“Monsignor Deane, this is Signorina d’Erasmo of the Roman Red Cross.”
“Yes, of course,” Deane said. “From the airport. The milk.”
“Yes.”
“The children at the Quirinal, are they . . . ?”
“We’ve begun, Father,” she said.
Deane nodded, then pointed them through the doorway into his small office. “Prego. Prego.”
Deane had to bring a second side chair into his room. When the door was closed and the three of them were seated in the space in front of his desk, he turned to Warburg. “What is it, David?”
“Shall I come right to the point?”
What a relief the straight-line question was after the serpentine labyrinth into which the German priest had led him. “Please.”
“Do you know what the Delegation to Assist is?”
“Yes. Delegazione per l’Assistenza degli Emigranti Ebrei. The organization to help Jews.”
“A Rome-based organization of Jews, Monsignor. But in the months since the Nazis took Rome, a priest has been its rabbi. Did you know that?”
“No. What priest?”
It was Marguerite who answered. “Père Antoine Dubois, the chaplain of the Cistercian Convent of the Holy Spirit. He has been the record keeper. The only one, during the occupation, who knew . . . everything.”
Warburg said, “For obvious reasons, the Jewish leader of the Delegation was a particular Nazi target. He entrusted his records to Father Anthony. But the Jewish leader has come out of hiding now, with an urgent request. He has identified a concentration camp near the town of Carpi, in Modena. The Germans are in retreat there, pulling back across the Po River. All but a few hundred captive Jews have been transported north, and the rest will follow soon. We need your help in preventing that.”
“My help? What can you possibly mean?”
“An American air wing commander, approached through a friend of mine, agreed this afternoon to bomb the crucial railroad bridge, making the last German transport impossible, but only on one condition.”
“What?”
“That the Holy Father draw attention to the camp. It’s called Fossoli. If His Holiness were, for example, to offer public prayers for those innocents in jeopardy at Fossoli—”
“That’s fantasy. Since when do German guards take signals from the Pope?”
“The Germans are not the point. It’s the American air wing commander who needs assurance that His Holiness is concerned for these people. Apparently he’s a Catholic, and would be . . .”
Into the gap of Warburg’s hesitation, Deane thrust, “A sucker for word from His Holiness.”
“Not ‘sucker.’ A strategic point, in fact. Why should a commander, distracted from his battle order and without authority from his own superiors, seek to help some when so many are in jeopardy? It’s a matter of setting the Fossoli prisoners apart from all the other victims. The Pope could do that. He prays for victims in the abstract every week. This time, he could get specific. Just use the word ‘Fossoli.’ It might save them.”
“You believe that, David?”
“Yes, I do,” he answered, a bit too quickly. He continued his brisk argument. “The American commander needs to think His Holiness will do it. It would have to happen immediately after the raid, lest the Wehrmacht be alerted. All I need from you is the promise that it can happen.”
Deane shook his head. “So then this particular American Army Air Corps command—what, announces an Allied operation coordinated with the Holy See?”
“This is purely humanitarian, Monsignor.”
Deane stared at Warburg, not speaking. Finally he said, “Carpi is across the Apennines. Clark isn’t taking on those mountains again. He’s headed to Florence, not Modena. And anyway, say the train is stopped. What happens on the ground? What about the German guards? Who arrives to unlock the gates at Fossoli?”
Marguerite had been staring at the hand in her lap, as if thinking of the German priest who had kissed her there. But now she raised her head. “I do. The Red Cross does. When a campo is abandoned by a mobile combat unit, the Red Cross takes it over, cares for the victims. We have done that since Sicily.”
“Yes, Signorina, Fascist camps, Italian camps,” Deane said. “When the Fascists fled. But these are Germans. Even withdrawn to the far side of the Po, Germans can be expected to control that valley for some time. Carpi can hardly be on Mark Clark’s map yet.”
