“From what?”
“Nursing school.”
“Oh, ah . . . yes. A little,” she stammered, for the only birth she’d ever witnessed had been one of the farm cats having kittens in the spring. “A very little,” she amended.
“We’d better call for Romilda,” Aldo said, his face white with fear.
“The midwife? But what if she says—”
“We can trust her,” Rosa insisted, “and she knows what she’s doing. It will be safer for you and the baby if she’s here.”
At last they reached her room. While Aldo rushed off to fetch the midwife, Rosa helped Nina sit on the bed.
“Let’s get you out of that dress,” said the ever-practical Rosa. “Where’s your nightgown?”
“I only have the one. I’ll soil it,” Nina protested.
“You can’t mean to go through your labor stark naked. I’ll get one of mine.”
“No. Just a sheet is enough. Just—”
More pain, so consuming she could scarcely breathe, let alone speak.
Hours seemed to pass, though it might have been only minutes. It was so hard to think of anything beyond the pain. Romilda arrived at last, coming into the bedroom just as Nina kicked off the covering sheet that Rosa had insisted upon for modesty.
“No, Rosa,” she begged. “I can’t bear it. Don’t put it back.”
“Better that way,” Romilda said cheerily. “Will save on washing afterward.”
The midwife set about unpacking her bag and washing her hands in the bowl of near-boiling water Rosa provided. And then she took a good look at Nina and informed her that the baby would not be born for hours yet.
“I’m glad,” Nina panted, caught up in a contraction. “The baby can’t be born today. Not after . . .”
“No fear of that,” Romilda said briskly. “First babies like to take their time.”
Hour after hour crept past, the pain building higher and higher, the pauses between contractions growing ever briefer. Romilda examined her from time to time, and just as the sky began to brighten into day she announced that it was time for Nina to push.
“Your baby is ready to be born.”
“What do I do? What do I do?”
“Look at me,” Romilda ordered, her tone firm but not unkind. “You know what to do. When your body tells you that you need to push, you’ll take a big breath in, and then you’ll hold it. You’ll hold it, and you’ll push until I tell you to stop. Rosa will help you sit up a little—that will make it easier for the baby.”
She was so tired, and she wasn’t sure she would find the strength to carry on, but she did as they told her, one searing push after another, and just as she was coming to the last of her strength Romilda had her reach down so she might feel the top of her baby’s head.
“One more should do it, Nina—now,” Romilda urged.
It was too much, too much, but Rosa was chanting in her ear, reminding her of how strong she was, and she held her breath and pushed until she was dizzy. The pain grew and grew and then, in the space between one gasp and the next, it was gone and a baby began to cry. Her baby.
“It’s a girl,” Rosa wept, and for a moment Nina was certain that something was wrong. But Rosa was smiling beneath her tears, and her voice was joyful.
“She’s healthy and strong,” Romilda said. “I’ll weigh her in a bit but she looks to be a good size. Here she is, and while you’re busy admiring her I’ll help you pass the afterbirth.”
Romilda set the baby on Nina’s chest and covered them both with the neglected sheet, and in that moment, seeing her daughter’s face for the first time, Nina was transported. She was in love.
“See if you can get her to suckle,” the midwife suggested. “She’ll want to sleep soon—you both will—but it’ll do you both good if she can get some early milk from you.”
It was a challenge to get the baby to latch on, but with a little help from Romilda, and some frustration on the part of both mother and child, the baby began to nurse. Her greedy mouth was surprisingly painful, but it was nothing compared to what had gone before. No amount of pain mattered, not when she could hold Nico’s daughter in her arms.
“He wanted to call her Lucia,” she now told Rosa. “And I thought we could add Anna as a second name. For your mother.”
“What do you think?” she asked the baby. “Do you want to be called Lucia?”
But Lucia had fallen asleep, her mouth slack against Nina’s nipple, and Romilda now took her and washed her and wrapped her up in the same soft blanket that, Rosa now explained, had been used for all the Gerardi children. “There,” she said, returning Lucia to Nina’s waiting arms. “Now you both need to sleep.”
