Stones in Water Read online

  Roberto wound up behind a tall kid. He leaned toward Samuele so he could see.

  “Want to switch with me?” whispered Samuele. He got up and they changed seats.

  “Thanks.” Roberto could see everything now. He loved the big theatre screen. He felt surrounded by it, as though he were there, in the middle of the fast-moving picture.

  War news flashed across the screen. German soldiers marched in the Crimea. They captured Kertch. Everyone was afraid of the Germans. Meanwhile, an American airplane dropped bombs over the German town Cologne. None of the bombs struck anything important, though. The American and British air forces were incompetent, despite their larger bombers. And now the Japanese were dropping bombs someplace far away in the East.

  Roberto knew the geography of Europe and western Asia—he could place the Crimean battle on the Black Sea and the German battle along the Rhine River. But his teachers hadn’t talked much about the geography of Asia. Still, he sat up straight when he heard about the Japanese bombs—they weighed five hundred kilograms. Roberto furrowed his brows—that was half the weight of the British bomb he’d heard about on the radio. How could the Axis forces win if the enemy had bigger bombs? But the newsreel said that everyone was surrendering to the Germans or the Japanese. So it was okay. Italy would come out okay.

  Italian troops flapped their caps at the camera, smiling wide. They were stationed in Tunis, in North Africa, and, despite the fact that they had been driven back from Abyssinia last fall, they were doing their part valiantly. It wouldn’t be long before that whole area fell to the Axis powers.

  Roberto’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. He looked around. The theatre was packed with boys. No girls, as far as he could tell. Westerns weren’t so popular with girls—plus most girls’ mothers wouldn’t let them go to the movies without chaperones. Several rows ahead he saw a few boys from Venice. But most of the kids were from Mestre and the little villages outside. He didn’t see an adult in the group.

  The newsreel ended and the Western began. Roberto stared up at the title and actors’ names on the huge screen.

  Suddenly the lights went on. Roberto blinked against the brightness. Boys groaned and hooted in complaint. He joined in.

  The hoots mixed with screams. German soldiers marched down the aisles. Soldiers, here in the theatre. Roberto focused on their stomping boots. The boots seemed absurd in the early summer heat. Everything was loud, deafening—the confusion made Roberto feel stupid and somehow distant, detached. He forced himself to look around and pay attention. Rifles swung from straps over the soldiers’ shoulders. They shouted orders. Half the audience was standing by now, pushing, trying to get out.

  Roberto’s heart pounded. He reached across Samuele and grabbed Sergio’s hand. “What’s going on?”

  Sergio stood up and leaned over the three boys. “Keep your mouths shut and do what everyone else does.”

  Samuele let Roberto squish past him so that he was right behind Sergio. But Sergio pulled his hand away and moved toward the closest aisle. He spoke out of the side of his mouth without looking at Roberto. “Stay close. Just stay close.”

  THE TRAIN

  Everyone pressed into the aisles, Roberto on Sergio’s heels, Memo and Samuele close behind.

  The soldiers shouted at the stumbling crowd. They hit the boys’ legs with wooden batons. Someone finally understood and yelled in Venetian dialect for everyone to go single file.

  Another boy jammed between Sergio and Roberto in the line. Roberto looked around in panic. At least Samuele was right behind Roberto, and Memo right behind him. When they got out of the theatre, Roberto would catch up with Sergio.

  But when they got out of the theatre, more soldiers were waiting for them. They shouted and pushed and split the boys into two groups, clearly by age. Sergio went with the older boys. Roberto called to him, but his voice was lost in the din.

  “Keep your mouth shut,” hissed Memo. “Do what Sergio said.”

  “Why?” said Roberto. “The Germans are on our side.”

  “The Germans are on their own side,” said Samuele.

  A boy near Roberto shouted, “I have to get home now.”

  “Me, too,” shouted another.

  And everyone was shouting, “I have to get home now.”

  Bang!

  The crowd hushed. Roberto looked around, frantic. But no one had fallen. A soldier must have fired into the air.

