Jewish children had likewise been expelled from state schools, though they were allowed to have their own special educational institutions. Elena’s parents had once mentioned the actual statistics at the dinner table—5,600 Jewish students had been barred from Italian elementary schools, high schools, and universities.
Other aspects of these laws were, in her opinion, even more offensive. She remembered Giulio telling her, with deep disgust, that as of June 1940 Jews could no longer go to the seashore because they would supposedly pollute the ocean. Jews were likewise forbidden to own radios or books with any sort of political content, and they could no longer employ gentile servants. But even more significant, from a legal point of view, was the fact that children of religiously mixed marriages were now considered to be of mixed racial origin.
Yes, it was all unfair, immoral, and unethical. But unfortunately it was legal, thanks to the willing collaboration of the Fascist government of Italy. Many of the wealthier, more financially secure Jews of Rome had already gone into hiding, renting apartments under false names in neighborhoods far away from the ghetto, living off of savings or the gradual sale of valuable antiques, jewelry, or artwork. Still others had left for South America or Cuba, while others took a prolonged vacation in the Italian Alps, in the hope of eventually making their way to Switzerland with the help of mountain guides. Sometimes they succeeded. And sometimes they were defrauded of their money and left in limbo on the Italian side of the border.
Elena’s thoughts were now interrupted as her brother excused himself for a moment and went into the kitchen to bring them all some homemade biscotti and fresh limonata, which, despite the current food rationing, was a staple in the Conti household, since two thriving lemon trees that grew in large terracotta clay pots on their apartment balcony continued to provide them with a plentiful harvest.
Elena and Niccolò looked at each other in awkward silence for a few moments, and then Niccolò asked her when she would like to begin the tutoring sessions. They agreed to meet the following day and to decide at that time just how many hours per week would be best.
After Niccolò left, Giulio explained to his sister that Niccolò had been the top student in his class, with what had seemed to be a bright future ahead of him. “I really feel sorry for him, Elena,” he said. “It’s so unfair that someone as brilliant as he is should be denied the opportunity to finish his education and enter a profession.
“He’s an only child, and I understand that his parents have invested a great deal in his upbringing—only the best schools, a home library full of the latest scientific literature, anything you can think of. And besides, he plays piano and dabbles in astronomy as a hobby. The last time I visited him, he showed me some amazing equipment, including a really professional-looking telescope. Maybe some day we can see how it works. If we decide to break curfew, that is,” he added, without much hope.
“So how come you’ve never really talked about him before, Giulio?” Elena asked. “Or brought him here for me to meet?”
“Come on Elena, when have I ever brought home any of my friends recently? I see most of them at the university every day, and what with that stupid citywide curfew at 7 PM, everyone heads straight home after classes. We’re all afraid of who’s watching us or even following us, for that matter. You never know who has a brother or a cousin or a friend who’s working for the Blackshirts. None of us wants to get in trouble.
“And besides, with a beautiful sister like you, Elena,” he added with a wink and a deliberate pause, waiting for her reaction, “I need to be very careful about whom I bring home these days. I wouldn’t want half the student body at the University of Rome to fall in love with you. Just think of the complications. And life is complicated enough for all of us at the moment,” he sighed.
“Okay, Giulio, you’re forgiven,” Elena replied, winking back as she pushed her dark wavy hair behind her ears. “But aren’t you afraid that I might fall in love with the handsome young Niccolò Rossi? You do agree with me that he is very striking? And charming. And apparently more brilliant than you are,” she teased, punching him lightly on the arm. “Otherwise you’d be tutoring me yourself.”
“Sure I would, Elena, sure. In fact, I’m so good in mathematics and physics that that explains why I’m studying Italian and French literature,” he said with gentle sarcasm.
“But actually, no,” he continued. “I’m not worried about the two of you falling in love. I think he’s too serious for that sort of thing at this point in his life, and besides, I think you know better than to get involved with someone who might need to leave the country at any moment. Even if he is very handsome. And charming. And brilliant.
