From Sand and Ash

by Amy Harmon

  There were other refugees who were escorted into the Abruzzi, where smugglers and a local priest would bring them into Allied territory. Angelo didn’t know who. None of them knew who was involved beyond their initial contact. It was safer that way. If one person was caught they couldn’t betray what they didn’t know. It was a network of volunteers who were blind to all but their part. No real mastermind, no official organization. Just desperate measures by willing people. And it worked only through the grace of God and the goodness and courage of each individual.

  But Angelo hadn’t come to Florence just for the foreign refugees. Not this time. This time, Angelo was going home, and the visit was very personal. He’d known the trip was inevitable, that the day would come. He’d been watching and waiting. When Benito Mussolini was overthrown in July and General Badoglio took his place, Angelo had waited, holding his breath. Many thought the old laws would be repealed and all would be made right. That hadn’t happened. When the Americans started dropping bombs on Rome and the San Lorenzo district was destroyed, he reconsidered, wondering if Florence wasn’t the safer place to be. But when the armistice was announced, and the German tanks rolled in and occupied Rome, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer.

  The war had hurt Florence—aged the ageless city—and her head was bowed with long-suffering, like a widowed bride. Like in Rome, there were Germans everywhere, long lines for rations, and the people didn’t amble. They darted to and fro, as if rushing made them harder to hit. Harder to see. Harder to oppress. As a people, Italians were exuberant and effusive, and they didn’t hurry. Italians meandered.

  Not anymore. Now they scurried.

  Angelo let himself in through the big gate. It wasn’t locked. He would have to scold his grandfather. The days for open gates were long past. He walked across the silent courtyard of the place he had once called home, a place where he and Eva had played in the fountain and broken a few windows when he’d tried to teach her American baseball. He was pleased to see the villa looked the same. His grandparents had taken care of it. The flowers still bloomed in riotous color, and the walks were neatly swept with no debris or sign of the calamity that had gripped Italy in its fist. The heat had eased, and the September air was balmy and the skies a brilliant blue. The beauty made him uneasy, as if the mild weather and the soft breeze conspired with the Nazis to lure them into complacency.

  Angelo wondered if his grandparents’ tender care of the palatial home would simply make it a bigger target. A property in the heart of the city, easily accessible. It rose up behind a high wall on a main thoroughfare. Beautiful. Well maintained. Irresistible. Just like Eva and the wall she’d built around herself. But walls wouldn’t be enough. It was time for her to hide. He had to convince her to leave Florence. Eva and maybe his grandparents too. They would be better off out of the city, away from the property that could only bring them unwanted attention.

  Camillo had been gone for almost three years. Three years and no word whether he lived or died. The only word they’d learned was Auschwitz. It sounded like a sneeze. Harmless. But when it was whispered among the fearful it became something else, the Grim Reaper come to call, the Black Plague. There were only rumors, but the rumors were enough to make some Jews flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs, looking for a hiding place. It made others cower in their homes, hoping that the plague would somehow miss them, spare them, and pass over, as it had once, anciently. But so often it didn’t.

  The wisest ones hid. Camillo Rosselli had not hidden. He’d been so confident his Italian citizenship would protect him. Camillo had been sent to Auschwitz. And that was all they knew.

  Angelo raised the knocker and let it clatter against the burnished red door. His eyes fell to the right, to the place where the mezuzah had once hung. He remembered the day Camillo took it down. It was 1938, and his shoulders had been set, but tears streaked his face. He’d transferred the home from his name and given it to Santino and Fabia to protect it from the Racial Laws. When Angelo had asked him why he cried, he told him he was ashamed.

  “I remove it because of fear. A better man would fight for his God. But I am not that man. It shames me to say, I am not that man.”

  The door opened slowly, and Fabia peered out into the afternoon sun, shading her eyes and squinting up at him.

  “Angelo!” she gasped, dropping the hand that shaded her eyes so she could clap her own cheeks and then his. She pulled him forward by the face, her arms stretched to reach him. She was even smaller than he remembered. Or maybe he had grown.

