“What are you doing here?” she asked Father Müller.
“Let us in.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I know, but... Please, let us in and we’ll explain.”
The woman seemed to hesitate, then took off the chain that served as a bolt and let them pass.
They followed her down a dark corridor that led onto a salon crammed with furniture. An upright lamp scarcely lit the room and it took Amelia some time to make out the woman’s face. She must have been around fifty years old. She was dark and of medium height, with her hair drawn back into a bun. She was dressed in a black skirt and a gray sweater and wore no jewelry.
“You have put me in danger by coming here,” she said accusingly to the priest.
“I am sorry, but I have to find Marchetti and I didn’t know how.”
“And you want me to tell you how to find him?” she said ironically.
“If you won’t tell us how to, then you could at least get in touch with him and tell him that we need to see him urgently.”
“Right, you’ve given me your message, now leave.”
“We need him to help us to...”
The woman raised her hand so that Father Müller would stop talking.
“I don’t want to know. The less we know about each other and our operations, the less danger we are in. You have already broken the rules by coming here. You didn’t know if this house were still safe or if it had been discovered by the SS. You have run unnecessary risks.”
“I had no other option.”
“In any case, don’t come back here. I will try to get him your message, but I won’t tell you how or when I will, or if he will reply. So if you don’t hear anything don’t get impatient, and above all don’t come back, do you understand me?”
“Yes, of course.”
They hurried out of the house and didn’t speak to each other until they were in the street.
“She didn’t even look at me,” Amelia said.
“She prefers not to see or hear what she has not been told to see or hear. It is not easy to live in hiding, Amelia.”
“Tell me, Rudolf, how many people are there in your organization?”
“My organization? I wish I had an organization! You have misunderstood me. I came to Rome on the recommendation of my bishop to work in the Foreign Office. The fact that I speak German and English and French and a little Polish and Russian helped me to get a low-ranking job. I am a secretary, an office worker. I have no responsibilities. There are no secrets that pass through my hands, no important documents. Shortly after I arrived they sent me to San Clemente to hear confessions two days a week. Two priests take charge of this, sometimes I finish early, sometimes he does. One day I was taking confession until after eight o’clock, and when I had finished and went to the sacristy I found a man hiding there, along with a woman and two small children. The man told me that he was Dr. Ferratti, a surgeon, and he told me that he had kept the woman and the children in his house. Her husband had long since been deported to Germany.
“He said that there had been a raid on their district that afternoon and asked for my help. And I helped them. I didn’t know where I could hide them, so I thought I’d open the door that led to the cellars. They’re from the first century and in a pretty poor state, but what could I do? The parish priest at San Clemente had told me that I shouldn’t even think of going into the catacombs, because who knew what I might find. Apparently, this used to be a temple dedicated to the Persian God Mithras. And it wasn’t until the last century that an Irish priest, Father Mullooly, discovered that there was another church under this one and started to excavate it. I took the woman and the two children there. They were trembling from fear and cold. We heard the sound of water as we walked, because there is a spring in the catacombs. I set them up as best I could; luckily Dr. Ferratti had a bag with food and a couple of blankets in it, and I brought some candles.
“‘Stay here until I can find a way of getting you out of Rome and taking you to Lisbon, and we can try to get you from there to America. It won’t be easy, but we’ll manage it somehow,’ I said. The children started to cry and their mother didn’t know what to do to calm them down.
“Dr. Ferratti explained that he lived very close to San Clemente, on the corner of the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, and that he felt an obligation to help his fellow men. There were some Jews who were his neighbors; some of them had been arrested by the SS and sent to Germany; others were hidden in the houses of good Christians who were not willing to work with the Nazis.
“Ferratti and two other doctors had banded together to help and assist the Jews who were still hidden. They moved them from house to house so as not to compromise the people they were staying with, and had even managed to get a few of them away to Switzerland. As you can imagine, I immediately offered to help them however I could. Carla helped us whenever she was able to, hiding families in her house and getting some of them sent to Switzerland.”
“But it was so risky to drive them over the frontier!” Amelia exclaimed.
“She didn’t take them in her car, that would have been very dangerous. Carla’s relationship with the partisans meant that we could get some of them out over the mountains. Of course, only in spring and summer, because it would have been impossible in autumn. Even so, this was always the most dangerous option, because we were dealing with families, women, and young children. The truth is that most of the families we were helping are still in Rome: As I said, we have moved them from house to house and sometimes have even used the basements and forgotten underground shelters such as the ones under San Clemente. And we have used the catacombs, which have been sheltering Christians for twenty centuries.”
“The catacombs? They can’t be very safe, everyone knows where they are.”
“Don’t you believe it. I have a good friend in the Vatican, Domenico, a Jesuit who works in the archives; he’s an archaeologist and knows the underground areas of the city very well. Rome still has many secrets. I’ll introduce you, I’m sure that you’ll like him.”
“Can’t the Vatican do anything for Carla?”
