A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

  “And said...?”

  “That you could be counted on in an emergency.”

  Guidi said neither yes nor no. “What else did she tell you?”

  “That you’re familiar with a German aide.”

  So, it was all coming to a head, somehow. Guidi remained tense, even if no warning had been spoken and the men seemed altogether deferential. They were idealists, whom Francesca’s death filled with honest and daring rage. Ignorant, no doubt, of the source of the money that floated from her to their cause. Guidi had the impression that, had they known, they might have killed Francesca themselves. He said slowly, “It’s true, I know Colonel Bora. Now I’m familiar with you, too.”

  The blue-haired youth clicked his tongue to dismiss the similarity. “You just met us. But the German – we know who he is. He fought the partisans up north. We tried to get him last month and another comrade paid with his life for it.”

  “Rau?”

  “You know how it went. This Bora, he hasn’t returned to his hotel in days. Where is he?”

  Guidi’s attention ran from one man to the other – the older one was partly bald, pale, with deeply set, passionate eyes. Yes, that was true, Rau had paid with his life for it. And whoever had killed Francesca could have had reasons he, Guidi, could not and would not tell her two companions. Perhaps to protect Francesca’s memory, perhaps not to soil these men’s grief. Making them wait for an answer, Guidi knew he was facing the foot soldiers, those who risked their skin without fuss. Those who did not indulge in double-dealing and could not be negotiated with or mollified. Finally, he said, “I have no idea of where he is.” And, “Why don’t you go after those who killed her like a dog?”

  “If we knew who it was, we’d do it, make no mistake about it. So, about Bora – will he try to see you before he leaves Rome?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “We can’t get close to him at the Flora, Inspector. You, he met where you lived before, and elsewhere. We’re not asking what you did or said when you met, but now is the time to do your part.”

  Guidi was tired. The words didn’t disturb him; he had thought of them before. “What are you asking me to do?”

  “Bring the German to us.”

  3 JUNE 1944

  The voice that answered the phone was deep, and well known. “Bora here.”

  Guidi had nearly lost hope of reaching him this morning. For a moment he seemed to forget what the call was about. Uneasily he presented Caruso’s plight to Bora, who listened.

  “If the chief of police wanted to contact me, he should have done so personally. I have no time to see him today. Tomorrow morning, perhaps.”

  “At what time?”

  “Nine o’clock sharp. If he’s even two minutes late, the meeting is off.”

  “I’ll tell him.” Neither man lowered the receiver, waiting for the other to add something.

  Caruso swept the phone from Guidi’s hand and slammed it down. “Tomorrow morning?” He had an exasperated air about him and nearly as much arrogance as he’d shown Guidi before. “What does he think I am, a subordinate who is shelved until he has time to deal with me? You should have insisted on a meeting today, this evening at the latest!”

  Guidi kept his peace. He knew Caruso had packed overnight and was ready to go.

  “Does this Kraut think I’ll go begging?” he was spouting off. “Does he think he can instruct me on punctuality? There’s still hierarchy in the German Army – he cannot do as he pleases!”

  “It’s hard to tell at this point what the German can and cannot, or would not, do.”

  “He’s trying to save himself, that’s what it is!” Wide-eyed with panic, Caruso paced the room. “He’s planning to sneak out of Rome and will not show up at all in the morning, making me waste time.” He stopped short of admitting he, too, was racing north, but it hardly needed spelling out. “The Germans are leaving like rats. Day and night, getting out. Whom does Bora think he’s fooling? But I’ll show him. I’ll go at once to his command and demand to be received. I’ll show him whose guests he and his are.”

  Bora was so amused by Caruso’s presence at headquarters, his anger was lessened by it.

  He came to meet him downstairs, in the lobby where he waited in a fury.

  “I thought our appointment was for tomorrow morning.”

  Caruso grew apoplectic at the words. “It’s hardly at a lieutenant colonel’s convenience that a general meets!”

  “If the general is asking for a favor, he may wish to forego rank protocol.”

  “I only expect what is due to me.”

