Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Pino thought about that, and then shook his head, saying, “I’ll come off the roof with you, My Lord Cardinal, but I think I’ll slip out after dark, go home to my family.”


Schuster paused, and then said, “As you wish, my son. Bless you, and go with God.”



After dark, Pino slipped into the lobby of his parents’ apartment building and immediately recalled the prior Christmas Eve and how Anna had played the sentries to get the suitcase with the radio transmitter safely upstairs. Riding up in the birdcage elevator provoked another round of crushing memories, how they’d kissed going past the fifth-floor guards, and how they’d— The elevator stopped. He shuffled to the door and knocked.

Aunt Greta opened the door with a big grin on her face. “There you are, Pino! We’ve been holding dinner for you and Mario. Have you seen him?”

Pino swallowed hard and said, “He’s dead. They’re all dead.”

His aunt stood there in shock as he moved past her into the apartment. Uncle Albert and Pino’s father had heard him and were getting up from the living room couch.

“What do you mean he’s dead?” Michele asked.

“A man who wanted his wristwatch called him a Fascist and shot him in the head in the public gardens near Porta Venezia,” Pino said dully.

“No!” his father said. “That’s not true!”

“I saw it happen, Papa.”

His father broke down, crying, “Oh dear God. How will I tell his mother?”

Pino was staring at the living room rug, remembering how he and Anna had made love there. The best Christmas present of his life. He wasn’t hearing the questions Uncle Albert was firing at him. He just wanted to lie down there and mourn and grieve.

Aunt Greta stroked his arm. “It’s going to be okay, Pino,” she soothed. “Whatever you’ve seen, whatever you’ve suffered, you’re going to be okay.”

Tears welled in Pino’s eyes and he shook his head. “No, I won’t. Not ever.”

“Oh, my poor boy,” she cried softly. “Please, come and eat. Tell us all about it.”

In a wavering voice, he said, “I can’t talk about it. I can’t think about it anymore, and I’m not hungry. All I want to do is sleep.” He was shivering as if it were the middle of winter again.

Michele came over, put his arm around Pino. “Then we’ll get you to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Pino barely understood where he was as they led him down the hall to his bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed, all but catatonic.

“Do you want to listen to the shortwave?” his father asked. “It’s safe now.”

“Father Re has mine.”

“I’ll get Baka’s.”

Pino shrugged listlessly. Michele hesitated, but then left and returned with Baka’s radio. He set it on the end table.

“It’s there for you if you want it.”

“Thanks, Papa.”

“I’m right down the hall if you need me.”

Pino nodded.



Michele shut the door behind him. Pino could hear him talking to Uncle Albert and Aunt Greta in worried whispers that faded to nothing. Through the open window he heard a single shot to the north and people laughing and carrying on in the streets below.

It felt like they were all taunting him with their joy, kicking him at his lowest moment. He slammed down the window. He pulled off his shoes and pants, lay down on the bed, shaking with rage and regret as he turned off the light. He tried to sleep, but was haunted not by the aria but by the black accusatory look Anna held on to as she died, and the love that fled from him with her soul’s passing.

He turned on the shortwave and tuned it until he heard a slow piano solo playing against the whisk of a drum cymbal. Soft, warm jazz. Pino closed his eyes and tried to go with the music, which was as gentle and playful as a summer stream. He tried to imagine the stream, tried to find peace in it, and sleep, and nothingness.

But then the piece ended, and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” came on. Pino sat up with a start, feeling like every twitching beat in the song was there to goad and torture him. He saw himself the night before in the Hotel Diana with Carletto playing and partying. Anna had been alive then, not yet taken by the mob. If he’d just gone by Dolly’s rather than . . .

Feeling destroyed all over again, Pino grabbed the radio and almost hurled it against the wall, intending to bust it into a thousand pieces. But all of a sudden he was so overwhelmed, so exhausted, he merely turned the dial until the radio emitted static. Pino rolled up in the fetal position. He closed his eyes, listening to the hiss and crackle of the wireless and praying that the gaping wound in his heart was enough to stop it from beating before he awoke.



In Pino’s dreams, Anna was alive. In his dreams, she still laughed like Anna and kissed like Anna. She smelled of her own perfume and gave him that sidelong, amused look that always got him wanting to hold her and tickle her and— Feeling someone shaking his shoulder, he startled awake in his bedroom. Sunlight poured through the window. Uncle Albert and his father were standing by his bed. Pino looked at them as though they were strangers.

“It’s ten,” Uncle Albert said. “You’ve been asleep almost fourteen hours.”

The nightmare of the day before rushed back in. Pino so longed for sleep and the dreams where Anna still lived that he almost started to cry again.

“I know this is difficult for you,” Michele said. “But we need your help.”

Uncle Albert nodded. “We have to go look for Mario’s body at Cimitero Monumentale.”

Pino still wanted to roll over and search for Anna in his dream, but he said, “I left him in the public gardens. I ran from his body there.”

Uncle Albert said, “I went to look last night after you’d gone to sleep. They said he was taken to the cemetery and we could look for him there along with all the other bodies that have been found in the streets the past few days.”

“So get up,” Michele said. “Three of us will find Mario quicker than two. We owe his mother that much.”

“I’ll be recognized,” he said.

“Not with me, you won’t,” Uncle Albert said.

Pino saw there was no stopping them. “Give me a minute. I’ll be right out.”

They left him, and he sat up, aware of the pounding in his head and the deep and vast emptiness that fluctuated between his throat and gut. His brain sought memories of Anna, but he stopped the urge. He couldn’t think of her. Otherwise, he’d just lie there and mourn.

Pino put on clean clothes and walked back into the living room.

“Do you want anything to eat before we go?” his father asked.

“I’m fine now,” Pino said, hearing the flatness in his voice and not caring.

“You should at least drink some water.”

“I’m fine!” Pino shouted. “Are you deaf, old man?”

Michele took a step back. “Okay, Pino. I just want to help.”

He stared at his father, unable and unwilling to tell them about Anna.

“I know, Papa,” he said. “I’m sorry. Let’s go find Mario.”

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