Santino Cicala, infantryman, Calabrian draftee

Catarina Dolcino, the Leonis’ landlady; Rina

Serafino Brizzolari, municipal bureaucrat, Sant’Andrea

Antonia Usodimare, proprietress, Pensione Usodimare

Tercilla Lovera, contadina (peasant woman), Santa Chiara

Pierino, Tercilla’s son; il postino (the postman)

Bettina, his sister

Battista Goletta, Fascist farmer, Valdottavo

Attilio Goletta, his cousin, Communist sharecropper

Tullio Goletta, Attilio’s son, partisan

Adele Toselli, elderly housekeeper, San Mauro rectory

Nello Toselli, her nephew, partisan

Maria Avoni, partisan; la puttana tedesca (the German whore)

Otello Rollero, partisan, interpreter for Simon Henley

BRITISH

Simon Henley, signalman, Special Operations executive

GERMANS

Werner Schramm, deserter, Oberstabsarzt (medical officer) Waffen-SS

Irmgard, his sister, deceased

Erhardt von Thadden, Gruppenführer (division commander) Waffen-SS; the Schoolmaster

Martina, his wife

Helmut Reinecke, his adjutant, Hauptsturmführer (captain), later Standartenführer (colonel, regimental commander)

Ernst Kunkel, Oberscharführer (staff sergeant), aide to von Thadden

Artur Huppenkothen, Oberstpolizei (police colonel), Gestapo

Erna, his sister

Preludio

AUSTRIA

1907

This is what everyone would remember about his mother: her home was immaculate. Even in a place where cleanliness was pursued with religious zeal, her household was renowned for its faultless order. In Klara’s mind, there was no gradation between purity and filth.