A Dark Song of Blood (28 page)

“He says they turn stupid.”

“That, you’re not. But you wouldn’t get so emotionally involved in things if you had something else going – even old Hohmann got himself some. No? Well, disbelieve it all you want, he had a lover and she blew his head off in bed. Oh,
never mind
the blood drops on the floor, that’s what we have maids for.”

8 APRIL 1944

On Saturday, Cardinal Borromeo agreed to meet Bora after the yearly baptism of converts in St John Lateran.

“If you’re coming to mourn Cardinal Hohmann, I hope you will not expect me to say anything but
parce sepulto.
”

“He was not one to need forgiveness,” Bora said testily. “No, sir, I came to confirm that the removal of troops I negotiated with the cardinal is completed.”

Borromeo looked a bit annoyed. “So, you don’t want to talk about Hohmann? I’m surprised. Conceited though the poor man was, he had good words for you now and then.” Bora was really so grieved – and Borromeo could see it – it was cruel of him to speak as he did. He sipped from his demitasse as an anteater from the termite mound, with dainty draughts. “I know you’ve come to speak about him. Sit down, peace of angels. I can’t understand why laymen think they have to speak in riddles to us – I can speak straight.” After finishing the coffee,
he balanced the cup in the hollow of its saucer, his eyes on Bora’s bandaged hand. “To say that I’m sorry he died – that’s immaterial now, isn’t it? We’re all just passing through, and all that. I regret the way he went, which reflects badly on all of us. But then we all have our failings. How weak the flesh is. It is a strange physiological fact how man’s flesh gets weaker and weaker from the midriff down.”

Bora, who had read and reread Marina Fonseca’s suicide note, looking uselessly for hidden messages that might give him a clue as to its veracity, was now dismally convinced it meant just what it said. Still, he kept his cool at Borromeo’s words. “It’s interesting that you accept uncritically that Cardinal Hohmann did in fact die as we are told.”

“Why, don’t you? Heaven forbid that I should be curious about such unsavory details, but I saw the police report. It is
graphic.
You probably could add to that, as you were among the first on the scene.”

“I hope you’re being so negative because you’re distraught at the loss, Cardinal Borromeo. Surely you had the opportunity to appreciate how good he was.”

“Oh, I did. I did. The question is, how much did
you
appreciate him?”

Even in his grief, Bora was suddenly wary of Borromeo’s words. Hohmann’s political outspokenness had relegated him to the Vatican no differently than his own had landed him on Westphal’s staff. How much was known here, he did not know. Borromeo watched him squirm, and then said, “Time will come for both of us to express our appreciation, each in our own way.” It was a quizzical statement, but Borromeo would add no commentary. “Anyway, you should know that Cardinal Hohmann was close to Marina Fonseca – charitable enterprises, of course. They were often seen together, lately more so than ever.”

Despite all evidence, Bora was tempted to leave in outrage. “He was nearly eighty. How much of an intimate relation could he possibly maintain?”

“Ha! You’re naive for a soldier, and a doctor of philosophy.” Unexpectedly the cardinal laughed. “Speaking of lighter and better things, our dear Mrs Murphy tells me she saw you the other day.”

Bora felt instantly removed from the strain of the moment. An ineffably gratifying, wholly physical reaction made him bristle at the mention of her name, hearing that she had spoken of him to the cardinal. He was careful to say nothing, but Borromeo would not let him get away with silence. He rang a bell, and the ubiquitous little cleric appeared on the threshold with a second tray of espresso. “Her husband will return to Rome this afternoon, and Nora – she’s well educated, you know, and lived in Florence as a child – will have to curtail her volunteer work. Young Murphy is to drive his father from the station.”

“
Drive
him?” Bora had no choice but to speak up. “She can’t be old enough to have a grown son.”

