“Mario, you have a wife and three children who have been through hell. You are finally free to resume your lives. They need you. You have to think of them.”
“Giulia agrees with me. She and the children will stay at the convent, and I will send them my stipend every month. They are safe, and Giulia has help. I’m not a soldier. I won’t be fighting. I will be saving lives and getting paid to do it. And if that fails, I’ll join the Red Cross. I have spent the war hiding while my people are being slaughtered. This is my way of making a difference, of fighting back. I don’t have a job—”
“You could find one! If something happened to you, Mario, I would never forgive myself. The world can’t afford to lose any more Jewish men. The world can’t afford to lose a man like you, period. Don’t make me carry that weight,” Angelo interrupted.
“If I don’t come with you, I won’t ever forgive myself. Eva Rosselli sat with her back to my door, her legs braced against the wall, while the Gestapo shot through it. She single-handedly saved my entire family. And she has been taken. Signora Donati, my neighbor, faced down men with machine guns to inform them that my apartment was empty, that no one lived there anymore. She was taken too. I’ve watched you put yourself at risk over and over. I’ve watched you scramble and maneuver and work to keep hundreds of Jews safe. You were beaten and sent to die, and you could have talked. You could have exposed us. But you didn’t.
“I have been forced to let all of you sacrifice for me and my family. I had to. But not anymore. It’s my turn. I intend to be there when those camps are liberated. It’s my turn to save lives. I’m coming with you, Angelo. And you can’t stop me.”
13 December, 1944
Confession: I couldn’t part with Eva’s violin.
I have walked through France with a violin case on my back. Everyone asks me to play, and when I tell them I can’t, they look at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. I left everything else, including the three remaining journals, with the nuns at Santa Cecilia. But I couldn’t leave her violin. Eva will want to play it again when I find her.
The soldiers think I’m a strange one. My clerical collar is confusing enough. I wear it with a standard-issue uniform instead of a cassock. All the chaplains dress like soldiers, for the most part. I think Mario told a few of them my story in an effort to quiet speculation, because now they all seem to know that the violin I can’t play belongs to the girl I’m looking for. But Mario doesn’t speak very good English, so who knows what rumors he may have started.
Still, the teasing has lessened considerably and everyone now calls me Father Angelo. A few of the guys call me Angel Baby, but nicknames are pretty standard around here and seem to communicate a certain amount of affection. In some ways, it’s like being in the seminary again—only with guns, less food, and frozen blisters. On the bright side, having only one leg means only one case of trench foot.
There is a hymn that talks about rescuing “a soul so rebellious and proud as mine.” It’s a Protestant hymn my mother sang a long time ago. I heard a soldier singing it last night in the non-denominational church service I organized for the division. I don’t mean to be sacrilegious, but I am convinced my rebellious soul is the only thing keeping me from defeat, and I don’t want to be rescued from it.
It’s been almost four months since I left Rome. Close to nine months since I saw Eva last. Now, without explanation, instead of continuing north into Germany, we are being sent east to Luxembourg, and it’s all I can do not to abandon my unit and set off on my own. I can only pray Eva’s soul is as rebellious as mine.
Angelo Bianco
CHAPTER 25
BELGIUM
The cold was relentless, and the cotton candy comparison made by a soldier was apt, but if the fog was like being immersed in white spun sugar, the cold was like living in a vat of ice cream with none of the sweetness and none of the pleasure. Rumors of the coldest winter on record were being bandied about, and Angelo was convinced it must be true. He may have been born in New Jersey, but he was acclimated to Florence and Rome, and though both were cold in winter, neither were the Ardennes. He’d never been so cold or miserable in his whole life. He did his best not to think of Eva in a camp in Northern Germany or the temperatures and conditions she would be enduring. The thought made him grit his teeth and avoid a word of complaint. He was making deals with God right and left. Keep Eva alive. Keep her safe, and he would suffer whatever he had to suffer in exchange.
But God didn’t work that way. He didn’t deal and he didn’t yell. He didn’t always make himself known. In fact, he rarely did. Angelo had had to faithfully look to find evidence of his existence. God was still quiet. Impossibly quiet. Just like the snow and the fog and the skies. He’d been quiet as Angelo had wandered, following the 20th Armored Division up through France, to the outskirts of Metz, where France, Luxembourg, and Germany came together, hoping against hope that they would continue up into Germany, forcing a cessation to war and a chance to make his way to the camp where Eva was held. But though Metz had been a victory for the Allies, it had not been enough to punch through and deliver a deathblow to the Reich. He and Mario had waited, Mario needing to go home, Angelo needing to press forward. And God had been endlessly quiet.
The Ardennes Forest was quiet too. Eerily so. It was known as the Ghost Front for the cold white mist that clung to the ground and for the silence that hadn’t been penetrated by war. The troops had been talking about going home. The Ardennes front was the place divisions were sent when they’d taken too many casualties or they needed to rest up. It was eighty-five miles of forest, and the Americans were taken completely by surprise.
Just before dawn, on December 16, all that changed, as the sky was illuminated with floodlights and the silence was decimated by an artillery barrage. Behind it, a massive force of German troops poured across the eighty-five-mile front into Belgium under the cover of fog and foul weather.
Angelo’s detachment had passed through Luxembourg, believing they were to be quartered there. But instead of stopping, like they’d initially thought, they’d been sent on to a town called Noville, in Belgium, with no idea of what their orders truly were. Angelo had discovered that that was army life for the men in uniform—the chaplains, the medics, and the soldiers. Someone pointed, and you marched. Maybe it was better that way, not knowing what you were in for, not knowing what was around the bend. Maybe sometimes it was better when God was quiet.
In Noville, the company they were assigned to had been told to keep the German 2nd Panzer Division from progressing. Nobody knew they were outmanned ten to one and way outgunned. Maybe that was better too, fighting without knowing the odds. Every man who could fire a gun, did, and the town was caught in a small-arms fight that lasted until the Tiger tanks were breathing down their necks, and everyone was told to retreat to Bastogne, three miles down the road.
“Bastogne is where everything intersects, boys,” their commander told them. “It’s the hub of a wheel, seven main roads converge there, and the Germans know they’ve got to have it if they want to control the area and keep pushing on into Antwerp, the biggest supply base for the Allied troops on the Western Front.”
It wasn’t an easy three-mile march. Instead, they’d been pinned down in ditches, taking fire from behind and stemming blood on injured soldiers with bullets whizzing over their heads, until the 101st Airborne had arrived, parachuting in to save them all at the last minute, helping the team stumble into Bastogne, only to fight again.