“How solitary does the once populous city sit, like a lonely widow grieving for her husband. She weeps bitterly in the night; her tears are on her cheeks, for there are none to comfort her.
“All of her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies. Is this the city that was once called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”
Lost in her thoughts, quietly weeping, Nicola finally realized that the service had ended when she felt someone gently tap her shoulder. She looked up to find Bruno standing next to her, a lighted taper still in his hand. He gazed at her with softness in his eyes, but said nothing as she brushed away a tear. The sanctuary remained dark, the only illumination being the pale glow of the candles, which would be extinguished outside the building.
Reaching into his pocket, he offered her a handkerchief and then asked, “What did you think of the service? I imagine this is the first time you’ve been to a synagogue.”
Nicola sighed. “Actually, it's the first time in years that I’ve attended any religious service at all. I was raised Catholic,” she continued, “at least nominally. I even attended First Communion in a frilly white organdy dress, like all my friends. But as a teenager, I stopped going to mass. My grandmother was Catholic, my grandfather vaguely Protestant, but formal religion was never emphasized.
“I guess I should mention,” she added parenthetically, “that my parents were killed in a car accident when I was three, and that my grandparents became my legal guardians.
“Anyway, the atmosphere in their home was basically ecumenical. All they really cared about was ethical behavior. Love thy neighbor. Do unto others. You know what I mean. I think my grandmother felt that organized religion wasn’t really necessary. Something to do with her childhood in Italy, she once said. But she never gave me any details.”
“I do know what you mean about formal religion,” Bruno replied. “My parents never observed any of the rituals. We never kept the dietary laws, never bothered with holiday celebrations, except for the occasional Passover Seder, since it was a good excuse to get together with the extended family. But somehow, as an adult, I’ve become interested in tradition, at least in an intellectual way.
“Probably it has something to do with the profession I chose,” he continued. “I guess I felt that here I was, an expert on ancient civilization and the history of Rome, and that I was actually part of a culture even older than that, from which I’m basically estranged.
“You probably didn’t know this before, but Jews first settled in Rome in the 2nd Century B.C., and by the time of Julius Caesar, there were already tens of thousands of them here. After 70 A.D., when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, the number increased, when Jewish slaves were brought to Rome in a triumphal pageant. Of course, that’s the event that’s being commemorated tonight.”
He waited as Nicola opened the metal locker in which her passport and purse had been stored during the services and handed the key back to one of the guards.
“Anyway, my parents did send me to a Jewish school as a child,” he now added as they walked along the bank of the Tiber, along Lungotevere Cenci. “It was the thing to do, even for non-observant families. But most likely it had a lot to do with the fact that my mother and father managed to survive World War II under the most extraordinary of circumstances. I guess it was part of their cultural identification with Judaism.”
“Really? How did they manage to survive? I thought that most of the Jews of Rome were rounded up in 1943 and sent to concentration camps,” Nicola said.
“Well, my mother’s family took their life savings—and the family jewels, so to speak, sewn into their clothing—and fled north, to the Swiss border. They had hired a guide to take them into Switzerland, but my grandparents were turned away on some technicality. My mother was very pretty and apparently quite mature looking as a young girl, and it seems that she flirted with a few of the guards for several hours while the matter was being decided—and the requisite bribes were being accepted, I might add. Even before the war, the Swiss would only take in children up to age ten, at least officially.
“To make a long story short, they all crossed the border and made their way to a small village near Locarno, where they stayed for the duration of the war, using false identities. With the Swiss, no one could ever be sure that the neutrality policy would last.”
By now they had reached Bruno’s car and stood for a moment in the street before he opened the door. The usual crowds of people lingered in the nearby piazza and adjoining alleyways. The ghetto was a popular nightspot, with restaurants and outdoor cafés that catered to a young, mostly native Italian crowd. The sound of laughter, animated conversation, and the clinking of silverware and glasses made them forget, if only fleetingly, that a more solemn occasion had brought them here this evening.
“By the way,” Bruno continued, “my mother’s older brother didn’t accompany them to Switzerland. He'd been ill for several years with tuberculosis and had finally been sent to a sanatorium somewhere in the Dolomite Mountains several months before the Racial Laws were passed. I think he used a false name when he was admitted as a patient. At least that’s what my mother recalls. It was assumed in those days that your future employment prospects were seriously compromised if it were known you’d spent time in one of those places. Hence the need for secrecy, even before they knew it would save his life.
“At any rate, no one in the facility knew that he was Jewish. Or if they suspected it, they kept their mouths shut. He stayed there until the war was over, by which time he’d been cured, and later rejoined the rest of his family when they returned to Italy.”
“How terrible,” Nicola said. “But at least they all survived and found each other again.”
“True,” Bruno agreed. “Many didn’t, and many could tell you stories equally unusual or almost miraculous. My father actually hid on Tiberina Island, in the Fatebenefratelli Hospital, right smack in the middle of the Tiber, practically across the street from the ghetto. He was disguised as a patient. When the Gestapo came, they overlooked him. No papers, no I.D. They couldn’t prove who he was or wasn’t, and left him there.
