The Jews’ car was jolted sideways, toward the roadside, where a flimsy, low guardrail stood at the cliff’s edge. The driver oversteered, sending them into a skid away from the cliff, and Lionni felt his center of gravity drop from the hollow behind his throat to the cavity of his lungs. The rear of the car slammed into the rock wall on the other side of the road. Before the driver could react, there was another bump from behind, a sharper one, and the car began to spin. From his place in the front seat, the commander turned to look back at who had done this to them, and Lionni took in the sight of Abel’s face with acute precision, the mouth agape, the dark eyes wide. Abel had drawn his pistol. Lionni’s mind was clear enough to know that Abel was intending to shoot at the car behind them, their unexpected enemy. But Lionni also understood that if Abel fired, he, Lionni, would take the bullet. Before that happened, their car slammed through the guardrail. Abel was thrown through the passenger window and out as the car went over the cliff’s edge. Lionni hurtled forward, his face crushing first into the crown of the front seat, then against the rearview mirror, as his body plunged with the car and its men into the ravine.
The car came to rest upside down. Lionni alone was alive. He lay face-up where the door had sprung open. He was able to move only his eyes. The driver beside him had the steering wheel in a death grip. Abel’s corpse, having been thrown clear, was caught on a jagged outcropping of rock about thirty feet above. The wheels of the car were still spinning. Lionni saw a robed figure making his way down into the ravine. He had a snarling dog on a short leash. The figure craned over the smoking tangle of wreckage, and his eyes met Lionni’s. Lionni saw the misshapen mouth. The cold steel barrel of the man’s Luger pressed hard against Lionni’s upper lip, the last sensation he felt.
Giacomo Lionni had not been a religious Jew, but he’d have expected the prayers to be said, and they were. More than a thousand people crowded into the Great Synagogue the next day. Tradition called for members of the bereaved family to rend their garments, but as the pine box holding Lionni’s body was carried into the sacred space, hundreds tore fabric, men and women both—some using the symbolic ribbon, most ripping their shirts or blouses. Though Lionni had disappeared from their midst more than a year before, Rome’s Jews had not forgotten him. That he died in an automobile accident on the Via Cassia, along which he was said to have been driving alone, was as much a mystery as his disappearance had been, since Lionni was famous for his bicycle. It was news that he could drive a car.
“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu . . . ,” the rabbi intoned. David Warburg couldn’t help wondering about the impulse to praise God’s name in the thick of loss. But he knew so little. He was one of only a handful present who had cause to imagine that Lionni had not died the way the rabbi said, but the Delegation members with whom he’d spoken, including Lorenzo Anselmo, claimed to know no more than he. Through Legal Affairs at the U.S. embassy, Warburg had obtained the police report, and the matter was explicit: Lionni had driven a car through the guardrail on a mountain road near Sutri on the route to Ravenna. No other vehicles were involved, and he was alone. He had died instantly when the car slammed into the ravine floor, fifty feet below the road.
Warburg was hemmed in by the mourners around him, the packed pews a far cry from the regular Sabbath services. Jews all, yet it was clear from their wandering sorrow that few understood the Hebrew of the rabbi’s recitations, or could follow the cantor’s somber melodies. Men and women were not separated but mixed together in the sanctuary. Almost all of the women’s heads were covered no matter where they sat, mainly by shawls. The heads of perhaps half the men were covered, and of those, most coverings were street hats. Warburg was among the minority who wore yarmulkes. He took in such details of the grieving congregation’s appearance as if they were the reason for his observations.
When it came time to intone a psalm as the coffin was carried out, an inarticulate rumble rose from the mass of bowed heads. Lionni’s box rode unevenly on the shoulders of Lorenzo Anselmo, his son Enzo, Stanislaw Monash, and other leaders of Comunità Ebraica di Roma. As the coffin approached the doors of the synagogue, the crowd stirred uncertainly, for tradition required their hesitation, to allow the immediate family of the deceased to lead the way out. At first no one moved. Lionni was a man without relatives. His family had been the Delegation, and now the inner core of that organization, perhaps a dozen men, crowded into the aisle, some holding each other by the elbow. They fell solemnly behind the coffin, and no one stepped into the aisle ahead of them.
