Chapter 15
Rome
Thursday January 27 1944
ISRAEL MADE HIS exhausted way towards the Ponte Mazzini in the center of Rome. Of all the bridges over the swift-flowing Tiber in the occupied city, this was probably the safest. Anyway, he felt too cold to stand still and take note of his surroundings, and too cold to worry. The January air of the early afternoon was well below freezing, with the wind blowing strongly down the river.
For much of the journey to Rome, soldiers of the German occupying force had driven him in a closed truck. How ironic that they, the supposed master race, had been able to tell that he was Italian, and so offer him a lift as a refugee, yet had not detected that he was also Jewish. His people had always been ready to adapt. Brought to Rome two thousand years ago as slaves by the Caesars -- one hundred thousand Jewish slaves had helped construct buildings like the Colosseum -- his ancestors had quickly learned to blend into the background. It was a trick that always served them well through many periods of persecution. In other parts of Europe the Jews dressed distinctively; but to a German, a Jewish Italian with his trousers on looked just like any other Italian.
The strange metal head lay in a torn khaki bag, given by the soldiers who had joked with him in the truck about the mysterious bundle. They had even shared some of their rations. What had they called him? Israel shook his head. The scarecrow, die Vogelscheue.
He had picked up some exciting news. The Allies had landed at the coast. The German soldiers said they expected the British and Americans to be in Rome at any time. Unseasoned troops like his helpers in the truck were being rushed to defend the Holy City. Their sergeant who spoke Italian had scoffed at the idea, calling this a typical panic response by his chiefs. He predicted a considerable delay while the Allies dug in as they tried to strengthen their positions at Anzio.
Unnoticed by both the Italians and the Germans, Israel made his way along the river to the Via della Conciliazione, the wide street leading to the vast Piazza Santo Pietro. The wind made his eyes water, but in front of him stood the hallmark of his son's faith: the massive Basilica of Saint Peter.
On the skyline, over the red and amber roof tiles of the city, the insipid blue of the winter sky gave way to a horizon of stark white clouds: a reminder again of the Promised Land he would never reach with his family. Israel felt a desperate desire to escape from this evil world, to be at rest. But his household was already there, getting ready to greet him when his time came.
The German sentries hardly gave a second glance. And why should they? Italians were always coming and going across the white line on the ground that separated the Vatican from the ancient city of Rome. An old woman in black returning from confession said something to him softly, but Israel ignored her. His thoughts were on the intimate ordeal ahead.
It felt strange to be entering the portals of the very faith that had caused him so much pain. Strange too, as a Jew, to be entering a place or worship with his head uncovered. It was many years since he had entered a Christian church. How could he look at the statues that lined the walls? To him, these aids to Christian faith were anathema.
No one came to challenge his presence. Perhaps Christians could wander freely within this vast shrine of shadows, stopping for prayer or meditation whenever they felt the need. A young man wearing the long black cassock of a priest approached briskly, sandals slapping on the marble floor.
Feeling guilty with his bare head, he nodded in the priest's direction. "I am looking for a young seminarian. His name is ... Levi. Angelo Levi." The words were difficult to form. The name of Angelo had long been banished from his lips. "Do you know where I can find him? It is most urgent."
The priest nodded in silence, raising a finger and beckoning. A large white marble statue towered high in a side chapel. The crucified Christ, dead, cradled on his mother's lap. The look on the mother's face reflected Israel's anguish. This was the Pietà, which even a Jew could recognize as the famous Michelangelo statue. Israel shook his head. Death, terrible death, followed man every step of his life.
The priest turned, breaking into Israel's gloom. "You are not, I think, of our faith, old man. If you are seeking protection you must not stay here. Come with me to my humble quarters. My friends can arrange safety for you and your family."
"My family is already safe from this world." Israel felt his voice become an involuntary whisper. "Please, I have urgent business with young Levi."
The priest placed a hand on his shoulder. "He is here at prayer, signore. You must not disturb him."
A young man sat in the shadow, dressed in a suit of clerical black. Israel ignored the priest and hurried to the dark, narrow bench. "Angelo," he whispered urgently.