“Won’t the children wish to see her?”
Rosa was doubtful. “Aren’t you too tired?”
“I don’t mind staying awake a little longer. Especially if it will give them a happy memory to set against yesterday.”
Rosa nodded and slipped from the room, only to return moments later with Carlo, Angela, and Agnese. Their faces were wan and fearful and still stained with tears, but each of them managed a smile for Nina and the baby.
“I hope I didn’t frighten you,” Nina said as they gathered around her. “Did I make a lot of noise?”
“Hardly any,” Agnese said. “Papà told us you were being very brave.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I only did what Romilda and Rosa told me to do.”
“Can we see her?” Carlo asked.
“Of course.” She tilted the baby’s face toward them. “What do you think?”
“Hmm,” said Carlo. “She’s very small.”
“New babies usually are, but she’ll get bigger.”
“What are you going to call her?”
“Nico wants her name to be Lucia. What do you think?”
He nodded vigorously. “I like it.”
“That’s enough for now,” Rosa said. “Nina and baby Lucia both need their sleep.” Turning to Nina, she added, “I’ll be back once they’re settled.”
Romilda had finished packing up her bag. “I’ll return tomorrow to see how you’re doing. Nurse her whenever she wakes, and if you have any trouble getting her to latch, have Rosa fetch me.”
“Thank you,” Nina said. Suddenly she was so tired it was an effort to even say that much.
“You’re a brave girl, Nina. You faced down that labor with as much courage as any woman I’ve ever known, and I’ve delivered more babies than I can count. I only hope you’ll remember that in the days to come.”
Chapter 24
9 October 1944
As soon as Nina was able to climb the ladder, Aldo and Rosa had insisted she and Lucia move to the hiding place. They had made it comfortable for her, even homey, with a freshly filled mattress of corn husks, the same woolen pad from her bed below, and a warmly lined basket for the baby. The children visited her, too, sworn to secrecy.
“No one can know,” Aldo had explained. “Not your teacher, Carlo, nor any of your friends.”
Rosa was up and down the ladder many times over the course of each day, and Aldo, too, for he loved to hold his granddaughter and sing to her softly, soothe her when she was fussy, and tell her stories about Nico when he’d been a little boy.
“How do you manage it?” she asked, wondering at how he was able to smile and laugh so easily. “I want to laugh. I want to be happy again. But I’ve no idea how to do it. How am I meant to survive?”
“It’s no great secret. We rise at dawn and we do our work and we live our lives. That’s all. And we never forget that Nico only wants happiness for those he loves.”
“I know, but how am I to shut out the memory of what was done to him? The knowledge of what he is suffering now?”
“You can’t. I wish you could, but you can’t. Not when you love him as you do. And I do understand, Nina. I do. When my Anna Maria died, I thought I would die, too. Seeing her struggle to give birth to Carlo, watching her in pain, knowing how much she suffered . . . even now
I can’t bear to think of it. But I survived. I survived, too, when Marco was killed. And I will survive this latest horror, and pray every day that my son will come home to me.”
“And what if he doesn’t? What then?”
“Then we endure, and we remind ourselves to hope, and one day we wake and the weight of it is a little less.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
“You will. One day, my dearest daughter, I promise you will.”
Lucia was only a week old when Rosa gently introduced the subject of the baby’s baptism. “We do need to get it done quickly, if only so she still fits in the gown my mother made. Father Bernardi can do it here, at the house.”
Nina nodded, and smiled, and asked if they might talk about it again when she wasn’t quite so tired, and Rosa abandoned the subject.
But only until the next day. “I know you don’t want to have the baptism when Nico isn’t here. I understand. But we must get it done.”
And Nina knew the only way out of it was to tell Rosa and Aldo the truth. Every last bit of it. So she asked if Father Bernardi might come for a visit, as he hadn’t yet seen the baby. In deference to his bad knees Nina brought the baby downstairs and they all gathered around the table in the kitchen. Only the adults, for they’d prudently waited to bring her downstairs until it was dark, which meant the little ones were in bed; Matteo and Paolo were outside keeping watch.
