Beneath a Scarlet Sky

by Mark T. Sullivan

“I think so, but why don’t I avoid that face, drop down to Madesimo on the two-track, and then climb straight up to that spot? It would be faster.” “It would be,” Father Re said. “But I’m not interested in your speed, just that you can find your way and not be seen.” “Why?” “I have my reasons, which I’ll keep to myself for now, Pino. It’s safer that way.”

“Don’t provoke them, Pino. The Germans, I mean.” “Father?” “I want you to practice being unnoticed,” Father Re said. “Driving a car like that gets you noticed, brings you to the Germans’ attention. Understand?” Pino didn’t understand, not completely, anyway, but he could see the concern in the priest’s eyes and promised not to do it again.

“Aren’t you risking your life just having them here at Casa Alpina?” “And the boys’ lives,” the priest said, his face sober. “But we must help all refugees fleeing the Germans. The pope thinks so. Cardinal Schuster thinks so. And so do I.” “I do, too, Father,” Pino said, emotional in a way he never had been before, as if he were about to go out and right a great wrong.

“The Germans haven’t found many of the Jews. The Nazis know they’re being helped.” “Alberto Ascari says there have been atrocities, Father,” Pino said. “The Nazis have killed priests helping Jews. They’ve pulled them right off the altar while they were saying Mass.” “We have heard that, too,” the priest said. “But we can’t stop loving our fellow man, Pino, because we’re frightened. If we lose love, all is lost. We just have to get smarter.”

Pino stood next to Father Re, shaken. “Are you all right?” the priest asked. Pino was quiet for a long time before saying, “Father, is it a sin if I’m asking myself if I did the right thing in not killing that man?” The priest said, “No, it is not a sin, and you did the right thing not killing him.” Pino bobbed his head, but his lower lip was trembling, and it was taking everything in his power to swallow the emotion surging in his throat. Everything had happened so fast, so— Father Re patted Pino on the back. “Have faith. You did the right thing.”

The Gestapo is like God. We hear all things.” Father Re stiffened. “Whatever you may think, Colonel, you are not like God, though you were made in his loving image.” Rauff took a step closer, gazed icily into the priest’s eyes, and said, “Make no mistake, Father, I can be your savior, or your condemner.” “It still doesn’t make you God,” Father Re said, showing no fear.

Pino felt embarrassed to be the object of so much attention. He smiled. “Mimo was the one who made it work.” But he felt good about it, elated actually. Fooling the Nazis like that made him feel empowered. In his own way, he was fighting back. They were all fighting back, part of the growing resistance. Italy was not German. Italy could never be German.

“You’ve changed, Pino. You not only look like a man, you sound like one. So I’m going to tell you that unless you decide to escape to Switzerland yourself and sit out the war, you are going to be drawn into it one way or another. The first way, you wait to be drafted. You will be given three weeks’ training, and then be shipped up north to fight the Soviets, where the death rate among first-year Italian soldiers is nearly fifty percent.

The man looked up. Pino saw how young he was. They could have been the same age, though he was twisted and aged beyond what Pino could fathom. “You speak like a Milanese, but you wear a Nazi uniform,” he croaked. “It’s complicated,” Pino said. “Drink the water.” He drank a sip, and then gulped it down just as eagerly as the other seven had. “Who are you?” Pino said when he’d finished. “Who are these others?” The man looked at Pino as if he were studying a bug. “My name is Antonio,” he said. “And we’re slaves. Every last one of us.”

“You are my driver,” he said as he stomped past Pino. “You do not serve the laborers.” “I’m sorry, mon général,” Pino said, hurrying after him. “They just looked thirsty, and no one was giving them water. That’s just . . . well, stupid.” Leyers spun around in his tracks, got in Pino’s face. “What is stupid?” “Keeping water from a working man makes him weak,” Pino stammered. “You want them to work faster, you give them more water and food.” The general stood there, nose to nose with Pino, peering into his eyes as if trying to see into his soul. It took every bit of Pino’s spirit not to look away. “We have policies about the laborers,” Leyers said curtly at last, “and food is hard to come by these days. But I’ll see what I can do about the water.”

Pino drove in silence, glancing at the rearview mirror and arguing with himself. When the general had complimented him, he’d swelled with pride. But now he was wondering why. Leyers was a Nazi, a slave driver, a master builder of war. How could Pino feel pride when the compliment had come from someone like that? He couldn’t. He shouldn’t. And yet he had, and it bothered him.

“Someone very wise once told me that by opening our hearts, revealing our scars, we are made human and flawed and whole.” He felt his brows knit. “Okay?” “I’m not ready to reveal my scars to you. I don’t want you to see me human and flawed and whole. I want this . . . us . . . to be a fantasy we can share, a diversion from the war.”

Leyers said. “A rare thing for someone so young. But both Hans-Jürgen and Willy read all the time, especially the sports sections. We used to go watch sports together. Willy and I saw Jesse Owens run at the Berlin Olympic Games. Fantastic. How angry the führer was that day when a black man bested our best. But Jesse Owens? Vorarbeiter, that Negro was a physical genius. Willy kept saying that, and he was right.”

“Dolly’s a dear friend,” Major General Leyers announced sometime later. “I’ve known her a long time, Vorarbeiter. I like her a great deal. I owe her a great deal. I look out for her, and I always will. But a man like me doesn’t leave his wife to marry a woman like Dolly. It would be like an old goat trying to cage a tigress in her prime.” He laughed with admiration and some bitterness before drinking again.

“You never want to be the absolute leader in the game of life, the man out front, the one everyone sees and looks to,” Leyers said. “That’s where my poor Willy made his mistake. He got out front, right there in the light. You see, Vorarbeiter, in the game of life, it is always preferable to be a man of the shadows, and even the darkness, if necessary. In this way, you run things, but you are never, ever seen. You are like a . . . phantom of the opera. You are like . .

The best thing is to grieve for the people you loved and lost, and then welcome and love the new people life puts in front of you.”

He hated war. He hated the Germans for starting it. For what? Putting your boot on another man’s head and stealing him blind, until someone with a bigger boot comes along to kick you out of the way? As far as Pino was concerned, wars were about murder and thievery. One army killed to steal the hill; then another killed to steal it back.

“The United States of America appreciates that, General Leyers,” Corvo said. “I think there’ll be something on paper and signed in less than a week, maybe even sooner.” Leyers nodded. “Until then. Wish Mr. Dulles my best.” Pino translated, and then added, “He has been burning documents across northern Italy for the past three days.” Corvo cocked his head. “That true?” “Yes,” Pino said. “They’re all burning documents. All of them.” “Okay,” the OSS agent said. “Thanks for telling me.” Corvo shook the general’s hand, and Pino’s, and then he was gone. Pino stood there for several awkward moments before Leyers said, “What were you saying there just before he left?” “I asked him what Connecticut was like, and he said it was nowhere as beautiful as Italy.” The general studied him. “Let’s go. I have an appointment with Cardinal Schuster.”

In the back, the general was handcuffing himself again to the suitcase. “Why didn’t you kill him?” Carletto said in disbelief. “Because I want him to kill me,” Pino said,