The Secret of Altamura: Nazi Crimes, Italian Treasure Page 14

The sight of a soldier at the door, with hat in hand, was never welcomed by any family in times of war. Frau Bernhard's reception was wary, at best. After some brief introductions, she invited Hilgendorf inside.

  In the older woman's living room, the young officer reported that her husband had died a hero's death at the hands of the enemy. He confined his description of affairs to modest activities that Frau Bernhard would neither understand nor challenge, and he left soon after the conversation began.

  Hilgendorf kept the existence of the journal secret until their meeting was nearly over. He knew that the contents would be disturbing to Frau Bernhard, and he preferred to be heading back down the flight of steps and exiting the building before she had a chance to read its contents.

  Chapter 54

  Café Romano, in Altamura

  Carlo sat in the shade of an umbrella outside Café Romano, drumming his fingers on the table. A half litre of the local red wine stood on the table alongside a shallow bowl of nuts and olives. He sipped the wine and absentmindedly chomped on an almond, but his thoughts were on the notebook in his pocket, and the sound of Nino's voice on the phone earlier that day.

  The caretaker had wanted to meet with him, said it was urgent, but Carlo knew that the urgency stemmed solely from Nino's demanding the meeting. Still, Carlo decided to honor the request, and found himself in the piazza, under this umbrella, in the heat of the afternoon.

  Just as he took another sip of wine, he saw Nino crossing the square at a deliberate, yet unhurried, gait. He made a bee line to Carlo's table, sat down across from him without any social pleasantries, and locked eyes with Carlo.

  “You have it,” Nino said, more of a declaration than a question.

  “Yes, I do,” replied Carlo. He didn't want to become part of a scene he couldn't control. He didn't even want to be in Altamura since Martin Bernhard's murder. Carlo wanted to remind Nino that he was only a visitor, only here to learn more about Italian culture. He didn't want to know anything about the murder or, for that matter, anything about Altamura's secrets. At that moment, he only wanted to be back home, but he kept such thoughts to himself.

  Carlo didn't want to give the notebook to Nino. He wasn't sure why the caretaker wanted it, or how he knew of its existence, but Carlo felt that somehow this notebook was the cause of Martin's death and he didn't want it destroyed.

  “You will give it to me,” Nino said flatly.

  “Why?”

  Nino gave Carlo a menacing stare – and then…

  “Follow me,” he said. They walked across the piazza, and passed through a door on the side of the church. Leaving the bright sunshine and entering the dimly lit Chiesa dello Spirito Santo made it hard for Carlo to see at first, and the darkness and cool air of the apse made him even more apprehensive.

  Nino walked past the rows of pews and pushed open a door at the other side of the altar. He stopped and, looking over his shoulder, jerked his head signaling Carlo to follow.

  The two men entered a small room that smelled of incense and was lit by a single stained glass lamp suspended from a long chain from the middle of the vaulted stone ceiling.

  Nino drew up two chairs, positioned them along one wall, and sat down. He pointed to the other as his eyes locked with Carlo's, who settled into the other hard wooden chair. Their knees were almost touching and Nino's large frame seemed to loom over Carlo. Yet the younger man was not afraid. The drama, menace, and isolated meeting place didn't alarm him. Instead, Carlo felt he was about to learn more about the notebook and Altamura's secret.

  Nino leaned forward, sighed, and began to speak.

  Chapter 55

  La Chiesa dello Spirito Santo

  “Altamura is a small village, not one that most American tourists come to see,” Nino began.

  “But we are a proud people, and we are blessed by the grace of the La Chiesa dello Spirito Santo. Our town is known to many Italians as a holy city, and there are stories of saints who have caused miracles to happen here. So, even without American tourists, we have many pilgrims visiting Altamura each year to pray in our church and take water from our fountain.”

  Carlo knew this and even met some of the paisani who came to the village to kneel and pray in the church, thus paying their respects to the saints of ancient times.