“Mrs Murphy married a widower. He’s quite old enough to have grown offspring – and not to wish for new ones.” Borromeo sipped from the second cup not differently from before, extracting the drink by silent suction. “It grieves her, I think. She
loves
children.” He stared at Bora, amiably. “But we all have our crosses to bear, eh?”

That afternoon, Dollmann called Bora at the office.

“Have you read today’s
Unione
, Major?”

“I don’t patronize communist newspapers, Colonel Dollmann.”

“You ought to read this one. Your beloved teacher is plastered all over the first page, along with an exposé of the last century of Vatican malfeasances... Are you there, Bora?”

“I’m here.”

“I was speechless myself, at first. Tried to find out who leaked the information to a clandestine rag, to no avail. Whoever did it, the cat’s out of the bag now – not even the Pope will be able to drive it back in without scratching himself. I heard on the
news that Marina’s sister refuses to comment on the news, and well she may.”

The scandal was enormous. Although the official press refrained from picking up the story without substantiation, by Easter Sunday it was everywhere. Bora met Dollmann at the concert and asked him not to bring up the subject today. Dollmann agreeably nodded, and handed him the issue of
Unione.

10 APRIL 1944

On Easter Monday, when traditionally Romans went “out of the gates” for the first picnic of the year, all principal highways had been made off limits to civilian traffic by German authorities. So people munched their modest lunches on balconies and on the benches of what city gardens had not yet been requisitioned as dumps for materiel. Even so, in the movie district of Cinecittà – where according to Westphal most of Bora’s colleagues had their lovers – three German soldiers were killed. Bora was sent to investigate and make recommendations.

He found Kappler already there. Gamely Bora greeted him, and agreed that deportation of the men in the district may be the only answer. “But make sure you put them to work. It’s no advantage to keep them clogging the jails.”

“Except that it takes manpower to watch them on work detail.”

“Why don’t you just go ahead and tell them to shoot on sight?”

Kappler’s lips nearly disappeared. “I’m so disappointed in you, Bora.”

“Frankly, Colonel, it’s mutual. I thought yours would work better under pressure.”

“It was bad for my men to see you come the way you did. It’s unforgivable. Now I cannot trust you anymore.”

“It can’t be helped.”

*

From Cinecittà, though it was to say the least a circuitous way back to the office, Bora drove to the Cassia. There, before the modern, pine-surrounded house with a locked garden gate, he rang the bell and gave the maid his calling card, on which he had scribbled as further identification,
One of His Eminence’s former students.

Within minutes the maid was back without the card, but to report that Baroness Gemma Fonseca declined to meet with anyone at present. Bora had no choice but to accept the refusal, and the only consolation he granted himself was to drive back slowly along the meandering northern course of the Tiber.

The silt-yellow water ran among green and blooming fields, courted by swallows. Warm, sensual comfort was in the air, which he bodily craved, so much so that he stopped the car before reaching Ponte Salario and sat outside, breathing the clean springtime wind. And he felt – no, he
knew
– that things would be so much better if he were allowed to fall in love with Mrs Murphy.

After work, unwilling to see the usual faces at his hotel just yet, he stopped by Donna Maria’s. The old lady spoke up in dialect, “
Martì, me se vojono magnà i gatti,
” with concern in her voice. “I can’t let them out, poor creatures, because they’ll make stew out of them. Yesterday I lost Pallino.”

Bora bent to caress one of Donna Maria’s three survivors. Through the years, the cats had been a permanent fixture, the old ones being replaced by the new, until this was entirely a second generation.

“Pallino trusted everybody,” she said, “that’s the problem. I should have taught him better.” Between them, on a low table, lay a folded copy of
L’Osservatore
, bearing the first official news of Hohmann’s death. It was a well-written but late and useless attempt to curb the scandal, which Bora had read and now moodily glanced at again. “We aren’t spared anything, are we?” she added, setting aside the tatting pillow.

“I don’t believe it. I don’t.”