  “Angelo, my beautiful boy! Santino, look who’s here!” Fabia called over her shoulder into the dim foyer, its cool expanse drawing Angelo’s eyes. But it wasn’t rest and refreshment or even his grandfather Angelo sought, but Eva.

  “You are so big,” his nonna exclaimed, drawing his eyes back to her wrinkled face. “So handsome. Mamma mia! You look like your father.” Fabia promptly burst into tears, which hadn’t changed. She couldn’t talk about “her Angelino,” his father, without crying. It had been so long since she’d seen him. Angelo suspected they would never see him again. The thought bothered him more for his grandparents than for himself.

  His grandfather tottered from the back of the house on bowed legs, clapping and calling Angelo’s name. His white hair was unchanged, thick and waving back from his sun-browned skin. His blue eyes, the eyes Angelo saw staring back at him from the mirror each day, were bright and relieved.

  “You came home! You came home, Angelo. Tell us you can stay a while. We have missed you.”

  Angelo kissed Santino’s cheeks and bent to hold him close. Unlike his eyes, Angelo’s height was not something he’d inherited from his nonno. When he straightened and stepped back, his gaze moved to the figure descending the wide marble staircase that rose grandly from the formal entry.

  Eva wore a dress of deep blue that made her skin look like cream, pale and smooth against the sapphire hue. She was thinner and her dark hair was shorter, brushing her shoulders in smooth curls as was the fashion. She used to wear it longer. Maybe age had made her more aware and careful, more mindful of the opinions and attention of others. He hoped so. It would make her safer. Eva greeted him with a soft hello, her lack of enthusiasm contrasting noticeably with Fabia’s tears and Santino’s clapping.

  He greeted her just as soberly, wishing he could embrace her like a sister, wishing he could convince himself that was all she was, all she would ever be. His eyes clung to hers briefly, looking for forgiveness and finding none. Eva’s eyes were guarded. She was young, only twenty-three years old, but she wore the same vibrating tension he had observed on so many others he had helped and sheltered throughout the last few years, and it made her seem much older than she was.

  But she was still the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

  She reached the last stair and approached him, holding out her hands. He clasped one of hers in both of his.

  “Is that how it’s done?” she asked softly. “Is that a priestly greeting?”

  He felt a flash of anger at her mocking tone and immediately rose to the bait, pulling her into his arms and embracing her tightly, albeit briefly.

  He felt her jerk, as if she hadn’t expected the contact, and her gasp tickled his neck before he stepped back from her. She still smelled like the jasmine that Fabia grew in pots beneath the windows. It mingled with a subtle hint of something new, as if the sadness she wore gave off a scent of its own. Her grief had grown stronger since he’d seen her last, but then, life had delivered some heavy blows, and Eva had absorbed them all. Her jasmine-scented sadness was justified.

  It had been too long. He should have come back sooner. But he’d been trying to move on, he’d been trying to let her move on. He wondered if they would have to start over from the very beginning, and if they did, would they manage to find common ground, a place where a Catholic boy and a Jewish girl could be friends, even family, once again? There’d been a time when she would have followed him anywhere. He wasn�
�t sure she would follow him across the street anymore, but he was going to do his best to convince her.

  The evening meal was meager—nothing was plentiful in wartime—but Eva brought out a bottle of her father’s Austrian wine and there was laughter and reminiscence, even if it was flavored with forced levity. Eva participated, but her quick smile had slowed considerably, weighted down by strain. In fact, it wasn’t present at all. The sparkle in her lustrous eyes was more nervous than mischievous, and there was a wary tilt to her head, as if she were listening for calamity to strike. Eva had always been grace in motion, as if the music she created on her violin was just beneath her skin. Now there was a stillness in her posture as if she were poised to bolt. He hated it, and his own tension increased considerably.

  There was talk of what came next. Fabia was sure the old Racial Laws, the laws inspired by Mussolini’s desire to placate Hitler, would be revoked now that Mussolini had been toppled and Germany was no longer Italy’s partner in the war.

  “It’s going to get worse for a while, Nonna,” Angelo said softly.

  “Worse?” Fabia cried, likely thinking of the losses Eva had suffered, the food shortages, the deaths of thousands of Italian young men on the Russian front and in North Africa, all for a war and an ideology most of the country didn’t support.

