She woke briefly when Nico came to bed; he and Aldo had still been in the fields when she and the others had eaten their supper. It was a comfort to feel him beside her, and she meant to tell him she was doing better and that Rosa had been happy with her work, but the moment his weight settled next to her, and she felt the comforting cadence of his slowing and deepening breaths against her back, she, too, was dragged back into slumber.
THE NEXT DAY, just after breakfast, Nina and the girls were given the task of helping Nico haul the corn down from the granary. It was the first time she’d been to the top floor of the house, which was long and low-ceilinged and dim behind its shuttered windows, and when her eyes finally adjusted to the light she had to stifle a scream at the sight of mice, dozens upon dozens of them, scurrying in every direction. And was that a rat slinking away?
“Your barn cats aren’t doing much to earn their keep,” she exclaimed, embarrassed at how nervous those darting shadows made her feel.
“There’s a limit to their appetites, unfortunately. And the mice won’t hurt you. They’re barely as big as your smallest toe.”
The baskets were large and heavy, so it was a good thing they had Nico’s help. He was able to carry two at a time, but Nina and the girls could manage only one between them. It took all morning to get the baskets outside and lined up in the courtyard.
After lunch, with Carlo returned from school, they got started on the shelling. Nico had already set out the machine they would use, fixing it to the edge of a big wooden tub, and now he showed Nina—and reminded the children—how it worked.
“It’s simple. Put the cob in the hole here at the top, with the stalk end pointing up, and turn the crank. As the cob goes through, the kernels are stripped off, like so, and the cob pops out the top.”
“That doesn’t look so hard.”
“The cobs are good and dry, so the kernels should come off easily. It’s hard on the arms, though—you’ll want to take turns.”
“And when the tub is full?”
“Transfer the kernels to these sacks, and I’ll take them along to the miller.”
At this Carlo sighed. “More polenta. Ugh. I hate polenta.”
“Rosa says we are lucky to have it,” Agnese insisted, ever the serious one. “There are starving children who have far less than we do.”
“Agnese is right,” said Nico, “but I get tired of polenta, too. What if we ask Rosa to put a little cheese on top of yours? How does that sound?”
Carlo was unconvinced. “I’d much rather have a big slice of fresh bread, right out of the oven, with so much jam on top that it drips off the edges and makes all the wasps come flying over.”
“Enough of that,” his brother protested, “or you’ll have Nina and the girls daydreaming of jam and not paying attention to the shelling machine, and then I’ll come back from the fields to discover the girls have accidentally stuffed you through the sheller. There will be kernels of Carlo everywhere, and then we’ll really be in trouble with Rosa. You know how much she hates a mess.”
Nico stood, dusting the dirt from his knees, and then bent to kiss his brother’s head. “I’ll be off. Do watch out for the children’s fingers,” he said, this time to Nina, “and have them collect the scattered kernels. Otherwise the hens will gobble everything up.”
They worked for hours to shell the corn and tidy the cobs, which would be used to fuel the range come winter, into the bins where they would dry out even more. By the time they finished, Nina’s arms were so sore she could barely hold her spoon at supper. The children were worn out, too, Carlo most of all, and it took far longer than usual for him to eat his soup and bread.
When Rosa moved to clear away his bowl, he sighed gustily and looked longingly at the basket where the bread was kept. It hung from a nail in the ceiling beam, far out of the children’s reach—even Nina had to stand on her tiptoes to reach it.
“I’m still hungry.”
Rosa was unmoved. “You had plenty. Have a drink of water if you need to fill your belly.”
“But Paolo and Matteo—”
“Your brothers get more because they do more work than you. Off you go to bed, and no more whining.”
“I’M NOT COMPLAINING,” Nina whispered to Nico that night as they lay, carefully spaced, side by side on their narrow bed. “I’m not. But you work so hard and you have so little to show for it. And I could hear Carlo crying in bed just now, and—”
“He was tired.”
“I don’t see why he and the girls can’t have a little more to eat if they say they’re hungry. Especially when the cantina is full of food.”
“That food needs to last us until the summer. If we feast now we’ll starve later.”
“But—”
“It was even worse when I was a boy. On the mornings when the bread was baked, the smell was enough to drive me mad. All that fresh bread, loaves and loaves of it, but Mamma could only give us a little slice each. It was never enough to take away the hunger.”
“But you grow the wheat yourselves, and you have your own bread oven—”
“We can’t afford to fire the oven more than once a week. And most of the wheat goes to pay the ammassi.”
“Can’t we just buy bread? There’s a bakery in the village.” She shouldn’t be nagging at him like this, but it made so little sense to her.
“We could, but we also have to buy things like fresh seed and tools, fabric for Rosa to make our clothes, shoes when ours are too worn for the cobbler to repair—and for most of those things, we barter what we do have. Eggs, the cheese Rosa makes, the ham and sopressa from the pig. There are taxes to pay, too—even the meat from the pig is taxed. And there’s the electricity to pay for, and the tithe for the church, and we try to have some set aside for the doctor, or for a funeral if the worst should happen. And still there is never enough.”
