by Amy Harmon
The majority of the Jews in the cattle car spoke French. French had been required in school, but Eva was rusty and she had to listen closely to understand. But she didn’t need to speak fluent French to know what the man named Armand was attempting. He’d climbed up the side of the boxcar and was sawing at a bar with Eva’s gold file. Through everything, the days at Via Tasso and the week at Borgo San Dalmazzo, Eva’s file had never been discovered. When the man had asked if anyone had something that might work to cut through the bars, she’d offered it to him.
Armand had been at it all day, trading off with a boy of twelve or thirteen named Pierre who was with his mother, a woman named Gabriele. Gabriele had soaked her scarf in urine from the bucket in the corner, and when the men weren’t sawing, Pierre worked it back and forth over the bar, using the corrosive liquid to weaken the metal where the man had attempted to cut through with the file. Armand braced his feet against the side of the car and pulled, with all his weight and strength, against the bar he’d been laboring to weaken.
“It’s going to break! I can feel it!” he yelled, triumphant. With a mighty yank he bore down and the bar came free at the top. He grabbed the severed end and hung from it, bending the bar back, creating an opening about a foot wide and a foot tall. He was a very thin man, but he was going to have a difficult time getting through.
“They shoot at the first jumpers,” Eva heard the man telling the boy who’d helped him all day and all night long. “So I will go first.”
“You can’t do this! I am responsible for everyone in this wagon.” The protester was a heavier-set man with a bolero perched on his head. “If you jump, I will be punished. We will be punished.” The man spread his arm to include everyone else, and a woman spoke up from behind him.
“You will die! Someone jumped when we were being shipped to San Dalmazzo. His clothes caught as he was jumping, and he was pulled under. We saw the blood and the strip of fabric hanging from the window when we got off the train.”
“We are going to Bergen-Belsen! There is no need to take this risk,” another man argued.
Armand could only shake his head in disgust.
“Bergen-Belsen is a labor camp,” Armand argued. “Hard labor! And we have done nothing wrong. You act as if being sent to a work camp is our due.”
The voices of protest rose again, urging him to think of others.
“No! I am jumping. I would rather die now than die slowly,” he shouted. He scrabbled up the side of the car once more, and Eva watched with all the others as he squirmed and wiggled through the small window, trying to get his shoulders to fit. He had just managed to clear his upper body when the sound of shooting commenced. People screamed, and Armand’s legs jerked wildly and then went limp. He hung, still wedged in the hole he’d worked so hard to create.
Another man pulled him down. A portion of Armand’s head was missing, and the rest was covered in blood, obscuring his face entirely. He was dead. One woman began to weep, but most of the passengers lapsed into silence, careful not to look at the man who had risked it all and died for his efforts.
“Where are they shooting from?” Eva spoke up quietly. “The Germans. Where are they? We are on a moving train. I don’t understand.”
As much as they would like their prisoners to believe it, the Germans were not all powerful. They did not look down from on high, from the heavens, plucking lives from the earth like God. Instead of scaring her, the shooting made her angry.
“They have a lookout, a guard, and a roving spotlight on each end of the train, in the engine and in the caboose. Wait until the light passes over and then push yourself out. Feetfirst. Not headfirst.” The woman named Gabriele spoke up.
“So if you can wiggle through the opening quickly enough, you have a better chance?” Eva hoped she was asking the question correctly. She garbled some of her words and put a vowel on the end of everything—she was italiana, after all, but they seemed to understand.
Gabriele nodded. She was holding her son’s hand and they were conferring quietly. The boy didn’t want to jump anymore. He was understandably afraid that he or his mother would be picked off by the German watch.
“Climb down the side and make your way to the couplings between cars, where you won’t be as easily seen. It will also give you the opportunity to turn around and jump outward. Cover your head and roll when you hit the ground. Then stay down. Stay flat. Don’t start running until the train has passed, and then wait a bit so the man on the caboose doesn’t see you and shoot,” Gabriele told her son.