  The soldiers shouted and marched them down the street. Every Easter Roberto went with his family to visit cousins who lived in the hills southwest of Padova. His cousin Guido herded a flock by himself. Roberto envied Guido and often imagined being him. But now he had the sensation of being one of the sheep, freshly shorn and wild-eyed, pressed on from all sides. His heart thumped.

  They went into the Mestre train station. Thank heavens, they were about to be sent home. Now he understood: This was their punishment for going to see an American film in the middle of the war. In a minute, the soldiers would separate out the ones who were going east to Venice from the ones who were going west to the villages outside Mestre. Roberto didn’t even have the change for the train ticket. And he didn’t want to borrow more money from Memo. But if he was lucky, no one would check to see if he had a ticket. And if he got caught, he’d explain what happened. It would all be okay.

  Roberto breathed more slowly. He looked around for the other groups of Venetian boys. They might as well all get together now. “Come on,” he said to Memo and Samuele. He turned around and pressed toward the rear of the crowd.

  A soldier shouted at him—an Italian soldier. Things couldn’t go too badly now that Italian soldiers were here, too. Roberto moved toward the soldier in relief, but the soldier yelled and told Roberto to go with the crowd.

  Memo jerked hard on the back of Roberto’s pants.

  Roberto turned forward and let himself be pushed by the crowd down the steps and up again, onto the platform by the second track, to a waiting train. The boys in his group were loaded into one train car. The older boys were loaded into a separate one. It made no sense—they didn’t all live in the same direction.

  No one took seats. They stood at the windows in clumps and looked out at the soldiers on the train platforms. Two German soldiers got on their train car. The engines revved up. The doors shut. The train started. It headed west.

  Roberto shook his head. “We’re going the wrong way.” His stomach lurched.

  “I should have run for it.” Samuele stared at Roberto with terror in his eyes. “I should have run while I had a chance.”

  Roberto shook his head again. He clenched his teeth against the fear. “This is a mistake. It’s just a big mistake.”

  The car full of boys was noisy and hot.

  “My mother’s going to worry,” someone said loudly. “I’ll never get home on time.”

  Voices of agreement chimed in. No one wanted to risk his mother’s wrath or tears. People swapped mother stories.

  Roberto could imagine his own mother carrying on crazy-like, what with both him and Sergio showing up late. She imagined danger everywhere.

  “Look at them,” said Samuele, with a small nod toward the soldiers at the end of the car. “They can’t be more than twenty years old—you can tell in spite of their fancy uniforms.” He blinked and whispered hoarsely, “Two of them to a whole carload of us.”

  The two German soldiers sat on the last row of seats. They smoked. One of them yawned, showing clean white teeth.

  “They have guns.” Memo sank onto a seat.

  Samuele sat down beside him.

  Roberto stayed standing, watching the cows go by. He stopped listening to the boys around him. These German soldiers were making trouble for him. His father would be enraged. The only saving grace was that Sergio had done it, too. Sergio, as the older brother, would bear the brunt of the punishment.

  Pretty soon Roberto could see buildings ahead. He sat. “We’re already at Padova.”

  Samuele got up and moved
down the aisle away from the soldiers.

  One of the soldiers called to him.

  Samuele didn’t look back. Roberto knew he was heading for the door.

  The soldier stood up.

  Roberto quickly followed Samuele. He heard Memo right behind him. His mouth went dry and his chest tightened. But if Samuele was going to get off the train, so was he. He’d done nothing wrong—nothing more than go to an American film. And look what trouble he was in now. Memo always had money on him, sure, but he’d never have enough to buy three train tickets back to Venice. They’d have to walk most of the night to get home. Unless they were lucky enough to hitch a ride.

  The soldier called to them in German.

  The train was slowing down.

  The soldier shouted now. He ran down the aisle, pushed past Roberto and Memo, and grabbed Samuele’s arm. He spun him around, jabbering German. He slammed him against the side of a seat.

