A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

  Guidi had no reason to be disappointed by her words. Still he said, tartly, “It’s because of sabotage that the Germans just took two more hours out of our day. It isn’t just the Italian police keeping an eye on things. See him during the day.”

  “As if I don’t have to work during the day. Besides, he’s married.” She grinned, but it was an uncovering of lips as animals have, and there was no humor in it. It was for a moment as if her skull were showing through the skin, marring her beauty.

  Guidi found himself bluffing; quoting empty police talk, because in the end there was no arguing the point. “I’m warning you. Find another way to meet him, or I’ll have to turn you in. I know where you’re really going.”

  “I bet you don’t.” She tried, slowly, but was less sure of herself.

  “I followed you,” he lied. “What will it be?”

  Her lips were pale with cold, chapped. She turned away from the wind, wary or discouraged or just unhappy. Not helpless, but unhappy. “All right,” she said, making Guidi wait for the next words. “I’ll quit seeing him at night.”

  Guidi could have left now. Instead, he continued to walk at her side to the tramway stop. There, because she was trembling, he undid his overcoat and put it on her shoulders. Francesca did not react; looking away from him, she seemed already a resentful prisoner, whose friendship might now be impossible for him to gain.

  Later that day, at the office, Danza made little of things. “There’s a mess of people holed up all over the place, Inspector. Anybody could be meeting anybody. Folks came out of the woodwork in the past months, and went back into it twice in number. Jews, monarchists, dissenters, you name it. Deserters by the score, writers, officers from the Royal Carabineers – all watching out for you, me, the Germans, the Fascists. What can we do about it? Either we play political police or we ignore the whole. She sees her boyfriend at night? If that’s what she does, good for her. If that’s not it, then...”

  “No,” Guidi said. “I think that’s it.” And it weighed on him that he might be twisting the law for a woman, as he had risked doing up north only a month ago.

  Danza offered cautious support. “So, ignore it. Since the Americans landed a week ago, we’ve had assassination attempts, slashed tires, gas depots blown up, and the Germans are taking things in their own hands. With all due respect, I couldn’t care less about a girl that cats around.”

  At his return home, the last person Guidi wanted to meet in the stairwell was Pompilia Marasca. He tried to avoid her, but she managed to keep him there by blocking the stairs.

  “A nice fright, you men gave me,” she said. “After I came to the other night I was ill for hours and hours, just thinking there might be fighting in the streets.”

  Guidi shrugged. “Who knows. There may not be.”

  “Women like myself have to be very careful, you see. I’m all nerves. Since my husband passed away, all nerves – nothing else. What you see is nothing but nerves.”

  Her nerves were well hidden under the padding of breast and hips, Guidi thought. He faced her, with an ear to the other noises in the house – voices, steps, the halting whimper of the child upstairs. Francesca was just then coming in from the street. She walked by, indifferent to both, bound for the Maiulis’ door. Pompilia’s cherry lips tightened. “She should be with her nose up in the air, the shameless hussy. Who does she think she is? She’s even showing!”

  It was the first comment that interested Guidi. “Showing what?” he said stolidly.

  “Haven’t you noticed? My God, you men never notice anything. Even the Maiulis, who are the least informed in the world, wonder whether there’s anything amiss with the young lady. Amiss, indeed! I should say there is. Things one wouldn’t believe! Pay attention, next time – it’s still early, but it’s showing all right. Since she came, she hasn’t spoken ten words to me, and I’ve been in this house going on three years now. Well, what can you expect from the likes of her?”

  Guidi drove his hands into his coat pockets. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Her mother’s a Jewish you-know-what, and as for her father – he’s a bishop or something. That’s how she got to go to school and all that. People heard her brag about it.”

  With his fingertips, Guidi savored the fleece-lined space of his pockets, where Francesca’s chafed hands had burrowed as they waited for the tramway. “Sorry you got a scare,” he said. “Let’s hope nothing happens around here.”

  “Nothing? Why, just before you came home there was a big blast at Piazza Verdi.”

