“Is the war over? Yes! It’s been more than a week now. The Soviets got here on the seventh of May, and then the next day it was over. I asked the nurses to tell you, but I think you were still mostly sleeping then. You don’t remember hearing the cheering and shouting and the car horns?”

Nina shook her head. “Not one bit of it. What day is it now?”

“The sixteenth.”

“Your birthday,” Nina said, remembering. “Happy birthday, my dear. And thank you for staying with me.”

“As if I would have left you. Oh—I almost forgot. The Red Cross nurses were handing out postcards, so I sent one for you. I put down that you had been ill but were getting better.”

“How did you know where to send it?”

“Well, you said that Mezzo Ciel was a small place. So I just addressed it to your husband. Niccolò Gerardi in Mezzo Ciel. Do you think it will get to him?”

Nina nodded, and she clutched at Stella’s hand, and she forced her tears to retreat. “Yes,” she lied. “I’m sure it will.”

Chapter 31

At the beginning of June they were moved to a hospital in Prague, though Nina tried to persuade her doctors that she was well enough to make the journey home. They were sympathetic but unmoved. Not until her lungs were clear—she’d also developed pleurisy—and she’d put on another ten kilos would she be allowed to travel. Nor could Stella, as a minor, be permitted to leave on her own.

So they waited. Nina wrote to Rosa every week, though she couldn’t be certain her letters would ever be delivered; nor was there much she cared to tell her sister-in-law at such a distance. But still she posted her letters every Monday, without fail, and waited for replies that never came.

By some unfathomable stroke of luck, the doctor in charge of the clinic had recognized Nina’s maiden name on one of the forms that had crossed his desk.

“Are you any relation to Gabriele Mazin? The nephrologist?”

“He is my father. Was. He was killed at Birkenau.”

“I am very sorry to hear it. I met him once. He came to speak at the university, and I was invited to the dinner afterward. Are you . . . do you have any family left?”

“Yes. My husband’s family live near Bassano. How soon—”

“Soon. I promise.”

Dr. Koller came to visit her nearly every day, taking a marked interest not only in her health but also her plans for the future. He was skeptical, though politely so, that the daughter of Gabriele Mazin would be content to live on a farm for the rest of her life.

“With your husband gone, there’s no need for you to return to live with his family in the middle of nowhere, generous though they have been.”

“My home is with them. They are my family, too.”