion. Most of the city barely knew the place and, with a single Veronese canvas as its only noteworthy work of art, nor did visitors much either. Garzone would occasionally attempt to interest a passing sightseer in its more obscure attractions, among them the ‘chair of Peter’, supposedly used by the apostle when he preached in Syria. In truth it was a fetching piece of archaeological chicanery, for him at least. The remains of an Islamic funeral monument, with inscriptions from the Koran in Kufic script on the side, reworked to resemble a saintly throne. His enthusiasm rarely found favour with the occasional wandering tourist, most of whom were lost and seeking directions. Still, San Pietro’s isolation helped the priest in the role he’d decided to pursue secretly and at no small risk to himself as the war wore on.
He was not a political man, certainly no communist like a few of his fellow priests who’d taken to the testament of Marx with enthusiasm of late. Still, he had a strong sense of both justice and service to his community, two attributes challenged by the Fascists when they came to power, and as good as dispatched altogether after Mussolini started his vile regime in Salò as a puppe
t of the Nazis.
Gradually over the years, as quiet men and women came to him for help, Garzone had positioned himself as a conduit, first for those who fell foul of the state, then lately for others, partisans, politicians, trade unionists who sought to oppose it. In his own mind he knew the war was, from Mussolini’s point of view, unwinnable. It was only a matter of time before the Allied forces in the south took Rome, then moved to capture the rest of the country, with both the king and the official government by their side.
The question he wrestled with daily, sometimes in conversation with his good friend Diamante, was how a good man might approach such circumstances, what help, practical and moral, was appropriate when it was needed. Garzone had set himself some rules. For one thing he would never involve anyone else close to the church. As far as they knew he was a quiet man who, while out of tune with the political will of the day, saw his primary responsibility to be the pastoral care of his parishioners. There were two sound reasons for this. He’d no wish to involve others in actions which, if they became known to the Germans, would lead to immediate imprisonment, doubtless torture, and in all probability a violent death or dispatch to one of the camps.
The second was equally practical: in wartime Venice it was impossible to be certain who to trust. There were informers, paid for he felt sure. There were others who might send a man into Ca’ Loretti too: idle gossipers, passing on a whisper, those with a grudge or seeking vengeance or simply individuals who wanted a quiet life and would inform, perhaps reluctantly, on any individual they thought a threat. Everyone suffered from the war in one way or another. At the same time they heard stories from terraferma, tales of aerial bombing by the Allies, reprisal raids by vicious gangs of Black Brigade thugs, rapacious profiteering and bloody black-market feuds. The city on the water was spared most of this since it lived at the edge of the conflict, a precious gilded prison too beautiful for the horrors Italy was seeing elsewhere.
There were occasions, it seemed, when the right decision was beyond a simple man like him. To act or do nothing? Both might end in bloodshed, for guilty and innocent alike. Under no circumstances would he allow church premises to be used for storing weapons or explosives. Nor would he listen to the ideas and certainly not the plans of the men and women who came into his confessional from time to time, desperate to talk to someone they could trust.