by Ben Pastor
Bora wrote on a blank sheet: “Remember to go higher in the Ministry of the Navy”.
“Very well,” he said. “Thank you. Let me know if there are developments.”
He’d barely put the receiver down when De Rosa called. Without wasting time, “Major,” he asked, “did you happen to read yesterday’s news in the Arena?”
“No, I don’t get the paper here at Lago. Why, what should I have read?”
“Vittorio Lisi’s housemaid, the Salviati girl…”
“Well?”
“A tram ran her over the day before yesterday near the station.”
Bora remembered the traffic jam in Verona, the passengers crowding to get off the public car. “Is she dead or alive?”
“Dead. Eyewitnesses reported she slipped while crossing the tracks, either because of the ice or because she took sick. They transported her at once to the hospital, but she was dead on arrival.” De Rosa paused for effect. “Now don’t tell me I don’t keep you posted.”
“Is it possible someone pushed her?”
By De Rosa’s hesitation, Bora wondered if he’d said more than he intended. “I’m reporting all I know, Major. Meanwhile that self-styled first wife, Masi, says she wants to go back home. She says that if you or Guidi have other questions to ask, that you go about it soon. I don’t mind putting my office at your disposal, but need to know when you might be using it.”
Bora folded his mother’s letter, and placed it in his breast pocket.
“I prefer that you bring Olga Masi here,” he said. “Tonight, preferably. Nineteen hundred hours sharp. I’ll make sure the inspector is in attendance.”
His planned trip to see the Zanella woman was out of the question.
At seven o’clock, De Rosa punctually delivered Olga Masi, who was still wearing the clothes she had donned at the funeral. She showed no timidity in the German’s presence, other than that she clutched her knitted gloves and handbag to her chest.
All she knew, she told Guidi and Bora, was that Vittorio was dead and she wanted to go home. No one had ever bothered to keep her informed of Vittorio’s doings before, so there was no point now. She had put her mind at rest long ago. “Vittorio was what he was. Handsome, manly, he liked women. There was no changing that. Better to pretend nothing was happening. When he married me” – here Olga Masi turned to Guidi in a fluster – “g’avevo solo la dota del Friul: tete e cul…”
Guidi glanced at Bora, whose lack of reaction might mean he had not understood that a poor girl’s dowry is “ass and tits”, or else pretended not to understand.
“My Vittorio…” Olga Masi sighed. “Whenever he took off, I’d wait for him to come back. I knew he went after somebody else as soon as I turned my head. He was like a blast of wind at the street corner: here, then gone. This Signora Clara you speak of was really stupid if she didn’t understand how it was with Vittorio. I want nothing from the will. I have said it already to the lawyer the major sent to me.” Here Guidi looked at Bora, who leaned against the window sill and did not acknowledge the glance. “I never asked Vittorio for money when I needed it. Now that my folks are dead and I have a small piece of land, I don’t need anything else. I have no children, no grandchildren. What do I need money in the bank for?”
Guidi’s attention shifted to De Rosa, whose martial face and occasional crimping of the moustache betrayed an effort to keep from smiling at the good news.
“The only thing I want,” Olga added, “is to take back Vittorio to Roveredo, where I married him. And maybe the money to get him a cemetery plot big enough for the two of us and our little girl. I have already spoken with the priest, who said it’s all right even if Vittorio had been a socialist and we never did get married in church. As long as we tell the bishop, he said.”
“I don’t know about that,” De Rosa interjected. “After all, Vittorio Lisi belongs to the Party, and the Party should decide. There’s already a granite monument in the works.”
“Idiotisch.” The German word came contemptuously from Bora, and both Guidi and De Rosa looked his way. “Keep the money, but at least let her have the body. Haven’t you already got all you could from Lisi?”
De Rosa grumbled. At the edge of her chair, Olga Masi adjusted the drooping black velvet toque that kept slipping over her eyes. “For once in my life I get to keep Vittorio all to myself. There’s satisfaction in it, gentlemen.”