  Guidi didn’t bother to say he’d been stopped by a German patrol while he drove past the Mint, and despite his documents the intolerant gendarmes had dragged him out of the car before allowing him to continue.

  Pompilia pouted with open hands held up to her face. “See how pale I am? I almost passed out. When you’re all nerves, it’s a constant struggle just to keep your sanity.”

  29 JANUARY 1944

  Bora and Guidi didn’t meet again until late on Saturday, in front of the Hotel d’Italia, only a street-length away from Guidi’s Pubblica Sicurezza office, at the other end of Via Rasella. The hotel faced the imposing gate of Villa Barberini, its scrolling metalwork appearing out of the dark and fading quickly as the dimmed headlights of passing German vehicles struck it.

  “Let’s go to my room,” Bora said. “I was able to trace one of Magda’s colleagues – you might be interested in what she had to say.”

  Minutes later, taking advantage of the fact that power was on, Guidi took notes on the narrow desk by Bora’s window. A photo of his wife – it was the same woman whose portrait the major had at work, in any case – sat on the desk, with a small snapshot of a German pilot tucked in one corner and a dried edelweiss on the other side.

  “Wouldn’t she tell you whom Magda was afraid of, Major?”

  “She doesn’t know. What’s for sure is that Magda didn’t want friends over, and no longer asked for rides from the embassy. She was drinking more, and ‘acting strange’, whatever that means. You understand, my informant is the girl who was reassigned after the famous party. She says that everyone was drunk, their kissing was just a lark, and Magda got to keep her job because she had a boyfriend in the SS.”

  “Any idea who that might be?”

  “Not yet. But I can tell you who else lives at her address.”

  Guidi flipped through his notebook. “Ground floor, a retired soprano, deaf and senile, never goes out. Third floor, three German officers, no longer there. Correct?”

  “Correct. The officers are elsewhere now,” (Bora meant Anzio, Guidi knew) “but they have an alibi and witnesses. They were celebrating at their place, one floor down from Magda’s apartment. The rest of the building is untenanted and used for storage by the embassy.”

  “Well, whoever had a key to her apartment searched it professionally before we got there. I doubt it was the killer, so – whether they were destroying evidence or merely removing potentially embarrassing clues, the investigation has been impaired from the start. Magda dated Merlo, she dated an SS, she was afraid of somebody. As of today, Merlo is the only one we can place near her house on the night she died, and I must tell you, Major Bora, that the chief of police is convinced of his guilt.”

  “Maybe the chief of police is right. Or maybe he doesn’t like Merlo. I hear that unlike his corrupt colleagues at Braschi Palace, Merlo is true blue when it comes to graft.”

  For some time, neither of them spoke. Bora sat in the armchair at the foot of the bed, his eyes fixed on his wife’s photograph. Following his stare, Guidi, too, observed the image again. An athletic blonde with a discontented air, elegantly coiffed, holding a dog by the leash on some smart city street.

  “Her name is Benedikta,” Bora said.

  “Very handsome.”

  “She is, thank you. I haven’t seen her in a year.” Bora fumbled with cigarettes and lighter, with uncharacteristic clumsiness. “She’ll be here on Thursday, with a Red Cross train.
” As you surely know, his stepfather had wired, your wife is coming on the third. Why he should have known was more than Bora could tell. He put a cigarette in his mouth, in what Guidi was beginning to recognize as an antidote for embarrassment, or shyness. “Care to smoke?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Good. Here. I do, too.” With a quick puff of smoke Bora started his cigarette. “You know, I could have been transferred to a German hospital, back in September, but I didn’t want to jeopardize my assignment. They did a good job in Verona, I think. The hand could not be saved regardless. I knew that.”

  “You seem to be doing fine.”