“The relations between the Vatican and Germany are not what you might call good. You don’t know what the Pope has to deal with.”
“So your group is three doctors and two priests. That’s not a lot,” Amelia said, regretfully.
“You can’t imagine how active and brave some of the nuns are. Dr. Ferratti also has some friends who help us out now and then, but we can’t ask people to be heroes, because if the SS arrest them... I don’t need to tell you what will happen to them.”
“We have to save Carla,” Amelia insisted again.
Vittorio was worried about Amelia. She had been out all afternoon, and when she got home, accompanied by Father Müller, it was already dinnertime.
“Tell me when you’re going to be late, I thought something might have happened to you.”
In fact, it was Amelia who grew more worried about Vittorio every day. Carla’s husband scarcely ate anything, he suffered from insomnia and never stopped running around the city, ringing the doorbells of influential people who in the past had been his friends, whom he begged to do something for Carla. But nobody wanted to commit himself, and people even started to avoid him. It was rumored that Carla Alessandrini was to be tried for high treason.
If it had not been for her worries about Carla, Amelia might have been happy in Rome. Max spent all his free time with her, and both of them felt as much in love as they had felt on their previous times together in Warsaw and Berlin.
The baron asked his superiors about Carla Alessandrini, and they told him to forget about the diva, as she was now in the hands of the SS. Even so, he managed to discover that she was still alive.
One night when Rome’s military governor held a reception for all the members of German High Command, the diplomatic corps and everyone who was anyone in occupied Rome, Max insisted that Amelia accompany him. She was unsure, sh
e felt disgusted by the idea of shaking the hands of those men who sowed misery, death, and destruction in their wake, but she thought that maybe she would get the chance to hear something about Carla.
That December night was cold and rainy. On her way to the party, Amelia thought that it would soon be Christmas and that she had promised her family to be back in Spain for the festivities, but she knew now that she would be unable to keep her word, not until she had done something for Carla.
She was happy to see Major Hans Henke, Max’s adjutant.
“Colonel, I don’t think it was a good idea to bring Fräulein Garayoa here,” Henke said as soon as he saw her.
“Well, I think it was a great idea,” said Max, happy to have Amelia by his side.
“Look who’s over there,” Hans Henke said, pointing discreetly to a group of SS officers at the back of the room.
Even though they had their backs to her, Amelia could recognize Ulrich Jürgens at once, and felt a wave of disgust wash over her. She reddened.
“I’m sorry, Amelia, I didn’t think we’d run into him, if I had then I wouldn’t have come. They told me that Jürgens was in Milan.”
“He came back this evening,” Major Henke said.
“We should leave discreetly. Hans is right, it would be a risk if Jürgens were to see you.”
They were just leaving the room when Colonel Ulrich Jürgens headed toward them. A moment before, another SS officer had alerted him to the presence of Max von Schumann and Amelia Garayoa.
Jürgens cut them off, holding a glass of champagne in either hand.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my old friend Amelia Garayoa! Surely you wouldn’t leave without raising a toast to our happy meeting?” he said, holding out a glass to Amelia and ignoring von Schumann.
“Get out of the way, Jürgens,” Max said, taking hold of Amelia’s arm.
“But my dear baron, you’ve only just arrived at the party! A gentleman like you, surely you’re not going to disappoint the hosts by leaving before dinner is served?”
“Leave us alone, Jürgens,” Max insisted.
Suddenly he realized that they were surrounded by a group of SS officers.
“Baron, aren’t you going to introduce us to this beautiful lady?” one of the soldiers asked with an ironic smile.
“You can’t keep her all to yourself, allow us at least one dance,” another one said.
“We’ve heard so much about Fräulein Garayoa, isn’t she an old friend of Colonel Jürgens’s?” a third said.
Amelia felt her body becoming rigid and her voice freezing in her throat. She had not thought that fate would place her once again face to face with a man who had personally tortured her. She could still hear in her ears Colonel Jürgens’s shouts of laughter as she twisted with pain and shame when he ripped her clothes off to examine her naked body before torturing her.
Max pushed one of the officers out of his way and pulled Amelia toward the exit, but luck was not on his side that evening, because at that very moment the commander of his division came over to the group with two other generals and asked Max to come and talk to them for a moment.
“We won’t be a moment, we just need to discuss one point, Colonel. Let’s leave these gentlemen to look after the lady.”
“I am sorry, general, but we were just leaving, the lady doesn’t feel very well,” Max replied.
“Come on, it will only be a moment! Colonel, look after this young lady while we talk to Baron von Schumann.”
Amelia was face to face with her torturer, and when Jürgens held his hand out to her, she pulled back brusquely.
“Don’t you dare touch me!”
“But my dear, I did rather more than touch you in the past! Where does this sudden prudishness come from?”
His SS companions laughed at Jürgens’s riposte and at a signal from him they withdrew, leaving him alone with Amelia.
