was a fervent Jew but not an Orthodox one. Her fervour was directed towards salvation rather than religious observation. She was sure that one day she would be a Zionist, but at the moment she was more concerned with saving Jews than rehabilitating them.
She rose from the bed and stood naked at the open window of her bedroom and peered round the yellow curtains for her daily glimpse of the river — the advertisement for the apartment had said simply ‘overlooking Tiber’ without mentioning that you could break your neck looking for it. She saw a swirl of water and withdrew from the window satisfied. It had become a ritual this daily peek at the river: not for any aesthetic reason: merely to remind her each day that the Tiber had once regularly flooded the ghetto into which Pope Paul IV had thrown the Jews in the sixteenth century. To Maria Reubeni the flow of the Tiber was the flow of Jewish persecution ever since.
But Maria was not a Jew who dolefully studied anti-Semite history while awaiting the next blow. She could not understand why the Jews of Europe were allowing themselves to be exterminated by the Germans. My God there were enough of them. Now she was determined to save the Jews of Rome.
She left the window open so that she could smell the first breaths of freshly-baked bread and coffee from the street below and turned on the shower in the bathroom. The cold water drumming on her shower-cap and sluicing down her body cooled her thoughts and gave them direction.
It was now a critical time for Italian Jewry. She and the other members of DELASEM, Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti (Jewish Emigrant Association), had known this ever since the war had started to go badly for the Axis powers. Italy would crumble. The Germans would move in. The Jews would suffer.
Now Mussolini had been ousted and it was just a matter of time … First DELASEM had to persuade the Allies and Italy’s new government under Pietro Badoglio to postpone an announcement of an armistice until they had got the Jews out of Italian-occupied France — and organised sanctuaries for the Roman Jews.
Maria dried herself, glanced briefly at her fine, heavy-breasted body in a wall mirror, dressed herself in a lime-green skirt and blouse and began to brush her long hair, so black that it seemed to have bluish lights in it.
Then she went to a cafe near the Theatre of Marcellus and ordered black coffee, the ersatz variety which tasted more like gravy, and a slice of pizza with a filling no thicker than a postage stamp.
The waiter with the anaemic moustache served her with a traditional flourish.
“Have you heard the news today?” he asked.
She shook her head, mouth full of pizza.
“Palermo has fallen,” the waiter told her.
“It fell on the twenty-second,” said Maria.
“Ah, you have better information than me.”
“I listen to the BBC.”
“Soon they will be on the mainland. Soon, perhaps, in Rome?” He looked at her hopefully. This goddess who had brains as well as beautiful bosoms.
“Perhaps,” said Maria.
The waiter pointed at the pizza and coffee. “Now every Italian knows we should never have gone to war. It is hurting us where it hurts most,” prodding his stomach. And then sadly: “We Italians are not fighters.”
She looked at him steadily. The waiter smiled uncertainly. She stood up, at least three inches taller than him. “Never let me hear you say that,” she said, searching for money in her handbag.
“You think we are fighters?” Astonished.
“You are implying that Italians are cowards,” Maria said. “Have you ever heard of Suda Bay?”
Miserably the waiter shook his head and began to clear the table to avoid her gaze.
“The Italians sank the British cruiser, York, and three supply ships. And how did they do it?” waiting until he was forced to look up. “With human torpedos, that’s how. And the pilots only ejected when the explosives were on target.”
“I didn’t mean —” the waiter began.
“The Italians are as brave as anyone. It is merely that we” — What am I, Jewish or Italian? — “are not stupid enough to sacrifice our way of life — that is what we have more than any other nation, a way of life — for an empty cause. But we are ruled by our hearts and not our minds, and that is why we allowed ourselves to be led to disaster by the Fascists.”
Her speech finished she strode from the cafe.
“Ah, she’s got guts, that one,” said a workman in blue dungarees sipping his coffee.
“Six months ago she would have been thrown into jail,” observed another.
“Perhaps she will be very soon,” said the first workman. “When the Germans come.”
The waiter said: “Why? The Germans have no love for Mussolini. Why should they throw her into jail for insulting him?’
“Because,” said the second workman, “she’s a Jew. That’s why, my friend.”
Outside the cafe Maria turned on her heel and headed towards the Corso. She was surprised at her pro-Italian outburst; after all, the Italians had introduced racial laws aimed at the Jews — even the Jewish artichoke had been renamed; but, Maria comforted herself, that had been the doing of the Fascists. But why had she wasted words on the waiter? Perhaps, she thought, because I know no man of character and strength in whom to confide; a man, that is, to whom I am physically attracted. Not even Angelo Peruzzi whose strength is a sham.
She didn’t take one of the green trams this morning. She wanted to smell the scents of Rome as it finally climbed from its bed after its drowsy awakening. The sky was misty blue and the streets rang with the clip-clop of horses’ hooves — more horses around these days than cars. But today Maria sensed a fresh nuance to the summer morning; a new expectancy as the Romans awaited the Germans, a razor-blade of cruelty; and when a pneumatic drill started up she jumped as though it were gunfire.
* * *
At the Fountain of Trevi Maria met by appointment a man she did admire. Although admiration was the limit of their relationship because the man was forty-eight — and a priest.
His name was Father Marie-Benoit, known in Rome as Maria Benedetto. He was a French Capuchin friar who had dedicated himself to rescuing Jews from their oppressors.
From the outset his career had been unorthodox. In the First World War he had served with the 44th Infantry Regiment as a stretcher-bearer and rifleman and had been awarded the Croix de Guerre with five citations and the Medaille Militaire. He was being trained as a machine-gunner when the Armistice was signed and was then transferred to the 15th Algerian Rifle Regiment in Morocco. After that he became Professor of Theology at the College International de St. Laurent.
At the outset of the present war he served first as an Italian interpreter with the French South-east Army Group. When France surrendered he went to Vichy, France, to Marseilles, sorting house of gangsters and refugees from German-occupied Europe. There he organised escape routes for the Jews.
Subsequently he was recalled by his Father Superior to Rome,
