by Joseph Kanon
“Do you know what she was? Did she tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, the camp mistress. This is the woman you bring to your mother’s house.”
“She was forced.”
“No one forces a woman to be a whore. A man like that, at the camp, do you think he would have kept her if she didn’t please him? No one had to force her.”
“You really are a sonofabitch, aren’t you?” I said quietly.
“Oh, now names. I try to help you, show you what she is, and you call me names.”
“Just call off the dogs, Gianni. The police or the housing authority or whoever the hell you called this time.”
“For your information, I didn’t call anyone. Another of her fantasies.”
“Who else would have done it, Gianni? Who else?”
“A landlord finds a new tenant, he gets rid of the old one. It happens all the time.”
“Leave her alone.”
“I see. She scratches my face in public. Waits outside the hospital, like a beggar. Makes scenes in restaurants. But I am bothering her.”
“Just call them off. She’s not leaving Venice.”
“She has no permit.”
I smiled grimly at the slip. “Something you just happened to know?”
He glanced away. “I told you, I made inquiries. It’s not for me to decide. It’s a legal matter.”
“Not if I marry her,” I said, not even thinking, just returning the ball.
He looked up at me, genuinely shocked. “You can’t marry her.”
“Why not? My mother’s marrying you.”
“A woman like that? It would be a disgrace. Think of your mother. It’s impossible.”
“What a piece of work you are,” I said slowly. “You send her father to die. She ends up in the camp, raped, and now she’s a disgrace, not fit to enter your house. You did it and she pays? Not anymore. I don’t know how you live with yourself.”
He stared down at the papers, not saying anything.
“Always her father with you. Over and over. You think you know,” he finally said.
“What don’t I know?”
He pursed his lips, then turned and stopped, turning back, a kind of physical indecision.
“You still see his room on your rounds?”
“Lower your voice,” he said, darting his eyes toward the anteroom.
“I don’t care who hears. You got away with it, you can live with it.”
He put his hands on the desk, as if he were stopping his body from moving, coming to an end.
“Yes, I live with it. You want to know? That day?”
“I thought it never happened.”
“Come.”
He took his coat from the rack and started out, not bothering to see whether I was following. There was some quick Italian to the nurse, who nodded uneasily at me, and we were in the hall.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Out of here. I will tell you something that never happened.”
Outside, he turned right on the Fondamenta dei Mendicanti and began walking along the canal, then stopped, as if he had changed his mind.
“An ambulance. Wait.”
Orderlies were carrying a stretcher off the boat, stepping carefully from the deck to the receiving room door. Gianni went over and asked them something, presumably whether he was needed. I stood looking at the boat, waiting. Everything by water, even the sick. Claudia’s father must have come this way, on a boat from the Lido. She would have stood here, watching as they carried him in.
“Another one for San Michele,” Gianni said.
“Dead?”
“Almost. Some morphine, that’s all you can do now. Pray, if you believe that. Then San Michele.” He started walking again, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. “Do you know how many dead I’ve seen? When I was young, I thought I would be helping people, making them better. You know, the nice doctor with the cough medicine, the way a child sees it. That’s what I thought it would be, medicine, but no. Death. Seeing it happen, waiting for it. I’ve spent my whole life in this building,” he said, motioning with his head toward the long brick wall. “I know when someone is going to die. What are we supposed to do? We help even when we know it won’t help. We don’t kill them. We don’t make that decision. God does, if you believe that. Maybe it’s just the cells, giving up. But not you, not if you’re a doctor. I never wanted to kill people, I wanted to save them. And then sometimes you have to make a choice.”
“What choice?” I said quietly. We were walking slowly now, almost in time with the waves of the canal hitting the stone walls.
“I said I would tell you something that never happened. Now, this once. And then I didn’t tell you. It never happened, we never talked of it. If you say we did, I will deny it. And by the way, everyone will believe me. You can never prove what happened. But we must make a truce, you and I. For everyone. Not a peace, you don’t want that, but a truce. Before you ruin your mother’s happiness. And your own life, with that-well, she is what she is. You think I made her that way? No. That I don’t have to live with.”