Warburg had expected to see her there, perhaps leading the procession behind the coffin. But from what he had observed, Marguerite was not present. For an instant, when the congregation stood, his glance had risen to a woman in the balcony. She was dressed modestly, her head covered in a black kerchief, tied at the nape of her neck. She was turned slightly away, so he could not see her features, but, at her exceptional height, he felt a momentary rush of recognition. But she was wearing spectacles, and with a second glance he saw that it was not she. He rebuked himself for this slavish habit of mind, this constant looking.
A cortege of automobiles assembled in the cobblestone plaza, circling the synagogue. The crush of mourners made for a chaotic scene. Again Warburg caught sight of the tall, covered woman, but from behind. Her long sleeves came to her wrists. The hem of her dress was at her ankles. He would not have given her a further thought, but then he saw the man who was holding the door of a rounded Fiat two-seater with bulging fenders and bug-eyed headlights. The man was wearing a tattered suit jacket and an off-kilter necktie. He was bare-headed, gray-haired, somewhat stooped—and Warburg was sure he knew him. But from where? The woman disappeared into the car, and the man got in beside her, to drive.
The cortege followed the hearse at a good clip, running north on the Tiber’s broad embankment boulevard, through the Villa Borghese, where Lionni had huddled under bushes during the occupation, past the Termini and the Transport Ministry he had burgled just after liberation, and out along the Via Tiburtina to the Campo Verano cemetery, which, since the early nineteenth century, had included a section set aside for Jewish burials.
Lionni was laid to rest in a grave not far from a colonnaded walkway. After his coffin had been lowered into its hole, mourners lined up to gently shovel dirt onto the lid, and it was then that Warburg saw the woman again. The gray-haired man was beside her. Then Warburg realized who he was: the priest who’d come to his office the year before, Padre Antonio. Why should the priest have been dressed like a layman? Warburg let that question go in order to concentrate on Marguerite.
And, of course, he understood, if only then, that appearing at Lionni’s funeral involved some risk for her. Her need for obsequies had trumped caution, but caution explained why she had worn the modest clothes of an observant married woman. After dropping dirt on Lionni’s coffin, she stepped back into the crowd, aiming to lose herself, but Warburg never took his eyes from her.
Back beside the Fiat, she reached in for a black bag, which she slung on her shoulder. She said goodbye to Padre Antonio, kissing both his cheeks. He climbed into the car as she made her way, against the flow of mourners, out into the open field of the cemetery, heading off alone, nothing but tombstones around her, all awash in bright morning sun. Her loosely fitting black skirt rippled as she walked. The long tail of her head covering fell down her back, lifting like filament behind her. The black bag swung, a counterpulse pendulum. Even from a distance, her grace registered, and the modesty of her clothes oddly emphasized the feminine rhythm of her movement. Warburg followed.
Through the rolling terrain, past the obelisks and urns, he trailed her, not attempting to close the distance. At one point, and though strictly speaking the cemetery required it, he removed and pocketed his yarmulke. When at last she stopped to sit on a stone bench within a circle of hedges, in the shade of a towering cypress, he continued to walk toward her. There would be no pretense of accident, and no denying that his arrival was not int
rusion.
As he drew near, she looked up at him. She removed the spectacles, and he saw that her impassive face was devoid of surprise. He hesitated before her. A fabric fastener on her blouse, a black flap below her breasts, was hanging loose. She had torn it, the ritual garment-rending, but with a conservative woman’s modest care to expose nothing, not even a hint of undergarment. Warburg’s own shirt, beneath his tie, was torn. He had channeled more feeling than he’d known, leaving a jagged flap of broadcloth at his chest, showing his undershirt.
