“In a manner of speaking, yes. The official description is to promote pastoral assistance to migrants, nomads, tourists, and travelers. The congregation is overseen by a cardinal. Monsignor Luciano serves Cardinal Dubois. I assist Monsignor Luciano. My job is to attend the monsignor in whatever duties he assigns, but I rarely sit at a desk and type, if that’s what you’re thinking. There are lay secretaries and assistants to do that. I tend to be the physical liaison, and I mostly do legwork.”
“How interesting. The one-legged priest doing legwork.”
“Yes. Ironic.” He smirked, and his blue eyes glinted. She didn’t smile even though she wanted to. It was too easy to fall back into their old ways, poking at each other and teasing one another. It wouldn’t be good for her. It would make her miss him too much when she returned to Florence. She resolved to guard herself against him even as he spoke again, the humor absent from his voice.
“I want you to stay at the Santa Cecilia. It’s a cloistered convent, but there are rooms available for boarders along the entrance block. It’s in Trastevere, and you won’t be too far from your family.” He sounded as if he were giving an order, dictating what she would do, and she opened her mouth to refuse.
“Please, Eva,” he implored so softly that she could almost pretend it didn’t happen.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she murmured, hating herself for her vulnerability.
“Better alone than arrested,” he said, but his eyes were compassionate.
“I’m not sure that’s true, Angelo,” she answered. “I’m not sure of that at all.”
“Eva.” He sighed. “You don’t mean that.”
“How do you know, Angelo?” she asked sharply. “How can you possibly claim to know how I feel?”
He shot her a look that said he knew exactly how she felt, and she turned away with a shake of her head, dismissing him. He knew nothing.
“I told my family I was coming,” she reiterated. “They are expecting me. I’m sure they would like to see you too.” Angelo started to shake his head, anger tightening his mouth and causing the groove between his eyes to deepen into a canyon.
“I will see them, we will have dinner with them, and then you can lock me in the convent if you must,” she added before he could resume his campaign. Angelo exhaled with relief, and the rest of the ride was spent in stony contemplation.
They had to change buses and catch another before taking a streetcar that let them off two blocks from 325 Viale Domina. It was two in the afternoon, and they’d been traveling since six o’clock that morning. Angelo looked remarkably un-wilted, his black cassock and wide-brimmed hat traveling much better than Eva’s slim red skirt and white blouse. She felt filthy and wrinkled, and she removed her hat so she could smooth her hair as they waited for someone to answer the door. The building was neat and clean, the corridors wide and airy, but the residence was a decided step down from Uncle Augusto’s Florence home, which was now being rented to non-Jews for a ridiculously small amount of money. The door opened an inch, and a brown eye appeared in the gap.
“Eva! Angelo!” The door was flung open, and Eva’s cousin Claudia, decidedly less plump than she’d once been—war rations were only good for one thing—pulled Eva into the small parlor, reaching out a hand for Angelo as well. Eva took quick note of the polished floors, the pictures on the walls, and the pieces of furniture from their home in Florence. The homey atmosphere and the effort to make the apartment comfortable eased the knot in Eva’s stomach. She had worried about her uncle and aunt, about her cousins and their life in Rome. From the looks of it, all was well.
“We’ve been waiting to eat. Levi got fruit. He’s a black-market guru, you know. He manages to get things no one else can.” She prattled easily as she led them into a sitting area teeming with people.
“Eva, you remember Giulia, don’t you? Mamma’s sister?” Giulia Sonnino was much younger than her older sister, barely thirty years old if that, and Claudia and Eva had always looked up to her, more like a sophisticated older cousin than an aunt. Giulia was still lovely, but she was hugely pregnant, and she smiled wearily at Eva and Angelo and tried to stand to greet them. Her husband, Mario, pressed her right back down into the sofa and stood in her stead.
Mario Sonnino was a physician, a tall, slender man with kind eyes—a Jewish trait, according to her father. “We Jews have kind eyes and quick minds,” he would say. Eva didn’t know if it was true. Camillo had claimed so many things as Jewish traits, but Mario reminded Eva a little of her babbo, so maybe he was right.
Eva had attended Mario and Giulia’s wedding when she was twelve or thirteen, and she and Claudia had thought Mario very good looking. Plus, he played the violin, which made him a kindred spirit from the start. He wasn’t especially handsome—Eva could see that now—but he wore his goodness all over his face, and he was clearly devoted to his wife. Eva smiled at him warmly and shook hands with the little girl who hung on to his leg and dimpled winsomely when she was introduced.