“He’s not the only Jewish friend that I have, by the way. Many of them have already left for Switzerland or even for South America,” he said in more serious tones, noticing that Elena’s eyes now glistened with tears. She couldn’t imagine how people could uproot themselves from a familiar way of life and a familiar culture and context, leaving behind all they had known, despite the fact that times were bad and might become even worse. And to move to another country, where you didn’t even know the language, let alone have relatives or friends—it was a terrible thing to contemplate.
“I believe that Niccolò’s parents have some financial affairs that need to be tied up before they can think of leaving Italy. Some sort of family business. I didn’t want to press him for details. But until then, I think this arrangement will be good for both of you. You’ll get the help you need to improve your chances for acceptance at the university, and he’ll have—how shall I put it?—an intellectual and even social outlet.
“I really like him Elena. And I trust him. Which is more than I can say for most people nowadays. Trust me. This will be good for all of us.”
Chapter Two
Stella checked her appearance once more in the old cracked Venetian mirror above her worn wooden dresser. It was her one treasure, or at least the one treasure she’d received from her boyfriend that she didn’t have to hide from her parents’ prying eyes, as she needed to with the silk stockings, chocolates, and cigarettes that Giovanni brought her whenever he could. She had told her parents that she’d found it near a garbage dump outside the ghetto, and, as usual, they hadn’t pressed her for details.
She tossed her sleek hair back and pivoted from side to side to assess the effect of her faded pink-patterned dress. At least it had been recently laundered.
She was a dark-eyed, black-haired 18-year-old beauty, and she wished she could live somewhere else, anywhere but in the ghetto, in surroundings more worthy of her looks and aspirations. Her real name was Celeste, but she had been nicknamed Stella, or “star,” by her family because of her luminous, extraordinary beauty. Though the other members of her family were all reasonably attractive in their own way, somehow in Stella the gene pool had come together in perfect aesthetic harmony to produce a young woman who turned heads wherever she went.
While Stella’s family felt that her nickname suited her eminently, others, however, had a different epithet for her, one that was far less complimentary. They called her “the black panther,” la pantera nera—and not because of her sinuously graceful walk and her long black hair.
No, she had earned this comparison with one of the deadliest of jungle beasts from her fellow Jews in the ghetto because she hunted her hapless prey—neighbors, acquaintances, and relatives alike—with a sinister stealth that was nearly as invisible, and certainly as deadly, as that of a panther prowling in the dark and hellish depths of the forest, stalking its intended victims.
She was, in fact, the local Fascist brigade’s most important informer, who helped them locate and arrest Jews who dared to leave the precincts of the ghetto or who had not complied with the Racial Laws of 1938. Occasionally she was assisted by her cousin, Enrica, whose pale, bloodless complexion had earned her the moniker of “Powder Face.”
Stella, at that moment, was not preparing to leave for school, as her parent
s always assumed she did each morning. Rather, she was on her way to meet her boyfriend, Giovanni Torloni, a black-shirted member of Mussolini’s gang of Fascist thugs, to make her latest report on the whereabouts of Jews wanted by them and the Gestapo. The two had first met at a bar that Celeste had sneaked into one afternoon, and since then, Giovanni had made it his business to see her every day, hoping that she would help him fill his quota of Jews and that, in return for gifts and the lucrative, steady cash flow he enabled her to enjoy, he would soon enjoy her sexual favors as well.
It had already been two weeks since Stella had attended school, not yet long enough for it to be reported to her parents. Not that any of her teachers would dare to do so, however. For the one central fact that her parents refused to acknowledge, saying it was a vicious rumor based on envy of their daughter’s good looks, was that even the teachers in the local Jewish school were terrified of the pantera nera. Her parents were likewise unaware of her involvement with a member of the Fascist party.
