From Sand and Ash

by Amy Harmon

  Eva Rosselli

  CHAPTER 8

  ROME

  Eva and Angelo boarded the train early, and Santino and Fabia saw them off, their lined faces wreathed in encouraging smiles even as their eyes worried. The platform was crowded with the normal bustle and cluster of people preparing for a journey, people disembarking while others jostled to get aboard. All around them, passengers were hurrying, Germans were watching, and whistles kept blowing, making them rush through their good-byes and raise their voices to be heard over the din. The four of them pressed together, arms linked, heads bent to hear last words and expressions of love.

  “Take care of her, Angelo,” Eva heard Nonno say as he patted Angelo’s lean cheeks.

  Angelo kissed Santino’s forehead and embraced him tightly. “Remember what I told you, Nonno. No resistance. If the Germans show up at your door, give them what they want. You need only worry about yourselves. Camillo wouldn’t want you and Nonna to be harmed protecting his possessions. The only thing he would care about is Eva, and I will keep her safe. I promise.”

  Strangely enough, Fabia didn’t cry. She looked too frightened to cry, and her little hands shook and her smile wobbled, and Eva resisted the urge to tell Angelo she had changed her mind, gripped by a sudden, terrible premonition that this was the last time she would see Santino and Fabia, that they would be whisked into the ether the way her father and Uncle Felix had, never to be seen or heard from again. Her panic must have shown, because Fabia grabbed her hands and the fear in her face was replaced with stern affection.

  “We love you, Eva,” she said firmly. “We have lived good lives. We have been happy. Don’t worry about us. We have each other, and we will be fine. Someday the war will be over and we will be together again. And you will play for me, yes?”

  “Yes,” Eva whispered, unable to hold back her tears. Fabia hugged her close and spoke into her ear. “God sees you, Eva. He sees Angelo too. And he is a loving God.”

  Eva embraced Fabia tightly, but her mind resisted the sentiments. Either God saw everyone or he saw no one. Too many were crying out for him to see them with no response.

  Angelo touched her arm and picked up her heavy suitcase, setting his own small bag atop it, gripping it beneath his arm as he leaned into his cane and allowed his tiny nonna one more embrace. Eva clutched her little valise and her violin, and together they boarded the train, promising to send word as soon as they arrived in Rome.

  “They will be all right. They have nothing to worry about,” Angelo said softly. He didn’t say, “now that you’re gone,” but Eva heard the words anyway. Those who sheltered Jews would not be safe now that the Germans were in charge.

  “This is your pass.” He handed her a document and she took it, confused.

  “I have a pass, Angelo.”

  “A priest would not be traveling alone with a young woman he is not related to. You are my sister now. See?” He tapped the document she was holding, and she looked down at it. It looked completely authentic—from the different stamps, to the emblem on the front, to the type inside. And Eva would know. She’d been helping Aldo make false papers since her father had gone to Austria and never come home again. But her name was now Eva Bianco, and she was not a Jew.

  “How?”

  “Aldo,” he said briefly. “I asked him to make it a while back. Just in case.”

  “I’m from Naples?” she asked, her voice pitched for his ears only.

  “No one will give the Germans any information they seek south of the Allied line. They have no way to verify you aren’t who you say you are.”

  “Except I don’t speak with a Neapolitan dialect.”

  “A German won’t be able to tell. You speak Italian. They don’t. And if they do, you can fake it. You’ve always had a great ear, and a German won’t be nearly discerning enough to distinguish dialects.”

  Their hushed conversation ended abruptly when a couple with a child entered the compartment and sat across from them. A heavy-set man followed a few minutes later and sat on Angelo’s right. Unless they wanted to discuss inanities, which was far too much work, they wouldn’t be talking much on the trip. It was better that way. Eva didn’t need to talk to Angelo. She didn’t need Angelo at all. She was going to go see her uncle Augusto as soon as they arrived, and she had every intention of moving in with him, Aunt Bianca, Claudia, and Levi. She would stay with them until the Germans left Italy. She would assist Angelo in refugee work where she could—she had grown adept as a printer’s apprentice if he could find her a press—but she wasn’t going to hide in a convent, as Angelo had suggested the night before.

  The first hours of their journey passed without incident, but at the station in Chiusi, several German officers boarded the train with a civilian translator wearing a black armband, signifying his Fascist affiliations.

  “Documenti!” the civilian shouted, and people started to scramble for their papers. Eva’s palms grew damp and her breaths short. There was always a first time for a false pass, and this was hers. Aldo had always told her his documents were without equal. She would know soon enough.

  Angelo seemed completely at ease, and when the German approached and demanded their passes, Angelo bowed his head in a priestly fashion and placed his in the officer’s hand.

  The German looked at Angelo’s pass for what seemed an eternity. He talked quietly to the Italian interpreter, and though Eva spoke fluent German, she couldn’t hear what he said. Finally, he leveled pale, suspicious eyes on Angelo, who did not seem at all alarmed by the scrutiny.

  He then looked at Eva sitting next to Angelo, and his eyes narrowed further. He stuck his palm in front of her face. “Papers?”