“I thought the ammassi was a way for everyone to get their fair share.” That’s what it had said in the newspapers.
“No. It means only that we’re forced to sell most of our wheat and potato crop to the government so they can turn around and sell it to the rest of the country for double the price. That’s what the government calls fair shares.” He covered his eyes with his hands, even though the room was near to pitch-dark.
“You must let me help. I have some jewelry with me. We could—”
“We can’t. For us to suddenly appear with money, with gold—it would attract the sort of attention we must avoid. But I thank you all the same.”
“My being here has made things harder. I know it has.”
At this he sighed. “My sister and her sharp tongue.”
“She apologized. And it is true.”
“It isn’t. You are helping. Your being here does make life easier for all of us.”
Now he turned to her, his body shifting slowly, carefully, on the noisy and too-narrow bed. A beam of moonlight, creeping through a crack in the shutters, fell across his face.
“I have to leave. Not for good. Only for a few weeks.” He had said something of the sort before, but she had hoped . . .
“I’ll be helping Father Bernardi,” he added. “And I do so with my father’s blessing.”
“Helping in what way?”
“It’s better if I don’t explain. Safer. One day, perhaps.”
“You will come back?”
“Yes. I promise I will. I . . .”
His voice drifted away, along with the moonlight, and the room was dark again, and cold, but his body was warm, and so welcome, and as long as he was next to her she wasn’t alone.
She tried not to think of how lonely she would be when he was gone. She would keep herself busy, and she would work harder than ever, so hard that she would fall asleep the moment she doused the lamp each night. And she would count the days until he returned.
Chapter 11
15 November 1943
It was Monday, laundry day, the day of the week they all disliked the most. It began at eight o�
�clock, as soon as Carlo had left for school and the water in the big kettles had reached a rolling boil. The wooden laundry tub was already in place, set on a stool so Rosa didn’t have to stoop quite so low, and once the hot water was mixed with just enough cold to stop it from stripping the skin from their hands, and Rosa had whisked in scoops of washing soda and her homemade soap, the business of laundering their clothes and linens began.
Rosa trusted no one else to get things truly clean, so she was the one who labored the hardest and longest, her hands constantly scrubbing. Only once she was satisfied did she give each item to Nina and the girls. It was their job to wring everything out, then layer it all in an array of wicker baskets that went on the back of Bello’s cart for the journey uphill to the stream.
That took all morning, and by the time they stopped for lunch—always leftover soup, for there was no time for anything else—their hands and forearms were red and raw from the scalding water and harsh lye soap. On Mondays the men stayed well away from the house at midday.
Nina had just finished eating when some instinct had her glance at the calendar, which was tacked to the wall just below a framed photograph of the pope. November. It was November already, and that meant she had missed the High Holy days.
Rosh Hashanah had been less than a week after her arrival in Mezzo Ciel, Yom Kippur ten days after that, and they had passed by without her even noticing. Her parents would have been thinking of her, praying for her, but the days had swept by, governed only by the rhythm of the farm and her work and her self-pity, and she had forgotten.
It was enough to bring her to her knees, this longing for home, for all that was familiar, for all that she loved and had been forced to abandon. All its rituals and rhythms, sounds and tastes, faces and places and voices—all of it had been taken from her, and she was alone now, far from her parents, a world away from everyone and everything she had once known and loved.
“Is anything wrong?” came Agnese’s soft voice. “You were making such a face just now.”
“No. I have a . . . a sore tooth. That’s all.”
“Rosa has some oil of cloves,” Angela said. “That’s what she uses when we get a toothache. That might help.”
Carlo wrinkled his nose. “It makes my tongue burn.”
“I’m fine. Now go and help Rosa load up the cart while I take care of the dishes.”
The others went on ahead while Nina did the washing up and swept the floor, and then she went to follow them, her thoughts turned resolutely away from the calendar and its depressing reminders. The sun was bright, the sky was clear and endlessly blue, and the journey to the stream was exactly what she needed to clear her head.
She walked past the vegetable garden to the bottom of the big fields, empty now and waiting for their seeding of winter wheat, then east along the rutted path, then north again, the land growing ever steeper, until she could hear running water and the sound of the girls’ chatter. Up and over a hillock she climbed, her boots slipping a little on the pebbles, and down to the grassy bank where Rosa and the girls were rinsing the morning’s laundry in the stream.
“I’m here,” she called out cheerily. “Do you want me to bring you another basket?”
“Yes,” Rosa answered. “The one with the sheets.”
Nina heaved the basket down from the cart and lugged it to the edge of the stream, where a border of wide, flat stones was set into the ground. Although the stones made it a tidier spot for the women to work, they were also awfully hard on their knees. It would be Wednesday or Thursday, Nina knew, before hers would stop aching.
The stream was pretty but its water was breathtakingly cold, and before she’d finished rinsing even a single pillowcase her hands were numb. Dunking, shaking, squeezing, again and again, and still there was more water to wring out. She paused a few times, rubbing her hands on her skirt, trying to restore some feeling, but as soon as she’d warmed them it was time for another shirt, another bedsheet, until her entire body was chilled through despite the golden sun and bluest of blue skies.
