Isaaco Sonnino, a healthy seven-pound baby boy, was born on October 15, 1943. He was delivered by his father but was passed quickly to Eva, who washed him, diapered him, and bundled him in the thin white blanket Giulia had set out in preparation. Eva had never held a baby before, never diapered one either, but she managed with the help of Isabella Donati, an old woman from across the hall who had been a business owner before her shop was closed by the Racial Laws. Her husband was gone, her two sons lost in the Great War, and she claimed there was nothing left for her to do and little left to fear. She was as calm and comforting as a breeze in summertime, and Eva liked her immensely. She made a note to herself to convince the woman to come to the convent at Santa Cecilia. There was room, though Angelo had placed two families there in the last week. Eva would like her company, the nuns would like her soup, and Signora Donati would be safe.
Eva had come to the apartment late that afternoon with the precious passes in hand. All that needed to be added were the fake names, the signatures, and the fingerprints. But Giulia was already well into her labor, and Eva tucked the passes away and stayed, making herself as useful as possible, playing with the children, timing contractions, and eventually, in the early hours of the morning, watching a baby come into the world.
Signora Donati went home at midnight, but the curfew made it too dangerous for Eva to walk home, and so she stayed, putting the other children, who had slept in fits and spurts throughout the long night, back to bed. As the hour approached morning, Mario made his way out the front door, bleary-eyed but smiling, claiming he needed to be the first in line for rations with another mouth to feed. Lorenzo and Emilia, bedded down in the living room, were awakened once more, and they were irritable and hungry.
Eva warmed what was left of the soup and let them fill their bellies in hopes they would sleep again. When they finished, she brought out Mario’s violin and tuned the strings by ear, plucking and tightening until Emilia grew impatient and begged for a song.
“Can you play the bird song?” Little Emilia started to sing in lisping Yiddish, a song about being a free bird and a loyal little friend, something Eva herself had been taught as a child, and Eva felt her own fear abate.
“I don’t know that one very well. Sing it a few more times so I can learn it.”
The little girl kept singing, and before long Eva was moving the bow across the strings, matching Emilia’s sweet voice with the wail of the violin.
“Something else,” Emilia said suddenly, with the limited attention of the very young.
“Something happy,” Lorenzo grumbled, unable to resist the lure of distraction.
“But you need to sleep! We’ve been awake all night! And your mother is sleeping now. I will play something from America. How about that? But you must lie down and close your eyes,” Eva insisted.
The children climbed under their blankets on the makeshift bed and closed their eyes obediently.
Eva left the smallest lamp on and curled up on the sofa, determined to get the children to sleep before their father came home. He would need sleep too. It had been the longest night of her life, and Eva longed to close her own eyes and grab a few minutes of rest.
She notched her violin between her shoulder and her chin and channeled a little Duke Ellington, smiling as she thought of Angelo shaking his hips and his head, the first time he’d introduced her to jazz music. It had been during the week at the beach house, the time he’d kissed her for real. The one time he’d loved her. Then he’d donned a cassock and rejected her once and for all.
“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” Those were the only words she could sing, and only because Angelo had told her what they meant. He’d laughed when she’d tried to say them, her mouth tripping over the blunt words. But she wasn’t a singer, and the words weren’t important. The song was fun and fast, but she didn’t want fun and fast, and she changed the tempo, the melody curling from the strings, making the song unrecognizable, haunting even. Angelo said jazz was all about lament. She could hear it now. The dissonance of the song, stripped down and robbed of its tempo, made it sound like a song for Shabbat.
“That’s not happy.” Lorenzo yawned, but his eyes were closed. Emilia was asleep already.
“But it’s beautiful. And beauty is always joyful.”
“It doesn’t sound like American music,” he mumbled. Then he was quiet.
Eva played for a few more minutes, her eyes heavy, her limbs loose, and her head drooped as she slid the violin to her lap. Dawn would come soon, and when Mario returned, she would stumble home. But she would sleep until then.
She came awake and to her feet when screams pierced the night. Pounding feet and a series of gunshots rang out from somewhere outside. Eva scrambled for the window, pushing the curtain aside so she could squint down at the still-darkened streets to make out what was happening below. It was raining, and the darkness was inky and slick. Then she saw them. Germans. SS officers in their gunmetal-gray raincoats and bulbous black helmets, almost blending into the night. They lined the alley, and as she watched, one lifted his weapon and shot at the sky, sending the message that no one should try to get past them. Answering shots came from farther off.
