Our Darkest Night

by Jennifer Robson

  It took another long day, squashed in the back of an enormous GMC truck, to get to Innsbruck, though the GIs traveling with them were polite and respectful and generous in sharing their sandwiches and chocolate. From there they found a train south to Italy, the Brenner Pass having finally reopened; another day would see them back in Bassano.

  “I AM VERY sorry, signora, but there are no more trains this evening.”

  The ticket agent at the train station in Bolzano was a perfectly pleasant man, and he didn’t seem to bear her any ill will, yet all the same he was determined to prevent her from returning home. Or so it felt to Nina, who was utterly weary of trains, train stations, and anywhere in the world that was not Mezzo Ciel.

  “But there was supposed to be a train to Bassano del Grappa at half-past seven. We have tickets—look.” Their train south from Innsbruck had arrived almost three hours late, but it was only seven o’clock. Surely they hadn’t missed it.

  “Your tickets are quite in order, yes, but alas there is no train. Not tonight.” The ticket clerk shrugged, his expression properly mournful. “There will be one in the morning. That is not so very long to wait.”

  “No, I suppose not. Is there anywhere we may stay?”

  “By that do you mean a hotel? I can recommend—”

  “No, thank you. I meant here. I don’t want to leave the station.”

  One day she might visit Bolzano again, but not yet. Not while her memories of via Resia were still vivid enough to haunt her waking dreams.

  “Of course. Our waiting room will be open all night, and the guard will be nearby. You and your friend are most welcome to stay.”

  They found the waiting room without much difficulty, and after installing herself and Stella in a pair of seats in the very far corner of the space, Nina inspected her satchel in the hopes that some of their provisions might linger in its depths. Luck was with her, insofar as food was concerned, for there were two apples remaining, neither of them badly bruised, twenty or thirty grams of cheese wrapped in waxed paper, and a very stale chunk of pumpernickel bread, which she’d been unable to persuade Stella to eat that morning. But they were both hungry, and home was another day away, if not more, so she would give the cheese and apples to Stella and find a way to choke down the dark bread that reminded her so horribly of the refuse that had passed for food in the camps.

  She was tired, for she hadn’t slept at all well on the train from Prague to Munich, and then she’d had no chance to do more than doze on Stella’s shoulder on the shorter train and bus journeys since. She was tired, but she was too fretful to sleep, and it wasn’t even half-past seven.

  If only she had something to read. She wasn’t fussy; even a discarded newspaper would do.

  “I’m going to wander around for a bit,” she told Stella. “I won’t go far.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll try to sleep for a bit.”

  The station’s cleaners were efficient, however, and after pacing the length and breadth of the ticket hall two times over, looking under every bench and even peeping in the top of the rubbish bins, Nina wasn’t able to unearth so much as a single sheet of printed matter.

  Only that wasn’t quite true. The ticket hall of the station, like so many others she and Stella had passed through in recent days, featured a large noticeboard that normally would be covered with timetables, announcements, and advertisements. As with those other stations, though, the board in Bolzano’s ticket hall was instead shingled with pieces of paper, some faded, some only days old, and on each small notice there was a name, and beneath that name was a plea for help.

  She was tired, so tired, and it would be far more sensible for her to simply return to the waiting room and try to sleep. Instead she began to read the notices.

  Ricardo Rossi, age 22, last seen on march from Dachau April ’45. Information please to his mother, Signora Rossi, via Vittoria, Borgo Vallessina.

  Marco Foà Recagni, age 36, sent to Fossoli in August 1944. Last seen in Flossenburg. Any information gratefully received by his wife and children at via San Felice in Maragnole.

  Guerrino Salvati, age 18, last seen on Monte Grappa in September ’44. If you have news of him please write to his father, Signor Ettore Salvati, presently living at 2 viale Trieste, Castelfranco Veneto.