  She placed her identity card in his hand, the one Angelo had given her only hours before.

  The German eyed the document with the same suspicion.

  “Bianco, eh? Interesting. Her name is the same as yours?” He looked at Angelo. His companion rushed to translate.

  “She is my sister,” Angelo lied calmly. He was a very good liar, Eva thought.

  “Sie ist meine Schwester,” the translator repeated.

  “I do not think this is your sister. I think this is your wife,” the German said.

  The translator rushed to spit out the words they already understood.

  “For all I know you are a deserter,” he continued. “An Italian coward, a soldier running from your responsibilities. I do not think you are a priest.”

  “She is my sister, and I am a priest. Not a soldier. Not a deserter.” Angelo pulled up his cassock and tapped his prosthetic, drawing the attention of the German inspector. “I was never a soldier. Men with one leg do better as priests.”

  Convinced, but not happy about it, the soldier handed back their papers with a huff and moved on to his next victims. He’d been so intent on Angelo, he’d hardly looked twice at Eva’s pass, other than to pounce on her name. Eva slid her pass back into her bag and allowed herself to breathe, just for a moment. Her eyes slid to Angelo’s and he met her gaze, smiling slightly. There was no privacy, no chance to celebrate the tiny victory, but when he tapped his nose, she tugged her ear, an old baseball signal he’d taught her once, and turned her eyes out the window so she wouldn’t smile back at him.

  Eva marveled at the ease with which Angelo bared his prosthetic. It hadn’t always been that way. He had made her wait six months before he’d shown her his leg. She’d been dying to know, and he’d been reticent to share. In exchange for the privilege of seeing the leg that “wasn’t there,” she had read him confession after confession, journal entry after journal entry, and he had listened like she was the most fascinating person in the world.

  He hadn’t looked at her that way in a very long time.

  In fact, Angelo tried very hard not to look at her at all. Even now, his eyes were trained out the window, watching the countryside streak by, a blur of colors and shapes, the speed erasing the details and the definition, until it looked more like a smeared painting than real
life. The way Angelo was now, she could almost believe that the boy he’d been had not been real either.

  Eva pulled her journal and a pen from her valise and opened it to a blank page, needing to do something to take her eyes from him, to forget him, but instead she remembered the first time she heard his name.

  Angelo. Angelo Bianco. White Angel.

  She had loved him instantly. They had both known loss. That much was true. But Angelo had felt his loss early, and he’d felt it keenly. Eva had hardly felt it at all. Maybe that was part of the problem. At an early age, Angelo had learned to let go. Eva’s experience came later, and when it did, it came all at once.

  She hadn’t felt her mother’s loss when it happened. She felt it more now, now that she was the only Adler left. Sadly, her mother would always be dying in her memories, and her father would never be dead. That’s what happened when you said good-bye to someone, watched them board a train, and they never came home. Somewhere, inside, you always believed they would come back.

  Going to Austria had been a fool’s errand. She’d known it when she heard her father’s plan. He’d reassured her by telling her she would always have Angelo.

  You will always have Angelo. He promised me. You will always have Angelo.

  He’d been wrong about that too. Angelo had never been hers, and he never would be. Except for once, for a few hours, in Maremma. The memory brought the same ache it always did.

  “You still write in that old thing?” There was a smile in Angelo’s voice, and Eva looked up from her fat leather-bound journal. It wasn’t the same old book Angelo remembered. She’d filled up four of them, but she’d always picked the same style, as if the style itself gave her life constancy.

  “Yes. Not very often, obviously,” she answered, closing the book and wrapping the elastic band around it, keeping the pages tight and the book closed. She slid it back into her valise and folded her hands.

  “Do you still write confessions?” he asked gently.

  “No,” she lied. “I’ve decided confessions are only for priests.” She realized how confrontational she sounded, and she shrugged, shaking off her words. “I just write to record events. That’s all.”

  “What were you writing about . . . just now?” he pressed, and she found herself glowering at him. He reached up and smoothed the crease between her brows.

  “I’m just making conversation, Eva. I’m not interrogating you. Stop glaring at me.”

  She turned her face away, and his hand fell back to his lap. They sat in silence for several moments until she relented with a sigh.

  “I was thinking about Maremma. The train ride. It was awful.” She didn’t specify which trip.

  “But we still went. Every year,” he said, smiling. She didn’t want him to smile. The flash of white teeth beneath his well-shaped lips made her flinch and look away. It actually hurt when he smiled at her.

  “I’ll never go back,” she said tightly. She closed her eyes so she could pretend to sleep, but instead she thought about the last time she’d seen the red shingled house with the big veranda, surrounded by forest and sea, the best of both worlds.

  Camillo’s determination to get around the Racial Laws had been very impressive to Angelo. At the time, it had given him a great deal of hope. After the first round of laws were passed in 1938, Camillo had deeded his home to Santino and Fabia, with promises to continue on exactly as they had all done before. He and Eva would pay “rent” for the two rooms they occupied. That rent was equivalent to what he’d been paying Santino and Fabia as a monthly salary, so nothing changed. Camillo continued to pay all the bills from a household account, and things had all moved forward quite seamlessly.