“How do you know this?” Eva asked.
Gabriele shook her head. “I don’t. It is just what makes sense to me. I’ve thought about it nonstop since the first train.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“We’re in Switzerland, I think. But we may have already crossed into Germany. We need to jump soon. Otherwise, we will be deep into Germany. The deeper, the worse off we’ll be.”
“I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. It is too risky,” Pierre cried.
“Where will you go?” Eva interrupted. The woman soothed her son and answered softly.
“We are Belgian. We are going to try to get back home. The Germans are pulling back. We think we will be safe if we can just get home. We fled to France when Hitler invaded.”
“What happened?”
“The Italian army left—they were actually the reason we stayed safe so long—and the Germans moved into the sector the Italians had once controlled. People were rounded up. My husband was detained and deported. Pierre and I stayed hidden for five more months. But in February, we were discovered. We were put on a train for the transit camp, and we’ve been waiting there ever since for a group large enough to transport.”
“Please, Maman. We don’t have to do this. We are strong. We will be all right in a camp,” Pierre pleaded with his mother.
“No, Pierre. It is our only chance to go home,” Gabriele said firmly, holding his gaze. “You have to jump, and you will jump, just like we planned. And you will get to Belgium. You will live, Pierre.”
He nodded, but his eyes filled with tears that spilled down his cheeks. He embraced his mother fiercely, and she kissed his cheeks and held him for a brief moment before pushing him toward the window.
He climbed up obediently. No one protested this time. No one tried to make him feel guilty or responsible. They just watched morosely.
Pierre was much smaller than Armand, but maneuvering to get his legs out the small opening first, balanced on the lip of the window, was a feat in itself. He waited, watching for the light. When it swept past, he slid out the window. He didn’t hesitate or look back, and with just a brief snag, his shoulders cleared and his head disappeared over the side. They could see his fingertips clinging, then they were gone too. There were no accompanying shots.
Gabriele prayed and wept vocally. Then she turned to Eva.
“Now it’s your turn.”
“Gabriele. You have to go. Pierre is waiting for you,” Eva urged. “He made it. He must have.”
“I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough or agile enough to survive it. I know it, and Pierre knows it. It is why he didn’t want to jump.”
“You have to try! Your son will be frantic.”
“You go,” Gabriele insisted again. “You jump. And stay with my boy. Help him get home.”
Eva could only shake her head. “No! You can’t do that to him.”
“I had no choice. I want him to live.” She pushed Eva toward the window. “We have to hurry. The train is moving quickly! You won’t be able to find him! The distance grows every second we delay.”
“But . . .” Eva protested, thinking of the boy in the dark, waiting for his mother. Gabriele turned on her with fierce eyes, her fingers cutting into Eva’s arm.
“S’il vous plaît. Please. I’ve done what I can to save him. Please help me. Save yourself, and help my son.”
“I will help you up,” someone offered, tugging on Eva’s sle
eve. It was a middle-aged man with a small child and a wife heavy with pregnancy. They wouldn’t be jumping. Eva hesitated once more.
“Go!” Gabriele said, and Eva could only nod helplessly as the desperate mother imparted instructions in an urgent whisper. “Go to my husband’s aunt in Bastogne. She will take you and Pierre. She will keep you safe until the war is over. Tell Pierre I love him, and I am proud of him. I will fight, and I will live. And we will be together again. All of us. Someday.”
The man who’d offered to help Eva linked his fingers together and braced his feet, creating a step. Eva put her foot in his hands, and he bent his knees and launched her upward, giving her the lift and momentum needed to grasp the lip of the little window with one hand and the remaining bar with the other. She didn’t wait for courage or even to see if she was clear to go. She went out the window headfirst. Just like in her dream. She was still clinging to the bar with her left hand, and the action swung her around, her legs pinwheeling for purchase, a shriek on her lips. She hung from the bar for an eternal second before her toes found the edge of the cattle car.