“This is Emilia,” Mario said. “And the boy who is determined to beat Levi at chess is our oldest, Lorenzo.” Lorenzo, a little boy of about eight or nine and missing his two front teeth, heard his name and grinned, lifting his head from the chessboard in front of him. Levi stood from the game and approached Eva and Angelo in three long strides, swooping Eva up in a huge hug that had her laughing and little Emilia squealing and begging for a turn.
“Me, me! Swing me, Cousin Levi!”
“Yes! Swing Emilia!” Eva laughed as he set her down. Levi shook hands with Angelo, then Aunt Bianca started ushering them to the dinner table where the simple meal was quickly consumed. The conversation volleyed from one topic to the next, the time apart requiring a great deal of catch-up. When Angelo stepped in to field some questions, Eva turned to Giulia to inquire about her pregnancy.
“When is the baby due?”
“We have a month,” Giulia sighed, as if a month was an eternity. “I’m very ready now, though our circumstances aren’t the best.”
“Do you live here in the building?”
“No. We are in the old ghetto,” she answered quietly. “Mario’s a doctor, but he lost his practice. We had a home in Perugia . . .” Her voice faded off and Eva didn’t pursue the subject.
“Will you be staying here with Augusto and Bianca?” Giulia asked politely, shifting the focus to Eva.
“I’m not sure,” Eva hedged, not wanting to start a possibly uncomfortable conversation. Of course, her answer didn’t go unchallenged.
“What do you mean?” Claudia chirped up from across the table. “Of course you are. You will stay in my room.”
“I’ve made arrangements for Eva,” Angelo interjected, and Claudia immediately frowned.
“But . . . why?”
“Eva will stay here,” Uncle Augusto said, as if his was the final word on the subject.
“It’s not safe,” Angelo said quietly. “It’s not safe for any of you, honestly. You need to change apartments, Augusto. Or leave Rome.”
“But Rome is the safest place for Jews! The Germans have been on their best behavior. We’ll be fine here. Your Pope is our best defense. The Germans don’t want an international public relations problem with the Vatican. One in three Germans is Catholic. Did you know that, Angelo? That’s why I brought my family here. ”
“The Pope is in an impossible position. He holds no power over Hitler. He couldn’t save the Jews in Germany; he couldn’t save the Jews in Poland. He couldn’t save the Jews in Austria. He won’t be able to save the Jews in Rome.”
The table went silent and Eva winced. Angelo put down his fork and stared at Augusto soberly.
“If you won’t hide, that is your choice. But Eva won’t be staying here.” He lowered his voice, as if the walls had ears. “At the very least, let me get you false documents that you can use if the Germans do come knocking.”
“Like the documents Camillo used? Documents like that?” Augusto retorted, pushing his chair back from the table in disgust. He didn’t rise, but he leveled a finger at Angelo.
“My brother pretended to be someone he was not. They caught him. And now my brother is gone.”
A week after Camillo Rosselli went to Austria to find Otto Adler, the Italian police had shown up at the Ostrica Glass Factory in Florence, asking questions. The Gestapo had contacted them. Camillo had been recognized in Vienna by someone who knew he was Jewish and knew he was not the person he was claiming to be. He was claiming to be Gino Sotelo, his non-Jewish partner at the glass factory. Camillo would have been far better off with his own papers—an Italian Jew was safer than a man with false papers.
Gino Sotelo had pled ignorance and innocence, and they’d believed him, only because Camillo Rosselli had claimed he’d stolen the pass, unbeknownst to his old partner. It was a lie—Gino had known everything—but it saved Gino from charges, and it saved Camillo from having to tell authorities it was a fake pass, protecting the forging operation that was ongoing at Ostrica.
It didn’t save Gino from having to tell Eva that her father had been arrested. He had arrived at the villa, his hat in his hands, his face gray, and told Eva that her father was not going to be coming home any time soon. The only information police could give Gino Sotelo was that Camillo Rosselli had been sent, along with other Jewish detainees, to a labor camp called Auschwitz.
“Three years.” Augusto held up three fingers, underlining his words. “And we’ve had no word. I won’t do it. I won’t do anything to endanger my family. No fake papers.” He slapped the dinner table, and little Emilia stuck out her lip at the sound, as if she’d been slapped too.
“That’s your choice,” Angelo repeated. “But Eva isn’t staying here.”
Eva bit back her irritation. She didn’t like being discussed as if she weren’t there to speak for herself. But she remained silent. Uncle Augusto had always been too quick to choose optimism. Optimism could get you killed.