  She read through every last notice on the board, one after the other, and not because she thought there was a chance of her recognizing any of the names. She never had, not once, in any of the stations she and Stella had passed through on their way home. But someone ought to read them. Someone ought to spare a moment to think of those lost lives.

  She stepped back, wiping her eyes, and went to turn back to the waiting room and her quiet corner and the meager meal that waited for her there. And then she stopped short, her breath catching, for a man had come into the station, and for some ridiculous reason she thought she might know him.

  He was standing in the shadows, his attention focused on a ticket in his hand, and as she watched he shook his head, took a deep breath, and let it out in a huffing sigh.

  The man stepped back, only a little, and a beam of light fell upon his face, and her heart seized as she recognized him.

  As she discovered that joy could be as painful as grief.

  “Nico?” she whispered. And then, finding her voice, she called to him. “Niccolò!”

  He turned his head, surprised at hearing his name so far from home. The bag he’d been holding fell from his hand.

  “Nina? How on earth . . . how did you know I’d be here?”

  Here was far from home, and she was thin and frail, and there was no child in her arms. In an instant, Nico saw all of it, and Nina, in turn, was witness to the moment it broke his heart.

  He fell to his knees. She ran and knelt before him, her hands coming up to cradle his anguished face.

  “Why are you here? What happened to you?” he demanded, pushing her away, his hands shaking like wind-borne leaves, his horror so palpable she could taste it.

  “Won’t you hold me?” she begged him. “I am alive and well. Truly I am.”

  “Tell me now. Tell me the truth!”

  “It was Zwerger. He came for me. He threatened your family. And so I went with him—I had no other choice. He took me to the SD headquarters in Verona, and there was a man hanging from the gallows in the courtyard. And . . . and he was dressed in your clothes. Zwerger told me you were dead, and I believed him. I believed you were lost to me.”

  “Nina. Oh, Nina. All this time I believed you and our baby were safe and well. How can I bear it? Do you . . . do you know if it was a boy or a girl? Were you even able to—”

  “She was born before they took me away,” she rushed to reassure him. “I named her Lucia, as you wanted.”

  “She is safe? Truly?” he asked, the tears streaming down his face and vanishing into his days-old beard.

  “She is,” Nina promised, and she prayed that it was true. She hadn’t had any news from Rosa, but she would believe that Lucia was well. She would believe enough for her and Nico both. “It’s been a long time since I saw her last, but she was a very pretty baby.”

  “I don’t . . . I can hardly wrap my mind around all of this,” Nico whispered, and still he wept.

  “I know. Let’s go into the waiting room,” she suggested. “The benches there are much more comfortable than this floor.”

  They struggled to their feet, both a little shaky, but before they took a single step he enfolded her in his arms, his touch careful, almost tentative, as if he feared she might break. They held each other for long minutes, and it was the first time Nina had felt safe in a long, long time.

  Reluctantly she pulled back, just so she might see his face as she shared one more revelation with him. “I have something else to tell you. Something good,” she added hastily, seeing how he flinched. “When I was imprisoned I made a friend. Her name is Stella and she’s still a girl. Still so young. She saved me, Nico, more than once, and her family are all gone. She has
nowhere else to go, and so I thought . . .”

  “Of course. Of course she must come with us,” he answered, as she’d known he would.

  Nina woke Stella carefully, worried that she might take fright at the sight of a strange man standing so close by.

  “Do you remember how I told you I’d stopped believing in miracles?”

  “Yes,” Stella said, her still-sleepy gaze darting uncertainly between Nina and Nico.

  “I think I have to take it back. This is Nico.”

  “Your Nico? He came to fetch us? That’s lovely, but I wouldn’t call it a miracle.”

  “But it is. I thought he was dead. All this time, I thought he was lost to me, and I never told you because I couldn’t bear to talk of it.”

  Stella frowned, still trying to make sense of what Nina was telling her. “Why did you believe he was dead?”