A shot rang out and then another, whizzing above her head. With all her might, Eva let go and pushed away from the train with the balls of her feet, turning as she flew, weightless for a heartbeat, contorting herself like a circus performer. “Slide into home!” Angelo had said when they played baseball. “Slide, Eva, slide!”
She slid through the air, parallel with the ground, flying toward home base. Then she was tumbling and bending, end over end, head, buttocks, hands, back, side, knees, shoulder, stomach, back. Like a rug being beaten against the cobblestones, flapping and connecting, flapping and connecting. And then she was still, lying on her back, staring up at a sky filled with dazzling stars. There was no air in her lungs, and she fought to inhale, unable to reinflate her diaphragm fast enough.
But she’d done it. She imagined Angelo throwing his arms out to the sides and yelling, “Safe!” the way he used to do when she slid home just like he’d taught her.
She smiled as she gasped and choked, sitting up to reach for a breath, ignoring Gabriele’s second set of instructions, along with the first. She’d said, “Stay down until the train is gone.” Eva hadn’t even checked. But the train was slowly disappearing, just a black rectangle in the distance, growing smaller and smaller, quieter and quieter, as she watched. She wanted to lie back down and enjoy her home run for a minute more. She was starting to feel the raw scrape of her tumble, and she knew she would be bruised and sore, but for the first time since Angelo had been dragged from Via Tasso, she felt a glimmer of life. A spark. She wouldn’t think about tomorrow. She wouldn’t think about how alone she was. She would just celebrate the victory of escape. Of survival. And that was all.
“Maman! Maman!” She heard Pierre, calling and running toward her. He’d probably been running since he jumped, racing after the train, watching for his mother.
Eva rose gingerly to her feet, swaying as the confused blood in her body reoriented itself. It was dark, and Pierre was still a distance off. He was not yet aware it was she, and not Gabriele, who waited for him. She started to walk back toward him, dreading the moment he realized it was her.
She felt a sick flash of sympathy when he pulled up short.
“Where is my mother?” he gasped, out of breath from sprinting along the tracks, running after a train that had carried his maman away.
“She didn’t jump, Pierre. I’m so sorry.”
“Maman!” he called, panicked, and began running once more, racing across uneven ground, tripping and staggering, calling for his mother.
Eva pressed her hands against her aching heart and followed him. She didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t want to take away his hope. She didn’t want to discourage him. But she knew Gabriele hadn’t jumped. She’d loved her son enough to part with him if it could save his life. But Eva understood when Pierre sat down and buried his head in his hands. She understood his desolation. Life was small comfort when you had to live it alone.
“What if she decides to jump, and I’ve given up?” he mourned.
“We can wait here for a while. If she jumped, she will walk back this way,” Eva suggested.
“What if she jumped and she’s hurt, lying down there somewhere beside the tracks?” He sounded so young and lost.
“We will listen to see if she calls to you,” she soothed softly.
He nodded despondently, and they waited, side by side, for a call that didn’t come. Finally, Eva could bear the silence no longer. She was cold and sore, and there were trees in every direction. She had no idea which way to start walking.
“Pierre, do you recognize any of this? Do you have any idea where we might be?” she asked gently.
“It is north to Bergen-Belsen. Maman told me the tracks lead north.” He pointed in the direction the train had just gone, then pointed straight in front of him. “We were going to go west. West is Belgium. That was our plan.”
“There is nothing for me at home,” Eva said. There was nothing for her anywhere, but she pushed the thought out of her mind. She would grieve later. Now she had to survive. “I will go with you to Belgium. Your mother says you have an aunt in Bastogne. She said she would come for you there when the war is over.”
The boy nodded and brightened a little, slightly reassured that he wasn’t completely alone in the world.
