A Harvest of Secrets(31)

“In fretta! In fretta!” the soldiers were yelling, gesturing with the points of their automatic rifles. Hurry! Hurry!

A phrase from the end of the Ave Maria, one Paolo had repeated countless times, echoed in his brain: Nell’ora della nostra morte, Amen. Nell’ora della nostra morte, Amen.

At the hour of our death, Amen.

He recognized the soldier who appeared to be in charge—the bespectacled SS officer from the house in Montepulciano, the one who’d bothered Vittoria. Pistol on one hip, wire-rimmed spectacles flashing in the afternoon light, tall, thin, with narrow palms and wiry sinews showing on the inner side of his wrists, the man stood just outside the stable doorway until all the workers and families had crowded in against the hay bales and walls. When everyone was in place, the officer stepped into the room and stood facing them, booted feet spread. The only sound was the muffled sobs of the children and a snort from the far stable.

Paolo waited, listening for any noise from above them, counting the other soldiers in the barn—only three—and wondering if there was any possibility of fighting them. In the corner of his vision, he could see both mothers kneeling in the dirt, pressing their children’s faces into their breasts. He expected the officer’s first words to be about the deserters, then there would be the search, the punishment. But the German began this way: “A friend of the Reich was killed here three days ago.” His Italian was terrible, and he spoke in a quiet voice, the words emerging slowly, one after the next, like bits of poison dripping into the air around him. “Assassinato.”

Paolo watched the man’s eyes travel across his captives’ faces, saw the pleasure there, the power. He remembered the way the officer had touched Vittoria during the delivery, and he noticed that neither she, nor her father, nor either of the house servants had been summoned. For a moment, he wondered if Umberto would see the German vehicles on his property and rush to the defense of his workers . . . but then another thought came to him, hard and cold as a January wind: What if Vittoria’s father, furious at the loss of his friend, had himself called the Nazis? What if, at this minute, he was lying in his luxurious bed, waiting to hear the machine guns erupt?

The officer pushed the spectacles back against the bridge of his nose with one finger, sniffed, said, “We have come here to solve that terrible crime.”

Silence. Antonina scuffed one hoof and whinnied. Ottavio whinnied back from the courtyard, still in the traces, waiting to eat.

“Who has something to tell?”

Silence.

“No one?”

Marcellina made a sound, a stifled grunt, and for one moment, one horrible shaking breath, Paolo was sure she was going to try to save herself by telling the officer about the deserters. The Nazi shifted his eyes to her. “No one knows anything about it,” she squeaked bravely. “We’re not murderers here. We work.”

“We work,” Gennaro Asolutto repeated dully from where he was sitting on a bale of hay in the far corner.

The bespectacled officer twitched his lips, reached down, and unsnapped the flap on his holster. “Really? You work. And who, which one of you, is in the charge of your work?”

Paolo felt the bottom of his stomach fall away. After a second’s hesitation, he forced himself to raise a hand from hip to chest.

“Come here,” the officer commanded, pointing to the dirt in front of him.

Paolo stepped forward and stood facing the man. They were almost exactly the same height. He stared through the lenses and waited. At first, his feet and ankles were trembling, but then, as if the back of his neck had been brushed by the hand of some braver spirit, he felt the fear suddenly leave him. Dirty water swirling out of a sink. The way this man had touched Vittoria. The way he spoke to them now. The continuous torment of their presence on Italian soil. Paolo could feel an inferno of anger in his cells, and barely stifled an urge to lift the German like a sheaf of wheat with both strong hands and fling him against the wall. He felt his fingers start to shake, small tremors.

“Who kills our good friend?” the officer demanded.

“No one, Signore. His car exploded. There is gasoline in a car, and a spark must have—”

The German reached out and slapped Paolo so hard across his face that the older man was knocked over sideways and fell to one knee. The children started crying louder. Behind him, Paolo could hear Enrico making strange sounds, very loudly, “Uh! Uh! Uh!”

“Stand up!”

Paolo stood. He could taste blood.

“I ask again. Who murders our friend?”

“No one.”

The officer slapped him just as forcefully with the other hand. Paolo tilted over to his left but didn’t fall. He straightened up, wiped a sleeve across his bloody mouth, kept his eyes fixed on the eyes behind the lenses. Nothing in them now. Circles of ice. L’ora della nostra morte, he thought. This was his penance for the deed he had done, for the taking of a human life.

The officer removed his pistol from its holster and placed the cold tip of it against the middle of Paolo’s forehead. “Let me ask you last time.”

From behind him Paolo heard a hideous “No!” screamed out into the air, felt a frenzied movement, and then saw Enrico flash past. The boy threw himself with all his weight against the officer’s midsection. The pistol went off, the bullet flying up into the ceiling, causing a shower of splinters and dust to fall on them, and Enrico and the Nazi crashed hard to the dirt, arms and legs flailing. In an instant, all three soldiers had taken hold of Enrico, dragged him to the side, and begun kicking him—in the ribs, the knees. The boy curled into a ball and covered his face, grunting, shrieking. The officer clambered awkwardly to his feet, and pointed the gun at Paolo’s face again, spectacles crooked, hat gone. The voice was no longer calm. His hand was shaking, and the words came hissing out between his teeth.