  “Hey!” said Memo. He yanked on the soldier’s sleeve. He unbuttoned his shorts. “We have to use the bathroom. That’s allowed, right?”

  The soldier looked at Memo.

  Memo exposed himself and pointed at the toilet cabin at the end of the car. “Pee!”

  “Ah.” The soldier gave a quick nod. He let go of Samuele.

  The boys squeezed into the toilet cabin. Roberto swung the door shut, but the soldier put his boot on the doorsill and kept it from latching. Roberto leaned against the door from the inside. What was going on? When would the soldiers let them off? He pressed the back of his head against the door and pushed with all his strength.

  Memo used the toilet. “You, too. Hurry,” he said to Samuele. “Use it now, when there’s only us to see.”

  Samuele used the toilet.

  Roberto stared at Samuele’s circumsized penis. Of course, he’d seen it before. But he hadn’t thought about how it marked him as a Jew, no matter what he said, no matter where he was. If anyone found out, Samuele would be in serious trouble. He should have never agreed to let Sergio take the Star of David band off his arm. Samuele had broken the law.

  It was Roberto’s turn now. “Look.” He took himself with both hands. “Hold your hands this way to cover yourself.”

  Samuele nodded.

  “That was dumb.” Memo cleared his throat and looked steadily at Samuele. “If you do something like that again, I won’t follow you.”

  “Sergio said to do what everyone else does.” Roberto moved closer to Samuele. “Sergio knows about these things.”

  Samuele set his jaw. But he nodded again.

  They opened the door.

  The soldier stepped aside and the boys went back to their seats.

  The train stopped.

  “Let us off,” whined a boy near the door.

  The other German soldier barked something at him.

  The doors opened and more boys filed in. They called out in bewilderment and anger. They used Padovano dialect, which was a lot like Venetian.

  Two more German soldiers got on. The doors shut.

  They made three more stops that afternoon and evening: at Verona, Trento, and Bolzano. Each time, the train took on more Italian boys and more German soldiers. The boys exclaimed in dialects that were increasingly different from Roberto’s language—but he understood anyway: They said the same things the boys from Mestre and Venice said when they’d first boarded the train.

  The new boys jammed in, six to a bench seat that was intended to hold two adults. Several stood at the windows, Roberto among them. Once, when they rounded a curve going through the Dolomite mountains, Roberto counted the train cars. Seven. Seven cars full of Italian boys heading up into the peaks. At the next curve he tried to see into the car behind his. The faces at the windows stood out distinct in the evening glow—but none of them was Sergio’s. Roberto waved anyway, just in case Sergio was watching for him.

  The mountains cut up through the air, proud and clean. These mountains that Roberto had heard so much about and had promised himself he’d see someday. Now he was seeing them. He blinked the tears from his eyes. There was no telling how he’d get home from here and how long it would take. There was no telling what punishment his father would give. He’d never done anything so terrible in his life.

  Hunger made him irritable. Some of the boys who had gotten on the train at a later stop hadn’t missed a meal. But Roberto hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He had skipped the midday meal so that he could walk to the theatre in Mestre. His stomach growled. Loudly. He looked at Memo.

  Memo looked back at him with big eyes.

  Roberto’s stomach growled again.

  A smile crept across Memo’s face.

  Roberto’s stomach growled again.

  Memo laughed.

  Roberto’s irritation disappeared. He laughed, too. Everything was awful—but he laughed anyway.

  Memo stood up and leaned beside Roberto, their faces to the open window. They watched the evergreens whip past.

  “We’re going to be soldiers,” said a boy a few seats down. He spoke in the dialect of Mestre. “That’s it, I bet. My uncle’s a soldier.”

  “We can’t be soldiers. You have to be eighteen.”

  “Uh-uh. Lots of younger boys have joined up. My brother did, and he was only seventeen then.”

  “So did my brother,” said the boy beside him. “But he’s twenty. He has so many medals, he doesn’t know where to pin them all.”