“I hope we’re still in Switzerland,” he mused. “If we are, we will be fine. We can go anywhere and ask for help and directions. But first we need to figure out where we are. The sun is coming up. I’m going to climb a tree and see what’s beyond the forest. We can always walk south along the tracks if I can’t see anything. Maman said the tracks will lead to a town.”
His mother had prepared him to be alone. It was obvious. Eva nodded and waited for him to scramble up a nearby tree. It wasn’t long before he was calling down to her excitedly.
“There is a road. I see a road. We will walk to it and see if there are any signs so we can figure out where we are.”
Pierre had to climb another tree before they finally emerged from the forest and came upon the road, but they were in luck. There was a sign, but their luck was short-lived. The sign said, “Frankfurt 10 km.”
They were in Germany.
28 March, 1944
Confession: I’ve broken my vows and I feel no remorse.
Eva told me once there were two things she knew for sure. One was that no one knows the nature of God. No one. And the other thing she knew for sure was that she loved me. I find I am reduced to those same assurances. I love Eva. I will always love Eva. And as for the rest? I only know that I know nothing at all.
Many will seek to tell me what God’s will is. But nobody knows. Not really. Because God is quiet. Always. He is quiet, and my anguish is so intense, so incredibly loud, that right now I can only do my will and hope that somehow, it aligns with his.
Angelo Bianco
CHAPTER 23
CROSSROADS
The blank pages in Eva’s journal haunted Angelo. She’d been snatched up, whisked away, stolen. She’d been taken from him, and her story wasn’t finished—he wouldn’t let it be—so he would keep writing until she could pick up where she left off.
He recorded his first entry the day he returned to the Vatican on crutches, dressed as a civilian, looking every bit like a man who had narrowly escaped death—multiple times. He’d been hustled into Monsignor O’Flaherty’s office, and Monsignor Luciano was called as well.
“You look like you’ve been through hell,” Monsignor O’Flaherty said, tipping Angelo’s chin up so he could stare into his badly bruised face. “More than three hundred men were pulled from the prisons and off the streets. No one knows what happened to them. Then we got word that you were alive. Beaten but alive. What happened to you? Where did they take you? And where are the other men?”
“Everyone is dead,” Angelo whispered.
“Dear God!” O’Flaherty gasped.
“Where?” Monsignor Luciano cried.
“They took us to the Fosse Ardeatine. They took the men into the cave, five at a time, and killed them with a shot to the back of the head, one after the other. Toward the end, one of the German soldiers sneaked me out through another tunnel. He saved my life. He took other lives, but he saved mine. He didn’t want to kill a priest.” Angelo stopped, the weight of the memory suddenly more than he could carry. “The soldiers didn’t want to do it. Lieutenant Colonel Kappler sent cases of cognac to the caves to loosen them up so they could perform.” His voice was bitter, and the horror continued to rise in him like a tidal wave. He closed his eyes and focused on breathing, focused on the here and now, on Monsignor O’Flaherty’s hand on his shoulder.
“It is a miracle that you are alive,” Monsignor Luciano whispered. “Praise God.”
“I am grateful for my life, Monsignor,” Angelo said softly. “But it is very hard for me to praise God in this moment. I lived. But three hundred thirty-five others did not. I feel more guilt than anything. I lived, hundreds died, and Eva is gone.”
“I have tried to discover where the train was headed, Angelo. All I know is that Eva was on it,” Monsignor O’Flaherty offered after a short silence.
“She is young, and she is strong,” Monsignor Luciano said, trying to comfort him. “She will be all right.”
Angelo bit back a curse. Monsignor Luciano could be incredibly blind and stupid sometimes.
“You can’t come back to the apartment, Angelo. You will stay here at the Vatican until Rome is liberated,” Luciano continued as if the matter were resolved.
“I will continue on until Rome is liberated, until the people I am responsible for no longer have to hide,” he agreed softly.
“And then?” Monsignor O’Flaherty asked, clearly sensing there was more.
“I no longer want to be a priest. I have broken my vows,” he said with finality.