From Sand and Ash(65)

“I like this girl.” O’Flaherty laughed, and he danced a few more steps.

Angelo liked her too, but he didn’t offer commentary.

“Well. I guess we should be about the Lord’s business, then.” Monsignor O’Flaherty clapped him on the back. “Let’s go!”

They set out across the city, delivering goods and blessings to the children hidden in monasteries and convents where there was never enough to eat, a great deal of need, and very little cheer. It was a bit of a risk for O’Flaherty to leave the Vatican at all, but one he frequently took, and as members of the Curia, it was not suspicious whatsoever for the monsignor and Angelo to be together delivering Christmas cheer to convents and monasteries throughout the city.

“Your Eva. Tell me about her,” the monsignor insisted from the passenger seat. Angelo was driving and enjoying himself thoroughly. He didn’t get the opportunity very often, and he never let his prosthetic stop him.

He looked over at the monsignor, wondering at his use of the word your, but he didn’t protest or disagree.

“Growing up, we were as close as two people can be,” he said. “My grandparents worked for her father, in his home. I came to Italy when I was eleven, and I lived with her family when I wasn’t at the seminary. I love her more than my own life.” It was the truth without all the complicated subtexts and side stories.

“Yet you became a priest,” O’Flaherty said thoughtfully.

“Yes.”

Monsignor O’Flaherty looked out the window and said nothing for a while, as if his thoughts were tangled up in Angelo’s twisted choices.

“She is a beautiful girl,” he said quietly.

“Yes.” Angelo braced himself.

“I hear she plays the violin.”

“She does. She’s been classically trained. She’s very accomplished.”

“I wonder if she can play any Celtic music,” O’Flaherty mused, and Angelo relaxed. “I miss it.”

“She can play almost anything by ear. I will ask her if she can oblige you.”

“She doesn’t work on Christmas, does she?”

“No.”

“Then she should come with us tomorrow. We won’t be able to make all our deliveries in one day. We will go to the schools on Christmas Day. She should see the fruits of her labor.”

“The fruits of her thievery,” Angelo said with a small grin.

“That too!”



Eva borrowed a wimple and a veil for the deliveries. If they were stopped, which they probably would be, considering the checkpoints all over the city, she would need to look as if she belonged in a Vatican delivery vehicle with two Catholic priests, and it would mean fewer questions and explanations at the seminaries and schools as well.

They introduced her to the monks and the nuns as Sister Eva, and left it at that. Monsignor O’Flaherty had a personality that outshone everyone in the room, and Eva and Angelo hung back and let him hug and laugh and generally draw the attention to himself. But Eva was lovely and oddly alluring with her covered hair and veiled figure, and she was impossible to ignore completely.

The final stop was the Seminario di San Vittorio, where the oldest boys stared with wistful smiles and the little boys surrounded her with wide eyes and careful hands, touching her borrowed robes like she was the Virgin herself, come to visit on Christmas Day.

They were all receiving haircuts, lined up in a long row. The older ones were being taught to shave, and Eva had the grand idea of soaping up the dirty little faces of the youngest boys and giving them “shaves” as well, making them sit very still, scraping off the suds with the dull edge of a butter knife, and patting their small faces dry with a clean towel. She got smiles and clean, shiny cheeks in the process, and she kissed each one and gave him a piece of hard candy when she finished.

After Mass, they roasted the chestnuts the monks had been hoarding for months in an attempt to provide a Christmas treat. The smell was deep and rich, but the flavor was even better. The chestnuts were continually moistened with a brush as they cooked, then piled into a basket and tossed into the air repeatedly until the burned outer shell flaked off and revealed the white delicacy beneath. Eva proclaimed it the best thing she had ever eaten, and Angelo had to agree. As privileged as Eva’s upbringing had been—and by association, his own upbringing—there were some things that privilege could not buy. The scent of chestnuts roasted on a fire, the sound of childish voices laughing, and the sense of oneness and purpose shared among the impoverished group gave the evening a burnished glow that Angelo knew he would never forget. A child of maybe three or four, a little boy so small Angelo was afraid to hold him too tightly, found his way to Angelo’s lap, his newly shorn curls resting against Angelo’s chest. His parents had been killed in the San Lorenzo air raid in July. The seminaries and schools run by monks and nuns were becoming orphanages for the lost and hiding.

Eva had brought her violin and played “Adeste Fidelis” and “Tu scendi dalle stelle” at every stop, and she did so again before they left the humble school, making the monsignor weep, the monks bow their heads in worship, and the children sing softly. Even the Jewish children sang, feeling a oneness with the holy child born to poverty. For a few hours they had been released from fear and deprivation, caught up in the festivity and the spirit of the occasion.