“The roads everywhere are clogged with refugees,” she countered. “Germans do not want to deal with such desperate ones, especially pushing north. We will have more freedom now than before, for sure. Retreating Germans simply abandoned POW camps in the south. They opened prisons and insane asylums, setting inmates free, just to sow chaos. And, pulling out, they regularly allowed the Red Cross to move in. I have a passport. I have a truck. I have persons.”
“The Delegation to Assist Hebrews.”
“Yes.”
Deane looked at Warburg, who said, “It’s true. The Delegation’s leader is gathering a group of Partisans, remnants of an underground that formerly operated in the area around Modena. They will converge on Fossoli.”
“Partisans?” Deane said. “Or the Haganah?”
“What?”
“Breakaways from the British Army, the Palestine Regiment. Jews. Hasn’t Signorina d’Erasmo explained this to you, David? She will have Jewish fighters in her truck.” The priest looked at her.
Marguerite just shook her head no.
Warburg said, “I thought the Church’s problem with the Partisans was that they are mainly Communists, not Jews.”
Deane knew better than to touch that pairing. He simply stared at Warburg, who said, “And what has you Catholics so exercised about Zionists?”
Deane did not want this, yet he pushed back. “So exercised about protecting the Holy Land, the font of Christian faith?”
“Protecting it from Jews?”
“Suppose,” Deane said, “the Air Corps drops the bridge. And then, before the stymied German guards at Fossoli can kill the prisoners, the famously neutral Red Cross arrives with a force of Jewish commandos.”
Warburg said, “That’s your fantasy, Monsignor. The Modena fighters are a shadow of what they were—old men and boys, probably. If there are Jews among them, that is incidental. The Nazis decimated the Partisan groups in the region months ago. Otherwise, they’d drop that bridge themselves. If there are Palestinian Jews jumping off the Jewish Brigade wagons of the British Army, they are barely out of Rome. They could never get to Carpi. Miss d’Erasmo’s truck will have food and medicine, not fighters.”
Deane shrugged. “The Delegation to Assist Hebrews may have been interrupted in Rome by the Nazi occupation, but it was put in place by the Haganah. Funding. Organizing. Leadership. All from Palestine. Your man—what’s his name?”
Something prevented Warburg from answering.
Deane ignored that. “He is a Zionist. The Delegation to Assist Hebrews is Zionist.”
“You have your nerve, Monsignor, saying that so dismissively. The Delegation has been the only defender of Jews.”
Deane did not respond for a moment. Then, “Any Vatican involvement with Zionists would raise a serious problem for us with London, but that would be the least of it. What matters here, whether you see it or not, is where such an enterprise would leave the Holy See’s neutrality.” Deane had to push away a thought of the conniving Lehmann, but it was true—wild events were overtaking every careful plan. “Much as it has made me wince as an American, the Pope’s neutrality may be essential to the war’s endgame.”
“But we are not talking about Zionism. We are talking about a few hundred wretches who may or may not be alive in two days. You are not neutral about them, Monsignor. I know you’re not.”
“We are not talking about me, David. If it were up to me, I’d be in that truck with Miss d’Erasmo. I’d give anything to help those people myself. Like you would. Are you going?”
Warburg
answered, simply, “No.”
After a short silence, the American priest said, “So what are you telling me? The whole thing rides on a papal halo hovering over Fossoli? That’s what the Air Corps commander needs?”
“So I’m told.”
“I can’t offer him the Pope, David. Forget it.”
Warburg’s eyes narrowed. “What else is there?”
Deane shifted in his chair to look out into the Vatican gardens below. He steepled his hands at his lips. He said, “Acta Diurna.”
“Which is?”