  “I thought he had been killed. I was shown the body of a man, still hanging from a gallows, and he was dressed in Nico’s clothes. But I was wrong. Zwerger—he was the Nazi who had me arrested—wanted me to think Nico was dead, likely for no better reason than to torment me. And I believed him.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Stella,” Nico now said, though he came no closer. “Thank you for helping Nina.”

  “No more than she helped me.”

  “All the same, I’m very grateful. I want to welcome you into my family. And I want you to know you will always have a home with us. Always.”

  STELLA WENT BACK to sleep not long after, but Nina and Nico stayed awake for the rest of the night; and though it felt daring to do so in a public waiting room, she sat on his lap and let him cocoon her in his arms. Safe in his embrace, she told him her story. Not all of it; not anything close to the entire, bitter, horrifying truth. But enough.

  Bolzano and the zeros. The terrible journey to Birkenau. The selection and the women whose names she never learned. The moment her own name was replaced by a number. The chimneys and the aufseherin with her dead-eyed stare. Her horror when she first understood what had become of her parents. Stella. The cold, dark months in the nameless camp near Zschopau. The salve and Georg and the oberaufseherin. Typhus and Terezin and sleeping through the end of the war.

  He wept once more when she showed him the number on her arm, and then they were quiet together for a while. She pressed her face against his chest and listened to his heartbeat and told herself that she would never forget this night. She would never forget to be grateful for the blessing of his steadfast heart.

  “What happened after they arrested you?” she asked after a long while.

  “They took me to Verona as well. They stripped me naked and threw me in a cell and left me there. I hardly remember that part. Only how cold I was. After a few days they dragged me out and put me on a truck. I didn’t see Zwerger again.”

  “Did they send you to Bolzano, too?”

  “Yes, but I was only there for a few days before I was put on a train for Flossenburg. After I’d healed enough that I was well enough to work, they sent me out to one work camp after another. At one point I was in Chelmnitz. Not far from Zschopau at all.”

  “Oh, Nico. What I’d have given to have seen you. Just to have caught sight of you and known you were alive.”

  “When the Americans were no more than a day or two away, the guards forced us to start marching for Dachau. Anyone who faltered was shot or left to die. I still can’t believe I survived.”

  “You’re so thin.”

  “Would you believe I’ve put on twenty kilos since I was liberated? I was lucky, you know. I was given a bed in the American hospital in Linz, and the medics there knew how to fatten me up without killing me. I was lucky, and yet . . .” He shook his head, as if hoping to rid himself of his memories.

  “We both had a bad time of it,” she acknowledged.

  “I know you’ve only told me a part of what you endured. The very smallest part. You must promise to tell me all of it.”

  “One day, yes. Not now. Not until we both can bear the telling.”

  “I hope you’ll be able to forgive me. I was so set on being the hero that I never once considered what might happen to you if I was arrested. I am so very sorry, my darling.”

  Now she sat up, turning in his lap so she might look him in the eye. “Nico. Listen to me. There is nothing to forgive. I survived, as did you. As did the scores of people you saved. And do you know what we’re going to do next?”

  He smiled, the same crooked smile that she’d missed so much, and her love for him bloomed anew. “No,” he said. “Tell me.”

  “We’re going to have supper together. A delicious meal of one wrinkled apple, a very small piece of cheese, and a few mouthfuls of some truly awful bread. We’ll wash it all down with water from the drinking fountain. Clean water, no less. After that, we’ll wait here until morning, and then we will take the first train south. We’ll be home by supper.”

  Chapter 32

  In the end, it took them two more days to finish their journey, for the train they boarded the next morning went no farther than Trento. From there they took to the roads, hitching one ride after another, traveling east around the looming massif of Cima Dodici and then south along the banks of the Brenta.

  In Primolano, Nico found them space in the back of an empty van heading past Bassano del Grappa. The driver was apologetic, but couldn’t spare the time or the petrol to take them directly to Mezzo Ciel.

  “The old bridge was bombed in February. Still standing but you can only cross it on foot. Should be easy enough to find someone on the east bank who’ll drive you the rest of the way.”

