From Sand and Ash(43)

The city held its breath once more, but the week passed uneventfully. Then another. Eva bought a ticket for Florence and informed Angelo she was going. Regardless of the lull, time was running out for the Sonninos. He argued heatedly, but when she wouldn’t relent, he arranged to go with her, and they set out for Florence again, less than a month after Eva had arrived.

The trip went without incident. No one stopped them. No one questioned them. No one looked twice at the two of them. They saw no one they knew and no one they knew saw them, except Aldo, who welcomed them to his little workshop at dusk. He reported the same thing. All was peaceful in the City of Flowers—but his expression echoed the nagging feeling none of them could shake.

They spent all night setting type, tightening the string and screwing down the plates, adjusting the ink, refilling the feedboard, and churning out card after precious card. Then they attached pictures and stamped the seals, printed emblems, and assigned names of southern places that the Germans would have no way to verify. They dried, cut, trimmed, stacked, and started all over again with different samples from different places guiding their efforts. Eva and Angelo took quick turns napping on a corner cot, and they finished the long night with a stack of hope and blackened fingers. Aldo’s fingers were perpetually stained, but Angelo and Eva spent twenty minutes scrubbing their hands raw to remove the evidence of the night’s activities.

They boarded the six a.m. Rapido for Rome with fresh clothes and red hands without ever seeing Fabia and Santino. It couldn’t be helped, but Eva realized Angelo had probably been in Florence dozens of times over the last two years without ever seeing her.

“I forgive you,” Eva murmured, closing her eyes as the gong sounded and the train pulled away from the station, right on time.

“You do?” he answered just as softly. He sounded as tired as she felt.

“Yes. I do. But maybe I shouldn’t. How many times have you come to Florence since the war broke out?”

“Many times,” he confessed.

“And I never saw you. Not once.”

“No.”

“Why?”

He opened one of his eyes and looked at her. She’d already opened hers.

“You know why, Eva.”

Something hot and needy sliced in her belly, and she closed her eyes once more, unable to continue the conversation without revealing her longing for the forbidden. Her lips tingled and her palms grew damp and she had a hard time drawing breath. It took her a long time to drift off and nothing more was said on the subject of knowledge and forgiveness.



Isaaco Sonnino, a healthy seven-pound baby boy, was born on October 15, 1943. He was delivered by his father but was passed quickly to Eva, who washed him, diapered him, and bundled him in the thin white blanket Giulia had set out in preparation. Eva had never held a baby before, never diapered one either, but she managed with the help of Isabella Donati, an old woman from across the hall who had been a business owner before her shop was closed by the Racial Laws. Her husband was gone, her two sons lost in the Great War, and she claimed there was nothing left for her to do and little left to fear. She was as calm and comforting as a breeze in summertime, and Eva liked her immensely. She made a note to herself to convince the woman to come to the convent at Santa Cecilia. There was room, though Angelo had placed two families there in the last week. Eva would like her company, the nuns would like her soup, and Signora Donati would be safe.

Eva had come to the apartment late that afternoon with the precious passes in hand. All that needed to be added were the fake names, the signatures, and the fingerprints. But Giulia was already well into her labor, and Eva tucked the passes away and stayed, making herself as useful as possible, playing with the children, timing contractions, and eventually, in the early hours of the morning, watching a baby come into the world.

Signora Donati went home at midnight, but the curfew made it too dangerous for Eva to walk home, and so she stayed, putting the other children, who had slept in fits and spurts throughout the long night, back to bed. As the hour approached morning, Mario made his way out the front door, bleary-eyed but smiling, claiming he needed to be the first in line for rations with another mouth to feed. Lorenzo and Emilia, bedded down in the living room, were awakened once more, and they were irritable and hungry.

Eva warmed what was left of the soup and let them fill their bellies in hopes they would sleep again. When they finished, she brought out Mario’s violin and tuned the strings by ear, plucking and tightening until Emilia grew impatient and begged for a song.

“Can you play the bird song?” Little Emilia started to sing in lisping Yiddish, a song about being a free bird and a loyal little friend, something Eva herself had been taught as a child, and Eva felt her own fear abate.

“I don’t know that one very well. Sing it a few more times so I can learn it.”

The little girl kept singing, and before long Eva was moving the bow across the strings, matching Emilia’s sweet voice with the wail of the violin.

“Something else,” Emilia said suddenly, with the limited attention of the very young.

“Something happy,” Lorenzo grumbled, unable to resist the lure of distraction.

“But you need to sleep! We’ve been awake all night! And your mother is sleeping now. I will play something from America. How about that? But you must lie down and close your eyes,” Eva insisted.

The children climbed under their blankets on the makeshift bed and closed their eyes obediently.