“Apparently the nurses had had some warning about when the Germans would arrive, so they’d given him something to make him vomit uncontrollably. Not very pleasant, but no one wanted to take a closer look at him, and that was probably what saved him. This may surprise you—or even shock you—but some Jews even hid in the local lunatic asylum when they couldn’t find shelter anywhere else. That’s how desperate the situation was.”
An amused look suddenly animated his features. “I can’t believe that I almost forgot this, but many of the patients in the hospital had what the doctors called ‘K’s disease.’”
“‘K’s disease’?” Nicola asked in puzzlement. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Bruno smiled wryly. “Kappler’s disease. It was what had brought many of the patients to the hospital in the first place. Kappler was the head of the Gestapo in Rome. I guess some people are always able to find humor even in the worst of situations.”
Nicola nodded and sighed. “Thank God, none of my family had to go through anything like that. I’ve told you that my grandmother was Italian and grew up in Rome, but like all good Catholics she didn’t suffer the way your relatives did during the German occupation. Or at least I don’t think she did.
“It’s funny, though,” Nicola reflected aloud. “She never talks about the war. I think she might have been an only child, born to my great grandparents at a time when they’d almost despaired of ever having children.
“My grandfather—my very handsome and dashing American grandfather, I might add,” she said, her eyes lighting up, “was here with the Allied forces and whisked her away to the United States at the end of the war. I really don’t know anything about any relatives she might have left behind in Rome or elsewhere in Italy, for that matter. As I’ve said, that’s the one subject she won’t speak of with me—that she actually refuses
to talk about.
“I sometimes think it’s like being an adopted child. You know you have birth parents, and perhaps siblings, somewhere out there, but you don’t search for them out of deference to your adoptive family. Although, I must admit, I’ve begun to fantasize recently about unearthing the long buried truth about my Italian roots.”
“Her personal history certainly sounds very romantic,” Bruno commented, “being rescued by a knight in shining armor, so to speak. And she was very lucky, I think, to have been spared the difficulties of living in post-war Italy.
“As for my extended family, many of whom survived the war, some hid in various convents or monasteries throughout the city. But, you know, it wasn’t all sweetness and light or acts of charity. Some Jews actually had to pay for room and board or they were asked to leave the places that took them in.”
Nicola looked at him in surprise. “That’s unbelievable,” she remarked.
“Anyway, tomorrow, if you like, I’ll show you one of the most famous places that sheltered Jews during the war, although I’m sure you’ve been there before—the Palazzo Lateranense, near the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. I thought we could also have a look at the bronze pillars in the north transept of the church.
“There’s an interesting legend about them that I came across in a medieval chronicle I found in Italian translation recently. It’s called The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela. It seems that the writer was from Spain and traveled extensively in Europe and Asia, which was rather unusual in those days. He mentions that the pillars were believed to have come from the Temple of Solomon and that they release beads of moisture, almost like tears, on the Ninth of Av.
“Incidentally, the other, competing legend is that the pillars are actually gilded wood taken from one of Cleopatra’s ships and brought as booty to Rome,” he added mischievously. “You can take your pick.”
Chapter Thirteen
Nicola carefully eased the scroll out of the amphora. It was made of heavy parchment and tied with what appeared to be a silken cord, whose original indigo color, she conjectured, had apparently faded long ago to a pale blue. She remembered that there was some type of shellfish from which dark blue dyes were produced in ancient times. Heavily scented bits of spices fell out of the clay vessel as she lifted the scroll. Cloves and some sort of sweet smelling resin, reminiscent of embalming ingredients, she thought. Perhaps they had helped to preserve the document, but she was still terrified that it would crumble to fragments and dust in her hands.
This was their third visit to the catacombs that week, and while Nicola had given up on the rather lurid idea of opening the sarcophagi, at least for the moment, she had systematically inspected every block of tufa near each of the loculi, pressing on them painstakingly from various angles, attempting to move them as gently and carefully as possible so as not to disturb the integrity of the crypt. Maybe a loose brick masked a secret niche, she insisted, and might hold the key to the puzzling iconography of the two elaborate, yet anonymous, graves.
Bruno had been skeptical that her efforts would bear fruit, but as he soon realized, Nicola was determined to leave no stone unturned, quite literally, in her search for anything that might be helpful. Finally that morning, after several hours of persistent work, one of the bricks had in fact swung inward, revealing the hidden amphora which she now held in her hands.
“Bruno, can you move the light a bit closer, please?” she asked. “Not too close. Okay, that’s fine. I don’t know whether the heat will affect the parchment. The writing seems to be legible, but I have no idea yet what type of ink was used and how susceptible it might be to a drastic change in temperature or light.”
Sitting down on a collapsible stool, she began to unroll the parchment scroll, exposing a wide column of dense script, apparently in Latin. She began to peruse it, then nearly dropped it in shock.
“My God, Bruno! Look at this!” she exclaimed. He moved his stool closer to hers, and they began to read.
