She recognized the dream immediately. It was the dream she’d had a hundred times before. But confusion welled up inside her chest. Was she dreaming? The press of bodies in the darkness felt real. She remembered being loaded into the car, a German with a submachine gun pushing at her back. This wasn’t a dream. But she’d been here before.
They didn’t veer northeast toward the Brenner Pass, with Austria lying on the other side, but instead hugged the west coast and approached France. They spent a week at a transit camp called Borgo San Dalmazzo in the Piedmont region of Italy, twenty miles from the French border, where they were fed—thin soup and hard bread—and given enough water to wash and quench their thirst. The knowledge that they’d been heading west instead of east was a great relief, though they would be heading due north from that point on, if the reports were true.
“Bergen-Belsen. We’re going to Bergen-Belsen!” a woman cried, a thankful smile on her lips. She even closed her eyes and raised her hands to heaven, offering a prayer of gratitude at the development. They weren’t going to Auschwitz, and many of the woman felt that was cause for celebration.
It was strange how rumors started, trickling down from one mouth to another, crossing great distances to comfort or console, taunt or terrify. Bergen-Belsen wasn’t as bad as Auschwitz. Survival was possible. Families could even live together. Sometimes the prisoners were given a little milk and cheese to eat. That’s what the rumors were; those were the tales some of the women had heard. But Bergen-Belsen was in Germany. Northern Germany, someone else said fearfully, as if Poland were preferable to Germany. Germany meant Hitler.
“They sent the Libyan Jews that were hiding in Italy to Bergen-Belsen last fall,” someone else offered. “Everyone else in Italy has gone to Auschwitz. We are so lucky.”
So lucky. They might die more slowly, suffer longer. She just wanted it to be done. Bergen-Belsen sounded like death by a slow drip, Auschwitz was the six a.m. Rapido to the great beyond. She thought she might prefer that. Eva was distantly alarmed by her readiness to die. But only distantly.
When Angelo woke again, Mario Sonnino sat by his bed reading, the lamp casting odd shadows around the humble space. He’d given Angelo something. Morphine, he guessed. Angelo had been in and out of consciousness, waking only to beg for news of Eva and then falling back into oblivion before he could get any answers. But he knew she was gone. Mario said no one knew for sure, but Monsignor O’Flaherty said a train filled with Jewish women and children had left Tiburtina Station on Saturday.
He wished for oblivion again, but knew those hours were behind him. He was wide awake, and Mario helped him sit up so he could swing his legs—his prosthetic had been removed—over the side and use the chamber pot. Hopping down the hallway was out of the question, and he was too sore for crutches. He finished and managed to eat some cold polenta and brown bread and drink a glass of water before easing himself back down on the pillow. Mario hovered for a moment, clearly wanting to be of assistance.
“I set your finger and bound your ribs. They’re cracked but not broken. You’re black and blue, but the swelling’s gone down. I put your nose back where it belongs. How are your eyes? I worried a little about your sight in the right one.”
“I can see,” Angelo said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Yes. You will. The ribs will take the longest. But no long-term damage done. Your fingernails might not grow back.”
“I’m not worried about my fingernails,” Angelo said, his eyes bleak.
“No,” Mario murmured. “I don’t suppose you are.” He sat down heavily in his chair.
“I have to find her, Mario.”
Mario swallowed, his throat working against the heavy emotion in the room. “How?” he whispered.
“I don’t know.” Angelo’s voice broke, and he put his hands over his face the way he did when he prayed, but there was no solace in his hands. No solace in prayer. Not anymore. “The Americans are coming. We just needed to hold on a little longer. I just needed to keep her safe a little longer. I’ve been such a fool. I should have married her in 1939. I could have taken her away, back to America, like her father suggested.”
“We all had opportunities to escape. We all had those inner voices that said, ‘Flee. Leave.’ Those things have haunted me too, Angelo,” Mario said, rubbing hard at the back of his neck, fighting the old regrets, the guilt that had kept him up many nights.
“Eva told me once that the roots of the Jewish people are in their traditions, in their children, and in their families. She asked me why the Catholic Church wants to take a man and deprive him of his posterity. She told me there would be no more Angelo Biancos. My roots would die with me.” Angelo was so overcome he could hardly speak, but he was desperate to get the words out.
