A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russell

  The aroma is intoxicating. “No,” Osvaldo says. “Thank you.”

  “Let me guess! You’ve given it up for Lent?” Insouciant on damask, von Thadden lets his gaze travel around the office. “Christian mythology, I’m afraid, is also lacking in originality. Zeus visits virgins who give birth to demigods. Mithras was born of a virgin—on December 25, no less! His cult had a communal meal and prayer that went, ‘He who shall not eat of my body and drink of my blood shall not be saved.’ Let me see . . . A kingdom to come? Zoroaster. Blood sacrifice followed three days later by a resurrection? Attis, who returned from the dead on the spring equinox.”

  Osvaldo checks his watch. “I do have other obligations this morning, Gruppenführer.”

  “Of course! You are a very busy man.” It seems, almost, a compliment. “My men call me the Schoolmaster—I do tend to fall into old habits! One last thing, with your indulgence.” Von Thadden unfolds a small strip of paper and reads six words. “ ‘The convent is short on charcoal.’ ” He doesn’t bother mentioning where the note was found, or how he knows Osvaldo is connected to it. “You’re certain you wouldn’t like a brandy?” he asks.

  Mouth cottony, Osvaldo says, “No. Thank you.”

  “Is it normal practice,” von Thadden asks with catlike curiosity, “for an archbishop’s secretary to be concerned with a convent’s charcoal supply?”

  “These are not normal times, Gruppenführer. Italy has no coal. German authorities prevent us from importing fuel. So we use charcoal. Church institutions work together on such matters as heating and provisioning.”

  “Well, heating shouldn’t be a problem anymore. Lovely weather!”

  “Charcoal is also needed for cooking and washing, Gruppenführer.”

  “Obviously! Why didn’t I think of that?” Von Thadden all but smacks himself in the forehead. “Charcoal makers figure prominently in Italian history, I understand. The Carbonari of 1849 were rebels who gathered in forests pretending to be charcoal makers while planning attacks on foreign rulers. Karl Marx admired them. He believed guerrilla warfare was the best way for a weak force to confront a stronger and better-organized army.” Seraphic eyes glowing, von Thadden inquires, “Do you admire the Carbonari, Tomitz?”

  “I am notoriously obtuse about politics, Gruppenführer.”

  “A humble servant of the Prince of Peace!” He taps Osvaldo’s folder with a blunt finger. “And a very . . . busy . . . man.”

  Von Thadden stands, stepping out onto the small balcony overlooking the garden. “I’m told the botanical collection had five thousand exotic species,” von Thadden says, his voice raised for Tomitz’s benefit. “Plants from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. They have no place in Europe. Rip them out, and burn them! That was my order.” He faces Osvaldo. “The laborers are conscripts living in a guarded barracks. I’m inclined to let them go when the work is complete, but if something unfortunate were to happen? I’m afraid I’d have to wash my hands of them.”

  Dropping all pretenses, he returns to his desk. “Communist criminals have had their way in Rome, Milan, Turin, Genoa. Not here. Tell your Bolshevik friends, Tomitz: if Germans in this district are harmed, reprisals will be set at twenty to one.”

  “Tell Renzo: explain to Angelo,” the rabbi whispers urgently as the priest passes.

  Giving no outward sign that he has heard, Osvaldo strides away from the Palazzo Usodimare. Bogus mythology, he thinks, nauseated by anger. What about those magical Nordic runes on his collar? Nazi hymns to Wotan? Numerology, telepathy. Divining rods, phrenology, magnetic cures. Neo-pagan looniness, all of it! The German people have forsaken Jesus for a maniac who believes in cosmic ice and Atlantis, and a Grail filled with Aryan blood.

  Arrest is inevitable. Osvaldo knows that now. He feels momentarily safer merging into a market crowd on his way back to San Giobatta, but a broken-nosed stranger falls into step with him. When his arm is seized, Osvaldo is surprised only by how soon his time has come. He opens his mouth to shout.

  “I won’t hurt you, Padre,” the thug whispers, “but you have to come with me.”

  Oblivious pedestrians stream past, like water around a rock. Everyone has a great deal to do, very little to do it with, and always: the checkpoints, the document inspections, the petty tyrannies to circumvent.