Back into the baskets everything went, then down the hill again, Bello refusing to be rushed, and while Rosa made supper she and the girls pegged out everything on the lines that ran from the house to the first of the grapevines, all the while hoping the sun would hold for a little while longer.
She was almost too tired to eat her supper—they all were—but she dutifully helped to bring in and fold the still-damp laundry so it might be hung out again in the morning. Then Aldo switched on the radio, Rosa brought out her homemade salve of beeswax and olive oil for their aching hands, and the girls sang along to their favorite songs.
When the news came on at nine o’clock, Nina wasn’t listening, not properly. She’d been turning the heel on a sock she was knitting, always the trickiest part, and just keeping track of the stitches occupied all her attention. At first it hadn’t even seemed like something important. There was a congress in Verona, a meeting of the new fascist party, and they’d adopted a manifesto.
“The following constitutes a summary of the principal points that were agreed upon today. In regard to constitutional and internal—”
“The same rubbish as always,” Aldo grumbled, and the newsreader droned on, and Nina knitted stitch after careful stitch, her thoughts pleasantly vague.
“Point number six. The religion of the republic is the Roman Catholic Apostolic faith. Any other religion that does not conflict with the law is respected. Point number seven. The members of the Jewish race are foreigners. During this war they belong to an enemy nationality. In regard to foreign policy . . .”
Foreigner. Enemy.
She pushed back from the table, the chair legs skittering across the terra-cotta tiles. She stood, not caring when her knitting dropped to the floor and a row of stitches popped free.
“Excuse me. I’m not . . . I’m tired. Good night.”
“Is it your tooth again?” Agnese asked.
“I think she misses Nico,” Carlo chimed in.
It was true, for Nico would know how to make her feel better. He would know, better than anyone, what to say to take away her fear. But she couldn’t admit any of that to the children.
“No, dears. Only that I’m tired. That’s all.”
She hurried upstairs to bed, to the cocooning shelter of the covers, to the blessed anonymity of dark and silence and solitude. She couldn’t stop shivering.
She missed Nico so much. He’d left . . . she couldn’t remember how long it had been. Five days ago? Six? He’d warned her he was going away, as he’d done the time before, and he’d said he expected to be gone for at least ten days.
Another five days to wait—that was all. He’d return soon, and he would have answers for her then. Not long at all.
A HAND WAS at her shoulder, pulling her from the comfort of sleep.
“Nina. I need your help.”
“Papà?” It had been so long since he had woken her in the night.
“No, darling. It’s Nico. I’m sorry to wake you, but I need your help.”
“What’s wrong? Is it one of the children?”
“No, no. They’re fine. I have some people with me. They need food, a safe place to sleep, and—”
“I only need a moment to change.”
“Thank you. I’ll leave the lamp behind.”
She dressed quickly, slipping on a pair of Nico’s socks in lieu of stockings, and tiptoed downstairs.
A family, a very tired and frightened family, was huddled around the kitchen table, and Rosa, from the smell of things, was heating up some soup. Two children, hardly more than toddlers, clung to their mother, and the father held a young baby tight to his chest.
She’d taken care to be quiet, but all the same they were startled when she came into the kitchen, their eyes widening in alarm.
“It’s all right,” Nico said, his voice low and soothing. “This is my wife. She will help.” And then, turning to Nina, “The little boy here has a sprained ankle. Took a tu
mble in the dark. And they all have cuts and scrapes.”
“Do you want me to see to them now?”
“They should eat first.”
“Where will we put them?”
“I’ll show you.”
She followed him upstairs and into their bedroom. “Shall we make up pallets on the floor for the children? I’m not sure the bed will hold all—”
She watched, astonished, as he took the chair from its usual spot by the window and carried it to the far corner of the room. Standing on it, his head just brushing against the crossed beams, he reached up and pushed at the ceiling. Something heavy moved back with a faint groan—a trapdoor. In one fluid motion, he pulled himself up and through, vanishing into the dark.
She edged forward but could see nothing in the space above. “Nico?”
The lower rungs of a slender wooden ladder appeared, followed by his face, gaunt and unfamiliar in the shadows.
“Help me set it down—there. Yes. And I need the lamp. Just to make sure the bedding isn’t full of mice.”
She heard him walking about, then the familiar sound of cornhusk mattresses being shaken, and then his returning steps. He handed her the lamp and climbed down the ladder.
“But I’ve been in the granary. There’s nothing—”
“A partition wall.”
“You never told me.”
“I had planned on telling you when I came home this time. In case you ever need a place to hide.”
“Will the Germans come looking for them?”
“I don’t think so, not tonight. But they could, which is why I’m cautious.”
In the kitchen, Rosa had set out the first-aid box, a large basin of warm water, and some clean cloths. After binding the little boy’s ankle, Nina tended to the others’ cuts and scrapes with soap and water and gentle swipes of iodine.
Our Darkest Night Page 9