They were lined up and counted, their hands linked behind their heads, and then they were loaded into trucks—just like the Jews on the morning of the October roundup—and taken south of the city to an old quarry not far from the storied catacombs that tourists came to see and Romans never thought about. There were no tourists in Rome these days. Just Germans, beleaguered Italians, and the Catholic Church. Just war, hunger, hopelessness, and death.
Angelo’s ribs had been kicked a time too many, and one eye was swollen shut. He hadn’t been able to see where they were taking them, riding in the back of the covered truck, but it hadn’t taken overly long for them to arrive. When all 336 men—six more than was required—were herded from the trucks and lined up once more, he’d recognized his surroundings. His spirits had plummeted. It was the perfect setting for a massacre.
The German guard kept them sufficiently contained with bound hands and intimidated with pointed guns. No one tried to escape. Why was that? Was hope so powerful that it would cause a man to cooperate to the very end? He’d seen it over and over again. So few people actually fought, because fighting seemed so futile. Fighting back meant certain death. So they all cooperated and hoped.
The hope ended when the killing began inside the quarry. At that point weeping and praying also commenced, and Angelo began dispensing comfort the only way he knew how. Amazingly enough, the German soldiers allowed him to administer rites, and they ignored his prayers and his movement up the line to reach those who would enter the caves first. With his hands bound behind his back he couldn’t properly make the sign of the cross, but he moved his right hand in the proper direction and continued on.
He accompanied the second group of men into the quarry, winding through tunnels until they reached a large cave. He kept his mouth moving, administering last rites and hoping God would understand and forgive his own inadequacies and provide for these three hundred thirty-five souls who were looking to him, a fallen man who no longer wanted to be a priest.
Five would kneel. Five executioners would press the noses of their guns to the backs of the prisoners’ necks. Five triggers were pulled. Five men would die. Five more would then kneel behind the pile of the dead only to share their fate. Each time, Angelo expected to be pushed forward and forced to his knees. And each time, he was bypassed and allowed to continue the rites for the men who were dying all around him.
A boy and his father knelt side by side and were murdered side by side, their bodies falling into a sloppy embrace, and Angelo wept as he prayed. But he refused to close his eyes. He needed to see, to bear witness, even in his last moments, to what was occurring. The blood of the innocent demanded it.
It took hours.
When the pile of bodies grew too high, they would create another row until the cave was filled with the dead, and then they would move to another opening. Still Angelo prayed, blessing those waiting to die. When the final man was thrown face-first onto the blood-soaked mountain of death, would there be anyone left to die beside him?
As the Germans neared what had to be the end, there was a brief lull as bodies were moved, and more men were led through the dark passageway. Suddenly, Angelo was being shoved from behind and urged to walk. When he resisted, he was grabbed by his bound arms and yanked forward.
“Come with me, Father,” a voice said, but he wasn’t sure if the voice was in the caves or in his mind. His ears were ringing, the result of hundreds of gunshots, one after another, with nothing to protect his eardrums from the report. He staggered and fell down, his already poor balance compromised by his hearing loss.
Rough hands jerked him to his feet, and he tottered again.
His hands were suddenly cut free from his bindings, and his arms screamed in pain as the blood rushed through his limbs. He was urged forward again, the hand gripping his arm steadying him through a narrow passage that led to a tapered swath of light. The light grew, and the man leading him urged him on until he found himself crawling through a small opening, coming out of the caves about a hundred and fifty feet east of the craggy main entrance where the prisoners had first formed the long line. He stopped and turned around, still not sure what was expected of him. He was on higher ground now and could look down on a semicircle of helmeted, blood-soaked Germans that stood a ways off. Others—those who had guarded the men awaiting execution—leaned against trucks that were now empty, smoking and drinking bottles of cognac. Cognac for courage. More than one officer had grown sick inside the caves, and others had refused to shoot, only to be dragged off or forced to participate by a commanding officer. The assembly of soldiers wasn’t nearly as orderly and contained as it had been at the start, and no one had seen him or his unknown deliverer, who tugged on his arm once more and pointed through the trees.
The German soldier had a blunt nose, a wholesome face, and red-rimmed eyes, and Angelo noticed there were blood spatters—small, red, pin-size dots—all over the soldier’s cheeks, making him appear diseased.
The soldier’s mouth moved around words and Angelo focused on their shape, trying to understand. He heard the words as if he listened through water, and he wondered if his hearing would return, or if it was simply the first part of him to die.
“Go. None of us wants to kill a priest,” the man mouthed.
The soldier shoved Angelo away from the rocky outcropping and motioned with his pistol.
“Go!” he growled, sticking his face in Angelo’s, his eyes frantic. Angelo heard enough to realize he was being told to flee.
He turned and began to put one foot in front of the other. His prosthetic straps were loose, and he staggered and almost fell, but he didn’t dare stop and make the necessary adjustments, expecting a bullet in his back at any moment.
But none came, and he kept walking, limping through the trees toward a road he knew must be there. The terrain was muddy and wet from recent rains, and the trees were just starting to grow leaves again. Some were still completely bare, as if the winter had been harder on them than on others. Angelo wondered, still reeling from shock and horror, if those trees would ever come back to life, or if they would simply stand, skeletal, among the living and wait to be brought down.
He wondered if he would ever come back to life. Then he stopped thinking at all. He just walked in circles, stumbling and slipping, and after what could have been an hour or merely minutes—he wasn’t really certain—he reached the road. A sign next to a fork pointed the way to the old quarries at Fosse Ardeatine. Suddenly, a boom rocked the ground beneath his feet. Angelo fell to the earth once more and lay there, reeling, wondering if bombs were falling. He couldn’t hear the whine and shriek or see the stars and stripes above him in the sky. The ground rumbled again, then again, and the trees above him shook in whispery terror, their new leaves dancing in the tepid March sunlight.
Then he realized what was happening. The Germans were using explosives to bring down the rocks inside the caves. They were trying to hide the bodies and seal the openings, attempting to cover their tracks, as if more than three hundred people would not be missed.
He crawled back into the shelter of the foliage that lined the road, weak with pain and horror, sick with despair, and waited until the trucks rumbled down the road an hour later, the deed done. Darkness descended, and his cane was gone. His cross too. And Eva would be gone. The truth assailed him like a relentless whip, and he moaned audibly, his agony escaping through his clenched teeth.
Save my family, Camillo had said. Become a priest and save my family. But there was no one left to save. He didn’t even know if he had the strength to save himself. Still, he rose on shaking legs and willed himself forward. It was a long way to Rome for a crippled man with a broken heart.