In the town of Montalto Uffago, hungry again, he took a risk, ventured into the centro, and soon found the church—named Santa Vittoria, strangely enough—and saw a man he assumed to be Father Ascoltini, the priest Violeta had mentioned. He was at prayer in one of the pews, alone in the dim interior like a relic. When the priest finished his prayers, Carlo approached him, and the old man nodded and said there was some food and a bed, plus the sacrament of confession if he wanted it. Carlo asked if it might be possible to use the phone, but no. “My son,” Father Ascoltini said, “the phones have long ago stopped working here. If you give me the number and a message, I can try to put a call through when I travel to see the monsignor in Cosenza in a few days.”
In the dark safety of the confessional, Carlo unburdened himself. His hatred of Mussolini, his willingness to kill so as not to appear a coward; his leaving Ariana in tears and turning down the kind offer of the Sicilian family; his sense, increasing with every encounter, that he and people like him were little more than fuel for a machinery that could instruct its soldiers to hate and kill one group, then another.
And then, too, his guilt at having slept in the same bed with Violeta—“a woman near Reggio Calabria” was the way he described her, instead of using her name, so as not to breach her confidence.
“But how could Christ, the Prince of Compassion, judge you for kindness?” the old priest asked in the darkness, having listened quietly while Carlo declared his sins. “How could He mind that you left one woman because you love another, because you are seeking the true path for your own life? How could He condemn you for giving a lonely widow solace in her dark night?”
“I don’t know, Father. I don’t know so many things. The war, the . . . my wound, my face is so ugly now, my hopes . . . It feels like I’m in a confusing dream and I’m trying to wake up.”
“This life is a dream, my son. For each of us. But, within that dream, we still must act in a way that pleases the Lord, so that, when we awaken beyond the river of death, we shall be rewarded with the peace of His presence. Let the light of goodness guide you in everything you do. Make your difficult voyage the walk of love, and God shall give you an interior peace while you live, and welcome you to eternal peace when your life is finished.”
For penance, Carlo was asked to say one Ave Maria, slowly and sincerely. He thanked the priest, left the confessional, and walked on tired legs to the marble altar rail. He knelt there and said the prayer, remembering his mother teaching it to him, phrase by phrase, in the cold bedroom they shared above the barn. For the thousandth time he wondered who his father had been, and heard his mother saying, without a trace of bitterness at having been left to raise a child on her own, You were conceived in love. You were a great gift to me in my loneliness.
The priest had a pair of old work boots to give him, one size too large but whole, and three one-lira coins. After a night on the rectory sofa, a breakfast of weak tea and an apple, Carlo thanked him and walked on, trying without success to imagine the “light of goodness” in the ravaged landscape through which he traveled. At one point, on a road that cut through a stand of olive trees, he came upon a disabled German tank surrounded by a burst of yellow wildflowers, and he stopped and stared at it for a few minutes, said a prayer for Vittoria’s safety, for Enrico and Paolo and the others, tried to tell himself it was a sign: something good would survive the war. Color, life, joy, rebirth. The vineyard, the people there, his beloved Italy—they would all survive.
That afternoon he caught a long ride with a field-worker in a farmer’s cart, then another with a man in an automobile—something he’d seen only rarely on the roads. The man was wearing a suit and, even when Carlo inquired, avoided giving his name or saying what he did for work. “Four days it’s been since the Americans passed through here and moved on,” the man told him. “They’re in Naples now. The Germans are running.”
As they bumped along the road, Carlo watched the man’s profile and couldn’t tell if he thought the German retreat was a good or a bad thing, so he remained silent.
“You fought,” the man said.
Carlo nodded. “Sì, certo.”
“And deserted?”
Carlo shook his head and pointed to the patch over his eye. “By the time I healed, the war was far behind me.”
The man grunted. “You didn’t desert then?”
“I wouldn’t,” Carlo said.
Another grunt. An odd tension swelled into the air of the car, and Carlo didn’t know how to break it. Italians were fighting against Italians now, that was clear enough. People had chosen sides, rooting for Mussolini and his German friends, or for the Allies—the Americani. Loyal warriors or deserters. Italy the way it had been, or the way it might be.