“Please don’t let my weakness be reason to withdraw from me. Please don’t let my love for Eva endanger her or remove her from thy grace,” he said without sound, his lips moving around the silent words.
That was what he feared most, that his own sin would cause a cessation of blessings, of divine intervention. And he could not risk it. There were too many people counting on him.
When he’d gone to see Monsignor Luciano before he was ordained, the monsignor had read him the account of David and Bathsheba in the Bible, and the name Bathsheba had not escaped him, essentially the same name as Eva’s. At the time, it had struck him how King David hadn’t averted his eyes as Bathsheba bathed. He hadn’t looked away from her beauty, shielded her from his gaze. He hadn’t stayed away, not after he’d discovered she was married. Not after he’d realized who she was married to—loyal Uriah, who had faithfully fought for his king and country. Not after he’d gotten her pregnant and created a mess. Not after he’d had Uriah put in death’s path. He’d persisted in his sins, making them worse every step of the way.
Was Angelo doing the same thing, persisting in his sins by being near Eva? Was he willfully looking at her beauty and not averting his eyes when he should? The problem was, he didn’t know how to stay away from Eva. He didn’t feel like it was a choice. She was not another man’s wife, another man’s responsibility. She was his responsibility. He’d made a vow to God, but he’d made a promise to Camillo. And Eva was his. She had been his from the moment they met.
“Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you.”
He recited David’s prayer like it was his own, and when he finally finished and rose to his knees, he raised his head, his eyes seeking the candle he’d lit and the cross above it. A candle and a cross, the only thing that separated him from being hopelessly lost.
But there were several candles now, and Eva sat nearby, her head bowed in her own prayer. He didn’t disturb her but watched as she prayed, her hands outstretched toward the candles she’d lit. When she raised her head and saw him watching her, she curled her fingers and stared down at her palms.
“What are you doing?” he asked softly.
“It’s Shabbat.”
He nodded. She was saying her prayers beneath a cross. If it didn’t bother her, it certainly didn’t bother him. She continued speaking, her eyes on her bent fingers.
“With our hands, we reach for things we shouldn’t have and we grasp what isn’t ours. The way I have always reached for you.” She raised her eyes then and looked at him steadily. The way I have always reached for you. Angelo’s pulse quickened immediately, but he didn’t look away. We reach for things we shouldn’t have and we grasp what isn’t ours.
Her eyes returned to her hands, and she traced one finger over the opposite palm as she spoke, as if she were anointing it the way the bishop had anointed Angelo’s hands at his ordination.
“With our fingers we touch the filth that is all around us. Our fingernails collect dirt, the lines in our palms become stained and soiled, yet when we raise our hands in prayer or supplication, we demonstrate that even that which is sullied by the world can commune with the spirit. That is why during Shabbat, when we hold our hands toward the candle, we curl our fingers away from the flame, allowing the light to be reflected in our fingernails. Even our fingernails, the part of us that is most unclean, can still reflect God’s light. At least, that’s how I understand it.” She smiled ruefully and let her hands drop to her lap, but her eyes stayed fixed on the candlelight.
Angelo raised his hands the way she had done, palms up, curling his fingers toward his chest, so he could see the light reflecting in his nails. He would never have the hands of a scholar, though he supposed he qualified as one. They were large and rough. They looked as if they belonged to a peasant, not a priest. They were his father’s hands, he realized suddenly, the memory rising from somewhere in his past. His papà was wrong. He could have been a blacksmith instead of a priest. He had the hands to prove it.
“Fire purifies,” he said softly, looking at the dirt on his palms. The floor in front of the cross obviously needed a good scrubbing.
Eva nodded. “When we wash our hands and say a blessing in the morning, we pour the water with our right hand over our left, which signifies kindness before might. When we wash we are also remembering the close of Shabbat and the flame or power that purifies.”
He shifted his raised palms so they were no longer tipped toward the candle but tipped toward her.
“I keep reaching for you too, Eva,” he confessed. “I keep trying to grasp what isn’t mine.” He dropped his hands and tried to rise, his bad leg making him awkward and clumsy and his exhaustion making it worse.
Eva rose with him.
“I have always been yours, Angelo,” she said, echoing the very words he’d thought while he prayed. She was his. “But you have never been mine.”