  Warily Osvaldo follows the man through unfamiliar alleys. At the entry to a small, ruined apartment building, the thug whistles a few notes of Puccini and is answered by a bit of Donizetti. Stepping over wreckage, he leads Osvaldo to the remains of a corner flat that still has most of its walls and some of its ceiling.

  On a smoke-damaged easy chair, an elephantine figure rubs the inside of a fleshy thigh where a shrapnel wound has ached for a quarter of a century. “Signor Brizzolari!” Osvaldo cries, “Grazie a Dio! I should have come directly to you—”

  Serafino Brizzolari holds up a clean pink hand in warning. From the inside pocket of his tentlike suit he withdraws a small medicine bottle. “This should help your sister’s little boy, Beppino. Give her my best wishes.”

  The thug slips the bottle into a pocket. “Grazie, signore. Padre, I’m sorry I scared you. A blessing, please?”

  “Go in peace, figlio mio.” Osvaldo waits until he is alone with the fat man. “Signor Brizzolari, von Thadden has—”

  “That’s why you’re here. And no—never come directly to me about anything.” Brizzolari lifts a manicured finger to indicate a pile of not very clean clothing. “Put those on.”

  “But why?”

  “Huppenkothen has an arrest warrant out for you. The Gestapo knows you and Suora Marta are doing something suspicious, and that others are involved.”

  Osvaldo curls his lip at a pair of filthy trousers. “Then why didn’t von Thadden—?” He freezes, one foot in the air. “He told me to warn the partisans that he’d kill his hostages if they took any action in Sant’Andrea.”

  “He also had you followed out of the palazzo.” Brizzolari shifts his bulk in the chair. “Beppo’s brother-in-law will have taken care of your tail. And von Thadden won’t move against the partisans yet.”

  Osvaldo pulls on a patched shirt that stinks of another man’s sweat. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Renzo Leoni’s made friends with von Thadden’s wife and Huppenkothen’s sister. Lonely women talk.” Brizzolari glares over his belly at a massive gold pocket watch. “Damn the man! He was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. His drinking is—”

  “The principal arrow in my quiver!” Renzo stumbles through a gaping hole in the apartment wall and looks back at the rubble behind him, to see what he tripped over. After a puzzled shrug, he makes a sweeping bow. “A man among men,” he declares himself, “and graceful as well!”

  “Is this the end of a long night,” Osvaldo asks, “or the beginning of a bad day?”

  “Does it matter?” Renzo collapses onto a broken-backed sofa and scrubs at his face. “My apologies, gentlemen. Something came up last night, or this morning . . . or whenever it was.” The trembling hands fall into his lap. “Don Serafino, what would you take in trade for a cigarette? Would my firstborn son do, or will I have to promise you a daughter?”

  Brizzolari growls but tosses him a pack of Macedonias. “You are out of control.”

  “Those who are without sin are also without information. I’ve endured an unimaginably tedious evening with Erna Huppenkothen, and God knows, that required a great deal of drinking.”

  Aghast, Osvaldo sits on a wobbly, water-stained chair, a dirty sock in one hand. “You didn’t—”

  “O Dio! If you could see your face!” Renzo laughs loosely. “No, fornicating for Italy exceeds my patriotic limit, Padre. Even the perpetually virginal Erna might recognize a clipped dick if she saw one. Nevertheless! At the cost of hours of excruciating boredom, I have learned that her brother, Artur, is frustrated as hell. Italian Jews have Catholic friends, Catholic in-laws, Catholic business partners. Nobody’s ratting them out. Local police are tipping neighbors
off before every sweep. So poor, dear Artur has decided to concentrate on foreign Jews. There will be a Gestapo raid on Immacolata after midnight tonight.”

  “The convent!” Osvaldo says. “But the Concordat! They wouldn’t dare—”

  “International borders didn’t stop them,” Brizzolari rumbles. “Did you think a cloister would?”

  Shoving his feet into battered work boots, Osvaldo stands. “I should warn the sisters.”

  Renzo says, “It’s been taken care of. When Huppenkothen shows up, Immacolata will appear judenfrei, but the convent will be watched from now on.” He shakes a cigarette from the pack and offers it to the priest. “You’re compromised as well, Padre.”

  Osvaldo nods, accepting the cigarette as well as the logic. “With me out of the network and the rabbi in custody, who’ll take care of the refugees?”

  Renzo’s bloodshot eyes focus sharply. “Wait—Iacopo?”