When she said nothing, he chose to take that as permission, and he moved to the bench and sat down next to her. The bench was narrow, and their hips nearly touched. They sat in silence for a time, staring out at the same scene, the tombstones, the rough grass, the protruding granite markers. No crosses in this part of the cemetery, no carved angels.
“It is difficult to talk,” she said finally.
“But necessary,” he answered. “Talking is what keeps us alive.”
She firmly contradicted him, shaking her head. She busied herself with her bag, withdrawing a cigarette pack and gold lighter. She took a cigarette, awkwardly held the pack for him. French cigarettes. He took the pack, removed a cigarette. After she had lit her own, he bent to the gold lighter she held for him.
Exhaling, he said, “Nice lighter.”
She looked at it. “A friend,” she said. When she realized he was staring at it, she slipped it back into her bag, but not before he’d seen what was engraved on it.
“That’s the sign for Christ,” he said.
“I carry the lighter . . . to please my friend. He does not know I am a Jew.”
“Who does know that?”
“You know it. Jocko told me that you’d guessed about the mikveh, my immersion.”
“I couldn’t picture you in a mikveh. I found the idea of your conversion hard to fathom. But it moves me, what you did. You once told me you did not believe in God, but you also said, If there is a God, He is Jewish.”
“Even Jesus was Jewish. That he was Jewish is enough. As for God . . .” She shrugged. “For me, the people are enough.”
“I have some idea what you are involved in. Jocko trusted me.”
“I know. I told him he could.”
“He even told me he had a source in the Red Cross. I knew it was you.”
“Your Red Cross lady.” She smiled thinly.
“So who was he on to?”
“Pavelic.”
“The Croatian.”
“Yes. Jocko was following a group of Croatian priests.”
“Jocko did not drive.”
She let out the briefest of sounds, yet it connoted both a laugh at the thought of Lionni driving and anguish. “Of course he did not drive. He was not alone. He was with a unit, a team of five. They all died. The Croatian priests had guards, apparently. Protectors. It was my fault for not insisting on that danger firmly enough. Their mistake: to imagine that those with Vatican protection—priests—would not also have had Ustashe protection—killers. I had been watching the Croatian priests—”
“At the Convent of the Holy Spirit.”
“Yes. There were never signs of armed protection. I reported that, but the unit leader made too much of it, making him careless. I wanted to go with them. The leader would not permit it.” She fell silent.
“I am glad you were not permitted,” Warburg said. When, instead of replying, she drew on her cigarette, he said, “Croatia was where your story began.”
“Almost. My story began before that, on the road to Trento.”
“Where your parents died.”
“Yes.”
“And now Jocko died the way they died,” Warburg said. “A supposed accident, but it was murder.”
“With Mama and Papa, it was murder. With Jocko . . . it was combat.” She said this calmly—not coldly, but with a matter-of-fact assumption that the combat continued. That’s how it differed from murder. Without looking at Warburg she said, “Your shirt. It will need mending. Is that how you felt, to make such a tear in your shirt?”
“Jocko was what brought me here to Rome last year. Because of the Delegation, the WRB had a way to begin. When I arrived here, he was all I had.”
“By now he was all I had, too. I know who killed him.”
Her benumbed voice chilled him. He remembered that night, sitting in the jeep: A man I thought a friend attacked me . . . and I killed him.
“Who killed him?” Warburg asked.
“A man with a deformed upper lip. The car wreck did not kill Jocko, a bullet did. The back of Jocko’s head was exploded, but where the bullet entered was intact. An up-close shot. An execution, precisely through his upper lip. A signature. The priest’s name is Vukas.”
“A priest?”