  “German escort out of Rome?”

  Clearly Caruso did not expect to have the initiative taken from him. He mouthed like a fish pulled out of the bowl, searching for words. “My long collaboration with German authorities demands that I be ensured a safe passage to rejoin our forces in the north.”

  Bora stared at him with a face in which Caruso read neither empathy nor involvement. A hard-eyed face whereby he knew the Germans would leave him behind and to himself, to be torn by the mob if need be as had been done elsewhere. Had Bora at least said something in the way of a refusal, he could argued argued the point, but Bora said nothing.

  “Look here, Colonel,” he insisted. “You owe it to me!”

  “We owe you nothing.”

  Caruso seemed about to choke on saliva and spite. “I have... How can you? I have made it possible for the Germans to rule this city!”

  “We didn’t need you to rule.”

  “I...” As hopelessness yawned before him, words poured out of Caruso unrehearsed and fervid with reproach, tragic in their sincerity. “I have... Do you mean to say... After I prostituted my office to your authorities...”

  “That’s your problem. Don’t come to us with scruples.”

  “But I demand that you provide me with an escort! I demand, I command you to do so!”

  “I am not at your orders.”

  Caruso looked like one whom the measure of betrayal is engulfing. “You ungrateful whoresons!” he cried out in agony. “You goddamned filthy whoresons, you tricked me! I gave you all I had and you took advantage of me and now you think you can throw me away! But I won’t let you! I’ll go straight to Maelzer; I’ll show you who is in control!”

  The shouting attracted soldiers to the lobby, but Bora dismissed them with a gesture.

  “The door is there and Via Veneto is outside the door, Dr Caruso. Would you care for a glass of water before you go?”

  Guidi hadn’t had time to finish saying what he wanted when Caruso had snatched the telephone from him. After returning to his office he dialed Bora’s number again, and Bora answered, unruffled even after meeting Caruso. “What is it, Guidi?”

  “Colonel, I couldn’t get the head of police even remotely interested in the resolution of the Reiner case. I expect you’ll take care of prosecuting it.”

  “You bet I will.”

  “Also, I was thinking that we haven’t met in over two weeks, and maybe we should.” Guidi regretted the word. Should? Is “should” the right word? Why will he think I said “should”?

  Bora did not answer.

  “I was thinking about noon. How’s noon for you?”

  Bora stayed quiet. Whether he suspected something, or was taken aback by the invitation, he kept an obstinate silence that made things more difficult. Guidi was glad Danza was out of the office, as Danza was one to see through people. He continued, “We could meet at Villa Umberto. What about Goethe’s monument? We could meet there. It will be a matter of minutes.” Despite himself, he swallowed hard. “I do have to talk to you.” The only sign that Bora remained at the other end of the line was that the receiver had not been clicked down. “What do you say?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  At eleven, Kappler had just taken leave from General Maelzer when he met Bora coming up the stairs at the Excelsior, bound to report to the general about the Reiner case. They exchanged a salute. B
ora had already gone several steps when the SS addressed him. He turned to where Kappler stood relaxed, hip against the banister.

  “Bora, just out of curiosity – what did your father die of?”

  “Cancer.”

  “What kind of cancer?”

  “Throat.”

  “Did he suffer very much?”

  Bora was carrying his leather briefcase, which now he placed at his feet to appear calmer and less in haste than he was. “I don’t know, I was just born. I expect he did.”

  Kappler nodded. “Do you ever worry you might get the same?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And are you afraid of pain, Colonel Bora?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s good that you are, you know.” Kappler brought the flat of his hand to the visor of his cap. “Have a good trip north, Bora.”

  Back from the Excelsior, Bora made an unplanned stop by his office before driving to Villa Umberto, across the street.

  “Colonel, there’s a message from one Inspector Guidi for you,” an orderly informed him as he walked in. “He says he can’t make the appointment.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No, sir.”

  Guidi arrived alone at Goethe’s monument, and sat by it for half an hour before the blue-haired young man idly strolled by and asked for a light. When Guidi held out a match for him, he said, “It looks like our friend isn’t coming,” and took a drag of smoke.