  “This has been known for many years – centuries,” Nino continued, “which is why – when the Germans invaded our land – the priests, nuns, and townspeople came to Altamura with their most precious possessions to hide them from the wartime pillaging.”

  “What did they bring” Carlo asked, “and where did you keep it?”

  Nino ignored Carlo's questions.

  “It took weeks, maybe months,” he continued, but the villagers kept coming. Our pastor during the war, Don Daniele, welcomed them all. He blessed them as they arrived, tenderly took their possessions, and blessed the people as they left the church.”

  Nino paused as thoughts of his mother passed through his mind, reminding him how the war had affected the gentle people of Italy.

  “By the time the Germans arrived, all these things were safe.”

  Carlo didn't want to pause Nino in his story, but his curiosity about the possessions and their whereabouts nearly overcame his patience.

  “But there was this one officer, Colonel Anselm Bernhard.” As Nino he uttered the name, he looked meaningfully at Carlo, convinced that the colonel was related to the young German curator who had recently 'invaded' his town.

  “Bernhard the bastard,” Nino said. “That's what we called him, behind his back of course. He was a ruthless man who violated our women and ransacked the town. He said he knew we were hiding something but since he couldn't find it he would leave Altamura scarred forever. Don Daniele was a proud man, and stood toe-to-toe with Bernhard, his chin jutting out defiantly, so the bastard knew the priest was keeping a secret.

  “Bernhard hit the old priest with his riding crop, right across the face. They were standing on the steps of the Chiesa dello Spirito Santo and the people were crying and praying for mercy for their blessed pastor. But Bernhard, unmoved, smiled and struck him again.

  “Don Daniele never gave in, so the Germans took him away. For hours we could hear his cries. Bernhard tortured our priest in a lockup that would be the last thing that the holy Don Daniele would ever see.

  “The bastard and his troops stayed in Altamura for a while longer but then moved on, probably to torture and pillage another Italian town. When the bishop heard of what had happened, he came here to bless and console us, and to announce that he had chosen a new pastor, Don Adolfo, who lived in this village ever since, until passing away just recently. But you already knew that,” Nino added, and he paused for a moment's reflection, before revealing another of the town's secrets.

  Chapter 56

  A Blunt Object

  “Don Adolfo was my father,” Nino admitted.

  “He committed a sin with my mother during the panic of the war. He had already taken his vows and was a priest, so it was a great sin before God. The bishop knew and wanted to punish him, and he decided that Don Daniele's death was a perfect opportunity for penance. The bishop assigned my father to Altamura, where he would be near my mother, near me, and live every day knowing what he had done. We hardly ever spoke, and he believed he kept his secret from me all these years, but I knew.

  “My mother lived out her life in the convent. She never took the vows or wore the habit of a nun. She said her sin made her unworthy. But she made her place in a small storeroom where I lived for the first few years of my life, until it was unseemly for a young boy to be sleeping in his mother's room. So I moved in with the Cantones and grew up there, but like my mother I continued to work at the convent and church, doing small jobs and helping to repair things as I could.

  “What happened to your mother?” Carlo asked.

  “She was lonely every day of her life. She seldom smiled, and seemed to bear the weight of her sin in every waking moment.”

&
nbsp; Nino looked down and grew quiet, pained to recall those difficult years.

  “She helped protect the things that were entrusted to us, to the Chiesa dello Spirito Santo, keeping them secret until the rightful owners returned to claim them. Some did, some died in the war, but my mother never gave up her sacred trust to protect the possessions that had been delivered to the church. And mixed among the personal possessions were other things too precious to risk. So if they must remain hidden, it was through her efforts that these precious items would remain safe. When she passed away some years ago, I took on the responsibility, with the prayerful support of Don Adolfo.

  “And they're still here, still hidden?” Carlo asked.

  This question shook Nino out of his reminiscences.

  “Yes, and they would have remained safe if the Germans hadn't sent another one down here with that damned notebook to ferret out the secret.”