  Brizzolari sighs. “I knew there was a warrant out for him, but I didn’t—”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you!” Osvaldo says. “Von Thadden has him pulling weeds in the garden at Palazzo Usodimare. I don’t think they know who he is. He got raked up for a labor gang, but von Thadden threatened to kill the entire group if the partisans make trouble.”

  Swearing steadily, Renzo walks in tight circles. Slows, then stops and looks up. “Don Serafino, can you get custody of von Thadden’s hostages?”

  “It depends,” Brizzolari says cautiously.

  “Doctors are still allowed to go from house to house, right? Anytime, day or night—same as priests?”

  “Priests, midwives, and doctors, yes. Curfews don’t apply.”

  “With a doctor’s bag and the right papers . . . What do you think, Tomitz? We could cut your hair differently, get you some glasses perhaps. You could wear my suit—”

  “And pick up Iacopo’s rounds . . . Yes! Nobody ever remembers me anyway.”

  Brizzolari considers Osvaldo’s forgettable face above the ordinary clothing. “It could work, assuming you don’t have to set any bones. You could keep the refugees’ money in a false bottom. Roll bills up and put them into medicine bottles.”

  Squinting through smoke, Renzo holds the discarded cassock up to his shoulders. “A little tight across the chest. . . How does this work? Do you wear it like a dress?”

  “It goes over a shirt and trousers. You can use mine.”

  “Don Osvaldo, if he’s caught wearing that, every priest in Italy will be suspect!” Brizzolari looks from one man to the other. “Leoni, you can’t be serious!”

  “Not often,” Renzo admits, “but I’m sobering up, and the idea still makes sense to me. Don Serafino, if you get the hostages transferred into the municipal jail, I think I can solve a number of problems simultaneously.” He tosses the cassock onto the sofa and slumps beside it. “It’s up to you, Tomitz, but there are places I can’t go as Ugo Messner.”

  Osvaldo shrugs assent. “Giacomo Tura can alter my papers for you.”

  Brizzolari wipes his sweating crown with a pristine handkerchief. “Tura takes too long. There’s a man in my office who can be trusted.” He motions irritably for his briefcase. “Who’ll take care of these while you two play dress-up?” Opening the case to reveal hundreds of ration cards, Brizzolari recites, “Bless me, Fathers, for I have sinned: I have lied and I have stolen.”

  “I was selling them to raise cash for Iacopo to distribute,” Renzo explains.

  “I can fence them,” Osvaldo says. Renzo and Brizzolari stare. “Priests, and doctors,” he informs them delicately, “are acquainted with all manner of persons.”

  Squaring a straw Borsalino on his large, round head, Brizzolari heaves himself onto his surprisingly dainty feet. “I’ll send Beppino back with the paperwork in a few hours. And I’ll do what I can for Rabbino Soncini and the others. Padre, Dottore,” he says, tipping his hat. “Good day to you both. And God save Italy, if He can.”

  Side by side, the younger men watch him pick his way through the wreckage. Slumping onto the sofa again, Renzo says, “When this is over, remember what that fat Fascist bastard has done. He’ll need you to vouch for him, Padre. We’re in for a civil war, the moment the Germans leave.”

  “And if the Germans don’t leave?” Osvaldo asks. “Kesselring’s making the Allies look like fools!”

  “He’s as good a tactician as Germany’s got,” Renzo agrees. “And the military record of the Allies in Italy remains unsullied by a single well-run battle, but they’ve got time and brute force on their side. Germany’s running out of both.” He levers onto his shoulders and heels to pull a hip flask out of his back pocket. Osvaldo’s eyes narrow. Renzo rolls his. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a drunken priest.”

  Osvaldo snatches the flask away and pours its contents onto a waterlogged Turkish carpet that was once some housewife’s pride. “I’ve seen you,” he says. “In the streets. During air raids.” Standing in the darkness. Waiting for a bomb with open arms, a bottle in his hand. Osvaldo waits until Renzo’s eyes shift to change the subject. “There’s a rumor that the Allies are withdrawing troops from Italy.”

  Renzo flicks ash off his cigarette. “They’re being redeployed. The Germans’re expecting an attack on Calais. Von Thadden thinks the Allies’ll settle for holding southern Italy, because of the airfields and ports. The rest of the peninsula’s of no strategic value to them.”

  “And what will become of us, here, in the north?”