After the meeting, Bora and Guidi remained alone in the office. Bora walked to his desk, and sat down. He’d grown stiffer of gait, and Guidi had noticed how his handshake tonight had been overly warm and dry. But Bora revealed nothing about himself. He flipped on a desk lamp, asking, “Did you bring the book I requested?”
“I’ll fetch it from the car.”
When Guidi returned with the legal tome, Bora had brought a chair to the side of the desk, and was resting his booted left leg on it. Spread on the desk were a few black-and-white snapshots he’d got De Rosa to take for him of property Lisi had acquired in Verona. “He had good taste,” Bora said without sharing the pictures with Guidi. “A flat near Porta Borsari, a pied-à-terre facing Palazzo Bevilacqua, a fancy flat on Corso Porta Nuova. If only his taste in women had run so high.”
Guidi dropped the book on the desk. “I suppose you have a good reason for wanting this.”
“Yes.” Bora looked up. “In five minutes or less, explain to me the legislative aspects of bigamy in Italy.”
Guidi did not answer at once, though the question had come with characteristic hurry, a sign Bora was up to something. He opened the book under the desk lamp, searched for the right page and read out loud from it.
“The act of bigamy is regulated by Article 359 of the Zanardelli Code, and is now considered a crime against the institution of matrimony. Earlier they considered it adultery,” he explained. “Since 1929 a religious marriage is legally binding in the eyes of the civil authority, as by Article 34 of the Concordat between Church and State. A church marriage is recognized as binding by the civil authority, as long as it is transcribed in the State register in observance to the letter and spirit of the law.”
“What about a marriage that was not celebrated in church?”
Guidi turned the page, peering through the crowded script. “Among the causes for annulment in case of a previous marriage contract they st ‘lack of free consent’ on the part of the unaware spouse.”
Bora nodded. “That is, if the spouse does not know about the pre-existent contract. What if she knows?”
“If she knows, Major, the annulment is possible only if said spouse denounces it within one month from the beginning of cohabitation, or from the moment he or she discovers the existence of the previous tie. As far as the agent of deception – Vittorio Lisi, in this case – his action is considered as aggravating, according to Paragraph One, Chapter 555, of the Rocco Penal Code.”
“Yes, but since Lisi is dead, the aggravating nature of the crime is nothing to him. Who decides about the validity of the first marriage?”
“Usually a penal judge. But the penal judge can defer resolution of the issue to a civil judge, as by Optional Preposition, Article 3 of the Rocco Penal Code.”
Bora lowered his leg from the chair with difficulty. “So, any way you look at it, Clara Lisi’s marriage is invalid.”
“I’m afraid so. And matters are complicated by the legal separation proceedings.”
“Hm. If bringing up the first wife was a ploy to threaten Clara’s eligibility to inherit, they went through a lot of trouble for nothing. I seem to understand the second spouse has no rights whatever, especially if she knew of the existence of the first marriage.”
“This is your assumption.”
“I am free to assume a great deal, Guidi, I’m not a policeman. What I’m wondering is, did Clara Lisi know about a first wife – and if she knew, did she pretend ignorance for motives of her own? Finally, I’m dying to know if she was the one who anonymously summoned Olga Masi to the funeral.”
Gui
di forcibly laughed at the words. “What would she gain from that?”
“The complete invalidation of her marriage to Lisi. Even the Catholic Church would agree to annul such a contract, incidentally clearing the way for remarriage.”
“And what makes you think Claretta wanted to marry again?”
“The ex-boyfriend and the tearful phone call are suggestive.”
“You don’t know who made that call, nor if it really took place.”
“That’s fair.” Slowly, Bora rubbed his left knee. “But someone must be telling the truth in this mess. After all, the victim did as he pleased from the beginning of his married life. Why would Clara Lisi wait five years to ask for a separation, if she hated her lot? Now, if a former lover had recently appeared, or reappeared on the scene, separation might become attractive.”