  “But the notebook doesn't mention Altamura,” Carlo protested, “and it doesn't even seem to identify the things Anselm was looking for, except to say that some small town in southern Italy houses a great fortune, a town with an old church named after a great spirit. But all saints are spirits. And Martin Bernhard wasn't sent here by the German government.”

  Nino shook his head in disagreement. Distrust of Germans was deep-seated throughout southern Italy, the first regions to abandon Hitler, Mussolini, and the Axis powers and side with the Allies during the war.

  “If you trust the Germans, you're stupid. The people of Altamura never will, and I pray that the rest of Italy remains firm in this also.”

  Carlo had come to know and like Martin, and believed that the young curator's intentions were good, but he also knew that arguing this point with Nino would be useless. Anselm Bernhard's wartime notebook included both reverential descriptions of Italian art and despicable anecdotes of the sexual practices that the author had forced upon the Italian girls. Martin had annotated many of the entries, using red ink to distinguish his additions and to identify artworks that he had recovered and returned to the people or churches from whence they had been stolen. Many of the passages were so noted, Carlo recalled, but there was only one red mark in the special section at the back, the section that more and more seemed to him to be a coded reference to Altamura. That mark was kloster.

  “After Don Daniele accepted the personal belongings from the surrounding villages,” Nino continued, “he stored them away for safekeeping. He entrusted only my mother with this secret. When he died, my mother was afraid that the secret would die with her. In one of the very few conversations that ever took place between my father and mother, she told him of the things taken in by Don Daniele and where they were hidden. Then, at her death, the responsibility passed to Don Adolfo, where it has remained for all these years.”

  “You sound as if you know where these things are hidden,” Carlo suggested.

  “Just before she died, my mother entrusted the secret to me. She was afraid that some terrible thing might happen to my father before the knowledge was relayed to someone. For a while, three people knew of the great things and where they were hidden; after her death, the secret returned to just two trusted souls.”

  “But Don Adolfo is gone, so now it's only one,” Carlo said.

  “Yes, me, but the secret is also known to anyone who possesses that notebook,” Nino added, pointing to the bulge in Carlo's pocket.

  “I've read the journal,” Carlo said, “especially the last part. I don't think it points directly to the Chiesa dello Spirito Santo, or even to Altamura.”

  Nino was unconvinced. He extended his right hand but Carlo wasn't ready to hand over the journal.

  “What if these precious things rightfully belong to other churches and villages in Italy?” Carlo asked.

  Nino was unmoved by the question. He knew the importance of the treasure in Altamura, and he wouldn't be persuaded by Carlo to compromise it.

  “Dello Spirito,” was all he said at first, then he added, “The Spirit. Altamura is a very poor village, and these things are not anything in an earthly sense, but they are the spirit that raises us up. We will never surrender them.”

  This was said with such finality that Carlo realized that there was no point in carrying the debate further.

  Extending his right hand once again, Nino simply said, “The book.”

  Carlo watched Nino's right hand reach toward him as his left hand reached for a long-handled shovel next to him.

  The book or a crushed skull.

  Carlo had no choice.

  He handed the journal over to Nino and walked out of the room.

  Chapter 57

  Hidden Treasures

  Nino took the journal, walked out of the church, and went to the convent. He entered the storeroom that served as his mother's living quarters during her many years of penance among the nuns. As he thumbed through the journal out of curiosity, and saw the red-inked additions made by Martin in the final chapters of the book.

  Kloster. Nino couldn't speak German, but he could tell the word sounded a lot like cloister, or convent. Perhaps the young German had uncovered the secret after all.

  He gently lifted the few boxes that stood upon the wooden mantle of his mother's former bed. When she lived there, her quarters were spare, a wooden plank nailed down to a short stone riser served as her bed, upon which she allowed only a thin straw mattress for sleeping.