“In L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. Acta Diurna, ‘Daily Acts.’ It’s the list of public notices, everything from statements of the Holy See’s profound concern, to intentions of the day’s pontifical liturgies, to agenda items of the bureaucracy.” Deane hesitated. Was he really proposing this? But then he thought, what the hell. He said, “Do you think your Catholic air wing commander would be reassured by a monsignor’s guarantee that Fossoli would be featured in the Pope’s own Acta Diurna the day after the bridge drops? You could tell him—page one, L’Osservatore Romano.” When Warburg did not react, Deane added, “You wouldn’t have to mention it’s in small print, near the bottom.”
Warburg smiled. “I’m under the impression that all the colonel needs is a little Catholic mumbo-jumbo.”
Deane smiled, too. “That I can deliver. Here”—he turned to his desk—“wait’ll you see my stationery.”
A few moments later, as the woman and Warburg were about to leave, he turned back to Deane. “Monsignor, about the Haganah and the Delegation. If it’s true, that’s news to me. How do you know that?”
“Ad limina,” Deane said. “Periodic accounts rendered to the Pope—from everywhere. The nuncios enunciate. From London and Jerusalem. Information mingles with the incense around here.”
“I need that incense, Kevin,” he said. Then added, “Do you have a nuncio in Budapest?”
In the jeep, Warburg had ridden in front with the driver, leaving the bench behind to her. They had careened across Rome, at last screeching down the Via Veneto to the Palazzo Margherita, which the Americans were already calling Clark’s headquarters, although to her it remained the magical palace in which her namesake queen had lived until her death. Marguerite remembered how, as a girl of seven or eight, she had seen the great arched windows draped in black, bunting that seemed all the more austere in contrast with the pink stone of the monumental edifice. That Her Majesty the Queen Mother was dead had been, for Marguerite, an opening into the mystery of mortality. If Her Majesty could die, so could her son, King Victor Emmanuel. If kings and queens could die—Marguerite shuddered to remember this exact moment of recognition—so could her own mother and father.
Warburg had ordered the driver to keep the jeep’s engine running, leaving her to wait while he hurried in to deliver the monsignor’s letter. Then, coming out, he had dismissed the driver and gestured Marguerite into the front. He did this without imperiousness, but nonetheless with an authority to which, despite her by now habitual wariness, she immediately yielded. With Warburg at the wheel, and her providing directions, they had hurried to the Jewish neighborhood on the banks of the Tiber—the ghetto—where the first meeting with Lionni had taken place. They found him in the same rooms, and he leapt with joy at their report. The bridge would be attacked, probably in the morning, at first light. Now the Jewish leader and Marguerite had their plan. They would set out as soon as the store of medicine and food could be loaded onto the truck, noon at the latest. With luck, they would make Carpi before dark.
Lionni had drawn Marguerite aside, away from Warburg. In a corner of the room, he opened a drawer. Without comment, she looked at what it held—bundled currency. They turned back to Warburg.
“And so, tonight is for sleeping,” Lionni said with a clap, dismissing them. “Every minute matters.” So it was that the American had insisted on driving her to Trastevere, even though it was not far to walk.
Now they were sitting side by side in the jeep in front of the shabby rooming house where Marguerite lived. The glow of twilight lent the façade of the scarred and shuttered building a golden hue. The approach of midsummer meant it was late, even if darkness had not quite fallen. The nearby streets were deserted, as if the German curfew still held. Warburg said good night and wished her luck. When she did not move, he pushed the ignition button, shutting the engine off.
He said, “Tell me about your father.”
She said with quiet detachment, “My mother and father were killed when their automobile was forced off the Ponte Alto on the road to Trento.”
“Forced by whom?”
“Fascists. Nine years ago. When Il Duce seemed invincible. Not a rabbit, running scared.”
Her own incidental use of the word “rabbit” startled Marguerite, calling to mind as it did the harelip of the Franciscan in Croatia. His white handkerchief catching saliva, falling as a starter’s flag. She blocked the thought, resuming, “As the colonel said, my father was director general of the Red Cross. My father told the truth about Italian mustard gas in Ethiopia. Il Duce was arrabbiato—enraged.”
“So the Red Cross is your . . . patrimony.”