As Stella prepared to leave her family’s apartment on the Via della Reginella in the ghetto, she gazed into the mirror once again, pinched her cheeks to put a little more color into them, and licked her lips several times to make them glossy. She brushed her shimmering dark hair and turned from side to side to scrutinize herself a final time.
Poverty was a terrible thing, she reflected as she left the apartment. Poverty had prevented her from having stylish dresses and expensive bottles of perfume. She was glad that she now had a way to have these things eventually, to put aside some money to help her truly enjoy the looks she was blessed with and to make her life more comfortable with the little trifles that only a beautiful and unfairly deprived young woman could appreciate.
Most of the time she dressed in secondhand clothes, like other Jews in the ghetto. Her family, in fact, owned one such shop that sold used clothing. Still, others were reduced to peddling rags in the streets, as their ancestors had done for hundreds of years, before a brief respite that had abolished the restrictions of the ghetto when the Papal States were incorporated into a united Italy in 1870.
Now the Racial Laws had confined them again to the ghetto walls. Giovanni had warned her just the other day that things were going to change once more for the Jews of Rome, and not for the better. There were rumors. He would let her know if and when there was anything definite. In fact, he had been the one to suggest to Stella a way to buy her freedom, and this was what had made her so feared by all.
On a daily basis, Stella would leave the ghetto in Giovanni’s company, under his personal protection, since as a Jew the law forbade her to leave its precincts. It became her job to find fellow Jews who were working illegally outside the ghetto, or merely loitering anywhere at all outside its boundaries. Her reward: a bounty of 5,000 lire per Jewish head, payable at the end of each day.
With a nod of her head, an outward thrusting of her pretty chin, or a passing gesture in their direction, she would indicate the unfortunate victims of her greed and complicity with those who sought to rid Rome once and for all of its Jewish population. Patrolling Fascist policemen or the German SS would then carry out the arrests. As was common knowledge, the Blackshirt militia was comprised of gangs of hooligans who were, in effect, army rejects. They vandalized the ghetto at will, terrorizing the poor unfortunates who resided there.
Today, as on all other days for the past two weeks, Giovanni was waiting for her near the corner. In his black uniform, with his dark hair and sallow complexion, he blended into the long shadows between the grimy, dilapidated buildings of the crowded ghetto.
The young woman who was so determined to escape the fate of her people, even if it meant betraying them to the enemy, now left her apartment building and descended quietly to the street. Carefully, she glanced around and walked, not to the right, in the direction of her school, but towards the spot where she and Giovanni had agreed to meet.
They embraced, exchanged some quick kisses, and then got down to business.
“We’re going into Trastevere today,” Giovanni told her. “We have information that at least ten Jewish families from the ghetto have secretly relocated there in the past several days. A few are presumably in hiding with Catholic families, but the rest have probably rented rooms under false identities. I’m sure you’ll recognize all of them.
“We’ll be spending most of the day there, until we’ve rounded up all of them. A quick nod or glance in their direction will do the trick. As usual. We have reinforcements stationed there to arrest them on the spot. Of course, you’ll get your regular payment per head.”
Stella smiled slyly and tossed her mane of black hair seductively over her shoulders. “You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking of raising my rates. Without me, you guys would be nowhere. You’d never be able to figure out who’s Jewish. Not based on looks. Not based on how they’re dressed. You’d have absolutely no idea who would be carrying false identity papers.”
“I’ll speak to Mauro, cara. You know that his cousin is a captain in the local Fascio brigade. Maybe he can do something for you. But meantime, we have a big day ahead of us. At the current price. Sorry.”
“You’ll be the one who’s sorry,” she muttered angrily under her breath.
“What’s that you said?” he asked. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Never mind. Just make sure that you speak to Mauro tonight.”
Chapter Three
Mauro Rostoni strode confidently into the Pope’s private apartments, ignoring the ceremonial Swiss guards who were posted at the entrance. He was well known to all of them—not particularly liked, but most definitely feared because of the power he wielded and his influence on the rather frail Pope. It was said that even the redoubtable Mother Pasqualina, the Pope’s housekeeper, was wary of him—a not very small achievement.
