Warburg in Rome (6 page)

At last the chapel door was pulled slowly open, exposing a gaunt old man ready to be shot, having risked this because he had less to lose than others. Seeing Lionni, the man fell into his arms. “Jocko!” he whispered again and again, as if greeting the Messiah’s cousin. Lionni went down into the caverns, passing through alcoves and burial rooms, all the while saying, “The Americans have come. All is well in Rome.” Women clutched at his hands, children stroked his coat. “The Americans have come,” he repeated. “All is well in Rome.” The simple phrase came haltingly from Lionni’s lips because what he beheld in the cramped, ill-lit tunnels and cells—pale-eyed ghosts, scarecrow women, stooped men, terrified children—made him weep. Again and again the Jews embraced him, uttering blessings. In the one spacious chamber, red lanterns had been hung on either side of an improvised ark and its Torah scroll, and when he saw it, Lionni knelt. He was not a religious man, yet sobs racked him, bending him over, so that his forehead scraped the limestone floor.

Hour after hour through the night, Lionni had seen such Jews emerge pale and blinking from attics and cellars in Trastevere, cloisters of walled convents, rectories, monasteries, back rooms of shops, ateliers of the Corso, courtyards of the Via Margutta. “The Americans have come,” his mantra, repeated in Italian, but also in Yiddish, for those from across the Alps. “All is well in Rome.” And then came the antiphon: “Jocko! Jocko!”

At each place, Lionni appointed someone to make a careful list of the names of those who were emerging, the beginning of the roster of survival that he would check against the roster of hiding he’d compiled months ago, before he himself had had to disappear. Assuming, of course, that the original roster, and the one who kept it safe, had survived. All may indeed be well in Rome, but for Lionni the horror was far from over. The Nazi death machine was still grinding toward its worst, and Lionni was still looking for a wooden shoe to throw. Hence this ride on his newly precious bicycle. He pumped harder, rising from the seat for heft, pushing through the Piazza Venezia.

Slung across his shoulder and secured with ropes across his chest was the rolled-up canvas that had served Lionni as his fugitive domicile on those all too frequent occasions when, warned, he had slipped out of one basement room or another until, with the milder weather, he’d wound up in the open-air Borghese acres. But that was over now, and it wasn’t for a tent that he needed the canvas this morning.

He was headed for the walled complex of buildings not far from the central railway station, the Termini. The Ministry of Transport was the headquarters of the national railroad, which Mussolini had so famously run on time. How Il Duce accomplished that Italian wonder was less well known: he would order the engineers of tardy trains to be flogged.

Lionni was making his move in the small window of time between the Germans’ departure and the return of Italian security, whatever it would amount to under Allied control. Since the Nazis had disbanded the Carabinieri, today at least there would be no civil law enforcement of any kind. So he was counting on the ministry’s offices being penetrable.

Soon Lionni passed groups of American soldiers bivouacked on the grassy apron of several great villas, once and future islands of privilege but for now mere campsites. Lionni waved at one of the guards, who happily raised both arms in return.

In the last weeks of the occupation, Lionni had become obsessed with the Ministry of Transport. He had surreptitiously observed it, pretending, variously, to be a street sweeper, a railroad lugger, a garbage man—always in the same billed worker’s cap and soiled blue smock. He became familiar with the entire perimeter of the compound.

Now, by the time he reached the enclosure’s back side, the soft light of true dawn bathed the rough wall. A lingering cloud of mist promised rain. In this light Lionni would be fully exposed, but he had no choice. He knew from earlier visits that this rearmost wall had been built of remnant cement blocks—jagged, odd-shaped, or broken—resulting in just the protruding foot ledges and handholds he would need. Dismounting his bicycle, he pushed it behind a pile of disused pallets and crates. He stood back to assess the wall.

It was twice his own height, and though formidable was not insurmountable. But along the top of the wall were embedded shards of broken glass which glistened in the fresh sunshine. Green and brown predominated, every edge a threat. Quickly untying and unfurling his erstwhile tent and bedroll, Lionni doubled the canvas over again, then hurled it up and onto the thorny crown of the barrier. Pushing and rearranging pallets and crates, he made a stack against the wall, then scrambled onto it. Lionni prided himself on his agility, despite his shortened leg, the result of a badly set bone break in childhood. From the top of the pile of lumber scraps, he slapped himself against the wall, found the ledges he needed, and clambered skyward. Atop the wall, the heavy canvas might prove just thick enough to protect his body from the shards of glass. He hurled himself up, vaulted to keep his weight from settling, then plunged into the compound, finding it, as he expected, to be deserted.