THE PRIEST FOUND a discreet position from which to watch. The two men sat beneath a massive Bernini marble monument that reached up into the dark haze of smoke from the few candles the pious could still afford. They flung their arms around each other, embracing with tears in their eyes.
"Father, my papa, forgive me."
"My son, my blessed son, it is both God and I who forgive you. Perhaps you will also forgive me, for turning my back on you -- for the things I thought and said."
The priest moved away. He had duties to attend to. To watch for longer would be to intrude. An hour later he passed by again. The two men were now in deep conversation.
ISRAEL FELT AT peace. He had delivered the relic in the khaki bag. Wearily he stood to leave.
"Papa, stay here. There's nowhere for you to go." Angelo reached up, his voice shaking with emotion. "You won't be safe on the city streets. You're a Jew."
"And how will they know? I have the right papers. Your priests are very good at organizing passes for Jews. My papers will stand the closest scrutiny. The Germans will not recognize me as a son of Abraham."
Angelo shook his head. "Papa, you once knew the city well, but the streets are more dangerous now. It is not the Germans you have to fear. Our own fascist gangs are skilled at recognizing Jews. Why, even the Jews have turned against each other. Informers are everywhere, watching from every doorway and window."
Israel's tears had made his nose run. He sniffed. "Nonsense."
Angelo shifted uneasily on the hard seat. "That Jewish prostitute girl, Di Porto, they call her the Black Panther. She's betrayed so many. And the Koch Fascists are growing more powerful and dangerous. There are Christian priests you cannot trust any more. Be careful; be very careful, when you go onto the streets. And remember the curfew. It's all so different now, Papa. Please, let me fix it for you to stay here in the Vatican. We are the only two left in our family, and we need each other."
Israel hesitated, feeling for the Leica and the small leather box concealed under his jacket. The parchment from the box was in the sack with the head. They belonged together. "I shall be back, Angelo. There are things I have to sell. I cannot allow you to provide for me; I have been too full of hatred. And if I do not return, make sure you guard that sacred treasure. The monks told me it represents the face of your Jesus, who you call the Christ."
The sack lay half open on Angelo's lap. Israel realized his son had only glanced at the contents. It was natural. Even a holy relic must take second place to this long overdue reunion. He smiled wryly at the sight of Angelo sitting within the safety of this house of God, then he slipped out into the streets of the Rome that had been his home before the Germans came.
His first visit to a jeweler friend was unsuccessful. The abandoned property showed signs of recent looting. He must find Ben-ami Rossetti and his family, including his attractive daughter, who lived in an apartment in a twisting vicolo near here ... unless the Nazis had arrested them for transportation to Germany.
The apartment was empty, the Rossetti family gone, their rooms stripped of every piece of furniture. So many families had disappeared last October.
Israel knew that the curfew had been brought forward by one hour. Anti-Nazi partisans were bombing and assassinating German soldiers in the ver
y heart of the city. Bicycles were banned. It was too easy for these enemies of the Nazis to slip in and out of military areas with small bombs, leaving death and devastation in their wake.
Any person found on the streets after five o'clock would be arrested instantly. Israel shrugged. It was probably all so much bluff, and no one would pay attention. He felt the chill strike through his thin clothing. Things seemed different today. The work places and shops were deserted, the citizens hurrying to the safety of their homes before coprifuoco, curfew.
Two hours after leaving the safety of Saint Peter's, at five-fifteen, Israel was horrified to find the streets completely empty. Outlined against the damp cobbles he felt exposed. He stood anxiously on the corner of the Via di Monserrato and the Piazza Farnese.
A German soldier noticed him on the corner of the deserted piazza. As Israel was knocked to the ground and kicked, the Leica camera bearing the insignia of the Third Reich fell from his jacket.
With the gun pressing into his back, he rose painfully and stumbled ahead of the soldier to be pushed into the back of a truck and taken through the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano and into the narrow Via Tasso. The darkness amplified his fear. Here was the most terrifying address in the whole of Rome, a modern square block building -- Number 145, the Gestapo barracks and prison, filled with unlit cells where torture and death were rumored to be as routine as eating and sleeping.