The building came awake with a start, and as Eva watched, one family, then another, staggered into the dark streets, still in their bedclothes, holding children and clutching each other. They were herded immediately into the back of a waiting truck. The Sonninos’ apartment was four floors up, and it was only a matter of time before the Germans were pounding at the door.
Giulia called out from the bedroom beyond, and Eva raced from the window, stepping over the children who had miraculously remained asleep.
“It’s the SS, Giulia. It looks like they have surrounded the building, maybe the whole ghetto. I can’t be sure. But they’re loading people in the back of trucks.”
Giulia rose gingerly, tucking her newborn between two pillows and pulling a robe over her nightgown. She staggered and Eva reached for her, sliding her arm around her narrow back. She was too thin. And now she had a baby to nurse. But at the moment, that was the least of their worries.
“Mario. He isn’t back yet?” she whispered, looking past Eva toward the small sitting room.
“No. But that is good. If he isn’t here, they can’t arrest him.”
Giulia started to shake, and Eva knew with a sick surety that if the Gestapo arrested Giulia, she wouldn’t last a week. Nor would her children.
“We have to hide, Giulia,” she said firmly. “We have to hide somewhere. Think. Where can we hide?”
Giulia shook her head numbly, her eyes wide and unblinking. “There is no place. There is nowhere, Eva.”
Eva left Giulia and ran back to the window. People were filling the streets, soldiers were shouting instructions, and every so often another shot rang out. Eva hoped it was simply a shot into the sky like the first shot had been, warning shots, shots designed to incite fear, and not shots aimed at anyone in particular. If the shooting was to instill fear, it was working. Yet Giulia’s children slept on.
“We will hide here,” Eva said briskly. It wouldn’t work. It couldn’t. But it was something.
“Here?” Giulia squeaked.
“Help me!” Eva started shoving the rectangular table with the thick marble top, the table that had been too heavy for the previous tenants to attempt to take with them. If she could get it in front of the door and turn it on its side it would reinforce the door if the Germans tried to break it down. It was the only thing she could think of.
Giulia was suddenly next to her, pushing with all her meager strength, and they scratched and scraped their way across the wood floor, inching the table toward the door.
When they were two feet away, they tried to ease it over, but the weight was too great and it crashed to its side, as high as the knob and extending several feet on either side of the doorframe.
Eva gave it a final shove, snugging it up under the doorknob. She wondered suddenly if it had been used this way before.
“Is the door locked?” Giulia said feebly, her breath harsh from the exertion. There was blood on her nightgown and drops of it trailing across the bare floor. Eva didn’t know how much bleeding was customary after so recently giving birth, but she pretended she didn’t see it. There was no time for compassion.
“It’s locked. But I want you and the children to go into the bedroom and get in the closet. You have to keep the children quiet. No matter what. I will keep the table pressed against the door. Maybe they will think there is no one here, and they will leave. But we have to be absolutely quiet. If they come in, I will tell them I am the only one here.”
Eva didn’t wait for Giulia to respond but ran to the sleeping children, scooped up little Emilia, and raced to the narrow closet, tucking her into the corner, her small body propped against the back wall. She curled into it like it was her mother’s breast, and didn’t even let out a whimper. Giulia was rousing Lorenzo, helping him stagger into the bedroom, his eyes still closed. Eva trusted that Giulia could handle her children from there and shut the bedroom door behind them.
She could hear the clatter of boots on the stairs.
She ran to the front door and threw herself down, her back against the table, her legs extended to the opposite wall that made up the narrow entryway serving as a divider between the kitchen and the sitting room. She braced her feet and closed her eyes. She found herself reciting some of the words from the Amidah. “Oh, King, you are a helper, a savior, and a shield. You are mighty forever, you are powerful to save.” She couldn’t stand and take three steps back, as was customary, and she left words out, but if God cared about such things at a time like this, he wasn’t a god who would bother to save them. Her lips moved over the words, adding, “Deliver us!” as she repeated them.
The apartment door shook beneath the pounding of an upraised fist.
“Öffne die Tür!” a voice demanded in German, and Eva slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the shriek that tried to break loose. There was no sound from the bedroom beyond.