Two

Master of Ceremonies

T
HE C
-54
BOUNCED
and bounced again when it hit the runway. Inside the plane, aft, a stack of wooden crates broke loose from its cords, causing cartons to crack open, spilling dozens of cans, which then banged forward like cannon shot as the plane decelerated. Several struck Warburg’s feet—unexpected pain.

Turning sharply, the plane pulled quickly off the runway, causing more cartons to spill. “Captain Marvel has to get us out of the way,” Deane said, “the rate these birds are coming in.”

“I’m impressed, Father.” Warburg grinned at the priest, drawn to him. “You seem to know your way around.”

“
Savoir-faire
, my friend. French for ‘savvy fear.’” Then Deane matched Warburg’s grin with one of his own. “I hate flying.” He held up the book he’d been reading more or less the whole way across. A prayer book, with ribbons dripping out of its gold-edged pages.

As the plane slowed, the roar of the engine faded, and Warburg could speak almost normally. “So you prayed us across.”

“So you’re a Warburg.”

“Not the way you mean,” Warburg said. “I’m from Vermont.”

“Oh, well, there are Warburgs in New York.”

“I’ve heard.”

“Felix Warburg has helped Archbishop Spellman with the New York Foundling Home. Mrs. Warburg is on the board of directors. She’s very nice.” Deane’s easy smile was the one he used in Park Avenue salons.

“You work with Archbishop Spellman?”

“Until this week I was his MC.”

“Master of ceremonies?”

“Yes, but not the way the Toastmasters mean it. In the Church, the master of ceremonies is just that. On the altar, at the big guy’s elbow, I hand him the chalice when he’s ready.”

“And off the altar? Trusted assistant there, too, I’ll bet. Chief of staff or something.”

Deane lowered his head, a self-mocking bow.

Warburg said, “I’ve heard that it was Archbishop Spellman who finally shut up the anti-Semite priest Father Coughlin. Would the master of ceremonies have been involved with that?”

Deane’s failure to reply read less like discretion than modesty.

“Was that you?” Warburg pressed.

“Coughlin is a disgrace. The archbishop didn’t need me to tell him that.”

“And if you don’t mind my asking, Father, what’s so important in Rome that the archbishop has sent over his right-hand man?”

“Are you kidding? If Secretary Morgenthau can send across his Man Friday, why shouldn’t Spelly?”

“Spelly?”

Deane laughed. “What do you call Morgenthau when he’s not looking?”

“Mr. Secretary.”

Then they both laughed.

The plane halted, and in short order fore and aft hatches were thrown open. Bright light poured in at opposite ends of the cargo hold, with flotillas of dust motes dancing in the sunshine. Crewmen leapt aboard, ignoring the passengers, who were trying to gather their belongings as the offloading of crates began. It wasn’t until the pilot came from the cockpit and barked orders that the cargo handlers pulled back, and a roughly hewn lumber stairway was pushed up to the forward hatch so the passengers could get off. Warburg followed Deane out into the morning, each man with a single valise, both men over six feet tall. The priest and the Treasury official made a pair, although the priest appeared to be older by a decade or more.

Deane carried his prayer book under his arm. When he saw Warburg taking note of it again, he said, “The Roman breviary. Known to my kind as ‘the wife.’” He grimaced, and smiled.

Having left their plane behind, they crossed an open stretch of tarmac and soon found themselves in a man-high maze of stacked canned-goods crates and burlap sacks, and also of ammo boxes and pyramids of shells. The supplies had been successfully offloaded from dozens of planes like theirs, but there was no claimant in sight and no operations command. Clearly the only drill here was to empty out aircraft and get them gone. Unhelmeted soldiers hustled down the aisles of cargo with urgency but no evident purpose. The C-54 passengers were misfits in this corner of Ciampino. Ignored, they snaked in single file along the narrow lane of the open-air warehouse, following one another dumbly. Those in uniform—bars, brass leaves, and silver eagles on epaulets and collars—tossed salutes back at the occasional dull-eyed GI who’d bothered to salute first. These soldiers had been through hell, and looked it.