  Hands dangling between his knees, Renzo stares at an upstairs toilet leaning crazily on a pile of rubble. Laths and broken joists stick out of its bowl, like dead flowers in a cracked vase. Gathering himself for one last bout of coherent thought, he takes a long drag, and flicks the butt away. “The Reds will hold eastern Europe. The Americans and British could take the west. The Wehrmacht’s best bet is to shoot Hitler and negotiate terms: Germany keeps Mittel-europa from the Baltic to the Arno. The war’s over. Everybody celebrates, and I’ll get hanged instead of Brizzolari. Although, with my luck,” Renzo mutters, stretching out on the sofa, “the damned rope will break.”

  The sun has found the gaping hole in the roof. Renzo throws an arm over his eyes. Within moments, he’s asleep, and Osvaldo sits quietly, studying the man. Raids, fires, smoke: the air is often sickly yellow, but it’s not just sour light discoloring Renzo’s skin. Suicidal bravery, or cirrhosis of the liver—he’s killing himself. And he knows it. Osvaldo has been tempted to ask about Renzo’s past, but what might seem normal curiosity in other times could raise suspicion now. His only real clue lies in what Renzo himself said of Schramm, the day they met in San Giobatta. “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.”

  Twice, Osvaldo has tried to speak to Renzo of the prodigal son, of God’s loving welcome for the penitent. Both times, the words stuck in his throat. Hypocrite, he snarled at himself. Offering absolution to one sinner but not the other. You want to pick and choose who is worthy. And yet— Nothing Renzo did in Abyssinia could possibly rival Werner Schramm’s tally. Not a tenth of 91,867 were killed in the whole of the Abyssinian war!

  Lord, how often shall my brother sin, and I forgive him? And Jesus said, I do not say to thee seven times, but seventy times seven . . . That’s 490, Osvaldo thinks. Is it a matter of scale, then? Is the murder of one human being less heinous than the murder of 91,867?

  Yes, he thinks stubbornly. Yes! It is 91,866 times less heinous!

  Osvaldo Tomitz has tried and tried, but he cannot make words like guilt and forgiveness, atonement and absolution fit around what Schramm confessed, or around what others like him are doing today, at this very instant. Yes, of course! Forgive as you are forgiven! But Jesus spoke directly: forgive those who sin against you yourself. Surely that can’t mean forgive those who murder by the trainload. Forgive those who willfully commit atrocities. Forgive everything, anything!

  Osvaldo knows himself quick to
anger. Outrage comes over him like an eagle sinking talons into his chest, tearing at his heart. Is it satanic pride, tempting him to believe that God feels that same outrage? To believe that some sins are so vast, not even Jesus could be willing to forgive them?

  Nearby, shockingly loud, the air-raid sirens begin to howl. Osvaldo jumps to his feet. Renzo groans and rolls onto his side, his back to the priest. “Sit down, Tomitz,” he mumbles. “Nothing we can do yet.”

  Except pray, Osvaldo thinks.

  But pray for what? He used to pray that Sant’Andrea be spared a raid. That seems tantamount now to wishing death on other cities. For survival? Of whom? Who dies, and when and how, is long divorced from any moral dimension Osvaldo can detect. Even so, he prays: for the souls of those who’ll be vaporized by the blast of a direct hit; for those whose bodies will be crushed by falling masonry; for those who’ll suffer; for those who’ll grieve.

  Squadrons release their whistling cargo. Each bomb has a task. Two-kilo incendiaries ignite rooftop fires. Fifteen-kilo bombs penetrate deep into structures, setting them ablaze from the inside out. Blockbusters—as massive as small trucks—destroy entire buildings, cratering streets, filling them with rubble to hinder firefighting equipment.

  The detonations come closer. Osvaldo begins to wish he hadn’t dumped Renzo’s liquor on the floor. He wonders if it is easy to push a button or pull a lever and cause a hundred deaths you do not see. He asks himself if he could do it.

  When he gets his answer, he prays for the pilots and their navigators, for the gunners and the bombardiers. Forgive them, Father, for they cannot see the burns, the crushed heads, the splintered limbs, the shattered lives. And bless them, for they are fighting those who’ve made a charnel house of Europe.

  When at last the all clear sounds, Renzo sits up and scrubs at his hangdog face. “On your feet, Padre,” he calls, trudging toward the street. “Work to do.”