“Just her father.”
“Yes. I have to live with that. I’m not proud-this thing that never happened. Are you proud of everything you’ve done? Well, at your age it’s still possible. Not at mine. I’m a doctor, not assassino. He was dying. I knew he was dying. Nothing in the world was going to change that.”
“That doesn’t mean you had to help. You knew him.”
“Abramo? Yes. He was like her-difficult. Always looking for the slight. But no matter. He was dying. I had to make a choice, so I did. You can’t save the dead-only the living. So was I wrong? I knew what would happen to him. But I’m not ashamed, even now. It was the war. You had to choose the living.”
“Choose how? By reporting Jews?”
“They were not there for the Jews. For someone else. I don’t remember his name-maybe I never knew it. Anyway, it wouldn’t have been real. You know CLN?”
I nodded. “Partisans.”
“So someone fighting for Italy. That meant something, you know. I wanted to help. A man not sick, wounded. Bullet wounds. You couldn’t hide that. How could I lie about bullet wounds? They would have found him. They had a photograph-they knew who he was. And then what? ‘How long has he been here, dottore? You never reported this? A partisan?’ They were attacking Germans then. It wasn’t just sabotage, railroad tracks-they were actually killing them, so if you were caught, the Germans would make an example. There was no way to hide him in that hospital. I had to get him out, somewhere else. I had to make them go away, even for a little, get enough time to save him. So I gave them someone else.”
We were at the end of the fondamenta, facing into the wind coming off the lagoon. On the water, a covered funeral gondola bounced on the waves, heading toward the cypresses. Another one for San Michele.
“That’s some choice,” I said, looking out at the water.
“Yes,” he said, “a terrible choice. But not difficult. He was dying. The other man was living. How else could I save him?”
“And yourself.”
He looked at me. “Yes, myself, it’s true. It would have been bad for me if they had known I helped. But you know, at the time I wasn’t thinking about that. Of course you won’t believe that either. You want to judge-one thing or the other. But it wasn’t like that. Good and bad together, how do you judge that? You do things-well, how can you know what it was like? Villa Raspelli, you think I wanted that? How do you think it felt, putting my hands on them? Giving them medicine? Men like that. So you don’t look at the uniform, you don’t see it. Then you can do it, if it’s just a man.”
“So was Grassini.”
“A dying man. So I played God, yes. A sin. That’s what you wanted to know. Now you tell me something-what would you have done?”
I stared at the lagoon, choppy in the wind, and it seemed for an instant, as I watched it move, that everything in Venice was like its
water, shifting back and forth.
“Why didn’t you tell her this?” I said finally.
“What difference would it make to her? Her father’s dead. I had a part in that, yes. Do you think she wants to know why? What reason would satisfy her? I’m not making excuses-it happened. But you, it’s different. I want you to know. What happened, happened. Or rather, it didn’t happen. Not now.”
“Why?”
“You think this is a time for explanations? Now it’s revenge, settling scores. I have a position here. These accusations-anti-Semite, collaborator. Always something sticks, however it was. Do you think people want explanations? No, they’re like you, they want black and white.”
“But if you helped a partisan-”
“Not everyone would love me for that, even now. Collaborator. Communist. It’s dangerous to take sides here. This one, that one, and someone is against you no matter what you do. So I do nothing. Nothing happened. I go on with my life. I don’t want the war again.” He looked at me for a minute, then turned toward the fondamenta. “I must go back. Anyway, now it’s said. Maybe it makes a difference to you, maybe not, I don’t know. I thought, a soldier, you’d know how these things were. What happened then, it’s hard to judge now. Do I still live with it? Yes, but shall I tell you something? A little less each day. Maybe that’s how the war ends. A little less each day until it’s over.”