Marguerite nodded. She did not know why she was finding it difficult to leave this man’s company. What was it about him? She allowed herself to fix her stare on his slender fingers, resting on the steering wheel. He wore no jewelry. His nails were clean. He had turned in the seat, inclined toward her, and she was aware of his eyes on her face. A gentle gaze.
He said, “Monsignor Deane asked if I was going to Fossoli with you. I answered no. I wish I could.”
After a moment, Marguerite laughed. “At the sentry points you could show your repoussé Washington card—the card, you say ‘embossed’? You could answer for us in your fine Italian. The Gestapo would salute and let us through.”
He laughed, too. Then, somber again, he said, “It will be dangerous.”
“Jocko Lionni is wise, very practical.”
“Is he Zionist? Haganah?”
“The monsignor asked that.”
Warburg said, “I noticed when Jocko pulled you aside. He opened a drawer full of money, showing you. I just saw that. Where did the money come from?”
“I do not know.”
“It’s for bribes.”
“We say dono,” she said. “Donation. Every barrier on every road lifts at dono. And I have my passport.” She flicked at her Red Cross hat.
“If the Haganah’s involved, it will be even more dangerous.”
She said, “This will be nothing. I was in Croatia.”
“How?”
“With Partisans. Not Palestinians. Communists.”
“When?”
“Until a few days ago.”
“Is that where you received the bruises? There, on your face?”
If she could not tell Père Antoine, how could she tell this stranger? Yet she found herself unknotting the red kerchief at her throat. As he took in the sight of her mangled neck, she waited. When he asked at last “What happened?” it was so softly she was not sure he’d spoken.
“This cloth,” she said, twisting the kerchief around her fingers, “you see it in the north, in the hills. The Garibaldi Brigade. I was with them for more than three months. Before that, when the Nazis came to Rome, I had to flee. I was making my way to Switzerland, but I—”
“You joined the Partisans?”
“Not joined. I was one of the women. Our work was knitting the calze, the stockings—”
“The socks.”
“—for the men. In the winter especially, the socks are essential. To keep men in socks is important work. Blistered feet become infected.”
“But what happened?”
Marguerite shook her head. She had gone as far with this as she could. She looked Warburg in the eye. “I was not there when my father’s auto plunged into the river. But I see it every day, the black Lancia driving away on the bridge above. White tires. A sil
ver panther bibelot on the front. Two men, black shirts, one black-gloved hand made into a fist, raised outside the driver’s window. Pumping in triumph as my mother’s body washed away in the river current, as my father was trapped in the car, where he drowned or died of head injuries. They never said. And I never speak of it.”
“Except now. You are speaking of it now.”
“My mother’s body was not recovered for four days. Two miles downriver, partly eaten by eels.”
Warburg said nothing to this.
After a long silence, Marguerite said, “And your parents?”
Warburg’s head drew back just enough to show that the question startled him. He said softly, “My father was a butcher. A small city. Both my parents are deceased. Heart attack. Pneumonia. Natural. My life has been quite different from yours.”
“American.”
“Yes. Therefore privileged.”
“But the deaths of parents is never privilege.”
“No.”
“And they were Jews.”
“Yes.”
“It is bad for Jews here. Very bad.”
“Worse in the north,” he said. “If Fossoli were across the Alps, the prisoners would be dead already.”
“I do not understand why Jews should be so contempted.”
“Hated.”
“Why?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Yes.”
Contempt. The word pushed into Warburg’s mind his unwelcome memory. “Once,” he said, “I took a tallit, my father’s tallit. . . You know the word?”
“Yes. The Jewish prayer covering.”
“Shawl. My father offered it to me, but I refused to wear it. He was asking me to be a Jew. I said no. Instead, I let the tallit sink beneath the surface of a lake, like a drowning.”
“You say that with sadness.”
“Thinking of Fossoli, it is sad. It bothers me. Would it not bother you to have done such a thing?”
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