Chapter 17
Zaneta spent most of that first terrible night afraid to move, pressed motionless against the stone wall on the plain, her mind replaying over and over the last moments: the truck loaded with her family, her father’s face, her mother’s nod.
As the moon rose, Zaneta inched slowly along a stone wall on the scrubby plain, her pulse electric with fear.
Sometime in the wee hours, shivering with cold and her eyes puffy from ceaseless tears, the stones behind her back disappeared, and she tipped backward into a pile of brush, lucky she didn’t break her neck as she tumbled downward into the dark.
Zaneta sheltered in what she imagined must once have been a sort of temple.
Built of heavy stones, the part that remained visible on the plain was circular, and toward one end, if you knew to clear away the brush and overgrown grasses, a steep stone staircase led beneath the earth to a room below.
It was large enough for Zaneta to stand up in.
If she hadn’t had the lantern, and—after the kerosene ran out—candles, she would almost certainly have fallen in the well at the center of the room.
Its source had long ago run dry, so it offered no water; this she figured out after tossing in a rock to gauge its depth.
The space was a good place to hide, to crouch and cry in despair, and to toss in fitful sleep.
She spent the daytime hours after that first night in the shadows near the well, humming softly to dispel the panic that threatened to overtake her.
She sorted through the bag her mother had packed, finding practical items like a blanket, candles, dried food and nuts, matches and medicines, but other things, too.
Mamma had thought to include a handheld loom shaped like a lyre and pouches of folded cloth and spools of byssus, something pleasant to pass the time.
Zaneta had plenty of that. When darkness fell and the temperature dropped a bit, Zaneta waited until the moon’s milky glow lit the steps, and then she climbed up for a breath of fresh air and to search for food and water.
The plains were sparse, but pools of fresh water dotted the area.
After that first day and then a second, she fell into a sort of routine.
She hid by day, then ventured out by night.
Often, she encountered the wild horses dipping their muzzles for a drink.
At first, they’d bolted, fearing her a predator, but after several weeks, they grew used to each other, and they watched her from a respectable distance, their small ears swiveling and tails swishing.
Besides the birds and red deer, the horses were her only companions.
Zaneta talked softly to them as she poured out her heart in whispers, taking small comfort from the fact that another living being knew she existed at all.
Many thousands of years ago, when the ancient Nuragic people lived and died on the islands of Sardegna and Sant’Antioco, they could not have foreseen airplanes or bombs falling from the sky.
Surely, they could not have known, long after their population had disappeared, that a slim, nominally Jewish weaver woman would use their once mighty edifice as a sanctuary.
Zaneta actually thought of things like this as she settled among the nuragic remains, wondering if the half-standing buildings had been temples or fortresses.
Neither would have offered much protection from the weather or the war as spring clawed its way forward in 1943.
She fretted endlessly about her family, praying they’d remained together, that they were being treated well, that her brothers had found a way to join the resistance.
She flip-flopped between hope and despair, thinking one minute she’d never see them again and the next imagining them appearing at the top of the steps.
It was maddening, and the only thing that kept her imagination in check was the feel of the thread between her fingers, weaving flowers and birds and fish on the lyre loom.
When she finished one, she’d start another, and when the cloth ran out, she picked out all the work and started over.
The terrible sounds of low-flying planes and air raids occurred so often she felt as if she were constantly covering her head, bracing for an impact that never came.
Zaneta had no idea what she should do or how long she might stay there.
She waffled, sometimes every few minutes, between whether to remain or whether there might be someplace better, more secret or secure.
Her mother’s only instruction had been to hide, so hide she did.
When would she come find her? How would she know it was safe to go find them?
Desperate for news, Zaneta made up stories in her head.
Her family had been taken to the mainland, probably, and maybe they were staying with friends there, with beds and plenty of food.
They had a unique skill, so perhaps her mother had told them this and used it to bargain for their safety.
They were being processed, detained in some building in the capital city, just for recordkeeping, and soon they would come.
Soon, she might hear them call her name and tell her it was safe and time to come home.
Was that her name she heard now, on the wind?
Was it her mother’s voice? Or perhaps Marta’s? No, only the whistle of a jackdaw.
She rationed food from the bag. It had been meant to sustain their family; even so, after a few weeks of living in the ruins, the dried figs and fish dwindled, and Zaneta knew she’d have to venture farther to forage.
She hoped the night would be enough to shield her if she could creep far enough to find someone’s vegetable garden or an orchard of blood oranges and lemons.
She didn’t dare go as far as the coast, where the sea would offer her its plenty.
She couldn’t risk being seen, no matter how much she missed the water or how her muscles ached to swim.
She pined for the dawns and dusks; she should be standing on the shore, offering her song and service.
It had been over two months since she’d taken the water oath, and she hadn’t been to the shore even once, already breaking the rituals and routines she’d been taught since birth.
Zaneta conjured her sisters’ voices in her head, heard them singing the songs they’d all sung since childhood.
She hummed the melodies in a whisper, hungry for company, if only in her imagination.
Once, she’d been out foraging in the moonlight and had lingered too long.
Pink tinges started to streak the horizon, signaling dawn’s arrival, and she hurried to make it back to the ruin.
She passed an overlook and couldn’t resist, not having glimpsed the village or people in so long.
Zaneta allowed herself a moment to look down on the small hamlet but later she wished she hadn’t.
Two flags flew outside the post office now: Italy’s familiar blocks of green, white, and red that always reminded her of Neapolitan ice cream, and the scarlet red with its black spider.
Luccio had told her it was called a swastika, but she didn’t care about its name; she yearned to tear it from the pole where it flapped smugly in the breeze.
In the early light of dawn, Zaneta spotted soldiers walking the port, soldiers like the ones who had forced her family into the truck.
The Germans were apparently permanent fixtures on the island now.
When she thought she might go mad with hopelessness and thoughts of her family, she thought of Luccio.
Was he still sailing his green and yellow boat?
Did fish still swim in the waters as if the world were normal?
Did he sail by their cove where he once waved and laughed at them and wonder where the Rendas had gone?
She was glad he was safe from the politics of the war, with his family and not in danger of them being plucked up like a snail in a gull’s beak.
She lay on the stone floor and thought of Avi and Lev.
If they could get away, could find their way to the resistance groups they’d wanted to join, maybe news would reach them about what had happened.
They might come back searching for the family.
Zaneta sat up abruptly. If they did, they’d find their home empty.
They wouldn’t know she was up here alone, wouldn’t know to come find her.
She went round and round in her mind about this.
She couldn’t leave a note, lest someone else find her.
How could she go back there to leave a message, even a sly one, without risking being seen?
They’d had no news of her brothers for so long now.
They could be anywhere. They could already be killed, and no one would know.
Forced to sit in the dim light with bare walls, Zaneta catalogued each room in their home in her mind, wishing she could see even the simplest items again, imagining her family sitting around the table, enjoying a nice meal of fish flavored with lemon and saffron, bread.
Flowers in the windowsill, shelves of dyes, the hook by the door where her father’s vest hung and his boots on a woven rug beneath.
Windows, with curtains fluttering in the ocean breeze.
The loom, the bins of byssus. A plate of amaretti.
She’d let this continue for only so long before she’d shake herself and think of something else.
It was a nice escape, but it was also torture.
When would she ever see their beloved home again?