The Flight of the Veil

A Covo Family Saga

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Black Rose Writing
Published by: Black Rose Writing
Release Date: October 8, 2020
Pages: 269
ISBN13: 978-1684335596

 
Synopsis

Nicky Covo is a Holocaust survivor. In 1990, Nicky – a Brooklyn psychiatrist – receives a letter from Abbess Fevronia, the head of a women’s monastery in Greece. Although Nicky believes the rest of his family died at Auschwitz, he learns that Theodora, a mysteriously silent nun who’s lived at the monastery since 1944, may be his baby sister, Kal. With his old friend and new love, Helen, Nicky returns to Greece – to harrowing memories of his fighting with the partisans and to a reunion with his beloved sister. The Flight of the Veil explores the intersections of guilt and memory, faith and tragedy, fate and miracle.

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Praise

"A well-crafted tale about trauma and miracles."
-Kirkus Reviews

"In the intelligent historical novel The Flight of the Veil, a psychiatrist returns to places that were treacherous in his childhood, reconciling internal contradictions."
-Clarion Reviews

"Berger has created a compelling Everyman who must wrestle with grand theological questions: In times of great calamity, why does God save only some?"
-Stephanie Grant, author of Map of Ireland and The Passion of Alice

"The text skirts between fantastic realism, real realism, and a protagonist who has not taught himself how to go entirely insane..."
-Carolivia Herron, author of Thereafter Johnnie

"Author Bruce J. Berger has penned an unforgettable novel in The Flight of the Veil. It is truly an exceptional book!"
-Readers' Favorite

Readers' Favorite Honorable Mention - Religious Theme

Illumination Book Awards - Bronze Award

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Excerpt

In The Face of Certain Death

He moves when ordered, shoots when he must, eats when he can, but feels he no longer inhabits his own body. The fierce soldier that Nicky Covo has pretended to be, sardonically named Chrisma by his comrades in arms, has become a stranger, lost in a vapor of diesel fumes and rotting bodies, in the thunder of rapid gunfire and screams. Visions of children dying – deaths for which he feels responsible – stay fresh before his eyes when he’s awake and plague his dreams, set in a maze of tiny bombed-out towns and fields shorn of their produce. His lust for killing the Germans and their collaborators has evaporated, yet he’s unable to stop. The power of his Karabiner 98K and his pistol no longer thrill him, and he considers deserting, but deserters are summarily shot, and, irrationally, he still hopes that his band of partisans can press on into Ioannina and save the remaining Jews.

In early March 1944 they’ve reached the outskirts of the city, and there their forward movement stops. The andartes seem to be safe from a German counterattack for the moment, because the occupying forces care only about deporting the Jews trapped in the city and keeping open their own evacuation routes to the north. The German withdrawal from Greece is imminent, as the Wehrmacht is collapsing before the attacking Soviet Army. To the south, the Germans are fighting only a rear-guard action.

In Pedini, in Katsakis, and in Chionasa, Nicky’s group collects every scrap of food and hunts down collaborators, breaking into houses, terrifying women and children, inspecting floors and walls for hiding places, stabbing bayonets through stacks of hay where traitors may be hiding. When discovered, traitors – any men of fighting age who haven’t joined the andartes – are efficiently executed. Nicky kills to avoid being called a traitor himself and dispensed with just as abruptly.

One evening, while on guard duty, he sees a young man, perhaps fifteen or so – roughly his age – approach from Ioannina, waving a white handkerchief. He turns out to be a Greek Jew, like Nicky, named Matsa. They learn from him that the SS has confined Ioannina’s Jews in their homes, under penalty of death. According to Matsa, the deportations will occur within days, if not hours. A convoy of German military trucks has arrived in Ioannina for that purpose.

In minutes, Nicky’s company of andartes prepares for an attack. This is the opportunity he’s been hoping for. They approach cautiously just before dawn. As the blackness of night slowly grows lighter, the southern edge of the ancient city remains quiet. He and a comrade are ordered to check out a small, dark brown, brick church. It is the Church of Saints Constantine and Helen, but the sign has been blasted away by earlier fighting, and the two are unaware of its name. They enter, Mauser pistols drawn. A door leads off the sanctuary to what might be an office or closet. Nicky’s comrade tries the door, but it’s locked, a bad sign. The priest and his family cowering in fear? A Jewish family hiding with the help of the priest? A cache of German soldiers waiting to annihilate them? They are compelled to find out, one way or another.

They prepare to kick in the door, but a volley of gunfire from inside pierces holes through the wood and through his comrade’s torso. Nicky jumps back, plastering himself to the near wall, and waits, expecting more bullets, but there’s only eerie silence, save for the gasping of the dying fighter, whose blood pulses onto the floor. Nicky sees that the lock has been shot out, knows that the enemy is within, and understands that, if he’s ever going to act, it must be now. If he had a grenade, this would have been the time to use it. He pushes his way into the room, discerning nothing in the dimness, and shoots wildly. Within seconds, just as his eyes begin to adjust to the darkness, he’s emptied his clip. He hears a noise and comprehends that he’s a helpless target.

Nicky has entered a small room; one window filters in the faint glimmer of dawn. He sees a young German springing from behind a desk. Nicky cannot fathom why the German is there alone and knows only that the enemy has killed his comrade and is about to kill him. That’s why the German – only two meters away – brandishes a grenade, has pulled its pin, has let go of its safety lever. It seems that the German has a clownish smile, that he must be crazy, that the war has gotten to him. Like Nicky, tired of killing, yet not too tired to kill two more. Maybe he just wants to die a hero to his lost cause. The German must sense that the Third Reich is dying and that there’ll be nothing left for him if he returned to his homeland. All three possibilities – trap, crazed man, suicidal martyr – cross Nicky’s mind in an instant.

Then a flash of deep red, the color of sunset in the moments before dark, but the flash doesn’t come from the grenade. It sweeps into the room from the wall with the window, from the window itself, and envelopes the German. The grenade goes off in his hand a tiny fraction of a second later, but the explosion doesn’t deafen Nicky, as he would’ve expected. The explosion is muffled almost to inaudibility, like summer thunder heard from miles away. Shrapnel shreds the German’s face, but nothing hits Nicky except a puff of warm air. The German has been caught in a whirlwind, but the grenade’s metal shards leave Nicky unscathed, as if he’d been protected by an impervious blanket. The red flash, which has flooded the room in a ghastly, near-blinding light, swirls for a second and disappears as suddenly as it came. He imagines for an instant the scent of cinnamon. Nicky stares with disbelief at the dead German soldier, a crumpled body without a head, a gaping hole where his neck had been, his ravished uniform barely holding his body together. He looks down to see that his own legs are still attached to his body; he studies his hands to assure himself that he still has arms. His rational mind tells him he must be mortally wounded, bleeding out, but the physical parts of his body are intact.

The German has destroyed himself alone. Nicky runs outside, yelling in the triumph of being alive.