Outside in the air again, she was gripped by the most terrible anxiety—the thumping pulse, the sweating hands, the conviction that she’d be caught with Giuseppe’s map and sent to the Gestapo torture cells. She thought of carrying it to Rita’s immediately, but it was farther to Rita’s house than to her own, and she’d have to cross streets busy with German vehicles. No, she’d do that tomorrow. In daylight, on a Saturday morning, especially, she’d be less likely to be stopped.
She listened—no sound; and watched—no soldiers; then she drew in two short, ragged breaths, calculated the route least likely to have Germans on it, and started off. She’d gone most of the way home before she remembered that Bruni was forcing them to report for work the next day. “First thing,” he’d said. And on a Saturday. Some urgency with the posters, with the collection of Jews. If she didn’t show up, they’d be suspicious, possibly send someone out to look for her. She’d bring the map to the office then, secretly of course, and concoct a plan with Rosalia’s help. That was the wisest move . . . or was it procrastination?
Thirty-Five
Rita sat out in front of her house until a later hour than was customary for her. Leopoldo the Fascist had gone off on one of his secret errands, reporting on his talkative neighbors, perhaps, or being treated to a meal in the German barracks or the OVRA headquarters, where he might trade his worthless information for a piece of tough beef or a plate of potatoes. She and Eleonora and Joe were careful around him, of course. But it didn’t really matter what you actually said: they could make up whatever they wanted, claim you’d told a joke at Mussolini’s expense or expressed a longing for the quick arrival of the Americans. These days, however, beyond execution, there wasn’t much available to Leopoldo and his friends in the way of punishment. People were suffering to such an extent that the threat of prison or murder carried half the weight it ordinarily would have. Let Leopoldo tell his lies and spread his venom. She wondered if he’d run when the Allies finally arrived, or if he’d beg her and the other neighbors to tell gli Americani that he’d only been pretending to support Il Duce, that he was actually a lover of democracy and freedom and not really a Fascist at all.
Even with the hunger, sorrow, duplicity, disease, and death that surrounded them, Rita thought it was a beautiful September night, with a full moon—color of the inside of a peach—rising to her left. She sat with Joe and Eleonora and the next-door neighbor, old Ugo, speaking quietly at times and, at others, sitting in the silence and feeling the warm embrace of the city around them. A soft, salty breeze wafted in from the port and brushed at the skin of their arms and faces. After a stretch of silence, Ugo said, quietly, “I heard someone say today that there are Allied spies in the city.”
Rita didn’t speak. She’d already told both Aldo and Lucia about the man hiding in the monastery—a sin of lack of trust that she’d have to confess to her brother, who had specifically asked her to keep it secret—she didn’t want to hear herself say the words again.
“When they arrive, they’ll come with bombs again,” Ugo went on, his voice thick with fear, “then artillery, then tanks. That’s the order of things: bombs, artillery, tanks. Then the soldiers. Until two weeks ago, we were the enemy, and we expect them now to have mercy on us! If I were a young girl, I’d run.”
“Run where?” Eleonora asked. There was no answer, so she went on. “The Fascists were their enemy, not us. Not people like us.”
“Yes, but they can’t aim their bombs so they hit only Leopoldo and the others.”
“Nor can they treat the young girls any worse than they’re being treated now.”
Rita sighed and stood up. She was tired of the fear. She felt it, yes, but it had been in the air so long—almost three full years now they’d lived in the grip of war—that it was like a bad smell everyone had almost gotten used to. A rat’s carcass rotting in the gutter. Sewage from a broken pipe. Old sweat on clothes that had been worn for weeks without a washing.
She bade her friends good night and climbed the stairs, thinking, for some reason, of Aldo’s daughter and wondering if she’d ever see her again. Wondering if she’d bring the map her boyfriend was making. There was no way to get in touch with the girl, except through Aldo, and Lucia had specifically asked that her father not be told of her visit. Having mentioned the spy, not once but twice, Rita thought this was one secret she ought to keep.
She’d undressed to her underwear and bra when a knock sounded at the door, harsh and quick. She wondered if it might be Aldo’s daughter, needing a place to hide. She wrapped an old shawl around herself and opened the door. A tall man in a German army uniform stood there, leaning to one side like a building whose foundation had been damaged in the bombing. Without saying a word, he shoved her back into the room and slammed the door closed behind him.
“How much?” he demanded in bad Italian. “I know what you do. How much is the cost?”
She could smell her own sweat. The man was insane, or drunk, or both. The words weren’t slurred, but his head bounced as he spoke, and it was as if his eyes were being pulled side to side by a puppeteer’s strings.
Without waiting for an answer, he pushed her back and down onto the bed, and in a second had unbuckled and lowered his pants. There was a gun in the holster. It banged loudly against the floor as the pants fell to his ankles, and for an instant, Rita thought someone might hear it and come to her aid. But Joe and Eleonora were old and half-deaf, and not unused to hearing a man’s footsteps on the stairwell this late. Ugo wouldn’t enter the building and, even if he did, wouldn’t have the strength to climb the stairs. She reached up and took hold of the cross around her neck, a gift from Avvocato Cilento. Another second and the German was on top of her, pressing his weight down on her. His breath against her cheek and neck, his wet lips there, his hands grasping the cloth at her hips and tugging.
She had no choice but to call forth the spirits and work the curse the old gypsy women had taught her, the magic she held in reserve for the most dangerous moments. It was only the dialect that summoned them, not standard Italian, and so she turned her face to the side, squeezed her legs together, pushed hard with both hands against the man’s shoulders, and laid the curse upon him, a curse she’d learned from women who’d come to her aid half a lifetime ago: “Acqua cheta fa pantan’ e fet’!” she whispered. Stagnant water becomes a quagmire and stinks!
The soldier pressed his weight back down against her, pried her legs apart, tried to pull off the rest of her underwear, was making small grunting sounds as if he had penetrated her, which he had not. And he wouldn’t. The water was stagnant. The machinery had been cursed and wasn’t working, and wouldn’t work. Press and twist as he might, the man’s manhood was failing him and would fail him. Rita no longer fought; she simply kept her arms tight against her hips and pressed her legs together as hard as she could and focused on the next world, the spirit world, drew its strength to her and repeated the phrase aloud. “Acqua cheta fa pantan’ e fet’.”
The man worked and worked, then realized what was not going to happen and began cursing violently. He pushed himself away from her, slapped her hard across the face, and stood, pants around his ankles. He spat a spray of saliva that touched her bare chest, her chin. She watched him, holding tightly to the spirit world. “Whore, whore,” he said. “No wonder.” But there was more than anger in the words; there was a shaking, trembling, blind hatred that had its feet in the world of lunacy. The man had been cursed by other women, Rita thought, there was no doubt. Helpless in his fury, he reached down and, instead of pulling up his trousers, stood tall again, still bare-legged but now with the pistol in his fingers. “Hail Mary full of grace,” Rita said aloud, because this was the moment her spirit would be set free.