“You shouldn’t be so fierce with me, you know that hell hath no fury like a gentleman scorned,” he said, sarcastically.
“What do you want, Jürgens?”
“Oh, you know what I want! Do you want me to say out loud that I want what Baron von Schumann has? Why aren’t you as kind to me as you are to him? I assure you that I will be far more generous to you than Baron von Schumann is. He’s only offering you love, but I can offer you the whole world, I can offer you the chance to share the glory of the Reich.”
“If you only knew how much you disgust me!”
“Your resistance only makes you all the more attractive.”
“Never, Jürgens! You will never have me, even if you torture me again!”
“If you had been more reasonable, then I could have overlooked your little peccadillo: helping those poor wretches. I’ll never understand why you joined up with those pigheaded Poles just to save a few Jews!”
“No, of course you’ll never understand it; it’s beyond your capacity to understand it.”
“You know what? I don’t know why, but I feel attracted to you... I never usually like women who are so thin. Your friend Carla Alessandrini is far more attractive, at least she has curves like a real woman, and you look so fragile...”
“You are disgusting! What have you done to Carla?”
“Ah, well! Your friend is a traitor! You should be careful not to deal with traitors, you know what happens when Reich justice catches up with them.”
Colonel Ulrich Jürgens gave her a hard look. Then he grabbed her hand and squeezed it so hard that he hurt her.
“If you resist me, you know what the consequences will be. Why not try to avoid problems? You know I will not be as kind as I was in Warsaw.”
Amelia could not constrain herself, and kicked him in the shin in an attempt to get away. But she didn’t manage. Jürgens grabbed her forcefully and twisted her arm.
“If you want to declare war on me, then so be it!” he said, his eyes filled with fury and a wicked smile on his lips.
She broke free, finally, and ran off looking for Max.
“What happened?” the baron asked.
Amelia told him what had happened, and what Jürgens had threatened.
“He’s a scoundrel, a bastard!”
On the way back home, Amelia did not stop shaking. She was afraid of the threats that sadist had made.
“Calm down. It’s been decided, you’ll go back to Spain. I don’t want you to stay in Rome while Jürgens is here. I will find you a plane ticket for Madrid tomorrow. Try not to leave Vittorio’s house unless I come looking for you, it would be better if you didn’t even see Father Müller.”
“I don’t want to go; I can’t leave Vittorio.”
“Amelia, I will not allow you to stay in Rome, I have to leave in two days to survey our troops; I will be in the north and I cannot begin to think what Jürgens is capable of.”
But Amelia knew what Jürgens was capable of, even though she said nothing. She did not want to remember the months she had spent in Pawiak, even though they came back to her every night in her nightmares.
Vittorio agreed with Baron von Schumann and asked Amelia to go back to Spain.
“My dear, you can’t do anything here apart from be at my side. You have a family which is waiting for you, and it will be Christmas in a few days’ time.”
But there was no way of convincing her, and so Max von Schumann went to Milan, worried about what might happen in his absence.
9
Two days before Christmas, Father Müller turned up unexpectedly at Vittorio’s house and asked for Amelia.
“Marchetti has sent word that he’s prepared to see you,” he said in a low voice.
“When?” she asked nervously.
“On Christmas Eve, during the Midnight Mass, in San Clemente. He will try to get lost in the congregation. He’s in a lot of danger because they’ve put a price on his head.”
That night, Amelia didn’t sleep, thinking about what she was going to say to Mateo Marchetti, who had seemed such an inoffensive singing te
acher when she had first met him, but who had turned out to be one of the leaders of the Resistance.
December 24 dawned cold and foggy, just like her mood. She thought about her family, and imagined them making the Christmas Eve dinner. Perhaps Melita’s husband had brought a good basket of food, which would help the family’s difficult situation.
She decided to write them a letter: She had not finished it when the door opened and Vittorio came into the room, pale and trembling.
“What happened? What’s going on?” Amelia stood up and put her arms round Vittorio, who seemed about to fall.
“The radio... They’ve just said it on the radio...” The man began to cry, holding tight to Amelia.
“Vittorio, calm down! What have you heard on the radio?”
But he could not calm down, and his sobs turned into howls of grief.
“Tell me what’s happened! Please, tell me!” Amelia begged, scarcely able to keep Vittorio’s weakened body upright, as he still held tightly to her.
“They’ve killed her,” he managed to say.
Amelia wanted to scream, but nothing came out of her mouth but a broken moan. She felt the salt taste of her tears in the corner of the mouth, and held Vittorio tight with all the strength she could manage.
“They’ve killed her! They’ve killed her!” Vittorio cried out.
She managed to get him to a chair and call for a maid to bring her a glass of water. The whole house had discovered what had happened. Everybody had heard it on the radio. There was no doubt in the report: “This morning, at the woman’s prison, guilty of the crime of high treason, the bel canto diva Carla Alessandrini was hanged.”
The servants muttered nervously among themselves while Amelia tried to take control of the situation.