Warburg in Rome (13 page)

“Roosevelt has no right to ask . . . What has Roosevelt done?”

Aside from the invasion of Normandy? But Deane checked himself. “No one says the Vatican rescue is of
baptized
Jews.”

Tardini carefully returned his cigarette to the ashtray. He picked up a pen, capped it, and placed it beside a curved felt blotter. His lips were pressed together. “Dear Father Deane, Herr Hitler does not care if the Jews are baptized.” He leaned forward. His left hand trembled slightly when he raised a finger. “Do you think Hitler cares if they are baptized? They are
still
Jews. Catholic Jews, too, must be protected. And as it happens, the
convertiti
are mainly the ones that come to us. They trust us.”

“
Convertiti?
” Deane said. “
Conversos?
” The Inquisition-era word was a slur, carrying an implication of blood impurity. Deane thought of the other word for converted Jews—
Marrano
, meaning swine.

“Yes, Father—if you will,
conversos
. We have a special obligation to Catholic Jews.”

Once again Deane thought of the American Jew. How would this strike Warburg? But he knew. “Excuse me, Reverend Monsignor, but our obligation is to all.”

Tardini shrugged, an eloquent world-weariness, more than a touch of impatience. “If we could help all, we would. And our paramount obligation is to do nothing that would make matters worse. As it is, we help those who come to us.”

“And send a message to other Jews about the benefit of conversion. Accept baptism, and we will protect you. Is that it?”

“Did you see a baptistry in Santa Marta? There are three hundred and twenty-nine parishes in Rome. I am told that most of them are hiding Jews. No one demands baptismal certificates.”

“I was asking about
here
. The Holy Father’s household.”

“And you have your answer.” Tardini snuffed his cigarette, picked up his pen. Dismissed.

Now, looking across Maglione’s drawing room at the jovial knot around Tardini, Deane had to stifle an urge to call out to von Weizsäcker and von Kessel, to ask if they knew that at Santa Marta they were sharing a residence with Jews. Rosary or not, the people downstairs from you are Jews! But he checked himself. If he could harbor an impulse to expose the cellar Jews to these Germans, it was because now the Germans were powerless, the Jews were safe.

Deane watched the Axis diplomats with their self-satisfied bowing, clicking of heels, and clinking of tulip glasses, but the disgust he felt was more at his fellow clergy, so thrilled to be in the company of these shits.

“You are the American monsignor.” Someone surprised Deane, coming from behind him, speaking accented English and touching him on the elbow. “We’ve heard of you.”

Deane turned and found the young German priest standing there. He had come from the table where the apéritif was being poured, and in addition to his own glass he was holding a fresh drink for Deane. “Here. Champagne. It’s better.” He took Deane’s empty glass and handed it to a passing waiter. Though the unadorned black of his cassock marked him as junior, the priest carried himself as if he were a regular at Maglione’s lunches. He’d entered with Archbishop Graz, the ranking German Catholic in Rome. Clearly this priest had made himself essential to the boss, a recognizable clerical type, the skilled factotum—from the Latin for “do everything.” But then, Deane thought, I should know.

“Thank you. I’m Kevin Deane.” He raised his glass.

The German clinked it. “Roberto Lehmann.”

“Roberto?”

Lehmann laughed. “
Sí
. I was born in Buenos Aires. But I am from Mainz. My mother is Argentinian. My father was an importer.” The German’s oiled hair gave him an exotic, Valentino-like appearance. His soutane was a well-tailored worsted. His fingernails were manicured.

“You are from New York.”

“Indeed so. Bronx Irish Catholic. Your English is good.”

“Necessity.” Lehmann smiled. “I learned your language yesterday.”

“General Clark would be flattered. Soon American slang will be heard in the streets of Rome,” Deane said, “if not on the Third Floor—the papal apartments.”

Lehmann smiled. “I know where the Pope’s quarters are.”

“Well then, perhaps you can answer a question.”

“I hope so.”

“I brought a personal gift from Archbishop Spellman for His Holiness. The archbishop instructed me to leave it with the papal valet. But yesterday a German nun headed me off—”

“Mother Pascalina.”

“Yes.”

“The Holy
Hausfrau
,” Lehmann said.

“What’s the story on her?” Deane asked. “She seemed to have real authority. She insisted on talking to me in German. Is it possible the woman speaks no Italian?”