  Guidi blew on the match. The pompous marble group, with the poet standing on a fat, elaborate capital like on a wedding cake, was blinding in the midday sun. “It seems so.”

  “Why did you tell us he was?”

  “Because he was.”

  “Well, make another appointment with him.” Guidi’s lack of reaction made the young man intolerant. “You know, you’re a policeman already, a servant of the Regime. You’ll look an awful lot like a collaborator if you don’t do something right now about having dealt with the Germans on a regular basis.”

  Guidi gave him a void look. He had been rolling himself a cigarette, and he now ran the along edge of paper with the tip of his tongue to moisten it. One hand on his hip, Goethe seemed about to take flight from his crowded monument. “We’ve all played into the Germans’ hands one way or another. Where were you on 23 March?”

  “This is June, Inspector. Let March sit where it is.” The man watched Guidi leave the bench, hands in his pocket. “Where are you going?”

  “To lunch.”

  “We’ll be in touch later today.”

  Guidi shrugged.

  That afternoon, Bora was driving down Via San Francesco, but even in the car he was aware of the change, not knowing what it was. He rolled down his window and listened. Got out of the car. Against the mirror brightness of the sky, the heads of the pines at the edge of the park rounded dark above him. For the first time in months he heard the wind rustle through them. The sound of the wind whispering in the branches over the silence. He held his breath, listening to the lack of noise. Suddenly the whole city, the whole world had fallen asleep, and enchantment would hold it now for a hundred years in stillness. He could all but hear his own heartbeat. The small creakings of the car that cooled off after stopping. The crinkle of a piece of paper that came wind-tossed over the pavement. And the tidewater sound of the pines over him.

  Guidi was eating at his trattoria without hunger. Across the floor, with plates of pasta balanced in his hands, the waiter stopped in mid-stride. His face looked stunned, as if he’d been hit and wondered where the blow came from. Guidi put down his fork and raised his eyes to the door. Silence was a visitor. It came in and people looked at it and were amazed, and didn’t know how to greet it, or what to do with it.

  Signora Carmela perceived the cessation of noise, that was all. The glass domes in her parlor ceased tinkling, and, suddenly taciturn, the saints stood beneath them.

  The shelves in Donna Maria’s parlor also grew quiet. She set the lace pillow aside and went to open the window. The street was mute. Swallows cut through it as scissors through cloth. From one of the roses Martin Bora had given her the petals fell, and even the falling of petals on the table had a soft sound of its own in the great silence.

  Cardinal Borromeo was saying Mass alone, and stopped. With his face to the altar he listened, so unmoving that the candle flames before him became vertical and long in the twilight of the chapel.

  The woman with the cherry lips let go of the skirt she had been zipping on her fleshy side.

  At the hospital, Treib sat up in his chair, eyes on the wall clock.

  Maelzer poured himself a glass of Frascati wine and gulped it all.

  Bora realized how much he had missed silence, and welcomed it no matter what it meant. The living and the dead, he felt, could now rest within themselves. Jails and barracks and graves would feed on silence, and hope for peace. His last orders in Rome entailed the destruction of barracks, depots and dumps, but not until tomorrow. He was grateful, ever so grateful he did not have to break the silence today.

  When Guidi returned to the office, Danza, who was a model of timeliness, was not there. On his desk, just outside the inspector’s door, his uniform was neatly folded, cap and pistol holder laid above the rest. No pistol in the holder. On a sheet of notebook paper, in pencil, the words, It is more honorable now to be a partisan than a policeman. And several banknotes were clipped to the paper, so that it couldn’t be said he’d made off with state property without paying.

  Nothing in some time had seemed as bizarre as the opening of the opera season Saturday night. Bora sensed great relaxation in the air, even humor. The theater blazed with elegance of dresses and uniforms, beautiful women and decorated men. The Fascists had nearly all gone, but Germans filled the audience. Rumors were that troops had taken position south of the city, but the exodus of entire units continued in the dark outside.