  Gino Sotelo became sole owner of Ostrica Glass Factory on paper, but the two had written up a contract where nothing changed at all, and they filed the contract with a lawyer in the United States and put a large amount of money in a trust with Angelo’s name on it. Angelo was still an American citizen, so it worked. Camillo went to work, but he didn’t get paid. If anyone asked he was just consulting.

  It required trust. What had Eva said so long ago? Sometimes God works through people. It was true. People were all Camillo Rosselli had to work with, and he’d managed to get around the laws, just like he said he would, trusting the people closest to him. He’d made all the right moves, until he’d made the wrong one.

  Angelo knew Eva wasn’t sleeping, though the rhythm and vibration of the Rome-bound train was making him a little drowsy. Eva was trying to keep him at a distance. She’d mentioned Maremma and retreated into herself. He could hardly blame her. It had the same effect on him, and his memories of Maremma weren’t nearly as long and complicated. He was surprised Eva had mentioned it at all. It had been devastating, the way it all ended.

  When he was younger, he would stay for the full month of August, just like the rest of the family, but as he grew older and his studies intensified, an entire month just wasn’t feasible. Plus, as much as he loved his family and the seashore, three weeks of sun, sand, and Eva’s beauty weren’t healthy for a young seminarian, regardless of whether or not they called themselves cousins. But his nonna would beg and plead and cajole, and he would inevitably show up, if only for a few days.

  Angelo loved the beaches of Maremma. It was a place filled with memories bathed in warmth and washed in white—white sand, white shells, white towels, and the white sundress Eva had worn that long-ago summer when he’d received his first kiss.

  It was Eva’s first kiss too, though he was pretty sure she’d received plenty since then. Eva had convinced him that they needed to see what all the fuss was about. She was twelve that summer and he was fourteen—still too young and far away from the priesthood to worry about his immortal soul if he kissed a signorina. Eva’s suggestion had seemed logical. Enticing even, and he had shrugged and let her pull his face to hers.

  Her lips were soft, but his were sandy, and she had wrinkled her nose and laughed when their mouths touched.

  “That tickles!” She brushed at his lips and they tried again, but neither of them closed their eyes. They stared at each other, even when they were too close to see anything but eyelashes and freckles.

  They stayed frozen, lips touching, until Eva started to laugh again.

  Angelo pulled away and scrubbed at his mouth, embarrassed.

  “I think we’re doing it wrong,” he muttered.

  “Really?” Eva frowned, her laughter fading. “What else should we be doing?”

  “Well, for one, you could close your eyes.”

  “But you didn’t close yours!” she argued.

  “I’ll close mine too.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  He had a pretty good idea that kisses involved tongues. He wasn’t sure how, as that seemed extremely wet and a little disgusting. But he thought he would try just a tentative stroke. He wouldn’t tell Eva it was coming, then if it didn’t work he could claim the attempt was inadvertent.

  “Tip your head so we don’t bonk noses,” he instructed.

  “Okay. And come closer so we aren’t stretching,” she suggested.

  They tried again, and he made sure there was no sand on his lips. They leaned in and simultaneously closed their eyes, tilting their heads instinctively. It was much better, especially because Eva wasn’t laughing. Angelo’s tongue tiptoed out and touched her top lip. She tasted like sunshine and grapes. She stiffened in surprise but didn’t pull away, and his hands fisted handfuls of sand as her tongue hesitantly returned the caress. Then his tongue was touching hers and her grape-and-sunshine flavor was in his mouth and tickling his nose, and his eyes were rolling back in his head, completely drunk on sensation.

  That was when his nonna discovered them. She shrieked their names and swatted them both on the heads, crossing herself and praying between the slaps. They were grounded from each other for two days, and Camillo sat them both down for a serious talk.

  When he was finished with his strange, rambling lecture about men
and women and babies and kissing, Eva just laughed and bounced up from her seat. She placed herself in her father’s lap and looked him in the eye, her face deadly serious.

  “Babbo! It was disgusting. It was like kissing an oyster! I never want to kiss another boy for as long as I live.”

  “It was?” Angelo interjected, stunned that the experience had been so very different for him.

  “You don’t?” Camillo looked as shocked as Angelo felt.

  “No! It was a silly dare. Angelo is like my brother. I am his sister. It will never happen again, Babbo. Don’t worry. Now please, I need my friend back. I don’t want to spend my holiday all by myself.”

  “Angelo?” Camillo was looking at him, his eyebrows raised.

  “Huh?” He was completely lost, and his feelings were more than a little bruised.

  “Was kissing Eva like kissing an oyster?” Camillo pressed.

  Angelo’s eyes darted between Eva’s face and Camillo’s spectacled gaze, then back again. He always tried to tell the truth. Especially to Camillo. Should he tell him it was nothing like kissing an oyster? Should he tell him it was the most amazing fifteen seconds of his life? Eva had widened her eyes comically and tilted her head, giving Angelo a look that said, “Play along, you idiot!”

  Oh.

  Oh!

  “Um, yeah. Maybe not like an oyster . . . but it was slimy and a little disgusting. Like kissing Nonna, maybe,” Angelo lied.