The old lady clasped her hands. “That’s what everybody thought back in ’89, when that other disaster happened near Vienna. I mean, when the Crown Prince and the little Jewish girl were found dead at Mayerling. What a shock that was! Just like now. We’d all been in love with Rudolf at one time or another – oh, he was
beautiful
, and married to that staid young goose Stephanie. All we girls thought it terribly romantic to be found dead with the Crown Prince.”

Bora sat facing Donna Maria, at once favored with a cat on his lap. “Was it in fact suicide, as they say?”

“I’m afraid so, though all the paperwork was destroyed and – you might know this – all those involved in the investigation sworn to silence. There were rumors, of course, that the Imperial Secret Service had done Rudolf in for his pro-Hungarian stance, and it didn’t help the thing that he had syphilis and could have no more heirs.”

Bora swallowed. “I see.” The cat in his lap smelled the bandage on his hand, and nuzzled it. “Donna Maria, did you know Marina Fonseca?”

“By sight. She was so much younger than I – forty, I think. No, I didn’t know her, other than she spent as much on clothes as she did on charity. I believe you were introduced to her family once, but were a child, and would not remember what she looked like.”

Bora didn’t say how he had seen her last, hair matted with pasty blood against the twisted sheets, when the police wouldn’t let him draw her knees together at least. “Why would anyone want to do as they did?”

“Oh, well... If you must justify it to yourself, Martin, you must also put yourself in her place. A cardinal of the Church is a prince all the same. Dying with him might have held the same horrible fascination it had for us court girls back then.”

“I don’t want to justify it to myself, Donna Maria. I refuse it.”

“That’s just what you do, isn’t it?” She retrieved the tatting pillow, resuming her agile play of ivory bobbins on it. “You don’t mourn for things and people, and ought to.”

“There’s no time.”

“One of these days time will be made whether you like it or not.”

Bora stood. “Donna Maria, I must go.”

“No, you mustn’t. You can spend the night here, and you know it. Your room is always ready. This is your house.”

But Bora did go. In the morning, as soon as he reached the office, he heard from Dollmann over the phone that Pasquino, one of the three
talking statues
of Rome, had been found with an anonymous message around its stubby neck for all to read.

             
Ai tempi bboni der gran Papa Sisto

             
er cardinale fu l’arma de Cristo:

             
mo’ stemo a vede ’na cosa assai barbina,

             
ar cardinale je piace la Marina.

“What does it mean?” Westphal asked him a few minutes later.

“It’s a distasteful pun on Baroness Fonseca’s first name, which is the same as ‘Navy’. It says that while in the old days the cardinals were the army of Christ, now they prefer his Navy.”

“It’s a capital joke, Bora. Write it down for me, I want to circulate it. So, what else is new about old Hohmann?”

“The Vatican forbids an autopsy.”

“What about the Fonseca woman?”

“It depends on her family, but if the Vatican has a say in it, I wouldn’t expect miracles. A plain post-mortem is the best we’ll get. As Colonel Dollmann puts it, they did have bullet holes in their heads, and her fingerprints are on the weapon. The handgun belonged to her late husband, a collector of side arms and great hunter. They say she was a remarkable shot herself.”

Good-humoredly Westphal nodded. “If only the Reiner girl had been a champion diver, you’d have your answer for that one, too.”

At dinner that evening, Francesca, who was gone from the house as long as ten hours a day, announced she would no longer work until after the birth of her child. “I got some money from home, so I don’t have to keep standing behind the counter with this weight on my feet.”

Guidi had nothing to say to her. In the two weeks since he’d returned to work, he had gathered as much additional information on her as he’d been able. The child was her employer’s, as it seemed. She had seen him off and on for three months, and when he’d offered to marry her, she’d turned him down and moved to Via Paganini. As Danza had reported months ago, nothing political had emerged, but Guidi knew by now how selective or blind the eye was that Roman police turned to violation of the curfew, illegal gatherings and the like. Francesca was
involved
, impossible to say to what extent. The danger came from the SS and from fanatics like Caruso.