Father Bernardi took the chair next to Nina, and he admired the baby, and then his usual merry expression vanished and he put on his serious face, and both Rosa and Aldo noticed right away.
“Is something wrong, Father?” Rosa asked worriedly.
“Have you had news of Nico?”
“No, Aldo. Nothing like that. I’m here because Nina and I have a confession to make.” And then, looking to Nina, “Would you like me to begin?”
She nodded, her throat closing in, and listened as he began to tell her story.
“For many years I have been friends with a physician in Venice. His name is Gabriele Mazin. At first I was a patient of his, and then, over the decades—I think it must be close to thirty years now—we became ever closer, and now I count him among my dearest friends.” He paused, waiting for Rosa and Aldo to digest that first, seemingly inconsequential, piece of information.
“Dr. Mazin and his wife are Italian. Their parents were Italian. Their families have lived here for hundreds of years. And still they have been persecuted in this, their only home, simply for the fact that they are Jewish. They are Jewish, and so is their daughter, Antonina. Though Nina is the name she uses now.”
The silence that followed, as both Aldo and Rosa tried to make sense of what he had just told them, was achingly painful.
“You are their daughter?” Aldo asked at last. “You are Jewish?” Yet he didn’t seem angry or affronted. Only surprised. “Why did you and Nico tell us you were an orphan? Why didn’t you tell us the truth?”
“I wanted to,” Nina said, blinking back tears. “But Nico thought it best that we keep it a secret.”
“We wouldn’t have cared,” Rosa said. “I was awful when you first got here, but that’s because I was upset with Nico. I couldn’t believe he’d fallen in love and spent all that time with a woman and never so much as told me her name. All those months and he’d never thought to tell me about you.”
“And therein lies the second part of our confession,” Father Bernardi said, his expression ever more serious. “Last year Dr. Mazin became convinced that it was no longer safe for Antonina to remain in Venice. He and I had talked of it before—the notion that I would find a place for her to hide until the war was done. I told Nico of it, in the course of some other conversations we were having, and he offered to take Nina in. Sight unseen.”
Rosa had been standing, but now she grasped hold of the tabletop and collapsed into the nearest chair. “You weren’t in love,” she whispered. “That was all a lie?”
“At first it was,” Nina pleaded. “I liked him straightaway—how could I not? And then, not so long after, we became friends. And then . . . then it was impossible not to love him. And I do, Rosa. I love him with my whole heart.”
“If you weren’t married when you first came here, then when?” Rosa asked, flushing a little.
“We’re not married,” Nina admitted. “And I wish, now, that we’d gone to Father Bernardi. But I didn’t want to have a Christian wedding.”
“Oh,” Rosa said, and she began to dab at her eyes with the corner of her apron.
“The rest, Nina,” Father Bernardi prompted. “Don’t forget the rest.”
“I don’t want Lucia to be baptized. I don’t want to offend you, or hurt you in any way, but she’s my daughter. She is my daughter, and that means she, too, is Jewish. And so that’s why . . . well. That’s why I asked Father Bernardi to come.”
“Did you think we would reject you?” Aldo asked.
“At first I didn’t know you well enough to worry. Later, though, I did worry. I still do. How can I not? You hold my fate in your hands. One word from you to the police and I’ll be on the next train north.”
“Never,” Rosa said, and now she was weeping openly. “Never, never would we hurt you. Never will we allow anyone to take you from us. You belong to us, Nina. You and Lucia both. Nothing will ever change that.”
“We will keep you and Lucia safe,” Aldo promised. “I swear it.”
“And you aren’t upset that we lied to you?”
“Maybe a little?” Rosa allowed. “But only because I wish you had trusted us with the truth.”
“I still think it best that the children aren’t told,” Father Bernardi said. “One day, but not yet. Not while men like Zwerger still hold the power of life or death over us.”
