From Sand and Ash(47)

It was early, but not terribly so, and the streets were filling with Romans going about their day. It was as if the terror of the predawn was just a strange mirage, shimmering in and out of focus. She saw a single German truck, thick flaps obscuring its cargo. She didn’t duck her head or slink. She walked, telling herself that running would only draw attention, even as her stomach twisted more tightly with each step. She walked across the Garibaldi Bridge and down the wide Viale di Trastevere, too unfamiliar with her surroundings to duck onto side streets. It took too long, and when she finally turned onto the narrow street lined with palms and little stores, she was numb with fear. The street was too quiet, just like Via d’Ottavia, and she finally started to run.

She was almost to their building when strong arms wrapped around her from behind and dragged her back. When she cried out, a hand clamped around her mouth as she was pinned between a man’s chest and an alcove wall.

“Eva, shhh! Be still.” It was Angelo. The relief was almost as great as the despair as she turned and wilted against him.

“Grazie a Dio!” he cried, and pressed his sandpaper cheek against hers before pulling away so he could cradle her face in his hands. Angelo had failed to shave, a testament to the kind of morning it had been, and his blue eyes were wild beneath the unruly black curls drooping dejectedly over his brow. Their eyes clung, gratitude and relief giving way to a baser need, a need for affirmation, even celebration, and suddenly his mouth was on hers, kissing her fiercely, desperately verifying that she was indeed safe, present, and accounted for.

Eva froze beneath the onslaught, but only for a heartbeat. Her hands rose to his face, her mouth opened beneath his, and in those few stolen moments, there was euphoric frenzy. Lips, teeth, and tongues that tasted truth and reaffirmed life. The dam broke, and there was only unbridled feeling, stripped of duty and civility, of pretense and propriety. There were no lies between them, no space.

But the suspension of time could only last so long. Eva pulled back, gasping for breath, and with oxygen came remembrance.

“Angelo, the SS are coming,” Eva cried, hands gripping, lips pleading. “I have to warn my uncle.”

Angelo still held her face in his hands, his relief and lust slower to dissipate, and he forced his gaze from Eva’s lush mouth to meet her pleading eyes. She immediately began to shake her head, refusing the dreadful compassion she saw in his face.

“I know. I know, Eva. The SS are everywhere. All over the city, they are rounding up Jews.”

“Oh, no. No, Angelo. Oh, please, no.”

“I went to the apartment, Eva. I went there first. When the nuns said you never came home last night, I thought you must have been caught. I thought I was too late. I thought they’d taken you too.” His breath caught and he swallowed back the black nausea, the horror of that moment so fresh he could still taste it.

Eva closed her eyes, as if closing her eyes would protect her from what he knew.

“Maybe they were warned. Maybe they left before the SS arrived,” Eva said hopefully, her lips trembling around the words.

“They’re gone, cara,” he said gently, unable to keep the truth from her. “I saw the truck. I saw the truck drive away, Eva. I saw your uncle climb in. I think he must have been the last. And he saw me.”

Eva’s legs wobbled, and Angelo was there, wrapping his arms around her, bracing her as her tears began to flow and her strength left her.

“Where did they take them?” she cried, the wail only a whisper against the wall of his chest.

“I don’t know. But we will find out. We will find out, Eva.”

He smoothed her hair with a trembling hand and kept her locked in his embrace. It was several long moments before either of them had the ability to say more, stricken into silence, as if a meteor were jetting toward them, promising certain annihilation, and no matter where they turned, where they hid, the results would be the same. So they stood, waiting for the world to end, wrapped in each other’s arms, breathing, unable to process thoughts into words. But after a time, brain function returned, and with it, a terrible realization.

“The gold. All that gold that was gathered . . . the gold they insisted upon. It was a lie, wasn’t it? They wanted to make us think we were safe,” Eva said.

Angelo stepped back so he could meet her gaze. Then he cursed angrily, one of the American words he’d taught her to say more than a decade ago. He dropped his arms from around her and gripped his hair, repeating the ugly word over and over. His eyes were bright with outrage. “Yes. It was all a lie. They are pulling our strings, watching us dance.”



The Jews apprehended in the daylong Roman roundup were transported to the Italian Military College and held there, under armed guard. People had gathered outside, a substantial crowd—curious bystanders and horrified neighbors who had witnessed the arrests, gawking and gossiping as people are inclined to do. They watched as truck after truck unloaded terrified prisoners into the college courtyard, SS guards pushing and shoving them with shouts and directions that almost no one understood. Twelve hundred Jews, more than half of them women and children, many of them in their pajamas without food or blankets, were told they were being sent to labor camps in the east. Eva’s uncle, aunt, and cousins were among them.

The Pope could have looked out of his window and seen the crowds, the military college a mere six hundred feet from Vatican City. Angelo even hoped that the Pope might intercede. After all, he’d known about the gold, even offering to make up the difference if the fifty kilograms wasn’t raised. And these were mostly Roman Jews, protected by Italian law. But there was no Italian law anymore. There was only the Führer’s law. And the Führer wanted all Jews deported. The Führer wanted Judenrein—a world clean of Jews.