issued a solemn trasferimento decree requiring the sisters to abandon their convent and yield the monastery to Vatican authority. But the monsignors did not know Mother Abbess. She simply pretended the order had never come. The Jews were protected again, not just from the Nazis but from the monsignori .”
After a moment the priest added, “Expect nothing from across the river!”
The two men were not aware of her—Marguerite standing on the threshold between the rooms, stooped slightly because her height nearly matched the door frame’s.
She had been sleeping on the priest’s cot, collapsed in the exhaustion that broke her in the chapel. Lionni’s arrival had awakened her, and through the closed door she had listened. Now, from her place behind the men, she spoke: “I know an American. An important one.”
Three
Handkerchief
C OLONEL PETER MATES came to with a jump. What had startled him awake was the unfamiliar feel of the sheets. After all these months—satin! This was his first morning in the poshest suite of the freshly requisitioned Hotel Barberini on the Via Veneto, and he hadn’t slept alone. The woman he’d picked up on the boulevard was sitting on the edge of the bed adjusting her shoes. Already corseted in a flesh-colored girdle and brassiere, the fasteners of which had slowed him down the night before, she had her back to him. He had no idea now what her face looked like, never mind her name. He did remember the overpowering aroma of her cheap perfume—or was that a present sensation?
Mates threw the splendid sheets back, found his shorts on the floor, and retrieved his wallet from his trousers. He withdrew a handful of lira notes—five bucks—and faced back to her just as she was pulling her dress down from over her head. A tawny-skinned, pretty girl, it turned out, but with bad teeth and much too young—younger, he realized with an efficiently deflected stab of guilt, than his youngest daughter. A pair of rivulets marked her cheeks. Apparently she had been weeping.
He took his silk pocket-square from his uniform jacket on the chair and handed it to her. She dabbed her face, then dropped the cloth on the bed. He gave her the bills, which she took without a word and folded into her dress. When she’d left his room, he heard her stifled yelp of surprise from the next room, followed by a man’s soft voice. Only then did he remember that he’d been assigned a suite-mate—the Jew from Treasury. He began to dress.
Mates was new to Rome that week, like all Americans, but he had lived here before, years ago. All winter and spring, from the OSS base in Brindisi, he had fervently anticipated this return.
Having carefully knotted his uniform tie and put on his tailored field jacket, Mates retrieved the slightly soiled silk square from the bed, whiffed it for a hit of the girl’s perfume, and studied the thing.
Parachute silk. Months before, he had used his survival knife to cut it from the ballooning canopy, iridescent in the moonlight, after his one drop—a souvenir of having lived through the most harrowing six minutes of his life. Mates had been commander of the Special Ops unit supplying Yugoslav Partisans with night drops. Though at fifty he was a decade over the airborne age limit, he’d cut orders for his own mission, a rendezvous with the deputy to Marshal Tito, the guerrilla leader. The meeting wasn’t strictly necessary; what had he been trying to prove? The silk square was his only answer. He’d found a Brindisi seamstress to hem it with cross-stitches—a rakish item now, but also a secret reminder of how scared shitless he’d been that night.
He folded the square back into his left breast pocket, ready to be brought out again for further women of Rome.
“Good morning,” Mates said as he entered the sitting room that separated the suite’s two bedrooms. The Jew did not reply at once, and Mates took in the high ceiling and lavish French doors whose lace curtains billowed
After a moment the priest added, “Expect nothing from across the river!”
The two men were not aware of her—Marguerite standing on the threshold between the rooms, stooped slightly because her height nearly matched the door frame’s.
She had been sleeping on the priest’s cot, collapsed in the exhaustion that broke her in the chapel. Lionni’s arrival had awakened her, and through the closed door she had listened. Now, from her place behind the men, she spoke: “I know an American. An important one.”
Three
Handkerchief
C OLONEL PETER MATES came to with a jump. What had startled him awake was the unfamiliar feel of the sheets. After all these months—satin! This was his first morning in the poshest suite of the freshly requisitioned Hotel Barberini on the Via Veneto, and he hadn’t slept alone. The woman he’d picked up on the boulevard was sitting on the edge of the bed adjusting her shoes. Already corseted in a flesh-colored girdle and brassiere, the fasteners of which had slowed him down the night before, she had her back to him. He had no idea now what her face looked like, never mind her name. He did remember the overpowering aroma of her cheap perfume—or was that a present sensation?
Mates threw the splendid sheets back, found his shorts on the floor, and retrieved his wallet from his trousers. He withdrew a handful of lira notes—five bucks—and faced back to her just as she was pulling her dress down from over her head. A tawny-skinned, pretty girl, it turned out, but with bad teeth and much too young—younger, he realized with an efficiently deflected stab of guilt, than his youngest daughter. A pair of rivulets marked her cheeks. Apparently she had been weeping.
He took his silk pocket-square from his uniform jacket on the chair and handed it to her. She dabbed her face, then dropped the cloth on the bed. He gave her the bills, which she took without a word and folded into her dress. When she’d left his room, he heard her stifled yelp of surprise from the next room, followed by a man’s soft voice. Only then did he remember that he’d been assigned a suite-mate—the Jew from Treasury. He began to dress.
Mates was new to Rome that week, like all Americans, but he had lived here before, years ago. All winter and spring, from the OSS base in Brindisi, he had fervently anticipated this return.
Having carefully knotted his uniform tie and put on his tailored field jacket, Mates retrieved the slightly soiled silk square from the bed, whiffed it for a hit of the girl’s perfume, and studied the thing.
Parachute silk. Months before, he had used his survival knife to cut it from the ballooning canopy, iridescent in the moonlight, after his one drop—a souvenir of having lived through the most harrowing six minutes of his life. Mates had been commander of the Special Ops unit supplying Yugoslav Partisans with night drops. Though at fifty he was a decade over the airborne age limit, he’d cut orders for his own mission, a rendezvous with the deputy to Marshal Tito, the guerrilla leader. The meeting wasn’t strictly necessary; what had he been trying to prove? The silk square was his only answer. He’d found a Brindisi seamstress to hem it with cross-stitches—a rakish item now, but also a secret reminder of how scared shitless he’d been that night.
He folded the square back into his left breast pocket, ready to be brought out again for further women of Rome.
“Good morning,” Mates said as he entered the sitting room that separated the suite’s two bedrooms. The Jew did not reply at once, and Mates took in the high ceiling and lavish French doors whose lace curtains billowed
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