STURMBANNFÜHRER Kessel insisted on interviewing the trembling Jew. The Leica, stolen at the monastery, was easy to identify -- and so was the small leather box.
"We must all hope the camera is undamaged." The Sturmbannführer signaled to one of the guards. "Take this to Untersturmführer Bayer. Tell him to check it for a film -- and process what he finds. Now!"
As the guard sprang forward, Kessel turned his attention to the figure crouching naked on the bare marble floor. "You will tell me, old man, exactly what you have done with the holy relic." He kicked at the frail ribs. "And tell me where the document has gone from the leather box -- pig!"
It might be a childish pleasure, but he enjoyed watching the Jew writhe.
WITHIN AN HOUR, Israel became too weak to cry for mercy. Degraded and broken, he had watched others go through this, and no one survived. No one was meant to survive.
Sobbing with the agony of torture, he thanked God that the Christian relic was safe with his son in Saint Peter's. Safe with Angelo, the son who had deserted the faith, but seemed to worship a God of love. And if there was any love at all in God, and many of his fellow Jews wanted to know if God was sleeping, then perhaps the Christians who risked their lives to shelter Jews were somehow in touch with him.
Whatever the pain, whatever the degradation, he would stay silent. Fear of death would not make him tell the animal Kessel where he had taken that holy relic from the monastery at Monte Sisto.
Tied naked to an iron bar on the wall, the cold and the pain at last became too great. The Vatican, yes, he would admit that the Vatican now had the relic. But the name of Angelo, the son with whom he had finally been reunited, was too precious to pass between the gaps in his teeth and his bleeding lips.
MANFRED KESSEL knew he had extracted all he could expect from such a feeble sample of the Jewish race. So, the obstinate fool either did not know who he had given it to, or he would not tell. Not that it mattered. The Vatican feared the German powers and would be only too relieved to return the item -- once he had applied enough pressure. Applying pressure on the Vatican would not be easy, but it could be done. He went to his rooms in the adjoining SS SD headquarters and left the old man to die.
At five-thirty the next morning the guard looked into the cell, cut free the ice-cold body, and began to hose the blood and excrement from the floor.
Kessel had too many worries on his mind to supervise the disposal of the corpse. He gave instructions for it to be taken, with two others, to the Regina Coeli. Everything seemed to be going wrong. Those left-wing Gapists were causing too much trouble in the streets with their terrorist tactics. The Communists had always been trouble, and Mussolini had let his people down by tolerating such violation of freedom in the years leading up to the war. On top of that, the dolt Bayer claimed that his camera had run out because the film was shorter than the standard length. The idiot accused the suppliers at Köln of cutting short lengths from the large rolls they received from Dresden. Could it be true? Probably not. The Untersturmführer seemed unhappy when ordered to send his film to headquarters for examination.
The coveted prize was slipping away fast. The old Jew had taken it to someone in Saint Peter's. If he had just one clear photograph of the relic it would be much easier to confront the Vatican officials and claim it back. The single sheet of Latin parchment had gone from the small leather box. He tried to recall the translation the monk had read out to him at the monastery. The document was clearly several hundred years old. It told of a sacred head from a statue of Christ seen by the writer Eusebius, sent as a gift to a monastery by Donato Bramante. And that untermenschlich Jew had stolen the head and the document.
He walked back to his quarters at number 155 in the Via Tasso in the early evening, full of regret that he had let the old man die so easily. Who was this Eusebius? Probably an ancient historian. Surely the great libraries in Rome would have information on so important a relic. Wearily he climbed the white marble staircase and went towards his rooms.
He turned at the sound of female footsteps. The woman coming down the stairs from the next floor with her small son had been fascinating him for some weeks. A cleaner in the Via Tasso headquarters, the attractive brunette seemed curiously out of place in these squalid surroundings, where nearly every room had been turned into a hastily converted cell. Kessel smiled. She should be serving aristocratic customers in Berlin, in a Ku'damm department store, not cleaning this hellhole in Rome. Her supple body in the cheap black dress aroused him every time she passed. With his parents dead, and with no brothers or sisters, the family line would die out unless he found a wife soon. Not this woman, of course. She was Italian, and probably no better than a tramp. He called her from the doorway of his room.
