He answered with a deep breath, as if it required courage to speak.
“I walked around the perimeter of the college. I even found an unlocked door, just like you said. Being a priest, with Vatican City so close by, I was sure I could simply keep walking or come up with a plausible excuse if I was caught.” He paused, then added quietly, “I saw Levi.”
Eva’s heart leaped in her chest, hope giving her a fleeting smile. But Angelo’s grave face in the lamplight stole it from her lips, and her heart resumed beating with a despondent thud.
“He and several other boys had already discovered the unlocked door. They were standing near it, arguing among themselves. I beckoned to them, whispering that there was nothing to stop them. The back was completely unguarded. They would have been able to slip away, Eva.”
“But they wouldn’t leave,” she whispered knowingly, seeing her cousin in her mind’s eye, insisting that he couldn’t leave his family.
“They wouldn’t leave,” he confirmed. “One boy argued that if they left, others might be punished.”
“So they stood by an unlocked door, and refused to use it,” Eva moaned.
“Can you blame them? What would you have done, Eva?” he said softly. “I know I would not have been able to save myself if I couldn’t save you with me. They wanted to stay with their families.”
“They are all going to die,” Eva whispered.
“Maybe not,” Angelo protested, his voice just as soft.
“They will be sent to camps. You’ve heard the reports. You’ve heard, Angelo. You know. They are death camps.”
“Some still say those are rumors, British propaganda.” He didn’t want to take her hope from her.
“Angelo, you know!” Eva’s face crumpled and she covered her tears with shaking hands. “You heard what the soldiers said. They’ve seen the crematoriums. They’ve seen the mass graves.”
“We got some out, Eva,” he offered, needing to give her something, anything, to hold on to, needing to rid his mind of the images her words evoked.
“Some of the Jews had Italian names. Non-Jewish Italian names. We convinced them to line up with the non-Jews who were arrested by mistake. One of the prisoners spoke German, and he was keeping everyone calm, translating for the Germans, telling people what to do so there would be no reprisals.
“The Germans said if anyone lied they would be killed on the spot. But bravado won the day. The officers let all those insisting they were non-Jews go. I vouched for several of them, swore they were my parishioners.” Angelo stopped talking and Eva wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him to her, horrified by the risks he’d taken and moved by his courage.
“It was awful. They confiscated their belongings. The guards told them it was to provide for those who couldn’t work when they arrived at the labor camps. Those who were too sick, too old, or too young. But I saw the most valuable items being pocketed by the officers. And there was a woman giving birth, Eva. Right there on the concrete floor. They wouldn’t take her to a hospital! She gave birth to a healthy baby girl.” Angelo’s voice broke, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. He had wanted to give Eva hope, and he’d lost all of his. His arms moved around her, embracing her as she was already embracing him, and he buried his face in her hair.
“The more I see, the harder it is to believe in God. What kind of priest can I be if I don’t believe in God anymore?” he confessed, his voice thick. “Some days it hurts too much to believe.”
“It hurts more not to believe,” Eva whispered back, stroking his hair. “I’m starting to think God is the only reason any of us are still alive.”
His arms tightened desperately, and his voice was a harsh whisper against her neck.
“I have to get you out, Eva. I have to get you out of Rome. But I don’t know where to send you, all alone as you are. I don’t know where you’ll be safe, and I’m afraid if I can’t see for myself, every day, that you are alive and well, I will lose my mind.”
“There is nowhere that is safe, Angelo. I am as safe here as I am anywhere else. I left Florence but I won’t leave Rome, and I won’t leave you,” she added gently. Seeing his devastation made her want to be strong, if only for him. It made her long to be honest. When loss was a constant threat and a terrible likelihood, there was no time for pretense. She held him as he held her, neither of them speaking, finding a temporary peace and comfort in each other, if nothing else. She fell asleep with her head on his shoulder.
In the inky dark, always blackest before dawn, Angelo walked to his apartment, only a few blocks from his old parish and the Church of the Sacred Heart where he’d left Eva for the second time in twenty-four hours. When daylight came, she would be safe enough, with her false papers, to walk back to Santa Cecilia on her own. The nuns had not been visited in the daylong raid, making Angelo breathe a little easier. None of the convents, churches, or monasteries where he had refugees hidden had been included in the razzia by the SS. His people, Jews and Catholics alike, were safe for the time being. And after today, there would be so many more that needed to hide.
Angelo needed to sleep for a few hours, and then he would return to the Italian Military College and see what more could be done for the Jews being held there.
He let himself into the modest flat, leaving his cane and his hat by the door and unbuttoning his cassock, eager to be free of it, to wash himself and fall face-first into his bed.
He jerked in surprise when he heard his name being called from the sitting room. Monsignor Luciano was sitting in pajamas and a dressing gown next to an unnecessary fire, a closed Bible in his hands as if he were comforted by its heft but too tired to open the cover.
“Monsignor! Are you just waking up or have you been awake all night?”
“A little of both,” Monsignor Luciano said with a smile in his voice. “It was a terrible day. My sleep was troubled.”
Angelo didn’t want to sit, he needed to sleep, but he sensed his mentor had waited there for him, and he fell heavily into a chair opposite the monsignor and closed his eyes.
“Where have you been, Angelo?” The tone was kind, not accusatory, but still Angelo weighed his words.
“Eva’s uncle, aunt, and cousins were arrested today in the roundup. After I spent all day trying, I had to tell her I could not obtain their release,” he said. It was the truth, but the simplicity of the truth was in itself a lie. Words did not exist that could fully express the horror of the day, the desperation, and the gut-sickening realization that he was almost powerless to save anyone.
“I am worried for you, my young friend,” Monsignor Luciano admitted quietly.
“Why?” Angelo was worried too, but he doubted his concerns were the same as the monsignor’s.
“This is the girl who made you question your decision to become a priest. This is Eva.” Monsignor Luciano clearly hadn’t forgotten Angelo’s agonized confession or his counsel to Angelo after that terrible, wonderful trip in August of 1939.
“Yes, it is.” Angelo nodded, his eyes on his mentor.
“You love her.”
“Yes. I do. But love in itself isn’t sinful,” Angelo said simply, another truth that skirted a lie.
“True. But it is distracting. And you’ve promised your heart to another.”
“God’s heart is big enough for all of mankind, yet mine can’t be big enough for two?”
“Not when you’re a priest. You know this, Angelo.” The monsignor sighed. “You know the dangers.”
“I have loved her since I was a child. It isn’t something new, something I haven’t grown accustomed to. My heart is God’s.” Truth. Truth. Truth. And still, a lie.
“We are at war. War has a way of stripping us of perspective. War is about life and death, and it paints everything in shades of now or never. We do things we otherwise wouldn’t because never is so frightening and now, so comforting. ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die.’”
“You are quoting Isaiah. You must be worried.”