  “You have to come back with me, Eva. To Rome. That’s why I’ve come.” Angelo turned to Eva, ignoring the stunned faces of his grandparents.

  “Rome will be no safer than Florence,” Eva protested immediately.

  “It’s farther south, closer to the Allied line. And no one knows you in Rome. You have false papers, yes?”

  She didn’t answer. She just stared, probably wondering what he knew and how he knew it.

  “A false identity card won’t do you any good here, Eva.” He continued as if she’d given him an answer. “Too many people know you. Too many people know you are Jewish. Your papers will actually get you in more trouble. That’s what got your father in trouble. He was recognized using false papers. You use them, and they will torture you until you tell them where you got them, until you give up Aldo Finzi and Gino Sotelo and Nonno and Nonna too.”

  Three pairs of eyes widened and Eva’s chair shot back from the table. “How did you know about Aldo Finzi and Signore Sotelo?”

  “I know all about them. They’ve been helping us for years. And I know all about what you’ve been doing too. ”

  “Us?” Eva asked sharply.

  “The church,” Angelo answered, unwilling to mention names, partly because he knew so few of them, partly because by not naming them, they were safer. To give the whole church credit—or blame—was disingenuous. He’d seen many pastors and parishioners who’d needed their arms twisted and their salvations threatened. But there were many who helped, in whatever way they could, opening their doors, their cellars, and their hearts to one refugee after another. He’d witnessed nuns opening cloisters that hadn’t been breached by a man, any man, ever. Jewish children were hidden in Catholic schools, Jewish mothers were wearing Catholic veils, and Jewish men were becoming monks—albeit temporarily—and learning Catholic prayers in order to stay alive, and no one was trying to convert them.

  “Do you really think my friends and my neighbors will run to the Fascisti and give me up? I know many of the local police. Some of them are even friendly. They are Italians first, Fascists second. And most of them hate the Germans.”

  “But the Germans are in charge now. Not the local carabinieri. And what about when they offer lire for the betrayal? When they start offering three thousand lire for every Jew? How desperate are your friends? How desperate are your neighbors? Someone will turn you in, Eva. I’ve seen it happen. Some Italians even think that the sooner all the Jews are found, the sooner this all will end. Give the Germans what they want so they will leave. That’s what some believe.”

  Santino and Fabia jumped in then, trying to soothe Eva, trying to placate Angelo, trying to talk their way out of the threat they didn’t want to face. It was so much easier to hope it was all going to get better. Angelo knew it wouldn’t.

  The subject was dropped for the sake of peace, and they all eventually retired to their separate quarters, Angelo back in his old room at the rear of the house—the servants’ quarters, though he’d never been a servant. There were times he had wished his presence in that house were that clearly defined, that simple to explain or justify.

  He paced in his room and finally forced himself to kneel before the old cross Nonno had hung on his wall to say his prayers. It was the Hour of Compline, an hour that should be spent filled with praise and gratitude, but Angelo found himself veering away from praise and reciting psalms of entreaty. “Make me know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. For you, I wait all the day.”

  Since becoming the pastor of a tiny parish at twenty-two years old, he had been begging God for direction on an hourly basis. It was a never-ending chant in his head. He didn’t see that changing any time soon. When he was finished, he stood and scrubbed at his face, feeling renewed. He washed his hands and calmed his breathing, and then left his room, slipping through the halls and mounting the stairs, determined to resume his campaign. He was not leaving Florence without Eva.

  She answered his knock as if she’d been expecting him, and Angelo breathed a silent prayer of relief that she hadn’t changed for bed. He didn’t need to see Eva in a flowing dressing gown, regardless of how much it covered. She immediately retreated to the window overlooking the gardens Santino tended so carefully, the tennis court where she’d regularly trounced Angelo, and the moonlit darkness that was, to Angelo, menacing in its tranquility. It made his stomach feel hollow and his palms itch, as if the Gestapo stood in the shadowed corners of the yard and aimed their guns at the beautiful girl limned in gold and framed perfectly in the window. He walked to her and pulled her back, drawing the heavy drapes. She looked at him with eyebrows raised and didn’t protest. But she immediately left his side, retreating to the opposite side of her room.