It was true. She had always come second. But now? Now, instead of coming second, he was simply being torn in two. The priest and the man warring with each other. The scripture about serving two masters flitted through his head.
“Angelo?”
“Yes?”
“Life is hard,” Eva whispered, so softly he strained to hear. Then she laughed without mirth, just a quiet huff of disbelief. “Life is hard. What an understatement! Hard is too mild a word for the trouble we’ve seen. Life is hell shot with just enough heaven to make the pains of hope all the sharper. Life is impossible. Ugly. Agonizing. Inexplicable. Torture.” She stopped and he waited, and when she spoke again, her voice was no longer a whisper. She still spoke softly, but there was steel in her words, and he heard her conviction.
“But there are some things that don’t have to be hard, Angelo. Loving me doesn’t have to be hard. Being with me doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to long for me and fight thoughts of me. You don’t have to beg God for forgiveness day after day and pray a dozen rosaries because you’re in love with me. It doesn’t have to be hard, Angelo. It can be the easiest thing in the world. It can be the only thing in our lives that isn’t difficult. If you stop being a priest, no one will die. No one will lose his soul. In fact, there is not a single person on this planet who will suffer at all. You can be mine. I can be yours. And it can be easy.”
Her words clanged through his head and his heart like the old parish priest of the Church of the Sacred Heart was ringing in Lauds, seven hours early. He shook his head in disbelief. No. It couldn’t possibly be easy.
“What about God?” he asked.
“God forgives.”
“What about my vows?”
“God forgives.”
“You are so sure about the nature of God?” Angelo’s voice was mild, even mocking, but his eyes were troubled, his brow furrowed.
“Angelo, there are only two things I know for sure. The first? I love you. I’ve always loved you. I love you now. I will love you in fifty years. I love you. Second: No one knows the nature of God. Not you, not me, not Monsignor Luciano, not my father, not Rabbi Cassuto. Not even Pope Pius XII. No one.”
Angelo’s lips twitched, and he began to laugh. He laughed soundlessly for several minutes, the pressures and the pain of the day giving the laughter a manic flavor. But still he laughed, and Eva, smiling slightly, waited for him to get control of himself. He did, eventually, sighing and wiping at his eyes.
“And what about the people who are depending on me right now, my beautiful prophetess? The Curia, the parishioners, the Jews I am hiding, the network we’ve created? Do I just take off my robes and run away with you?”
“You continue on. I continue on. Until it’s done. Until the war is over.”
“So you will pretend to be a Catholic, and I will pretend I am still a priest?”
“No. I will pretend I am not Jewish, and you will continue to pretend, at least in public, that you aren’t in love with me. Just as you’ve always done.” Eva smirked at him impishly.
“Ah, Batsheva,” he said tenderly, and leaned toward her and kissed her forehead, hardly trusting himself to do even that. “I don’t know whether you are wise or just devious.”
She stared up at him for a long time as if she were thinking it over. Angelo was too tired to put up any walls. Too raw. Too afraid of losing her to forces that were beyond his control. The world was raging all around them. And he couldn’t stop spinning.
“I am neither wise nor devious. I just don’t have the time or luxury for a moral dilemma. There is truth, and there is self-deception. I suppose we all have need of both. Good night, Angelo.” She turned and walked toward the little door to the left of the apse that led to the basement room.
He could only watch her go.
25 November, 1943
Confession: I am a spy.
Not all grape growers want to make their own wine. Many sell their grapes to wineries, and the wineries then produce the wine under their own label. My father made a fortune providing bottles to wineries—bottles they got to hand select. He had molds for bottles of all shapes and sizes, so the bottle was as unique as the wine. It was a great selling point, and Babbo always insisted that wine tasted better in Ostrica bottles. “The shape is important,” he would say. “Many do not know this. But trust me. Shape is everything.”
Each day that I go to work, I am reminded of my father’s glass molds at Ostrica. It’s been two weeks since I started working at Via Tasso, and I have been careful to mold myself into the perfect secretary, to do all that is required of me quietly and efficiently, so I don’t bring attention to myself. Angelo worried that like Ostrica’s bottles, I was hand selected for my shape and my beauty, but so far, it seems as if my German language skills are all Captain von Essen truly wanted. Angelo stops by the convent almost every night before going home to make sure I’ve survived the day.