“I am a man who was so impressed by the thought of immortality, of being a martyr or a saint, that I didn’t realize that by becoming a priest I was depriving myself of the very thing I sought. Our immortality comes through our children and their children. Through our roots and our branches. The family is immortality. And Hitler has destroyed not just branches and roots, but entire family trees, forests! All of them, gone. Eva was the only Rosselli left, the only Adler left.”
The terrible reality of his words silenced them momentarily, and they bowed their heads, shoulders hunched against the weight of such heavy truth, such staggering loss, and it took a concerted effort for Mario to respond.
“You have saved and preserved so many branches, Angelo,” he said in a choked whisper. “You saved my family, Eva saved my family, and we will never forget her. We will never forget you. I will tell my children, and they will tell their children. You might not have children who will carry your names, but you will have branches and roots who will honor your names.”
Mario wept, and Angelo reached out a hand, thanking him, even as his heart rejected his sentiments. It wasn’t enough. He didn’t want honor. He didn’t want to be a hero. He just wanted Eva, and she had been taken from him. The thing he had feared most had come to pass.
“She loved you,” Mario said. It was not a question, and Angelo wondered if everyone around them could see all along what he’d refused to admit.
“Yes. And I love her.” He refused to put it in past tense. He would never stop loving her.
“Did she know, Angelo? Did she know you loved her?” Mario asked gently.
“Yes.” Angelo wiped at his face, at the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. She’d known. He’d been able to tell her, to show her. It was the one thing he was grateful for, and in his heart he acknowledged the blessing he’d been given.
Mario stood and walked to the small chest of drawers in the corner. There was a pile of books placed neatly on top. Angelo recognized them immediately. Eva’s journals.
“These are hers. There are several of them. They all look the same, but you can see that she’s dated them over the years. You should have them.” He set them on the bed, near Angelo, and quietly left the room.
There were four books, all identical. The only differences were in the slight wear on the covers, the dates at the top of each page, and the handwriting that slowly changed and matured, just like the girl herself. But the last book was only half filled, and Angelo found he couldn’t look at the empty pages. The empty pages hurt worse than seeing the crowded lines filled with Eva’s thoughts, because in the words, she lived. The emptiness mocked him with what could have been, what should have been. He flipped to the last entry and read it just to escape the unfinished chapters.
22 March, 1944
Confession: Kissing Angelo is a mitzvah.
My Jewish grandmother would roll in her grave if I said it out loud. Uncle Augusto would accuse me of sacrilege. But it’s true. In him I have found a slice of the divine, a morsel of peace, and when his lips are on mine, his hands on my skin, there is reason to believe that life is more than pain, more than fear, more than sorrow. I am hopeful for the first time in years. And strangely enough, I find myself convinced that God loves his children—all his children—that he loves me, and that he provides moments of light and transcendence amid the constant trial.
Angelo closed the book and wept.
CHAPTER 22
NOWHERE
When they were loaded aboard the train again, a week after arriving at Borgo San Dalmazzo, the numbers had grown to include men, women, and children from other places, who had all been brought to the transit camp. There were twenty cars, with about one hundred Jews loaded aboard each car. Many of the people were there with members of their families, and they clamored to stay together. Eva was alone, so she just let herself be pushed and pinched, as people far more desperate than she clung to each other and fought for better positions. She found a corner and slid down against the wall like she’d done on the first leg of the trip, letting herself drift up and away to numb blindness. It was too dark to try and see anyway.
She curled into herself, fighting to stay asleep, to stay oblivious, and she caught a whiff of tobacco, a wisp of smoke, and she raised her head, wanting to breathe it in.
He was there next to her, looking exactly as he had the last time she saw him. His pipe glowed in the darkness, and his long legs were stretched out in front of him, like he had all the room in the world. In his hand he had a glass of wine. The wine was dark and it glimmered like an enormous gemstone cradled in the palm of his hand. She was so thirsty.
“Babbo?” Eva asked, her voice high and childlike in her head.
“Batsheva,” her father said, smiling and swirling his wine. But the smile faded quickly. “Eva, why are you sleeping?” he chided.
“What else can I do?”
“You can fight. You can live.”
“I don’t want to fight, Babbo. I want to be with you. I want to be with you and Uncle Felix and Uncle Augusto. I want to be with Claudia and Levi.”
“You want to be with Angelo,” he finished gently. “Most of all, you want to be with Angelo.”