From Sand and Ash(69)

Something had happened to her.

He must have sensed her approach, and his head shot up, his face softening with relief when he saw her standing at the back of the church.

“I’m back, Angelo,” she said woodenly. “I have the . . . provisions.” That was the word they always used to refer to everything and anything. One never knew who was hiding, listening, watching. Provisions were vague. Documents were not.

She turned and made her way to the little door that led to the basement of the church. She needed to get rid of Aldo’s blood. Moments later, she heard Angelo descending the stairs. The pattern of his steps—thud, tap, thud, tap, thud, tap—unmistakable. Her mind drifted back to the retreating footsteps of Aldo’s killer, and she began to shake. She couldn’t unbutton her coat. Her fingers didn’t obey her orders.

“Eva! What happened? What took you so long?” He was growing alarmed. She could hear it in his voice.

He reached out to her, but Eva sidestepped him, unable to meet his gaze. Concentrating, she managed to shove the top button through its hole and then the next. When she reached the fifth button, she reached down the neckline of her dress and pulled the pouch free, tossing it at Angelo. He caught it easily and set it atop the small chest of drawers, his eyes trained on her face. He didn’t even look at it. Eva wondered if there was now blood on his hands.

Her brassiere was stuck to her chest and she was panting, pulling in just enough air to keep her standing, but not enough to feel the nausea that threatened to rise every time she breathed too deeply.

“I had to walk.” Her answer was so delayed it sounded stilted.

“All the way?”

“Yes. All the way.”

“But the curfew! Eva, you could have been arrested.”

“I had to walk. I have blood on my hands, on my clothes. I didn’t dare take a streetcar.”

“Blood? Are you hurt? Eva, dammit! Look at me.”

He grabbed at her hands, and turned them over. Eva’s eyes followed his, unable to avoid it any longer. The blood was minimal, surprisingly. She’d kept her hands in her pockets as she’d walked. There would be bloodstains in her pockets. She pulled her hands from Angelo’s, and shrugged her coat from her shoulders.

“Madre di Dio!” Angelo cried. The blood on her yellow dress was not minimal. It had soaked through the thin cotton between her breasts, narrowing like a funnel as it reached her belt.

Angelo grabbed her again, this time more insistently, loosening the belt and tugging at her collar. He ripped the fabric and buttons flew as he tried to get to the source of the blood.

She didn’t even try to stop him.

The bra beneath looked worse, and Angelo yanked on the clasp and tossed it aside as his hands ran over her skin, across her chest and stomach, his fingers searching for a wound, his face as white as the panties she now stood in, her dress pooling around her feet, her hands covering her breasts.

“It’s not mine.”

His eyes rose from her skin to her face and his hands stilled.

“It’s not my blood. It’s Aldo’s. He’s dead.”

“Oh, no,” he groaned. “No.”

“Yes. He is,” Eva insisted brokenly.

“Tell me everything,” Angelo commanded, leading her to the sink.

As she talked, tripping over the terrible words, he washed her quickly, his hands deferential, his movements sure, cleaning the blood from her skin.

“I left him lying in the street,” Eva whimpered, the horror starting to break through the shock.

“No. You didn’t. They did. They left him lying in the street.”

“I tried not to look at the blood. He was drenched from the neck down. The bullet must have come out the other side.” She started to retch and shake and abandoned the sink to run to the toilet.

Angelo held her hair and stood silently beside her until she’d emptied herself out. Then he wrapped her in a blanket and led her to the small bed. Somewhere in a very distant part of Eva’s female brain, she registered that Angelo was seeing her without her clothes, that he’d removed her clothes and washed her, and she mourned for yet another first that had been ruined by war. Or made possible by war. He brought her water and demanded that she drink, and Eva obeyed gratefully, wincing as the cold liquid hit her empty belly.

“Breathe deeply. You have to breathe, Eva.”

“Von Essen didn’t even ask for his papers. He didn’t even ask! He wanted to humiliate him. And then he killed him.” Her teeth chattered as she spoke, and she realized how cold she was. She shivered desperately and the blanket fell back down, baring her shoulders and breasts and an expanse of skin that was covered in gooseflesh.

Angelo pulled the blanket up again and forced her to lie down. He pulled another blanket over her and tucked it around her firmly before he lay down beside her and pulled her against him, holding her tightly until her shivering subsided and her teeth stopped clacking together. All the while he talked and encouraged her to talk, as if he knew she needed to get it all out, every last detail.

“It’s not uncommon. It happens all the time. The Jewish men are even more vulnerable than the women in that regard. Their very flesh gives them away.”

“So Aldo died to deliver documents that are of no use, documents that couldn’t even save him?” Eva’s voice rose in disbelief, slightly hysterical once again.