From Sand and Ash(71)

“Don’t cry, Eva. Please don’t cry,” he whispered. “I understand.”

She only cried harder, not able to believe him.

Then he was holding her again, turning her so her face was pressed into his neck, her arms folded between them. His breathing was harsh, and his entire body was rigid, like he wanted to bolt.

“I’m sorry, Angelo,” she moaned softly.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

He pressed his lips to her temple and continued to smooth her hair, reassuring her, shushing her like her father used to.

“Shh, Eva. Shh. I understand.”

But her tears continued to fall.



Eva drifted off that way, her face in the crook of his neck, his hand in her hair, tears on her cheeks. When Angelo was certain she was deeply sleeping, he moved away from her, his body aching with need and denial. His left arm was numb and his back stiff from holding such an unyielding position. He hadn’t wanted her to feel what she did to him. He didn’t want her to know that his will was crumbling.

He said he understood, and he did. She’d been desperate for the affirmation that only the most intense experiences—sex, danger, pain—can provide. He’d heard enough confessions of battle-weary soldiers who had succumbed to self-pleasure or sex or worse in the oddest of circumstances. It was a very natural reaction. He understood. But it had required every ounce of his faith and his self-control not to partake or participate, not to take advantage of her vulnerable moment. But he hadn’t stopped her or averted his eyes, and just like King David watching Bathsheba bathe, he suspected that it would cost him.

But first, it had cost her. She had apologized, and he had wanted to thank her. The thought shamed him, but it was the truth. It was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen—she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen—and he’d been captured by a sense of surreal wonder, until he’d seen her despair, her embarrassment, and then he’d wanted to cry too.

He’d failed her over and over, and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to heal her or hold her or save her. He didn’t know how to be what she needed. All he knew was that he loved her desperately.

Desperately.

He wearily climbed the stairs and slipped into the silent church. Lighting a candle, he dropped his tired face into hands that smelled like Eva’s hair and groaned out his fears and his failings, asking God not to withdraw because of his weakness, and thanking Aldo Finzi, wherever his spirit had flown, for saving Eva’s life at the expense of his own.





8 March, 1944


Confession: I like Greta von Essen.



I can’t help but like her. She is kind, and she is sad—a very sympathetic combination. We are all products of the places we are raised, the people who love us or have power over us, and the things we hear, over and over again, as we grow.

Our beliefs don’t have to be based on personal experience, but when they are, they can rarely be altered. Greta has been told over and over that she is a beautiful disaster who has failed at the only thing she was created for. Her experiences have not disproved that.

Greta is shallow, but I have a feeling it is only because depth would drown her. So she floats on the surface and does her best to smile vapidly at her life and the man she is tied to. I have let her mother me, not because I want a new mother, but because she needs a child, and if I’m being honest, she provides me a small measure of safety, a buffer against the captain.

I like Greta von Essen, but I hate her husband. When I close my eyes I see his face, calm and cold, the way it looked before he pulled the trigger and killed Aldo.

Eva Rosselli





CHAPTER 17


MARCH


Lieutenant Colonel Kappler sent for Captain von Essen first thing Friday morning, and the angry shouting that reverberated through the surrounding offices was the talk of the staff at Gestapo Headquarters by lunchtime. Eva rarely saw the lieutenant colonel, and she was happy to keep it that way, but Captain von Essen worshipped him and did everything in his power to please him. Apparently, Himmler himself was in Rome bearing word of the Führer’s disappointment with Kappler’s inability to rein in the Italian resistance in and outside of Rome, as well as to uncover and smash the underground that provided safe haven for soldiers, partisans, and Jews.

Kappler and von Essen had been drawing up plans all week that included maps and consults with a thin, patrician Italian man with a German name, a man named Peter Koch who had established his own militarized band of Italian Fascists. The maps made Eva nervous, and the Fascist leader made her skin crawl. Thankfully, there was no sign of Koch that morning, but when Captain von Essen returned to his own office an hour later, his face was flushed and his eyes were bright, as if the confrontation with the Gestapo chief had brought on a raging fever.

“Follow me,” he commanded as he passed Eva’s desk. She grabbed her dictation notebook and a pencil and trotted after him, hoping whatever had possessed him wasn’t contagious. He didn’t wait to tell her what was on his mind.

“Herr Himmler is in town, and the lieutenant colonel wants to impress him. There will be a dinner tomorrow evening with the most important people in Italy. Rich men, beautiful women, wine, the finest food, the best entertainment.”

Apparently, the responsibility for the gala had been delegated to the captain. If the captain was a smart man, he would call his wife.