“He was a ‘relocation official’ in Zagreb. ‘Relocating’ Jews and Serbs. Serbs could convert and be spared the ‘relocation.’ Jews could not.” She looked directly at Warburg. “I saw Vukas tormenting children with a snarling dog. The flesh on Jocko’s arm was half eaten away—the teeth of a Doberman pinscher. That is Vukas. The worst of them are priests.” She stopped. What else was there to say? Priests. But then she resumed, “When my parents died, I turned to the Church—”
“Padre Antonio.”
“Yes. Père Antoine to me. With him, I prayed, ‘Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,’ but the Virgin forgot. In the Church now, across the Tiber, Père Antoine is anathema, Vukas is protected. Vukas! Jocko said, Leave Vukas be. But I will see to his being killed. His death is my purpose now. Does that surprise you?”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Blame? It would not occur to me—blame. You have an American innocence. You came from the New World to the Old World to save the innocent. It was beautiful, watching you. Watching you make them give me the milk for the starving children. Watching what you did for Budapest. Only in Budapest did an action for Jews succeed. Watching what you are still doing for Jews in camps. You think I have avoided you, but no. I have been watching you. All this time. Your beautiful work. Saving the innocent from the guilty. But David . . . may I call you David?”
He was as calm as she was. “Of course you may.”
“David, innocence has nothing to do with it. None of us here is innocent. My ‘friend’—the gold lighter from Christ? He also is a priest. He is one of them, a German. Also one of the worst. Himmler’s priest. I trick him. He trusts me. He tells me their secrets. I tell their secrets to the Haganah.”
“But Marguerite, I know all this. Jocko laid it out for me, what you are doing. He asked me to join you, and I did. The thought of Nazi criminals escaping is intolerable to me. Why do you think I came after you just now?”
“Not because of Nazis, David. You came because I lured you—to tell you I am not innocent.”
“I knew you lured me. I came anyway.”
“Yes. Because, imagining me innocent—your Red Cross blue angel—you think you want to be with me.”
How bold she was. How right. “I do think I want to be with you, that’s true,” he said. “As for innocence, put it this way: if you want Vukas killed, I will help you.”
She laughed, a burst of breath through her nose. “You are innocent, but naive as well. What could you do?”
“We’ll see,” he answered, taking no offense.
She tossed her cigarette. “No. That would be wrong for you. I am beyond what is wrong. The innocent and the guilty—for me, that difference no longer exists. You must still uphold it. You are American.”
“I am a Jew.”
“Not all Jews are alike. The Church says we Jews are damned. In my case, it is true.”
Warburg said nothing to that.
She added, “Besides, no help is needed with Vukas.” She stood.
“Haven’t you noticed something, Marguerite? I refuse to be left behind by you. How many times have you walked away from me? You can walk away now, but you are not rid of me.” He remained sitting, looking up at her.
And, in truth, he was. How could he have allowed himself not to see this? He had pictured this woman naked, in the throes of lovemaking, in the arms of a man. Blue angel? No. He had never imagined her as untouched. But the dream presumed, of course, that the man in whose arms she peaked was him.
For a long time she returned his sad gaze, waiting for him to drop his eyes. He did not drop them. She found it in herself to say, “If it were otherwise, David, I would return your feeling with feeling of my own—for you. Only you. But as it is, I feel nothing. I am damned.”
Warburg slowly stood up. “That is not true,” he said. “I don’t believe it. You are the farthest thing from damned.” And with that he gently closed his hands around her covered head, brought his mouth to hers, waited an instant, and kissed her. She who was beyond surprise was surprised by his move toward her, but more by his having seen before she did what made her instantly responsive. She opened her mouth to his tongue, pressed her breasts flat against his chest, circled his body with her arms, felt the press of his erection. Her response was total, emotional, carnal—and chosen.
They kissed. She pulled back. “Oh,” she said, but meant, I am still alive. Alive! And then, more fiercely, she kissed him again. A moment later, Warburg was the one to pull back. “I love you,” he said, words that had never passed his lips. “Marguerite, I love you!” They fell back toward the hedge, behind it, and once again—in grief and its opposite—set about the rending of garments.
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