  “Oh, I do.” Bora smirked. “You should have seen me this morning. All four tires of my car were slashed. Have you ever tried to change a tire with one hand? Well, I changed four, by myself. I manage, I manage.” Carefully, though he sat facing it, Bora avoided the mirror on the opposite wall. “I spent weeks learning how to do and undo my breeches, put my shirt on and button it, place the metal band of my watch on the finial of a chair so I can slip it on my right arm, all in record time. I can get dressed now more quickly than I did with both hands. I shave, drive, type, do push-ups and shoot a rifle as before. And yet, strictly speaking I can no longer even wash my hands, or clap, or hold someone. Playing the piano is also finished, which sometimes I think is the most difficult to take.” He smoked for a time, encouraged by Guidi’s silence. “Of course that’s not true. The most difficult thing is facing my wife on Thursday.”

  Guidi had to wonder what the matter really was. “Doesn’t she know?”

  “She knows. We last spoke by phone in October.”

  “I’m sure she’s dying to see you.”

  “I hope so.” Bora smiled in a self-conscious way. “Anyway, she obviously meant to surprise me. Only because of my stepfather’s wire did I find out. She’ll stay eight days. I’ll be at work, of course, but thank God I’ll have the nights with her. I don’t need to tell you how unbearably physical it becomes after a year’s separation.”

  Just then, the lights went out. Growing from a plaintive whine, the wail of sirens began to rise in pitch across the dark. Guidi heard himself saying, “An air raid here? I thought Rome was an open city,” and Bora replying dryly, “Yes, well. Bombs go awry, too.”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  No rustle of movement came with Bora’s answer. “There’s a shelter in the basement of the hotel. In case of a direct hit, you can choose between being blown up outright or being buried under these many stories of rubble.”

  “I’ll take my chances here if it’s all the same with you.”

  “It is. I’m staying.”

  Outside the door there was a scramble of people groping their way downstairs. Guidi’s mouth went dry. In the absolute darkness, the rising and falling wail was a ghost of sound let loose over the city. I hope Francesca is safe, he thought, unexpectedly. I don’t care with whom – just safe.

  The flame of Bora’s lighter flickered. “Another cigarette?”

  “Not now.”

  Off and on the reviving tip of flame pointed Bora out to Guidi in the moments that followed – long moments, drawn and flattened into strips of time, during which Guidi simply tried to find out whether he was afraid or just nervous. To be sure, the possibility of death made him feel acutely lonely; as if suddenly no rules applied, and all life were vulnerable. If Bora was pondering the unfairness of dying on the eve of his wife’s arrival, all that showed were the slow glimmering arcs drawn by his cigarette as he took extended draughts from it. Guidi sat back, chasing thoughts from his mind, so that he would not be attached to anything when the explosions rolled in from one periphery or another.

  But the explosions were slow in coming. In the odd silence, Bora said, “I don’t know why it’s taking them so long.” Then Guidi heard him move impatiently toward the window, feel around for the lock and throw it open. The crisp night air flooded in. Searchlights scanned the sky, here and there sweeping the bottom of clouds and becoming diffused or reflecting from them. No sound of engines, no anti-aircraft, not even from the beleaguered neighborhood of Castro Pretorio. The only artillery booming at slow intervals was Anzio’s way.

  “Just howitzers,” Bora observed. “The searchlights may have struck a cloud, or it may have been friendly aircraft.” He did not close the window until the sound of all clear began winding up. Shortly the lights returned, failed, were on again for good. Guidi felt sheepish, because he’d in fact been afraid, and likely it showed. “Not exactly a baptism of fire, was it?”

  Bora courteously pretended not to notice. “Let’s count our blessings. How about a cognac?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  On their way down to the bar, they met guests returning to their rooms from the basement in various stages of undress, military and civilians alike. One of them was SS Captain Sutor, whom Bora did not expect here in his shirtsleeves and with a woman, but greeted by a curt lowering of his head.

  3 FEBRUARY 1944

  “Well, why was Foa taken in?” Westphal decided to ask Bora.

  “No specific charges other than he did not collaborate with Gestapo officials. It seems he refused to inform on colleagues from the Royal Carabineers.”

  “He’s kept under house arrest, is he?”

  “No, he’s in the state prison. Frankly, it seems unreasonable to expect him to denounce brother officers.”

