One
Having been caught in a sudden afternoon rainstorm and separated from his friends, Armando ended up spending the night on an awning-covered porch in the Chiaia neighborhood, a sleeping place he’d never used. There was thunder in the wet darkness and flashes of lightning, too, not so different from the years of Allied bombing. He woke at first light to find his legs in a puddle and a man standing over him—the owner of the house, he guessed. The man was as wide as a wine barrel, with thick arms and fat hands, an ugly mouth, and short, curly hair that came to a point low on his forehead. A silvery scar ran across the middle of his neck. He reached down and lifted Armando to his feet, not gently, and held him there—wet, shivering, too close. “You pay rent here?” the man said, the scar on his neck bouncing with each word.
Armando couldn’t speak. His legs were shaking, his breath coming in gulps. After a few bad seconds, he shook his head.
“You have a name?”
“Ar . . . Armando.”
“Last name?”
Another shake of the head.
“You sleep wherever you want to?”
“Sì, sì . . . On the streets.”
The man ran his eyes—small, dark, merciless—over Armando’s face and released his grip. “You’re a scugnizzo.”
Armando nodded, proud of the label. Scugnizzo. Street kid. He was slightly less afraid now.
“What do you do for food, for money?”
The boy narrowed his own eyes, didn’t blink, didn’t turn away. “What I have to.”
The ugly man studied him, but he seemed to Armando to be partly somewhere else, to be thinking up a plan. “I’m burying my brother today,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry is a pleasant word.”
“I am, though. I don’t have a brother. Or a mother. Or a father. The nuns raised me.”
“Too bad.”
“Until I ran away.”
The man kept moving his eyes across Armando’s face, as if searching for something there, bringing himself back from wherever he had been. “You want to make two lire?” he said at last.
“Sì, certo.”
“Wait, then. Don’t move.”
Legs wet, his ragged shoes soaked, the awning dripping behind him and a line of cold nervousness running up and down his spine, Armando watched the man disappear into the house. He thought of running, but he was too proud to run, his stomach hurt from hunger, and two lire would buy him and his friends enough food to fill them up for a day or more.
When the man returned, he was holding a parcel the size of a loaf of bread. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with yarn. “You know the Spagnoli neighborhood?”
“Sì.”
“Take this there. Vico Politi number eighteen. Knock twice on the door. A woman will answer. Tall. Red hair. Give her the package and leave, chiaro?”
“Sì, very clear. What is it, food?”
The man stared hard at him for a moment, and then a small, mean smile lifted the corners of his lips. “You sure you want to know?”
Armando nodded, suddenly afraid again.
“Three pistols. For killing Nazis. And if you steal them instead of making the delivery, I’ll find you and break both your legs. Clear?”
“Sì, sì.”
The man gave Armando the package, then reached into his pocket and handed over two one-lira coins, beautiful pieces of metal, big bird on one side, some kind of prince or king with a curved nose on the other. “You remember the address?”
“Vico Politi. Number eighteen.”
“Good. Now go. And never come to this house again. If I have more work, I’ll find you. Vai! Go!”
Armando didn’t move. His legs were shaking from the cold and something else, but a string of steely notes was sounding in his brain, a song, a street kid’s anthem. “You know my name,” he heard himself say in a steady voice. “But I don’t know yours.”
For a few seconds, he thought he’d ruined everything. The wide man was looking down at him, still as a closed garage door, not happy. The tiny smile was gone. “Zozo,” he said at last, very quietly and slowly, as if it were an incantation. “Zozo Forni. Now go before I break you in half.”
Two
A cloud of foreboding hovered around Colonel Walter Scholl as he climbed the steps of the German army headquarters in the south of Rome. He adjusted the monocle on his left eye, something he wore only for important occasions. The office to which he’d been summoned—to meet with none other than Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commanding officer of all German forces in Italy—meant a climb of five stories, the ascent made on wide marble steps slightly worn at their centers. He was in good condition; the climb was no problem. The problem was the summons itself, coming as it did only four weeks after a reprimand for “personal behavior unbecoming an officer of the Reich.” That reprimand had been issued not by Kesselring but by a jealous major general in Rieti, where he’d recently been stationed, and it was a stain—shameful but small—on what had otherwise been an exemplary military career. Straightening the jacket of his uniform as he went, Scholl wondered whether this meeting would be disciplinary in nature or something else. For a long time now, since his triumphant return from the Norwegian campaign in late 1940 (he was wounded in the battle for Narvik), he’d been anticipating a promotion. Perhaps the day had finally arrived.
He reached the top of the staircase, brushed a tiny crumb of bread from his left sleeve, presented himself at the desk in the outer room, and did his best to conquer a small facial twitch, a tic, that had afflicted him of late. Kesselring had been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds! A giant among men and a personal favorite of the Führer. The annoying tic—how Scholl despised it—was acceptable, then, understandable. Anyone would be nervous before meeting such a man.
Kesselring summoned him with a single word. “Eintreten.” Scholl stepped into a high-ceilinged office with elegant white molding, tall curtained windows, an enormous desk. He stood before the desk and saluted. Kesselring sat there, a handsome man, wide lips, alert eyes, a sense of dignity about him. Scholl had never seen the field marshal without his hat and was surprised to realize that Kesselring was balding on top. Still, a good-looking man, Luftwaffe veteran of the first war, now with the weight of an entire occupied nation on his shoulders. The field marshal gestured with one hand to a chair, red-upholstered, that would have been more at home in the parlor of a Viennese socialite than the office of a commander. “At ease, Colonel. Sit.”
Scholl sat. Spine straight, monocle in place, eye contact steady. The tic had temporarily left him in peace.
“We have a situation,” Kesselring began.
Scholl swallowed, perhaps too obviously, tried to maintain his composure. If the Rieti fiasco was being referred to as “a situation,” he was in trouble. Assignment to the Russian front wasn’t out of the question, and, from what he’d heard, since the surrender at Stalingrad in February, things hadn’t been going well on the steppes.
After straightening the papers on his desk in an absentminded way, Kesselring looked up and said, “Do you know Naples at all?”