Aldo nodded, and then he went to the high shelf above the hearth, to the spot where he kept his best bottle of grappa, and he fetched it back to the table, along with four glasses. He poured a scant measure into each glass, handed one each to Rosa, Nina, and Father Bernardi, and took the last for himself.
“In lieu of a baptism, let us drink to the health and happiness of my first grandchild. To Lucia Anna Gerardi. May she forever know the love of her family and the peace of our hearth. And may her father return to her before she is old enough to remember his absence.”
“To Lucia,” Nina echoed. “And to her father’s safe return.”
IT WAS LATE afternoon, and the hiding place was uncomfortably warm, and the baby had fallen asleep at her breast. Nina had slept, too, but only fitfully, and so she was more than half-awake when the shouting and barking began.
She put Lucia down in her little basket, making sure she was securely swaddled, and crawled toward the shuttered window. It would be folly to open it, but if she tilted her head just so, she could see into the courtyard below.
Zwerger was back, and this time he had at least a dozen men with him.
“What more do you want from us?” Aldo cried. “You took my son, and now you come to take away my daughter?”
“Daughter? Is that what you’re calling that whore? No—don’t even think it. Or do you wish for your other children to witness your death? It’s easily done.”
“Leave my father alone.” Matteo’s voice was nearly as deep and steady as Nico’s had been.
“Get back—all of you,” Zwerger screamed. “Against the wall by the road. Stay where you are. And you there—if you let go of that dog I’ll empty my gun into her. That’s a promise.”
There were noises below, in her bedroom. Nina turned her head just as Rosa’s face emerged from the trapdoor. “He’s back! You need to pull up the ladder and keep the baby quiet. They’re sure to search the house.”
“Come here.”
“There isn’t time!”
“There is. Come here—I’m begging you.”
Rosa climbed the ladder, grumbling all the while, and came to crouch next to Nina.
“He’s gone mad, Rosa. Just listen to how he is carrying on. And the chi
ldren—he has all of them lined up against the wall. I can’t bear it. I can’t.”
“That’s why you must hide. They’ll look, and they won’t find you, and they’ll go away.”
“That man is not going to leave here without me. He’ll tear this house apart, beam by beam, brick by brick, and when he finds me he’ll find Lucia, too.”
“What do we do?”
“Hide here with the baby. Make sure she doesn’t cry. She just finished nursing, so she should sleep for a while.”
Rosa frowned, not understanding. “Why me? You’re the one who needs to hide.”
“No. I’m the one who needs to surrender. Listen to me. He will not give up. He will not leave us be. And there’s no way for me to escape, not now. He has men surrounding the house, and soon they’ll come up the stairs, and they’ll find her.”
“I can’t let you go, Nina. You’re my sister—you’re part of my family. How can I send you away with that man?”
“If we’re to save my baby and the rest of our family, you must let me go. Let me do this for you all.” Now Nina wrenched off her wedding ring. “This is for Lucia. And my other things, too. My jewelry, and my books, and the photographs of my parents. Tell her their names—Gabriele and Devora Mazin. She is the last of my family. The very last.”
Nina crawled to the basket and picked up Lucia. Held her close. Breathed in her milky sweetness. Kissed her perfect face. And then she gave her to Rosa.
“Will you tell her about me?” she asked. “If I don’t return?”
“But you—”
“Promise me you will.”
“I promise.”
Rosa was sobbing now, one hand pressed to her mouth to muffle her cries, and Nina longed to let her own tears fall. But not yet—not until she had faced down her enemies.
“Tell her how much I love her. How much Nico and I both love her. And when he returns,” she added, her voice faltering, “tell him that he is forever my beloved.”
Zwerger’s voice continued to rise and rise, and the children’s cries were growing ever more frantic, and there was only one thing left, now, for Nina to do.
She climbed down the ladder and helped Rosa to pull it back up. She waited until the trapdoor was closed and she could see her friend—her sister—no more. She walked downstairs, past the parlor, through the kitchen, and into the afternoon sun.
Our Darkest Night Page 20