  Westphal took a watermarked sheet of paper and began writing on it. “If he’s wise he’ll do just that. Of course I wouldn’t give the SS or the SD the time of day, but Foa has no choice. Thanks for telling me, Bora.”

  “Should we ask for some consideration? He’s nearly seventy years old.”

  Westphal was in an excellent mood with the news of the bloody defeat of American troops at Cisterna, and did not grow cross. “No. Why should you care? You were the one he insulted by phone. Here.” He handed the signed sheet to Bora. “Two days’ leave starting tomorrow. And go to meet your wife at the station, for God’s sake. It’s three hours from now, but keeping you around is like having a sick calf on the farm. You’re useless to me. Unless the end of the world comes, I’ll make sure nobody calls you until Monday morning.”

  Bora raced from the office to the Termini Station.

  As he walked in, Colonel Dollmann happened to be leisurely coming out. “Well, well!” He stopped only long enough to remark, with an eye to the flowers Bora had with him, “Are we not dashing this morning! Is it legitimate or illegitimate?” When reluctantly Bora told him, he laughed. “There may be fun in that, too. Enjoy yourself.”

  Bora had been ceaselessly pacing on the solitary platform when the train pulled in from the right, on tracks white with frost. The station – marble, limestone, naked surfaces – seemed to lose immensity when Benedikta’s face, dim behind the window glass, framed in her fairness, showed itself to him. He could distinctly feel the walls of his heart convulsively draw in and release blood as she stepped off the train. Fullness of breast in the gray woolen suit, slender legs, hair loosely pinned under the hat’s small shade, met his eyes in that order of anxious scrutiny.

  “Martin!”

  Her obvious unreadiness for the meeting he perceived mostly as a reaction to his wounds, an impediment he had anticipated but could not bear. Suddenly everything – his wounds, the flowers, the very space between them – were in the way, and he took her in his arms, lifting her up to himself. They kissed then, and from the undone fur coat the scent of her clothes rose giddily to him, the touch at once aroused him to the edge of exhilarated pain – blood cried within him as life itself reclaimed, reaffirmed. Running his tongue in her mouth, meeting the quick well of her saliva, the sweet edge of her tongue, flushed him until he felt his ears roar with blood in the kiss.

  Her eyes, so unhappy other times, stared at him like hard stars; he read nothing in them but physical joy. “You still taste so good,” she was saying, and, “How did you find out...? You’re so good about all of th
is, coming here to meet me.” The flowers had been crushed in the embrace, and she laughed. “Why did you tell me you limp? You’re not limping!”

  They started toward the exit – Bora never could recall afterwards if there were other people on the train, on the platform: there must have been, but he noticed none of them. Dikta filled with anxious little words the silence of his admiration, observing him from under the thin arch of her eyebrows. “Really, I don’t know why your father told you I was coming. Yes, they’re fine, Mother is fine. Your sister-in-law sends her greetings. Blubo and Ulki had puppies. Are you all right, Martin?”

  Bora was too aroused to think. He held her arm and smelled her scent and told himself that all was well, because she was here and she wanted him. He spoke back in his intense quick way, and she laughed again. “Well, you are so good about this.”

  Outside, car and driver waited. Dikta asked where he was taking her, and Bora said, “Hotel d’Italia. That’s where I quarter.”

  She turned to the driver, who was loading her suitcases from the porter’s cart to the trunk. “Careful with my hat box, it’s not army luggage. Are you sure we should stay at the same address, Martin?”

  “Of course it is. I wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise!”

  “If you say so.”

  “It’s quite safe, Dikta.” During the brief ride to the hotel he sat holding his eagerness in, absent-mindedly answering questions about the sights that passed them by. The side of her body, her sportswoman’s muscular hip hugged his on the seat, no fat cushioning either, so that he cringed with expectation at the contact. Unchecked longing for his wife drove him, as if he no longer knew himself, and what physically happened to him was wild and frightening. He controlled himself because the driver was here and because he was used to controlling himself, but he ached to touch her through her fine clothing, to be let under the gray woolen dress. As if all suffering were worth this, the pain and closeness to death and danger could be soothed in her, safely locked in her.