“I write this scroll in secret, by candlelight, in a small hidden cellar that few know of, now that the others have finally gone to sleep in their cells. I have left my narrow room and returned to the place where, several days ago, I hid a sufficient length of parchment and as many quills and pots of ink as I could safely remove unnoticed from the scribal hall, carrying them beneath my robes. Above all, I fear discovery by those who have already silenced our most sainted Father, the Bishop of Rome. They will not hesitate to contrive my disappearance if they know I suspect anything.
“O’ my beloved Pope, what have they done to you? And all because you dared to love a Jewess, the mater synagogus, Mariamne, who came to you to plead for her people. Who could have known that you were being pressured, against your better wisdom, into decreeing ever-greater taxes for the Jews of Rome? And who could have known that the archisynagogi, the heads of the Jewish synagogue, would send such an articulate spokesman, in the earthly guise of a wise, young, and beautiful woman, to argue their case and persuade you otherwise?
“But I ramble, and I must record the events more rationally and quickly, for perhaps little time remains.
“The council of bishops, greedy and ever eager to fill the coffers of the Church, prevailed upon the Pope to decree a new tax, to be paid twice a year by the Jewish communities of Rome. Already heavily taxed by the Church, they sent delegates from each of their eleven local synagogues, including the congregation in the port city of Ostia, to beg him to rescind the order. Their chief representative, their spokesman, was a comely young woman, as yet unmarried, named Mariamne Rufina, who argued eloquently on behalf of her fellow Jews.
“The Holy Father dismissed all observers from the room, sending out the small group of powerful bishops who had brought this situation about. I alone was left in the room with him, for I have long been his confidant and sincere friend, as he gave the young woman a chance to further plead her case, for it was not seemly that the Bishop of Rome should be behind closed doors with any woman, no matter what her age. And in this case, even I, steadfastly sworn to a life of celibacy and chastity—I too was dazzled by the beauty of her face and mien, and by the rhetorical wit and wisdom of her tongue. I could see him warm to her arguments and finally agree to a postponement of the decree.
“It was fateful decision that was to cost him his life.
“The following week, the Holy Father sent me as his messenger to the home of young Mariamne, requesting her presence at the papal court. Again, I remained in the room as the Pope questioned the young woman about her family, her education—for one as articulate as she could not but be well schooled—and then he asked about the religious practices of her people. Parrying back and forth, their conversation was almost like a theological disputation, in which both sides argued admirably and no side would concede defeat.
“And then the Holy Father promised to show her something that would convince her of the Church’s superiority to the Synagogue—treasures of such immense value that God Himself would not have allowed the Church to be possessed of them were it not worthy of such. These treasures were hidden away, and only a handful of people, he told her, knew of their existence.
“It was the first time I had learned of the existence of these artifacts, which I now know to be spoils taken by Roman legionnaires from the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem.
“She saw them. She pleaded once more—this time for their return to the Jewish people, whose rightful owners she claimed they were. And as before, her eloquence and beauty won the day . . .
“I must be brief. There are footsteps in the corridor outside my hiding place. He died the next day, suddenly—murdered, I believe, by poison placed in the sacramental wine at Holy Communion. I have no concrete proof, apart from some whispered conversations, some covert glances as his body was removed from the chapel, and the spilling of the remaining wine from the chalice onto the cold stone floor, as if by accident, after the Pope had drunk.
“I do not know how they knew. I do not know how they
heard. Perhaps, just as I have discovered this secret hiding place in which I now record the most heinous murder in all of Christendom, they have discovered a way to eavesdrop on the secret counsels of the Pope.
“He is to be buried quietly tomorrow, but not in the usual crypt designated for the Bishops of Rome. They have not said why, only that it is to be so. I have been told I may attend, for we were as close as brothers.
“I will be silent, observing the others even as I weep. G-d grant that someday someone will find this scroll and learn the truth. G-d grant that somehow I will live ‘til the morrow to bury this with him.
“Requiescat in pacem, my dear Father. Rest, rest in eternal peace.”
Nicola looked up at Bruno, her eyes glistening with tears. They sat silently for several minutes, staring at the parchment scroll, stunned by this discovery which had the power to move them, unaccountably, centuries after it had transpired.
Wiping away a tear that had rolled down her cheek, Nicola now turned to Bruno. “What can we do? Whom can we tell?” she asked. “This is awful! We have to do something! Maybe we should arrange for a pathologist to test the remains for poison, assuming that we can find the body.”
“Slow down,” Bruno advised, as he tried to analyze the repercussions of their discovery. “We need to think this through carefully. If the scroll is what it appears to be, the scandal would be terrible. The murder of this unnamed pope is one thing, but the possibility that the Church had the Temple treasures at some point in time could be terribly embarrassing to the Vatican.”
Nicola blew her nose and pocketed the tissue she had used. “Well, maybe we should start by trying to figure out just who was murdered. There are no names mentioned here—not the pope’s, not that of his close friend. Just that of the young woman, Mariamne Rufina.
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