Lehmann shrugged. “What was the gift?”

“An electric razor.”

Lehmann laughed, and then so did Deane, despite himself. He’d tried to tell Spellman to send something else, but the archbishop said the Pope loves the latest gadgets. “His Holiness shaves every morning, too,” Spellman added. “He puts his pants on one leg at a time, Kevin.”

“He wears pants?” Deane said, but Spellman did not laugh.

The German again touched Deane with easy familiarity. “So American—a razor with a motor. As for Mother Pascalina, she was the Pope’s housekeeper in Berlin when he was just the papal nuncio. She came with him here to Rome. Not
Hausfrau
, actually, but
Oberhaupt
. Mother Pascalina is from Freistaat Thüringen, the home of the Doberman pinscher.” Lehmann laughed again, then made a show of looking left before adding quietly, “You can be certain she took the razor for herself. The mustache nun.”

Deane made no comment, but thought it odd that a nun was the assistant to the Pope. And Tardini, too, depended on a nun. Was that Dominican sister also an
Oberhaupt
?

Lehmann offered a cigarette to Deane, who took it. Lehmann flipped his lighter, a fancy gold trinket with a cross engraved on its side. Holy smoke, thought Deane.

Exhaling, they looked out the window at the swelling crowd of pilgrims below. “It is good that Rome was spared from destruction,” Lehmann said. “The world owes that to him.” Turning, he used his glass to point at von Weizsäcker.

“How is that, Father?”

“The ambassador convinced Field Marshal Kesselring to base his Panzers outside the city. There were no major Wehrmacht setups in Rome. You say ‘setups’? Therefore, no targets for your Air Corps. Nothing for your bombers. On June 2, after meeting with von Weizsäcker, Kesselring chose to abandon Rome without a fight, leaving the way open for Clark.”

“So it was humane German goodwill that fended destructive American bombs and artillery.”

“Yes. That is sure.”

Deane said, “I suspect that Cardinal Maglione would say Rome was spared because of His Holiness. Look at the signs there.” In the square below, banners were being unfurled:
Grazie, Sancta Papa!
A huge poster showing the face of Pius XII was being dropped from Bernini’s colonnade. Deane asked, “Whose idea was it to invite Romans to come here to thank His Holiness for the liberation? It’s already being described as a spontaneous assembly. But haven’t you heard the loudspeaker trucks? ‘Come to St. Peter’s to thank the Holy Father.’ That’s Cardinal Maglione.”

“You object?”

“Of course not. Although I think a word of thanks to General Clark might be in order. Not to your ambassador—in point of fact.”

Squinting through his cigarette smoke, Lehmann turned from the window to eye the prelates and the German diplomats. He said coldly, “His Holiness would have been taken prisoner by the SS were it not for von Weizsäcker.”

Deane said, “And Ambassador von Weizsäcker came to his enlightened point of view with help from . . . ?”

“Yes. Archbishop Graz. Protecting His Holiness. Protecting Rome. It has been our daily work. Our daily prayer.” Lehmann brought his eyes back to Deane, whose own were there waiting.

“I know the game you play, Father,” Deane said.

“Because,” Lehmann replied, “you yourself are a master.”

“Tell me, is it true what they say about Regina Coeli?”

“The prison?”

“Where, three days ago, as your humane soldiers began their retreat, they lined up Partisan prisoners and trade union leaders against a wall and shot them.”

“I have not heard that.”

“At La Sorta, more than a hundred were lined up and forced to kneel. They were shot in the neck, from behind.”

“Is that what they say?”

“Yes. And they say that from the Ponte Milvio, where the emperor Constantine had his vision of the cross, there are corpses hanging today.”

“Constantine was from Germany, did you know that?”

“They say the Via Cassia has been sown with mines. Dozens of horses shot where they stood on the streets.”

“I have no idea if it is true. Of course, it could be.”

“Where does that leave your humane German goodwill?”

“Would you care to compare legends of atrocity, Monsignor?”

It seemed to Deane that the German was daring him to mention Jews.

Lehmann waited. When it was clear that Deane would not reply, the German went on, amiable again. “The point now, of course, is to emphasize the diplomacy role the Holy Father can continue to play, perhaps in partnership with your Archbishop Spellman.”

