Yes, Father. Of course, Father.
The man was a priest, after all. A man of God.
But then: Would he take this package and, late at night, slip into the courtyard and tie it to the exhaust pipe of the visitor’s fancy American car? Would he bomb the train tracks near Chiusi?
That first yes had caught him like a rabbit in a trap. One foot was enough. Every yes after that had dragged him further and further away from the simplicity and straightforwardness of his old life, the rabbit dragging the trap across a field, in pain, afraid of being killed. And now here he was, riding in a rattling Fiat with a stranger, at midnight, the barn empty of people, the vineyard waiting for another visit from the SS, a bomb wrapped in paper and tied with twine sitting in his lap.
They were deep in the trees now, enveloped in darkness, the road visible only because a slice of moon made the sky above them half a shade lighter than the trees to either side, and because the Fiat had one feeble working headlight. It wasn’t a well-traveled route, not one Paolo had taken since the days when he’d brought Carlo and some of the other youngsters to a certain part of the River Chiana on fishing trips. A decade ago. On those trips, taken always on holidays when they had a full free day, a lot of people were out, and they’d been able to hitch rides in both directions. Then and now, there were no houses along this road, just stone walls and fences that marked the property lines of hidden estates. The headlamp blinked and went out, came on again. Antonio was spewing curse words under his breath, taking the Lord’s name in vain, swearing in Italian and muttering in some dialect Paolo didn’t know.
Antonio went along as quickly as the road and darkness would allow, trying to avoid the deepest holes and ruts, the windows open and the tires making soft splashing sounds in the wet dirt, crunching sounds where there was gravel.
“We are going now to damage the train tracks, yes?” Paolo asked, because the man beside him made him terribly uneasy. From the moment he’d first seen Antonio’s face—the huge curved nose, the mop of hair, the big jaw, the narrowed eyes—he’d felt like he was looking into the mouth of a volcano, all fire and smoke and tremendous heat. He wondered what must have happened to the young man in order to have made him so incredibly angry. He wondered, not if Antonio had ever killed anyone, but how many people he’d killed. And he wondered how a girl like Eleonora could be attracted to such a person.
“Not exactly,” Antonio answered after a few seconds, and in such a murderous tone that Paolo felt as if someone had taken hold of the back of his neck with freezing fingers. He thought about it for a few seconds, assessing the mood, the tone of voice, the strange midnight errand. And then he understood. It was a pretend assignment, an elaborate trick. The package in his lap, securely tied, could be nothing more than a piece of oak, a metal money box filled with sand, a square stone. So this was the way they were going to kill him: take him into the woods late at night, shoot or stab him, and leave his body to rot there by the side of the road in a place where no one would find it for weeks. Clearly, Eleonora had been aware of this plan and had fed him one last, exquisite meal as if in apology. So it must be then that she and her Antonio worked for the Nazis. Or that they suspected him of working for the Nazis. Either way, they’d decided it was time to eliminate him.
For a few seconds he considered jumping out of the moving car and running away. But where? Into the trees? And how was an old man going to outrun someone like this Antonio next to him? Paolo kept his eyes forward, fingers splayed on the tops of his thighs, package held between his wrists, and he waited as long as he could before saying, “If you’re going to kill me, kill me now. Let me pray, and kill me while I’m praying. I won’t fight with you.”
He risked a look sideways, saw the man’s huge nose, a dark blade, heard a nasty one-note laugh. Then nothing.
The motor muttered and skipped, the car splashed and skittered from one side of the road to the other. Antonio peered through the windshield as if searching there for the expected firing squad that would help him with his evil errand. Paolo realized that the tiredness in his limbs and the murkiness in his thoughts had disappeared, replaced by a strange burst of energy, as if he were required to remain absolutely alert now in order to have any chance at all of staying alive. He waited another minute, trying to hold it back, and then a river of words rushed out of him. “I understand nothing,” he admitted helplessly. “Father Costantino said there would be a train carrying Italians to the camps. Italian Jews. And that I was supposed to place this terrible thing”—he gestured to the package on his lap—“at a certain place, and send the train off the tracks so the people could be rescued. But it made no sense to me even then. There’s a river there, and steep banks. How would I save the Italians by sending the train into the river? And if the Nazis driving the train and guarding the Italians survived, how would they let anyone go? How would I fight them with no weapon? How would the Italian prisoners fight them? With their bare hands? And why am I the one who has to use the explosives, when you could do it, anyone could do it? Why was I the one who had to put the bomb under the American car? Why was Vittoria the one who had to take the German deserters to the nuns? Why are she and I being put in danger this way?”