“Well and good, Major. But with a legal separation Claretta would automatically cut herself off from any hope to inherit.”
“What does it matter? If she is not the murderess, there was no way for her to know Lisi would die so soon after they parted ways. His doctor says he’d have lasted a good long time, and she might have wanted to be free to remarry.”
It was the first sign of Bora’s willingness to doubt Claretta’s guilt. Guidi found that he accepted the hypothesis with admirable composure.
“And if Clara Lisi knew Vittorio had already been married,” Bora continued, “it made sense for her to wait until his death to expose the first marriage. Had she dared do it while he lived, he’d have likely crushed her. All the same” – and here Bora changed tone, as if unwilling to let Guidi feel somehow vindicated – “she is the superficial, acquisitive type. She could have decided to get rid of him because he pulled the purse strings or suspected her of having a lover. Here.” Bora pushed the photographs toward Guidi. “Do you want to take a look at Lisi’s houses?”
“No. But before I go, Major, can you tell me who it was that bought a fine burial plot for the fugitive?”
Bora looked him straight in the face.
“I have no idea.”
It was nine o’clock when they parted ways. Bora had received intelligence of partisan activity north-east of the state route, and would lead a patrol before dawn. He did not speak a word about it, of course, but Guidi noticed the cases of ammunition piled in the hallway below.
At his return home Guidi found no supper – the second time it had happened in two days. He made himself an omelette sandwich and ate in the kitchen. The radio was on in the parlour, a religious programme. An exaggerated, crisp flipping of magazine pages also came through the open door. In order to avoid his mother, Guidi also avoided going to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He went directly to bed, and dreamed he was Claretta’s ex-boyfriend, back from the sea.
In the post at Lago, when it became obvious that he couldn’t relax enough to sleep, Bora sat in his office to reread his mother’s letter, studying every sentence written in her quick, minute hand. The letter was in English, as was all the correspondence they had ever exchanged.
Yes, Martin, she has received your mail. She will answer soon, give her time to adjust… and: My poor darling, how difficult it must be to become reconciled to such permanent injury and also: Try to understand.
He understood, oh yes. He read through the pain of his mother’s mourning for Peter and for him, and through the diplomatic, self-conscious brevity of her words.
My dear Nina was the only answer he wrote on the blank page, ask Dikta if she still loves me.
8
At eight in the morning, shafts of chaste light fingered through the windows. Framed by the kitchen door, Guidi saw his mother puttering around the wood stove in that oblique glare.
“Morning.”
He crossed the floor to make himself a cup of coffee, and during the operation she neither turned nor looked over, as she slowly stirred the soup. Guidi went as far as placing two teaspoons of ersatz mocha in the aluminium coffee-maker, and this on the stove. He even had time to put cup and saucer on the table. He knew perfectly well how sitting down to coffee in the kitchen was tantamount to surrendering, but he was sick of the tension.
His mother waited until he took the first sip before saying, “I know what it’s all about, Sandro, don’t you think otherwise. These silent bouts don’t work with me. Mysterious phone calls, trips at night, every other moment off to Verona when until now I had to drag you in chains to accompany me to a cinema or a department store. She’s a married woman, isn’t she? With children, maybe. One of those city women, those Verona tarts who have always had the reputation they have had.”
Guidi drank his coffee. Instead of anger, he felt an amused curiosity to hear what his mother had concocted in three days of silence. Just to provoke her, he answered, “She’s married, as a matter of fact. How did you know?”
His mother dropped the wooden spoon into the soup. “I knew it. I knew it. It’s all because of Verona and that cat-eyed German who has got on his conscience God only knows how many crimes.” She picked up the spoon, sending a tomato-red squirt across the air. “And to think you could have married the daughter of a Court of Appeal judge!”
Guidi managed to laugh. “Right. If only she’d wanted me.”
“She’d have accepted, had you been more insistent. Didn’t she end up marrying a schoolteacher? A pencil-neck with less career opportunities than yourself, who did go to university!”