In his youth he had read a great deal of Renaissance literature and political tracts written in Italian, and he had never forgotten the cynical and cryptic advice of Machiavelli to his prince: “’Tis better to be feared than loved.” For Rostoni, who aspired to be a prince of the Church, the slender volume was not merely an intellectual relic of the past, but a handbook, a practical guide to successful behavior, a key to his ecclesiastical future.
The Pope was sitting, slumped weakly to one side, his feet shod in the traditional red slippers. His ornately gilded armchair faced away from a tall mullioned window overlooking the Vatican gardens. On a nearby chair was casually laid the pallium, a broad band of white wool decorated with black crosses, symbolizing the Pope’s holy office.
Sunlight filtered into the room between the parted sections of the heavily brocaded drapes, making a strangely elongated, checkered pattern of light and shadow on the back of the Pope’s white robes and on the pale marble floor. To his right stood two figures, the Cardinal Secretary of State, anxiously bending over him, and the ubiquitous figure of Dr. Paul Niehans, who had practically become part of the scenery in the papal apartments in recent months.
Niehans had been engaged to administer some experimental medical treatments to the Holy Father, whose health had been deteriorating steadily and whose gastrointestinal difficulties, in particular, had become a source of worry to those closest to him. A Swiss physician of modest repute, Niehans advocated the use of cellular therapy and experimental drugs using fetal cells from sheep and monkeys, injected transdermally. Not only did he claim them to be a cure-all for the usual garden variety of ailments plaguing the elderly, but, more dramatically, he insisted that they were an antidote for the aging process itself.
Rostoni approached the ailing Pope and solicitously inquired about his health that morning. “I’m concerned, Holiness, that perhaps these treatments are, how shall we say, not doing all that they can.”
Niehans shot him a look of surprise. “My dear Father Rostoni,” he replied smoothly, “surely you are aware that even with the most advanced scientific technology, we must be patient. Only with miracles are there immediate, spectacular re
sults. I’m a physician, you will remember, not one of the holy apostles.”
“Touché, my friend,” Rostoni replied dryly.
“Mauro, Mauro, it’s all right. I have great trust in Dr. Niehans.” The Pope cleared his throat and continued. “You know how highly recommended he came. Dr. Niehans, perhaps you can clarify some of the finer points of the treatment to Father Rostoni?”
“Certainly, if you wish it, Holy Father.” Niehans bent over and kissed the huge, glittering ring on the bony finger of the Pope’s extended hand, which then waved him away impatiently. Mother Pasqualina, seeing him follow Rostoni in the direction of the door, scowled as she reached for a bottle of rubbing alcohol. At the Pope’s request, she made sure to disinfect his hands after every papal audience or after anyone had even touched his fingers. And though Niehans was the papal physician, there was always a danger, she believed, that he too could infect the Pope with some insidious bacterium or virus.
“Come,” said Rostoni. “We can speak more privately in my office.”
He led Niehans down a wide corridor to the left of the papal apartments and swept imperiously into a small, but well-appointed room. Gesturing to a mousy-looking bespectacled young man, who was his personal assistant, to leave, Rostoni sat down at a desk piled high with files and documents and motioned to Niehans to sit in the chair opposite him.
Rostoni placed his perfectly groomed hands in front of him on the desk, glanced at his nails for a moment, then propped himself on his elbows and folded his hands together, almost in an attitude of prayer. He looked expectantly at Niehans. “Well,” he intoned, glancing at the physician with piercing eyes, “let’s hear more about these treatments of yours. I assure you, I am not deterred by the intricacies of modern medicine.”
Niehans cleared his throat nervously and began. “As you undoubtedly know, since you are so close to the Pope,” he added with a touch of obsequious deference, “I have a clinic along Lake Geneva, where a staff of five physicians and three biologists are running highly classified experiments in cell therapy in our laboratories.
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