I wonder if Umberto knows, and whether I should tell Vittoria before I die. Enrico, of course, I would never tell.
The writing ended abruptly there, as if her mother had grown too sick to write, or as if her courage had deserted her. Vittoria paged hastily through the book all the way to the end, twice, but the remaining pages were empty.
She sat there, staring blankly out the window, her thoughts as still and heavy as stones.
No wonder, she thought. No wonder Old Paolo and Enrico enjoy each other’s company so much. She stood, reached for the pistol, and dropped it into the pocket of her dress.
Still dazed, but with other thoughts—dark, unformed—appearing like thin vines at the edges of the stones, she was drawn by hunger and habit to the breakfast table. So distracted was she by what she’d read that it dawned on her only when she saw Eleonora that the others were gone. Eleonora’s face was like a mirror of her own, washed in astonishment and worry. She brought coffee, pastry, one egg boiled hard, the way Vittoria liked them. Without speaking, the young woman set the cup and plate down, and then, from the pocket of her apron, she brought out a small sealed envelope with V. written in ink on the front.
“Your father asked me to give you this,” she said. “He woke me very early and handed this to me.” Then she fled to the kitchen.
Thirty-Six
Once it left Roma Termini, the train picked up speed and hurtled along at such a pace that people were continually falling against one another, being held upright by a neighbor, or by a hand pressed against a metal wall. From the deliveries he’d made, Carlo guessed it would be two or three more hours until they passed close to Montepulciano. That city was set too far up on a steep hill to be served by the main rail line—which ran through Orvieto, Città della Pieve, and Chiusi—so there was no chance the train would stop there. But, full as this boxcar was, others might not be full, and there was a chance the train might stop at Città della Pieve or Chiusi, not so far from home, and in the confusion and darkness, he might try to slip away.
Another fantasy. He’d be shot within seconds, and how would he open the door in any case? As he had when being marched down the hill by the German soldiers, he realized that, even in misery like this—the stink, the hunger and thirst, the terror—he and the others wanted to live. There was some deep force inside them, not the fear of death so much as the insistence on living out their allotted time, grasping another hour, another week, another year, taking their last breath in a less hideous setting.
Minute by minute, the situation grew more difficult to bear. The thirst, the hunger, the crowded darkness, the wailing of kids and weeping of women, the putrid flood swinging back and forth against his feet with every shift of the train’s center of gravity. He himself had added to the stinking puddle. They all had, or soon would.
Two hours north of Rome, Carlo was startled out of his standing half sleep by the sound of a man at the end of the car, singing a phrase in a strange language. To his surprise, Carmine, pressed close beside him, answered in what sounded like the same language, and then almost everyone in the boxcar was chanting together, some kind of sorrowful hymn or prayer. It took Carlo a few seconds to understand what language it must be, what kind of prayer. But women and children and old men! he thought again. Of what use will they be in the Nazi factories?
The prayer concluded, and in a short quiet moment, Carmine said, “It’s Friday night, Carlo. Our Sabbath.” And then someone started praying loudly again, in Italian this time.
“Benedetto sii Tu, o Signore, nostro Dio, Re dell’universo, Tu che ci hai santificato coi Tuoi comandamenti e ci hai comandato di accendere le luci di Shabbat.”
Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the universe, who has made us holy through God’s commandments and commanded us to light the Sabbath candles.
Carlo could see that two men at the other end of the car had ignited their cigarette lighters—he’d seen such a device only once, held by his Signore to light a cigar—and were holding them high above their heads.
Less than a minute after the darkness was broken by those two frail lights, Carlo felt a terrific jolt, and the car tilted violently sideways, as if the God of these people had been called upon to save them, and was responding. In a ghastly chorus of screams the world tipped over sideways, and the wall to his left slammed hard against the earth, throwing him and Carmine violently down against it. Carmine’s body cushioned him, the world seemed to bounce slightly, and then the whole car was skidding downhill, their bodies sliding unstoppably toward the ceiling, people crushed against each other, the air filled with screaming. The car slammed hard against something, and in the mad crush Carlo realized that the ceiling and wall close to him had split open and Carmine had disappeared. A horrible mass of bodies pressed on him, a jagged edge of metal passed just in front of his face, water poured in through the opening. He was pushed out and through it by the weight behind him, the eye patch ripped from his face, and the shirt and skin of his left shoulder sliced away as he went. Another second and he was up to his neck in cold water, a mass of bodies behind and around him in the darkness, complete chaos, then gunfire, machine guns, men screaming in German, what sounded like a battle raging on the other side of the ruined train.