It was not a terminal to which the passengers were headed, but a massive hangar, the near corner of which had been converted into some kind of personnel processing center, with Army clerks behind counters fashioned of planks set across stacked crates. Forms were being stamped and queued soldiers coursed through successive lines. Compared to the apparent anarchy of the outdoor depot, the hangar scene exuded an air of relative order, and Warburg was drawn to it.

But as he, Deane, and the others were about to leave the tarmac, a large canvas-sided truck came wheeling in from behind the hangar, nearly running them down. A man and a woman leapt down from opposite sides of the truck cab—the woman being the driver—and all at once there was an outbreak of argument. A pair of clipboard-wielding NCOs pushed back against the truckers, and then MPs materialized. They, too, got rough with the pair, whose furious shouts fell strangely on Warburg’s ear until he realized that this was Italian. His Berlitz was useless.

Since the American soldiers patently had no idea what was being said, Monsignor Deane stepped in front of the MPs with upraised arms. “
Per favore! Per favore!
Hold on, folks. Calm down!
Calmi! Calmi!
” The easy authority of his intervention—his size, the striking black of his suit, his Roman collar, the rich tenor of his voice—had its effect, and the contretemps faded. All yielded to the priest. He engaged the two Italians. It was quickly apparent that the woman was in charge. After a set of rapid-fire exchanges, Deane turned to one of the Army clipboard holders, a sergeant. “They’re the Croce Rossa, the Red Cross.”

Only then did Warburg notice the faded symbol on the truck’s canvas, the familiar cross the color of dried blood. The truck, too, had been through hell. Warburg’s gaze, now set loose, went to the woman. The first thing to strike him was her bruised face, an eye half closed in its blackened well. Tall and thin, her knee-length blue skirt and blouse hung loosely on her body. Her calves were strikingly unshaven. Taking in her face again, he saw, apart from the bruises, its emaciation, a hint of weary glamour in the way her cheekbones protruded. There was also an accidental glamour in the angle at which her beret was cocked, keeping the other side of her face in shadow. Because of bruises there, too? Her pale lips made clear that she wore no makeup, but the crescent under her eye was dark enough to seem penciled in. A red sliver of what he took to be an undershirt showed at her throat, reminding Warburg, oddly, of the priest’s crimson collar tab. The woman, suddenly aware that Warburg was looking at her, met his gaze with such directness that, despite himself, he returned it. For a long few seconds, they stared at each other.

“They are here to pick up food,” Deane was saying to the sergeant, “for an open-air orphanage.” Deane turned to Warburg. “She said there are more than a thousand untended children holed up in the Quirinal gardens—lame, lost, abandoned. They just congregated there, without adults. She has to get them milk and bread.”

“We got no orders for that, Father,” the sergeant said. “My orders are to watch out for black market operators.”

“It’s Monsignor, Sergeant,” Deane said easily. Without knowing the subtleties, Warburg recognized the pulling of rank.

“Sorry, Monsignor. But we don’t sign anything out of here until the major shows.”

“When will that be?”

“Who knows? Look around, Father—I mean Monsignor. Sorry. You see any officers? Logistics staff meeting, probably. We’re supposed to have motor pool support here by now, but do you see any vehicles? Typical.”

“Meanwhile, Sergeant, these Red Cross folks have orphans to feed. She said the kids are living on
castagne
—chestnuts. Raw chestnuts. Look here. What’s on that one pallet alone? Fifty boxes of Carnation Farms? Come on, Sarge. That’s milk.”

“No can do, Monsignor. Not feasible.” He flashed his clipboard. “
Capiche?
No signature, no release.”

Warburg stepped forward. “I’ll sign that. I’m David Warburg. WRB.” Having pronounced the initials with authority, he counted on them meaning nothing to the soldier. But he flashed his leather credentials folder with a flourish, then held it before the man’s face, requiring him to examine it. “That’s the secretary of the treasury’s signature there. And you see the service grade—GS-19, Sergeant. Think brigadier general. Let’s call this
my
shipment.” Warburg was trumping not only the sergeant, but the priest. “Evaporated milk. Civilian disposition. It’s
meant
for the children. You can let this one pallet go. By the time the Red Cross comes back for anything else, standing orders will have been issued. You’ll receive a commendation. Where do I sign?” Warburg took the clipboard out of the soldier’s hands, leaving him to roll the words “brigadier general” across the craps table of his brain. Warburg pulled a fountain pen out of his inside pocket, uncapped it, and waved it at the bottom of the page, a wand. Handing the clipboard back, he said, “Now get these people some help loading that stack onto their truck.”