Polar air continued to pour down out of the Alps on relentless bitter winds that blasted Milan through the end of January and on into early February of 1945. General Leyers ordered the seizure of staples like flour, sugar, and oil. Riots broke out in the long lines that formed for the remaining food. Diseases like typhus and cholera thrived in the unsanitary conditions caused by the bombardment. They were near epidemic in large parts of the city. To Pino, Milan felt like a cursed place, and he wondered why its people were being punished so heartlessly.
The weather and Leyers’s ruthlessness bred hatred throughout northern Italy. Despite the frigid conditions, while wearing the swastika Pino could feel the heat of rage building in every resentful Italian face he passed. Tics of disgust. Twitches of rancor. Spasms of loathing. He saw all those reactions and more. He wanted to shout at them, to tell him what he was really doing, but he stayed true, swallowed the shame, and went on.
General Leyers turned erratic after saving the four Jews. He would work at his job at his normal frenzied, sleepless pace for several days, and then grow despondent and get drunk in Dolly’s apartment.
“He’s up one minute, down the next,” Anna said one afternoon in early February as they left a café down the block from Dolly’s. “One night, the war’s over, the next, the fight’s still on.”
Snow coated Via Dante, and the air was frigid, but the sun was shining so brightly for a change that they decided to take a walk.
“What happens after the war?” Pino asked as they neared Parco Sempione. “To Dolly, I mean?”
“He’s moving her to Innsbruck when the Brenner Pass road opens,” she said. “Dolly wants to go now by train. He says it’s not safe. Trains are being bombed up on the Brenner. But I think he just needs her here, just like she’ll need me there for a while.”
Pino’s stomach fell. “You’ll go to Innsbruck with Dolly?”
Anna stopped by the long, wide, and deep depression in the snow that marked the ancient moat that surrounded Castello Sforzesco. The fifteenth-century stone fortress had been hit during the bombardment of 1943. The medieval round towers to either end were in ruins. The tower above the drawbridge had damage that showed like black, scabbed wounds against the snow.
“Anna?” Pino said.
“Just until Dolly’s settled,” Anna said, studying the bombed tower as if it held secrets. “She knows I want to come back to Milan. And to you.”
“Good, then,” Pino said, and kissed Anna’s gloved hand. “There’re at least fifteen meters of snow up high. It will take weeks to clear that road.”
She turned from the castle and said hopefully, “The general did say it could be a month once the snow stops, maybe more.”
“I pray for more,” Pino said, took her in his arms, and kissed her until they both heard the flapping of wings and broke their embrace.
Big ebony ravens were flushing from the bomb holes in the fortress’s central tower. Three birds flew away croaking and squawking, while the largest one flew in lazy circles above the wounded spire.
“I need to get back,” Anna said. “You do, too.”
They walked hand in hand down Via Dante. A block from Dolly’s building, Pino saw General Leyers coming out the front door and heading toward the parked Fiat.
“Got to go,” Pino said, blowing her a kiss before sprinting to meet Leyers. He opened the Fiat’s door saying, “A thousand pardons, mon général.”
The general bristled at him. “Where have you been?
“Taking a walk,” Pino said. “With the maid. Where can I drive you?”
Leyers looked like he wanted to lay into Pino, but he glanced through the window and saw Anna approaching.
He let out a long breath and said, “Cardinal Schuster’s quarters.”
Twelve minutes later, Pino pulled the Fiat through the arch into the chancellery courtyard, which was crowded with vehicles. Pino managed to park, got out, and opened the general’s door.
Leyers said, “I may need you.”
“Oui, mon général,” Pino said, and followed the Nazi across the snowy courtyard and up the exterior stairs to Cardinal Schuster’s apartment.
General Leyers knocked, and Giovanni Barbareschi answered the door.
Had the young seminarian escaped again? Leyers showed no sign of recognizing the forger who’d survived the decimation ritual at San Vittore Prison. But Pino did, and was mortified more than ever to be wearing the armband and the symbol of Nazism.
“General Leyers to see His Eminence.”
Barbareschi stood aside. Pino hesitated, and then walked past as the seminarian studied him, as if trying to place him. Pino prayed that it wasn’t in the yard at San Vittore Prison. Barbareschi had to have seen Leyers there, though. Had he seen the general try to stop the decimation? They entered Cardinal Schuster’s private library. The cardinal of Milan stood behind his desk.
“Kind of you to come, General Leyers,” Schuster said. “Do you know Signor Dollmann?”
Pino tried not to gape at the other man in the room. Everyone in Italy knew him. A tall, thin, elegantly built man with unnaturally long fingers and an intense, practiced smile, Eugen Dollmann was often in the newspapers. Dollmann was Hitler’s translator whenever the führer came to Italy, or when Mussolini went to Germany, for that matter.
Pino began translating to Leyers in French, but Dollmann stopped him.
“I can translate, whoever you are,” Dollmann said with a flip of his hand.
Pino nodded, backed up toward the door, wondering if he should leave. Only Barbareschi seemed to notice he did not. Dollmann rose, extended his hand, and spoke to Leyers in German. The general smiled, bobbed his head, and replied.
In Italian, Dollmann told Cardinal Schuster, “He’s comfortable with me translating. Shall I ask his driver to leave?”
The cardinal peered past Leyers and Barbareschi toward Pino.
“Let him stay,” Schuster said, and then gazed at Leyers. “General, I am hearing that if there is a retreat, Hitler means to scorch the earth and lay waste to Milan’s few remaining treasures.”
Dollmann translated. Leyers listened and then spoke rapidly back in return. The interpreter said, “The general hears the same things, and he wishes to tell the cardinal that he disagrees with the policy. He is an engineer, a lover of great architecture and art. He is opposed to any more unnecessary destruction.”
“And the new field marshal, Vietinghoff?” the cardinal asked.
“The new field marshal, I think, can be persuaded to do the right thing.”
“And you are willing to do the persuading?”
“I am willing to try, Your Eminence,” Leyers said.
“Then I bless your efforts,” Cardinal Schuster said. “You’ll keep me informed?”