Instead of coffee or a glass of wine they gave him a lime-green water-ice. He was, after all, only twelve.
At first he spoke in small, shivering phrases but soon the warmth, the water-ice and the mellow antiquity of the place had their effect. And it was a familiar tale that he told the priest and the Jewess.
It dated back to November 23rd, 1939, when the Jews of Warsaw, where he lived, had been ordered to wear yellow stars. Then, eleven months later, confinement to the ghetto administered by a Jewish council. Famine, cold, deaths by the thousands.
Then in 1942, Endlosung, the Final Solution.
Fear halted the words of the little boy in the too-long shorts, shaven hair beginning to grow into a semblance of an American crew-cut. They bought him another water-ice, and waited. The girl pointed to a lizard, watched by a hungry cat, basking on a slab of ancient brick. The boy’s lips stopped trembling, he smiled.
And in a strange mixture of languages he delivered his adolescent version of the terrible facts that were leaking out from Eastern Europe. The beginning of the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, transportations to Treblinka death camp, gassings with carbon monoxide from diesel engines, followed by another gas (which Maria knew to be Zyklon B).
Horror froze around them in the sunshine.
Then the boy came to the revolt of the Warsaw Jews which began on April 18th, two months ago. He had been smuggled through the German lines in an empty water-cart during the fighting.
Maria leaned forward and spoke to him in Hebrew. The boy straightened his back and answered her firmly.
Liam asked Maria what she had said.
“I asked him if the Jews fought well.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said they fought like tigers.”
“And?”
She shrugged. “They were massacred.” She sipped her glass of wine. “But at least they fought. For the first time in nearly two thousand years they fought back as a people.”
Liam stared at her fascinated. When he had first seen her he had been aware of an instant physical reaction. But his emotions had been swamped by the sickening catalogue of inhumanity the child had carried with him across Europe.
Now the passion in her voice reawakened the feelings. He wanted to lean across the table and touch her hand. He was appalled.
She put away her notebook and said: “Well, there you are, Father, there’s your evidence. Do you believe it?”
“Of course I believe it.”
“But will anyone else inside your little haven believe it?”
He ran one finger under his clerical collar. “I cannot say,” lamely.
“So you, too, are a diplomat rather than a priest.”
He wanted to shout: “Not true.” To unburden his conscience to this beautiful, aggressive daughter of Rome.
She lit a cigarette. “Don’t worry, Father. They will want more proof as always. And they will say, ‘We need more than the word of a child.’ As if anything more was needed,” patting the boy’s stubbly hair. “Another ice-cream?”
At that moment the cat pounced. But the lizard was too quick for it, disappearing in a blur of olive movement.
The boy laughed and said to Maria: “That’s how I escaped.”
“No more ice-cream?”
He shook his head.
“Then it’s time I took you home.”
“Where is he staying?” Liam asked.
“He has family here. That’s why he was brought to Rome. They thought it would be safe here. But now …” Her hands finished the sentence, Italian style.
“A Polish Jew has a family in Rome?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” the girl said. “He is a Jew. He has family everywhere.”
Liam wondered at her hostility. He guessed — hoped — that it related only to her attitude towards The Vatican. She stood up suddenly, every movement vital, and paid the bill. Then she took the boy’s hand. “Good-bye, Father, it has been pleasant meeting you,” in a voice that belied her words.
Liam stood up and, to his amazement, heard himself proposing another meeting, lying to himself and to the girl, concocting a story that they needed to compare notes to enable them to present convincing evidence to the Papal authorities, knowing that this was a lie within a lie because many dossiers and petitions had been presented to The Vatican with negligible results.
She looked at him quizzically. “Very well. I’m dining in Trastevere tonight. Perhaps we could meet there for a drink. You do take a glass of wine, Father?”
“Occasionally,” Liam told her.
They arranged to meet at a trattoria, and he watched her walk away holding the boy’s hand and he knew that he should never see her again, that he should run after her and cancel the appointment, but he didn’t move. And, as she passed out of sight, he knew, standing there among the ruins of imperial Rome, that his life, his creed, had been irrevocably changed, that he was about to embark on a struggle with temptation which would be the greatest test of his life.
They met that evening in a trattoria, in the Piazza D’ Mercanti in the artists’ quarter of Trastevere on the opposite bank of the Tiber.
Liam was disappointed to find that Maria had company. A young man with swaggering manners and, Liam suspected, many complexes, and a Sicilian who was never called by his name. Both men indulged in the sort of banter which many men employ to disguise their unease in the presence of clergy.
They drank from a carafe of red wine and smoked a lot, as did most of the other customers who crossed the river to find Bohemia. A musician in a grease-spotted black suit and open-necked white shirt was playing a violin, but only the occasional thin note penetrated the noise of Italians relaxing.
Liam and Maria completed the farce of comparing notes, then the swaggering young man named Angelo ordered more wine and topped up Liam’s glass, and Liam thought: “You’re trying to get me drunk, my young friend. What better joke than a drunken priest?”
“So, Father,” the Sicilian said, lighting a thin cigar, “what do you think of the latest events?”
“The war you mean?”
“What else? Your information must be good, Father. The best in Rome, eh?”
“I doubt if I know more than you,” Liam said, believing he told the truth.
“Come, Father, an American priest inside The Vatican. You must have access to much intelligence.”
Liam frowned. He couldn’t think of any particular intelligence that had come his way.
“Are you not in contact with Mr. Tittman, the American diplomatic representative?”
“I’ve met him,” Liam said.
“I’m told that he is angry because he doesn’t always have the same privileges as other diplomats.”
“That,” said Liam, “is because in the past the United States had barely recognised The Vatican diplomatically. It is only through the Holy Father’s kindness that he is there at all.”
“And Sir D’Arcy Osborne, the British envoy. Do you know him?”
“I’ve spoken to him,” Liam said. He realised that the Sicilian was showing off his knowledge. “Why?”
“They’re both still sending their coded messages on The Vatican radio. A lot of good that will do them — the Italian Fascists have cracked the code and passed it on to the