“Not for everybody.”
“No, not everybody,” he said. “It never ends for them.”
“You talk as if it’s her fault.”
“No, but not mine either. I didn’t make the war.”
He said nothing for a few minutes, looking toward the houses across the canal, the same patchy plaster and shutters we’d seen that day going to lunch, before anything had happened.
“You know what ended it for me?” he said suddenly. “When your mother came back. I heard her laugh, and it was a laugh from before the war. And I thought, yes, it’s possible to have that life again. And we do. I won’t let anyone take that away now. Not that girl. Does she think she can bring the father back? I did what I did. There was a reason-at least for me it was a reason. Now you know it. Maybe it’s still not enough for you. But maybe it’s enough for a truce. That’s why I told you. If it’s enough to make a truce.”
“What do you mean by truce?”
“An end. Talk like this, it can make trouble for me. I want her to stop.” He looked directly at me. “I want you to stop.”
“You mean you want me to leave.”
He held my eyes for a second, then nodded. “After the wedding.”
Rosa Soriano was blond and stocky, the weight, I assumed, a matter of inheritance, because she took nothing with her morning tea, not even glancing at the rolls and jam the Bauer had laid out for breakfast. She had a heavy person’s surprising grace, her thick fingers barely touching the cup, lifting it in a delicate arc. Only her walk was clumsy, an awkward shuffle, still new to her, her body pitching forward but held back by the stiff leg she dragged along. “From the war,” she said when she saw me looking at it. “A German souvenir.” When she sat down she breathed out, a barely audible sigh of relief, and brought the leg under the table. The dining room was warm, despite the rain spattering on the terrace, but she had wrapped a shawl over a heavy jacket, a huddled, almost peasant look in a room walled with damask. Joe had said she’d wanted the trip, so I apologized for the rain, but she looked at me blankly, as if she hadn’t noticed it. She had come ready for business-a folder with papers and a notebook were at the side of the table.
“My mother was German,” she said, when I asked how she knew the language.
“So that explains the hair.”
She shrugged. “Italians are blond too. But not many speak German. So it was useful. My mother said it would be. Maybe not this way, working for the Americans.”
“Joe said you recognized his name.”
“The name, yes. Not his. His brother’s.”
“His brother? Paolo?”
“Yes,” she said, patting the folder. “Him I know well. But the other-” She shook her head, then gently put down the cup. “Then Joe asked me and ha, I thought, another Maglione, maybe that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“The brother, Paolo, was often at Villa Raspelli. They kept a record of the visitors every day, so we only have to look at the sheet to see who was there. And then, I couldn’t understand it, his name was there after he died. How? I thought maybe the records made a mistake, but how do you make that mistake? A ghost signs in? So I look, and the writing is different, only the name is the same. G. Maglione.”
“G? Paolo?”
“Gustavo, his first name. That would be the name on any document, so of course the Germans-”
“But I don’t understand. He wasn’t a doctor.”
“Well, Villa Raspelli wasn’t a hospital. It’s-how do you say, casa di recovero? ”
“I don’t know-rest home? Recuperation center, I guess.”
“So, recuperation. You know, an officer is wounded. Maybe tired of the war. He goes to Villa Raspelli. He looks at Lake Garda, breathes the good air, he eats, he gets better. Maybe he has to practice walking. Maybe the arm is like this.” She made a gesture to indicate a cast. “But no one is dying. It’s casa di recovero, not a hospital. A club for butchers,” she said, her voice suddenly bitter.
“But then why did Gianni go there?”
She looked over, almost delighted, pleased with me. “That is an excellent question. A doctor from Venice? From the big hospital? Why not someone in Verona? I have the records. There were no serious illnesses there in this period. And you know, if it was serious they moved them out to a real hospital. This was der Zauberberg, a place to rest. But a doctor comes from Venice. So why?”
I said nothing, waiting.