  The walk across the once-beautiful bridge in Bassano, its Palladian arches a tangled mess of blackened beams, was disconcerting, and once or twice Nina was convinced they would fall into the rushing waters of the Brenta far below. The streets of the old town were almost impassable, too, filled with rubble as they were, and it took ages to reach the northern outskirts and the familiar view of the rising hills beyond.

  “I can see home from here,” Nico said, but Nina was looking back at the viale above them, the one by the ancient walls. The one with the line of trees, each garlanded with ribbons and medals and wreaths of long-dead flowers.

  “That’s where they hanged them,” she said. “Do you remember? Poor Paolo. The poor child. To see such a thing.”

  “I remember,” Nico said, “but it’s a beautiful day, and we’re almost home. Will you come with me now?”

  So they set off together, the autumn sun at their backs, and hardly more than an hour had passed before Nina spied the shining white tower of the campanile in the piazza, at first a dot in the distance, then growing ever larger, until they were climbing the last hill before home, and though it was even steeper than she remembered, every step she took was welcome and precious to her.

  The graveled road gave way to cobbles, the close-set houses along via Mezzo Ciel were replaced by the broad expanse of the piazza, and ahead, unchanged, were Fratelli Favaro, the cobbler, the bakery, and the osteria, its benches still occupied by dozing, white-haired men.

  She tried not to think of the last time she had stood in the piazza, cowering at the back of the crowd, watching Zwerger lead the attack on Nico.

  “Should we visit Father Bernardi?” she asked.

  “Later. Tonight. Come along, the two of you—we’re almost there.”

  They walked past the church, past the flanking stone wall where Nico had so nearly died, the ground beneath still stained, revoltingly, with splashes of dried blood. They came around the bend in the road. Nico held out his right hand to Nina, his left to Stella, and the three of them broke into a run.

  SELVA WAS THE first to realize they were home. The dog burst from the stables, barking so loudly that Nina was tempted to plug her ears, and then the rest of the family was crowding about them.

  “We’ve been waiting and waiting,” Rosa sobbed. “The postcards from the Red Cross came so long ago. Did neither of you receive my
letters?”

  “No, but it doesn’t matter now. Hush, Rosa,” Nico crooned, gathering his sister in his arms. “Hush. We’re home. We’re safe.”

  “Who is this lovely young lady?” Aldo asked, noticing Stella; the girl had halted a few meters from the rest of them, her expression uncertain and a little wistful.

  Nina now drew Stella forward, one arm around her shoulders. “This is Stella Donati. She grew up in Livorno, but she’s going to live with us now. She saved me time and again when we were . . .”

  She couldn’t bring herself to talk of where they had been. Not with the children so happy and Rosa and Aldo still so anxious.

  “When they were away,” Nico said. “But now we’re home, and we’re desperate to see Lucia. Where is she?”

  “Asleep in her crib. It’s in your room.”

  They rushed up the stairs, forgetting to be quiet, and opened the door to their room. Lucia was awake, sitting up in her crib, her eyes widening at the sight of the strangers.

  Nico was, predictably, smitten. “Oh, my darling. My darling girl. You are so lovely. And you have your mamma’s hair.”

  “Go on,” Nina encouraged him. “Pick her up.”

  He was nervous, his hands trembling, but he shouldn’t have been; it was clear that he knew how to hold a baby. Lucia stared up at him, her eyes round, and after a long moment her little hand reached out to tap his nose.

  “I can’t believe it,” Rosa said from the doorway. “Normally she’s shy around strangers. I mean . . . I mean new people. New faces. Of course you aren’t strangers to her.”

  As soon as Lucia saw Rosa, though, the spell was broken. Her little mouth bent into a pout, and then a frown, and Nico, his smile fading, handed his daughter back to Rosa.

  “Don’t worry. It won’t take long for her to recognize you both. And perhaps she already has an idea of who you are? I’ve been telling her about you every day.