Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

Rainy enters the bakery, the panificio. She waits her turn behind two other women, nods to the baker’s clerk, who says, “Signora?”

“Pane, per favore.”

There is only one type of bread currently available—a foot-long, flattened dome made of equal parts wheat and sawdust—and no one is allowed to buy more than one. But the formalities must be observed, and she must state her preference as though she has a choice. Rainy takes her loaf of still-warm bread and crosses the narrow street to the drogheria, the grocer. It is a small, dark shop with few shelves and even fewer things to be found on those shelves. She gathers a can of sardines, a packet of dried beans, pasta, a can of tomatoes, and a single garlic bulb. She is running low on cash and is very careful to husband it, but the grocer has been keeping his customers alive on credit so he is always happy to see her and her lira notes.

Since arriving in Italy, the land of fabled foods, Rainy has lost twelve pounds between the fever, her constant hunger, and the exercise of walking to and from town, as well as her optimistic and probably doomed effort to revive a long-neglected garden. She is thin but not weak. If anything, Rainy has hardened—there are few better exercises than climbing hills.

And she has perhaps hardened in mind as well, or at least deepened. Long, long days and nights with no one to talk to, no books, newspapers, or radio have forced her to think more deeply about many things: the war, God, her family, Halev, her future.

She is contemplating college as she climbs the long slope back to her borrowed home, shifting the net bag from hand to hand every now and again. The pistol, retrieved from the cave, is still strapped to her leg and she’s quite used to it now, would feel naked without it.

Back at her temporary abode, Rainy uses the rusted knife with a broken-off tip she’d found in a drawer to cut off a hunk of bread. She slices a wedge of cheese, considers the sardines, and decides to save them for later. Instead she piles the cheese and a half dozen olives on her slab of bread, sticks an opened bottle of red wine under her arm, and goes outside to eat atop a stone wall beside the well. The weather is fine, just a bit chilly but sunny and very clear.

A bite of cheese. A bite of bread. An olive. A swig of wine.

“Life could be worse,” Rainy says. She has long since stopped worrying about talking to herself, though for safety’s sake she talks to herself in Italian.

“It will be worse soon,” she answers h

erself, taking on a glum tone. “You’re down to three thousand, four hundred and seventy lire.” Perhaps thirty-five dollars in round numbers, and the prices are rising as the shortages worsen and as the authorities have ceased to show much actual authority against price gouging and profiteering.

Thirty-five dollars in cash is more than most people in Genazzano have, but most of them have jobs or farms, and all of them have local family and connections to help out.

If only she had some idea what was going on in the war. The local newspapers are censored and useless, good only for reading between the lines. It’s clear that the Allies have taken Sicily, but beyond that, no news at all. No news and of course no letters. Her parents must think she’s been captured or killed; she’s never gone this long without writing to them.

Halev . . . well, he’s surely found someone else by now. Not that they really even had more than a friendship. Halev owes her nothing, and she owes him nothing. But she cannot quite bring herself to dismiss Halev—friends, family, the memories of home have become vital to her survival.

She worries at times about her father and Vito the Sack. No doubt Tomaso and his father are furious that she’s escaped without killing the priest, but her deal was with Vito Camporeale to deliver Cisco, and she delivered Cisco. So no one should have any beef with her father.

From the stone wall, Rainy can look out over most of a mile of road. The road twists and turns along escarpments, through woods, behind occasional homes, but for the most part she can see anything or anyone coming this direction. Twice she has seen German vehicles passing on their way west to Rome.

There’s very little else to do aside from picking insects off the scraggly, never-to-ripen carrots and peppers in the garden. Her days are full of silence. Her nights are full of the small sounds that cause her to wake suddenly and check the door. She lives in fear of the sound of tires on the gravel outside, of slammed car doors and German voices.

But mostly she is bored. Somewhere the war goes on, but she is no longer in it.

Missing, presumed dead. So sorry, that girl had promise, what was her name? The little Jew with the hair like a bird’s nest and the odd name. You remember. Snowy. Or was it Breezy?

A car passes by on the road below, driving fast. Ten minutes later, an oxcart moving slow. The oxcart driver stops his beast, goes to the side of the road, and unbuttons his fly, needing a pee.

Rainy looks away, and it is this bit of delicacy that almost causes her to miss the open car. But she hears the engine and looks back, then peers intently as the car slows to maneuver past the stopped cart.

Four men in the car, none in uniform. She should breathe a sigh of relief, but something is wrong, very, very wrong about that car and those four men. She can’t see the spot where the car would have to turn off onto the driveway and reach the house, but instinct is screaming at her to run, so she races for the house. She grabs the rest of her bread and the bottle of wine, piles out of the side window, and runs to the shelter of the nearest trees.

The car pulls up when she is still exposed and in the open.

“Halt!” a voice shouts.

She runs, low bushes whipping her bare legs.

Voices yell in German. A shot! More yelling, angry, berating. Alive! she translates. Take her alive!

The suicide pill is in the pocket of her dress, but surely it’s not . . . no, it can’t be . . . She fumbles for her pistol.

She glances back. Two young men, both fit, neither hampered by women’s shoes. They’ll be on her in ten seconds.

The pill is in her fingers. The gun in her hand. My God, no, it can’t have come to that. It can’t be . . . not now . . . not yet!

She fires fast, without aiming, hoping to make them cautious.