"Frau Renata!"
The woman paused before obeying the beckoning finger of authority. "Signora Renata," she corrected politely but firmly.
In his mind Kessel undressed the woman and liked what he saw. "Signora Renata," he said with a smile, "we need to talk."
RENATA BASTIANI felt the grip of fear. Was this merely a sexual advance, or had she been found out at last? Seeing her husband clubbed to death by soldiers at the railway station had been ordeal enough, but now she was terrified of losing her son. Yet she was a fighter, or she would not have sought work -- the only work available that enabled her to care for her son -- right here in the lions' den.
"The boy," said the officer in a composed voice. "I want you to take down his trousers."
"Keep away from him!" Renata was amazed that in her fear she could shout so loudly. This man was a pervert. "You bring me in here to abuse a four-year-old?" Such behavior was beyond her understanding.
She watched the German officer shake his blond head. "Signora, please calm yourself. You know, and I know, that you have a secret. Surely you do not deny that the boy is Jewish?"
No more than a gasp passed Renata's lips.
"And you perhaps are Jewish, too? Ah yes, it is as I thought. Well now, Signora Renata, I am left with no alternative but to turn you and your son over to the Regina Coeli authorities."
"Oh, God, no!" Renata knew the Regina Coeli, the notorious Roman prison where the Nazis kept Jews and other unwanted citizens before shipping them by cattle truck to northern Europe. Some said they were being used to fuel the Führer's furnaces. Regina Coeli, the Queen of Heaven. What in the name of God had the world come to?
The arrogant Nazi smiled. "Of course, signora, such a move may not be necessary. But if it is, be sure you will first tell us the names and addresses of anyone in your family we may have missed."
&n
bsp; Renata knew what to expect now. She could not hide her Jewishness. This German devil definitely did not have his eye on her son.
A smartly dressed soldier came hurrying up the stairs, his boots echoing loudly on the marble. It was no use appealing to him, a mere private, even if he were simpatico. The man held some photographs. "Untersturmführer Bayer sends these, sir. The monastery you visited today."
The officer snatched at them. "Ah yes, the stupid monastery at Monte Sisto. I'm busy for the next hour. Put the photographs on my desk, then find me the relic, soldier -- and that's an order!"
But as the soldier bent down to pick up the prints thrown angrily to the floor, the officer's mood suddenly changed again. He smiled reassuringly at Renata. "Come, signora, I have my quarters here. You will have to be good, very good indeed -- if you want to save your boy."
The room seemed to be a study, with a door at the far end leading to a smaller room with a steel bed. A long ornamental dagger rested temptingly below a row of books on the desk. The officer turned his back.
Renata moved forward to snatch the knife and end her torment. She knew how to kill a man. The Gapist freedom fighters had taught her how to deal with the Nazi invaders. A sharp knife like this could cause a quick death -- or, with skill, a slow one. She would be out of the building with little Bruno before the alarm was raised, and away into the safety of the city. The Sturmbannführer turned as she reached out her hand.
"Come!" he said, his eyes bright with lust.
For nearly an hour, Renata feigned so much pleasure that the officer told her, breathlessly, he was surprised he could get so much enjoyment from a Jew. From the study, through the gap in the partially open door, Renata caught a glimpse of four-year-old Bruno watching with uncomprehending terror.
While the German dressed, he explained he had a most important letter to write, but for the sake of her son, she must be sure to be available the next evening.
"Come straight here after your other work. You have two duties to attend to now. One to these buildings of the Third Reich, and one to this Sturmbannführer of the Third Reich!"
The man began to straighten his jacket in front of the full-length mirror. Renata watched through her tears as the German threw back his head and laughed. "Tomorrow, signora."
She turned away, nausea sweeping through her body. One day she would end this man's evil existence. And she would do it with a knife.