  Nino pried up several of the nails holding the palette in place, nails that emitted a slight wail as they were withdrawn from their long resting place. Once freed from their pinioned position, the iron stilettos fell to his feet, and Nino folded back the palette itself. With the journal in one hand and a lantern in the other, he stepped down into the well that opened before him.

  It was a cavern that had existed for years before his mother took up residence in the supply room. It served the convent as a root cellar and wine cellar in the past, and had been forgotten by the cloister over time. But the space was resurrected to a new use by Sofina.

  “I want you to store these precious objects from the churches of the region down there,” Don Daniele had told her. “There they will be safe from the Germans.”

  “But what if someone discovers it?”

  “No one will,” he said. “Not even the sisters of this convent know that the cellar exists. It was last used over thirty years ago, before any of the new novitiates, and before the Mother Superior arrived in Altamura.”

  Sofina was ready to obey, but wondered how the priest himself knew of the cavernous hole. As if reading her mind, Don Daniele smiled and addressed her.

  “I have been here for many years, Sofina. When you pull back the palette that you use as a bed and you peer into the darkness, you may find some empty wine bottles still keeping a vigil over the place.”

  Nino thought of this part of the story his mother had passed on to him, and he allowed a slight smile to adorn his wrinkled face. So old Don Daniele imbibed a bit more than altar wine; so what.

  From her own telling, Nino knew that his mother had scraped the walls of the cellar to smooth the surfaces, then carried the dirt out in buckets, keeping her actions as unnoticed as possible to protect the secret that lay within. Sofina had smelled the rich earth below the floor and knew that it was fertile soil, so she came upon an idea of how to dispose of the dirt that she would extract from there.

  Working slowly, a pail at a time, she extracted the scrapings and small piles of long unused soil from their subterranean confines, fitting the room out for its new, more important role. In the early morning air, she would carry the pails of dirt outside the convent walls to fertilize her garden. Pride is a sin, she reminded herself often, but she couldn't help feeling a bit of pride for the beautiful flowers and vegetables that the garden offered up. The nuns who toiled around her were jealous – another sin – but they had to agree that Sofina grew the most amazing things under God's sun.

  At night, Sofina prayed that the soil was not only fecund, but blessed t
o come from consecrated earth. It was in this cavernous space, below her palette, inside this convent, that Sofina hid the true treasures of the Italian churches scattered about the region – the relics of bygone centuries that had been carried by the faithful during the war years to be stored for safekeeping in the care of the church.

  There were desiccated fingers of saints, whisps of hair from holy men, bone fragments that were believed to have come from Christ's apostles, even splinters from the original Cross. There was no gold, no jewels; instead this crypt held things far more dear to the Italians than worldly goods: the physical remains of the saints and the earliest years of Christianity.

  Nino placed the journal on a shelf, bowed his head and made the sign of the cross, then turned to a darkened corner of the hollow space and fixed the lantern light on a small indentation in the clay subsoil that made up the wall of this space.

  Chapter 58

  The Papyrus

  Nino gently dug the clay padding around the indentation and opened up a small space behind the wall. From it he extracted an ancient stone box and lifted the lid to reveal an old, yellowed cloth wrapped loosely around another object.

  Nino gently withdrew the cloth, revealing a scattered stack of papyrus fragments. The text on the antique scraps was unfamiliar to him, written in the ancient Coptic language common during the time of Christ. Nino knew that he couldn't translate it, but he recalled his mother's recitation of the heading: “This is the Gospel of Matthias, as passed down to his son Gaius, and then to Gaius' sons, Jacob and Aramus.”

  In the dusty plains of Palestine, a holy man walked behind his Lord, a man of saintly heritage that many people said was sent by Yahweh, the god of the Jews. The holy man, Matthias, was not yet chosen to be among the small band of disciples, but he was warmed by the grace and smile of his Master. Matthias followed him on his daily rounds, listened intently to his words, and memorized the lessons the saintly leader left with the believers who flocked to hear him speak.