To Find a Mountain

Chapter Forty-one

“Ah, the angel awakens.”

I tried to open my eyes but the brightness blinded me, and a horrible pain shot through my forehead, feeling a hundred times worse than any headache I’d ever had. My eyes watered and I cracked my eyes to slits, just enough to see a rounded pear shape, blurred through my tears, standing at the foot of my bed.

“Papa?”

“Ssshhh, relax, Benedetta,” my father said. “Don’t try to move, you’ve been through…”

I swung my feet off the bed and tried to rise, but the pain wracked my head again and I felt faint as I drifted, preparing myself for a collision with the cold floor. But Papa’s hands went beneath my arms and he hugged me to him, his rough shirt scratching me through my pajama top. He laid me back on the bed and covered me with a blanket.

“Sleep, Benedetta. You are still not well. When you wake up, you’ll have some soup.”

“The Germanesí…”

“They are gone. The Americans are here,” he said. And then, as an afterthought, he added, “I am here, too.”

“Iole, Emidio…”

“They are fighting with each other as usual.”

“Zizi Checcone.”

“Downstairs cooking.”

I hesitated, wanted to ask but wasn’t sure how much my father knew and how he would feel. He read my mind.

“Dominic is here, too.”

I felt a flood of relief.

“Is he…?”

“He’s all right. The wound became infected, but the Americans gave him some medicine and it’s better. When you’ve rested some more, you can see him.”

I pulled the blanket up tighter, holding it underneath my chin.

My father stood standing, watching me, and just as I was falling asleep I either heard, or dreamed, that he leaned down and whispered in my ear.

“I love you.”

With my eyes closed, I concentrated on relaxing my body, muscle by muscle, nerve by nerve. I started with my feet and then worked my way up, until I was able to finally relax my face, my clenched jaw.

The Germans were gone.

Sleep came to me quickly then, and I dreamt of the night the Germans first arrived. Of the morning when I came down the stairs to see Colonel Wolff and my father at the kitchen table. In the dream, Colonel Wolff saw his own body on the floor, just like it was after Becher shot him. And in the dream, Wolff asked my father what he was doing with a dead German officer in his house.

I woke before my father answered.

The ceiling of the bedroom looked the same to me. Its thin cracks were reassuring to me, they even looked beautiful. Maybe because I realized they were ours again. This house was ours. Our lives were ours.

It was all over now.

And I was alive.

I crossed myself and thanked God again for blessing me.