“Of course, it is an excellent excuse. Doctors do go there. Maybe not from Venice, but they go. To make the checkups. How is the cast? You know. No one would think it unusual if he went there.”
“But you did.”
“Because I know what it was like. He wasn’t needed. Still, there he is. Not once, several times.” She pulled out one of the sheets and pointed. “G. Maglione. Not a ghost. As I say, an excellent excuse, if you were meeting someone. No suspicion at all. You meet the SS at Quadri’s, everyone notices. You meet secretly, someone finds out. But at Villa Raspelli no one questions it. You’re a doctor. Maybe someone has asked for you. Take a black bag, all out in the open. Wonderful.”
“Wait a minute. Back up. His brother went there. He wasn’t a doctor.”
“Well, Paolo didn’t need an excuse. They were his friends. You know about him?”
“Only what I read in the papers. A playboy.”
She nodded. “Yes. Racing cars. Then more games. The Order of Rome. You know that?”
I shook my head.
“A club, for boys like him. Young Fascists. Rich, stupid. For the new empire. Ha. Abyssinia. What did they care about Abyssinia? An excuse to get drunk, be stupid together. Harmless, and then not so harmless. The Germans began to use them. Of course, it was the Duce at Salo, but really the Germans.”
“Used them how?”
“To inform. To help fight the Communists. For someone like Paolo, that’s all you had to say. The Communists-that would be the end of everything, wouldn’t it? Better to make a bargain with the devil. So they did.”
“Over drinks at the Villa Raspelli.”
“Yes, many times. He was a favorite there-he must have been good company. Still a playboy. And of course there was the work to discuss. No more Abyssinia. Now he was saving us from the Communists. A hero. For Italy. For the Church. He wasn’t the only one like that, you know. There were lots of heroes. And now they answer for it.” She placed her hand on the folder, as if it were the prosecutor’s case.
“But not him.”
“No, he answered earlier.”
“A car crash.”
She took a sip o
f tea, calm. “No, he was killed.”
“I thought it went off the road.”
“It did. After.”
I looked at her, surprised. “Do you know that?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
I reached for the coffeepot, something to do while I took this in.
“But Gianni,” I said, “he wasn’t-what was it? Order of Rome?”
“No. I only knew about the brother. That’s why I’m here. To talk to you about this one.”
“Well, he wasn’t that. Like Paolo, I mean. Not a playboy. Not stupid, either. I can’t imagine him joining anything. He likes to keep his hands clean.”
“Not too clean. Isn’t that why you came to us?”
“That was something else. Not the Order of Rome. In his own way, he-” I looked up from my cup. “He told me he did it to save someone else. Who was in the hospital at the same time. A partisan.”
She lifted her head in surprise, then tipped it to one side, thinking. “A partisan,” she said quietly, turning it over another minute. She pushed at her sleeve, an absentminded gesture, moving the heavy cloth back until a splotch of white appeared, new skin, without color. I watched, fascinated, as she rubbed her finger over it, idly scratching. Another souvenir of the Germans? There was more of it, running up under her sleeve. How large had the burn been, the old skin blistering, coming off in peels? “Then he’s lying,” she said finally, startling me. I looked up from her arm. Her eyes were certain, not even a hint of doubt, so that suddenly I had to look away, ashamed somehow of feeling relieved, oddly elated.
“Are you sure?”
“The partisans in the Veneto were Communists. Does he seem to you a man who would help the Communists?”
“But not all-”
“Americans. Why is this so hard for you? Yes, Communists. Or people fighting with Communists. It comes to the same. Who else was fighting the Fascists? Not just at the end. And when the Nazis ran, who else was there to chase them? Hunt them down.”
“Were you there?” I said, trying to imagine it.
She nodded. “Of course.”
“A Communist?”
“My parents were. I was named for Rosa Luxemburg-my mother was her friend, in Berlin. So she had to leave, after they killed her, and my father was then in Milano-” She stopped. “Well, my parents, that’s for another day.”