“And with your Archbishop Graz?” Deane asked. “You’re thinking of the mediation fantasy.”

“Why do you say ‘fantasy,’ Monsignor? No one in the world is better placed than His Holiness to bring about a truce between the Allies and my country. Ambassador von Weizsäcker has spoken of just such a thing to Archbishop Graz. And with your Spellman reaching out to Washington . . . Archbishop Spellman’s position—”

Deane cut Lehmann off with a sharply raised hand. No speaking here of Spellman’s position, nor of his ambition, toward which the sly Kraut was aiming his arrow. “A German truce with the Allies?” Deane said. “Not
all
of the Allies, surely. Isn’t the idea for Washington and London to join forces with Berlin against Moscow, making Russia our
former
ally? Isn’t that it?”

“Are you aware of the Red Army’s rampage, moving west?” Lehmann asked. “The Catholic Church is civilization’s only hope against such godless brutality. And if I may add, Germany and Hitler are not the same thing.”

A faint gong sounded, and a pair of elaborately carved doors at the far end of the room swung open. The two dozen men began to move as one into a second equally opulent chamber. Tray-bearing waiters appeared on either side of the doorway, collecting glasses and cigarette butts.

With Cardinal Maglione at the head of the long, elaborately set banquet table, the men took their places according to precedence—Deane and Lehmann near the foot of the table. All remained standing. The cardinal intoned a Latin blessing. Everyone but the diplomats crossed himself and said “Amen.” With a rustle of chairs, they were seated. They snapped open their linen napkins.

Deane’s gaze went to a gold-framed object on the wall behind Lehmann—a blanket-sized print of an early-Renaissance map, sepia tones, faint blue meridian lines, a faded red compass rose. Not a print. An original. It showed the world, with the boot of Italy at dead center. A crescent-shaped swath of land to the left, across an ocean—a best guess of the shape of the New World. Something about the primitive cartography struck Deane as odd.

All eyes turned to Maglione as he lifted a long-stemmed crystal goblet of red wine. Everyone knew to imitate him. The cardinal said, “
Al Papa
.” In Italian he continued his toast: “He saved the city of Rome. All Rome today will thank him.” Then he added, in Latin, “
Defensor civitatis
.”

Deane caught Lehmann’s eye and winked. So much for the spontaneity of Rome’s outpouring of gratitude.

As Deane sipped his wine, his gaze went back to the map on the wall: marking the blank place where the United States of America would eventually take form were the words
Terra Incognita
.

Four

Intercedite Pro Nobis

M
ARGUERITE D’ERASMO WAS
sitting on an uncushioned wooden bench in a narrow corridor on the top floor of a worn-down building that seemed to have been built as a school, but had, in Fascist times, been given over to routines of some bureaucracy. Around her, Americans were hurrying to and fro. Every male stared at her as he passed, but she refused to raise her eyes.

They were bareheaded and carried themselves with the urgent tempo of messengers, but they wore the rumpled brown uniforms of combat soldiers, and their boots bore crusts of mud. Letting boots occupy the field of her concentration meant they could never find her eyes. Men.

Fish. Her mind jumped sideways—no, back. For a moment she was in flight from Trieste, in the hold of the fishing boat. In the notch-like corner she had made herself even smaller than this. The reeking space was crowded with other bodies, although in the dark of the bulkhead she could not see them. Sounds of whimpering, breathing. The stench of vomit. And urine, always urine. Someone’s pleuritic cough. They were fellow fugitives, each with a separate desperation.

Yet no one’s desperation could compare with hers. Wasn’t that why, when she felt a rough metal protrusion breaking the surface of the wall where her face was resting, she had rubbed against it, scouring the skin at her cheekbone where his lips had touched her, where his fist had fallen. Her facial bruise began to bleed.
Despise not my petitions
.

On the street downstairs—here in Rome, two hours before—an American sentry had refused to allow Père Antoine and Giacomo Lionni into the building with her—not even the priest. When she produced the calling card the tall American civilian had given her at the airport, and had then paired it with her stamped Red Cross credentials, the sentry took both and disappeared. When he returned, he was accompanied by an officer who returned her credentials, but not the card. He gestured her into the building, then held his hand up to stop the others. No admittance except for the woman. That should have told her.