  “The boy who lives upstairs from me goes to the infantry academy. He does gymnastics and he goes on bike rides in the Apennine Mountains. And when they blow trumpets, he has to wake up, or eat, or”—he giggled—“go to the bathroom.”

  The boys laughed.

  “He loves it. He’s stronger than he ever was.”

  “Viva Il Duce!” shouted a boy in school Italian.

  “Viva la guerra!” shouted another boy.

  “Greece is behind us,” said the boy whose brother was twenty.

  “What do you mean?” asked another.

  “Don’t you know how it’s been? The Germans have been winning all the battles, while we Italians got whipped by the Greeks. My brother told me. But the shame is over.” He lifted his chin with pride. “We’re going to Germany. We’ll fight beside the Germans and we’ll win, too. Italians will win, too.”

  Someone sang “L’Inno a Roma.” Most of the boys in the train car joined in. It was a song everyone knew from school. And now they sang “Fischia il Sasso” and “Giovinezza,” songs to show what loyal citizens they were, what good fascists. Roberto sang along. But he didn’t want to be a soldier, whether the Italians were losing or winning. And, anyway, he had to tell his parents if he was going off to war. He couldn’t just leave like that.

  They arrived at the border.

  “We can’t go across the Austrian border,” Roberto whispered in Memo’s ear.

  “It’s not Austria anymore. It’s all part of Germany now.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We can’t cross any border. We have no documents on us. It’s against the law.”

  The train stopped.

  The entire train car fell silent.

  The Austrian officials just looked at them.

  “I’m getting off.” A boy who had been sitting without talking most of the way stood up. He spoke loudly. “I’m not going any farther. I’m going home.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Me, too.”

  The three boys who had spoken walked down the aisle.

  A soldier shouted. He stomped up behind the boys. But instead of grabbing them, he pushed them ahead of him.

  Roberto tensed up. “They’re getting off the train. Oh, they’re really getting off. Let’s do it, too. Fast.”

  Samuele stood behind Roberto and Memo. He quickly hooked his arms through theirs and looked over their shoulders out the window. “Wait.”

  “What do you mean, wait?” said Roberto. “You’re the one who tried to get off at Padova.”

  “And it was stupid then,” said Memo.
r />   Samuele nodded. “Let’s see what happens here first.”

  “What could happen?” said Roberto. “We can’t cross the border without a passport. Everyone knows that. They can’t make us go.” He tried to pull away, but Samuele held him fast.

  The soldier pushed the three boys along the train platform until they were outside the center of their train car. Another soldier came up and shoved at them from the other direction. The boys stood on the platform between the two soldiers. The three of them looked from one to the other. They said things Roberto couldn’t catch. They jerked their heads from one soldier to the other, half crazed by now.

  Roberto knew they were in deep trouble—terrifying trouble. “It’s unfair.” he said under his breath. “The boys are right. We can’t cross the border. It’s against the law.”

  The soldier who had pushed them off the train car turned to the boys who were still in the train, almost all of whom were now pressed in layers, staring out the windows. He shouted in German—fast and harsh. Then he held out his pistol and shot one of the boys in the head. Red spray fanned out in front of the boy as he fell forward. People screamed. One of the other two boys broke away and ran. The soldier shot him in the back. Then he shot the third boy in the head. They fell dead on the platform. Pools of blood widened around their bodies.

  The soldier held his pistol in the air and shook it as he shouted again at the boys in the train cars. His voice was the only noise heard.

  Roberto clutched the Saint Christopher medal on the chain around his neck. Christopher was the patron saint of travelers. Roberto squeezed so hard, the medal cut his fingers. He looked down. The salt of his tears stung as it mixed with his blood. “It’s against the law,” whispered Roberto, knowing his words were stupid, saying them anyway. “It’s against the law.”

  Memo looked at Roberto. “There are no more laws.”

  PICKS

  The sudden braking jerked Roberto awake. Memo’s head rested on his right shoulder. Samuele’s head was in his lap. The rocking of the train had been like the rocking of a gondola—almost soothing. But now it was over. Roberto rubbed his eyes.