“That’s the way it went. I guess I let the chance of a lifetime escape me. As far as my trips to Verona with Bora—”
The spoon dived into the soup again, and for good. “Your blessed father would turn in his grave if he knew you’re working with the Germans. He, who fought them in the Great War and was decorated with a silver medal.”
“Well, blame it on Mussolini and the King, who got in cahoots with the Germans.”
“Don’t you dare touch His Majesty.”
“Who’d want to touch him?” Guidi walked to put cup and saucer in the sink. “As if your own father wasn’t a Republican, Ma.”
“Leave my father alone, too. He was not about to rub elbows with a killer of poor innocent folks.”
“The King did the same thing in Libya thirty-some years ago.”
“Not the same thing, Sandro. Those were Africans. You can’t compare.”
“Why, it makes it all right if you do it to Africans?”
“Say what you want, I would not be seen with him. I wouldn’t want people to think I agree with him. This is all going to come back to haunt him—”
“Him, him, him. Ma, he’s got a name. His name is Bora. And nothing’s going to ‘come back to haunt him’. You’re just doing what you always do, projecting your sense of punishment on God, or whatever it is you believe in. Get it straight once and for all. Nothing happened to those who killed your husband, nothing’s going to happen to Bora just because. If he gets it, he gets it. But not because you or God said so.”
“Go ahead, blaspheme in my face. I want to know about this woman of yours.”
“And I’m not telling you.” Guidi put his coat on, and his greatcoat over it. “Just hear this. When I fall in love, that’s when I’ll get married. And the sooner you let me off the leash, the sooner it’s going to be.” He opened the front door to a gust of wind that ruffled the wall calendar in the hallway. “If you keep badgering, I’ll ask for a transfer to Sardinia, where at least I’m rid of you.” Guidi slammed the door behind him, taking an unusually deep breath of winter air. From the doorstep he heard his mother recriminating alone in the kitchen.
“Married, and a murderess! Why didn’t I die when the blessed soul did, before all these tribulations?”
In Verona, only a dense echo of daylight filled the prison courtyard, and little of it entered the room.
Claretta had hoped the visitor would be Guidi. Bora knew it from her countenance when he stepped in and greeted her with a nod. He’d driven here directly from night patrol, nauseous and feverish, taking only the time to shave in the ward
en’s lavatory.
“I have come back for a few more questions,” he said. “It is of the utmost importance that you answer with perfect candour, since your innocence can only be proven by honesty and the facts.”
It was, admittedly, the opening expected of a German officer. Claretta’s sickened glance told him as much. She sat down, folding her arms. Her breasts rose with the motion, a quick heave under the cloth. Still, in her grey frock she looked dejected and common, displeasing to him in ways Bora could hardly justify.
“What do you want to hear this time, Major?”
“Only two things. Did you know, yes or no, that your husband had already entered into a marriage contract in Friuli, and, if so, was anyone blackmailing you or your husband?”
As Bora spoke, Claretta’s face went suddenly white. Her unretouched cheeks took on the appearance of fresh cheese. Far from feeling sorry for her, Bora wouldn’t forgive her even the folding of arms, seeing malice in it.
“What?” she stammered.
Her response was genuine, but could have many motives. Bora said, “I have reason to suspect that when we first met, you told an untruth concerning your marriage to Vittorio Lisi.”
“I don’t know what you mean. What other wife are you speaking of? Vittorio never told me he had another wife!”
“He may never have told you, but I’m not sure you knew nothing of it. Does the name Olga Masi sound familiar?”
“Never heard of her.”
“Do you know she is still in Verona as of this morning?”
Claretta wetted her lips. She said, looking elsewhere in the bare room. “How should I know, if I never heard of her?”
“Well, someone in Verona knew of Olga Masi’s existence. Not only that, someone informed her of the death of Vittorio Lisi, who had married her twenty-nine years ago in Friuli. Someone told her you were currently married to him. Someone directed her to the place where his funeral was held.”