  Having arrived with Donna Maria, whom he had after much insistence convinced to come, Bora saw among others General Maelzer accompanied by two women, and Kappler with his lover, a discreet Dutch girl Dollmann had heartlessly bad-talked to him. Without much hope he looked around to catch a glimpse of Mrs Murphy. She’d mentioned studying Italian as a child in Florence. Did she truly like opera? Were all the diplomats still around? Borromeo’s box, which Donna Maria pointed out to him, was still empty when she and Bora took place in their box opposite to it. By a stir of clothing in the semi-darkness, after the lights went down, he perceived that he’d come, not alone, just as the curtain rose.

  At the intermission he was about to ask the old lady to join him in the foyer. He did turn, and that was all he did. Across the theater, in a lilac gown that enclosed her like a flower, Mrs Murphy sat in Borromeo’s box.

  Donna Maria, sunken in her seat like a black satin turtle, noticed his stare. “I don’t want to go downstairs,” she said, peering at the box through her opera glasses. “You go.”

  Bora paid no attention. He disappointedly watched the cardinal’s box fill with visitors, and did not move.

  “Well, Martin, weren’t you to meet the cardinal?”

  “Not with other people there, Donna Maria.”

  “If I wanted to talk to somebody, a mob wouldn’t keep me from doing it.”

  Bora faced her frankly. “It’s propriety, not shyness.”

  She sat in her jet-embroidered satin with a scowl. When she shook her head, the diamonds at her ears flashed their diminutive lightning. “Martin, pay attention to the opera. You might learn something from the love story in it.”

  At the second intermission she caught Borromeo’s eye and signified she wanted to meet him in the foyer, to which she descended, leaning heavily on Bora’s arm. Immediately cornered by General Maelzer, Bora had to shoulder his way among epaulets and bare backs to the other side of the hall in order to approach Mrs Murphy before the start of the third act. She saw him coming and did not move from where she stood. “I can hardly believe you are still all here,” she coolly interjecte
d. “The silence of the guns is ominous.”

  “I am so glad to see you, Ma’am.”

  As once before, she smiled at the British formality of his address. “Thank you.” At her side was stationed a tall adolescent, whose face was ridden with acne and incipient fuzz. “May I introduce my stepson Patrick Junior? Patrick, this is Lieutenant Colonel Bora.” Bora nodded his head, ignoring him entirely. “Patrick will be entering Columbia in the fall.”

  An impatient glance was all Bora could volunteer in the way of acknowledgment. He understood the meaning of the boy’s presence, but was so desperately pressed for time, he rejected it. With a slight bow of his head, he said, “Mrs Murphy, I ask you the kindness of allowing me to speak to you privately after the performance.”

  “For what reason?”

  He found himself justified in lightly touching her elbow to guide her aside. “There’s a favor I must beg of you.”

  “Is it in return to yours? I should have known.”

  Her face, her eyes. I must remember them, must remember the way her lips move, the cast of her face when she looks away. The color and scent, her small perfection. “Please give me a few moments after the opera, Mrs Murphy.”

  “If you insist.”

  The third act went by, with Donna Maria quite sure Bora had heard none of it. He slipped so quickly out of the box afterwards, she decided to wave to Cardinal Borromeo for him to accompany her below. Soon she saw how Bora, having succeeded in dodging Maelzer, other uniforms and the pimple-faced boy, was now talking to the woman in the lilac gown.

  “I wasn’t hoping to see you here, Mrs Murphy, so I planned to give this to Cardinal Borromeo.” Unobtrusively, he placed a small envelope into her hand.

  “Is it for the cardinal, or for me?”

  “It’s for you.” She began to open it, and he prevented her. “I’d rather if you didn’t. I’d like to talk to you for a minute. There’ll be time enough to read that.”

  Mrs Murphy slipped the envelope into a round, beaded purse. “I cannot imagine —”

  “I believe you can.” Bora had such a cowardly desire to hold her, he had to force himself from doing it. “Mrs Murphy, I am —”