He walked over and up the steps and made himself place a hand on the big doors of the church. After a slight hesitation, he pulled one side open, went through, and stood in the rear of the nave for a few minutes, letting his eyes adjust, taking in the smell of incense and candle smoke, running his gaze over the dark, empty pews, hoping to see a nun’s habit. He noticed that the huge old paintings had all been removed from the walls, and he remembered staring at one of them—the Virgin’s robe a beautiful blue, like the color of the sky, and a small child at her feet, clutching its hem with one hand—during the most boring parts of the Mass. Now, bare walls. The wooden confessionals, the white marble altar, all of it still a bit frightening. He sat in one of the rear pews. The stolen hat burned against the skin of his belly. He lifted his shirt and removed it, turning it this way and that, admiring again the fine tailoring and brass insignia, wondering what the green line of thread meant, wondering if it was a sin to bring a stolen piece of the Devil’s uniform into the sacred space of a church.
He heard a footstep on stone and looked up to see a familiar face there beside and above him.
“Lu skutchamenz,” the priest said. The little pest.
“Padre.”
“You’ve come to confess, yes?”
“Ah, I have nothing to confess, Padre Paulo. God loves me more than you! You should confess to me!”
The priest settled himself in the pew next to Armando and wrapped an arm around the boy’s shoulders for a moment, sighed, reached out, and touched the stolen hat. “You made this yourself, I suspect.”
Armando smiled. “Yes, it took me a long time.”
“I’m sure.”
“And a mysterious angel left a peach for me this morning. I was sleeping. I woke up, and the peach was there. A perfect peach. I ate it very slowly.”
“Good, good. A peach. I haven’t seen a peach since . . .” The priest waved his hand and looked up at the altar. “I’ve missed you,” he said.
“What happened to the orphanage?”
A sorrowful shrug. The old man met Armando’s eyes for a moment, then looked away. “The bombs.”
“Were people killed?”
Another sad shrug. “With God now,” he managed, but without much enthusiasm.
“Sister Marcellina?”
“Miraculously unhurt. She went to stay with her family. In the Vasto, they live. Took one boy and one girl with her. She comes to Mass every week. If you have the time, you might do the same.”
Armando studied the wrinkled, spotted face, recalling a thousand acts of kindness. The memories were almost enough to make him consider going to Mass again. Almost. “I thought she was the one who brought me the peach. At my secret place on Via Casanova. The store that used to sell tires.”
“It’s possible,” the priest said. “She lives not far. Many strange things are possible . . . that a boy your age could learn to make such a beautiful hat, for instance.”
“Can you hold it for me, Padre?”
“Of course. I’ll hide it in the room where we change. We have some other things hidden there.”
“Guns?”
The priest put a finger to his lips.
“Really, Padre?” Armando whispered.
The slightest nod, then a pause and the priest said, “When the war is finished, this hat will be some kind of . . . trophy. You can sell it.”
“When will the war be finished?”
“God alone knows that, my skutchamenza. But when it finishes, you will study for the priesthood, yes, as you promised?”
A smile stretched the muscles of Armando’s face. Their running joke. “And you will live on the streets, Padre. I’ll show you all the tricks.” He handed over the hat and, just as the brim left his fingers, felt his mood change. “I saw something terrible yesterday, Padre. I saw a little girl and her grandparents shot in the street. I can’t forget seeing it. I can’t clean it out of my mind.”
Padre Paulo wrapped his arm around Armando’s shoulders again and pulled him close for a moment. “Sometimes,” he said, “I pray to forget the things I’ve seen and the things I’ve heard.”
“Does it work?”
The priest shook his head, reached beneath his robe, ruffled the cloth there for a few minutes, then produced a single coin and pressed it into Armando’s palm. “For food,” Padre Paulo said. “If you find another peach, buy it.”
“I’ll bring you half.”
The priest tapped him on the shoulder, and Armando left the pew and slipped silently through the heavy front door, making the sign of the cross as he went, something he hadn’t done for many months. Outside, he glanced at the orphanage again, and was about to cross the street when he heard a truck speeding along the stone pavement. He worried it would be driven by a hatless Nazi, come to send him to the cemetery to lie forever in the cold dirt beside the murdered girl, but it was an Italian Army truck, its open bed roofed in green canvas. The truck skidded to a stop just before reaching him. He saw two men in civilian clothes climb out of the back and caught a glimpse of them carrying something down a short set of steps and through an open doorway. A casket, he thought at first, because what they were carrying was long and thin and wrapped in a white sheet. But the contents of the package rattled, like metal against metal, and the men were hurrying. Another few seconds and they reappeared and climbed into the truck. As it went past, the driver turned and looked at him. Out of a street kid’s habit—anything to torment the authorities—Armando made a vulgar gesture, grinned, and hustled away in the opposite direction. He’d gone half a block before he realized that he’d recognized the mean-looking man in the passenger seat. He remembered the name, too. Zozo Forni. He hoped Zozo hadn’t seen him.
Twenty-Nine
On her way home, wondering what would become of the Jewish children who’d barely managed to escape, Rita heard what sounded like bombs or huge guns going off. Near the airport, she guessed. Four quick explosions, then nothing but the odd quiet of the streets. She was grateful that, as the sun dipped behind the buildings in front of her, the air at last began to cool. It had been a very long and tiring day, a day filled with surprises, as if the stars were aligning in playful fashion, taking the expectations of simple human beings and tipping them upside down.
On warm evenings like this, life had always been lived on the streets. In better times, when the men hadn’t been sent off to Russia or Africa, Albania or Greece; when women and girls hadn’t been forced to sell their bodies for food; when wine and pasta were plentiful; when the magnificent jumble of humanity that went by the Italian name Napoli had been able to work and laugh and make love and endure life’s ordinary sadnesses and struggles; when the five- and six-story palaces that lined the main streets, with their wrought-iron balconies and rows of elegant windows, and the six-hundred-year-old churches with their stained glass and gold had stood intact and undamaged; and when the German army had stationed its soldiers north of the border; the tables of the city’s sidewalk cafés had been full; the children had invented games and roamed the alleys; and neighbors had sat in circles, sometimes well into darkness, gossiping and arguing, telling tales, laughing, breaking spontaneously into Neapolitan songs like “C’è La Luna” and “Torna a Surriento” and the wonderfully erotic tune that always made her a little sad, “Comme facette mammeta”—how your mama made you.