  “You told me once that you believed in me. Please, believe me now. The things I’ve been told, Eva. The brutality I’ve witnessed. The soldiers who have made it back to Italy have seen the camps. They’ve seen the trains overflowing with Jews. Train after train. And the refugees have stories. None of it is propaganda. People don’t want to believe, Eva, but I need you to listen. I need you to believe me again.”

  “When did I say that? 1938? Five years ago I believed in you. Now, I believe in nothing. I will stay in Florence with Fabia and Santino, and I will do my best not to die or be arrested and sent off to a camp. Okay? You can go back to Rome and your church and continue being Padre Bianco with a clear conscience. You tried. I refused. End of story.”

  “Madre di Dio!” Angelo cursed beneath his breath and then immediately berated himself, turning the curse into a silent prayer. Madonna, please. Mother of Jesus, help me control my temper and save this girl. He added a plea to his own mother and to Eva’s mother, Adele, on the off chance that Jews and Catholics all went to the same heaven.

  The longer he remained on this earth, the more sure he was that mankind had no clue about God or heaven. Not when they used him as an excuse to kill, to punish, to discriminate. He loved God. He felt God’s love in return, but he felt no special claim to that love simply because he’d been raised a Catholic, simply because he was a priest.

  “I have work to do here, Angelo. If you know what I’ve been doing, as you claim, then you know I can’t leave.”

  “What does your rabbi say?” He had her there. He knew exactly what her rabbi said. Rabbi Cassuto had already hidden his wife and children in a convent. Angelo had helped arrange it. Soon, the rabbi would go into hiding too. The DELASEM offices the rabbi helped run were closed. All the Jewish aid from the organization would go completely underground from this point on.

  Eva just looked at him, her throat working.

&
nbsp; “I can’t just hide, Angelo,” she whispered.

  “I will help you. I will hide you.”

  “That’s not what I mean. If I go to Rome, you have to let me do what I can. I want to help . . . I want to do what you’re doing,” she insisted, but he could hear her weakening. He didn’t let the relief he felt show in his face. He really hadn’t thought he would be able to convince her.

  “You’re not in a position to do what I’m doing,” he confessed. “But if there is a way for you to help, I promise, I will tell you.”

  “Why do you care, Angelo? Really?” she asked quietly.

  Angelo blanched and stepped back, as if Eva had walked across her bedroom and slapped his face. His cheeks stung like she had.

  Eva’s expression was stony, her eyes black, as she stared him down, her arms folded across her chest.

  “That’s a stupid thing to say, Eva.” He sounded like the boy he’d been, and hated that he was Angelo in this house and not Padre Bianco, ever patient and unflappable.

  “Is it? You’ve gone out of your way to make me feel invisible. I don’t exist to you, Angelo. I’m a Jew. Hitler doesn’t want me to exist at all. Remember?”

  For a moment they both remembered. Too well. But it had absolutely nothing to do with her being Jewish. And she knew it. Angelo’s breath grew labored as the vise that was Eva became impossibly tight around his heart. Eva was the vise . . . and the vice. That’s what she’d become for him, and he couldn’t deny it.

  17 September, 1943

  Confession: I’m going to Rome with Angelo.

  I don’t know what else to do. It’s too quiet and everyone is nervous, waiting. Rabbi Cassuto is urging everyone to leave their homes and hide. He says there are reports of Fascist fanatics—militarized squads—rounding up Jews and antifascists, and no one is stopping them. The Germans have deported thousands of Jews from Nice in France, Jews who had been protected by the Italian army, an army that is now disbanded. Rabbi Cassuto says the Germans won’t leave Italy, and now that we are not on the same side, they won’t respect our laws or citizenship. The Italian government can’t protect us anymore, even if they wanted to. No one can. Uncle Augusto, Aunt Bianca, Claudia, and Levi are in Rome already. Levi is studying law at the Pontificium Institutum Utriusque Iuris—the only university that will allow Jewish students. Uncle Augusto seems to think the Vatican will be able to protect the Jews in Rome. But Uncle Augusto hasn’t been right yet.