A Dark Song of Blood (45 page)

Bora said, “Get out!”

“You think you’re clever, and so does Colonel Kappler, but it’s not going to work —”

“Get out!”

“
I will not get out!
”

“Then I will.” Bora walked past him, and across the threshold. “Search my office while you’re at it. See what else you can find.”

Signora Carmela didn’t understand why Guidi had asked to speak privately to her husband. She sat in the kitchen waiting, until the men joined her there.

“There is bad news,” the professor told her then in a forcible monotone. “Francesca has been killed.”

The old woman heard him very clearly, but turned to Guidi all the same. “Inspector, what is he saying? I don’t understand.”

“It’s true. The Germans killed her. She is the one we read about in the newspapers.”

“My God!” Signora Carmela cried out. “Oh, my God, my God!” Her husband tried to reach for her but she eluded him, fleeing to her room and what saints she kept there. “Oh my God, the poor child! Oh my God, my God!”

Maiuli seemed unable to lower his arm, still poised to catch his wife. When he did, he had tears in his eyes. “Was her death hard?”

“No.” Guidi had to unlock his jaw to speak intelligibly. “A clean shot through the head. She died instantly. Probably never knew what happened.”

“But why would anyone...?”

“It appears she was involved in politics more than you or your wife realize, Professor. I’m going into her room to remove anything that might be dangerous for you.”

“She... Do what you must, Inspector. She slept in your room, lately.”

Guidi chased all nostalgia in order to function. The trained policeman in him searched the room, the
other
Guidi being kept out of the way. Quickly enough, he found some money rolled tightly at the bottom of the dresser, about six thousand lire. There was an empty envelope with her name on the table, no return address. Magazines, paperback mysteries, her old shoes. A small bottle of cologne. Her cotton dresses. The silk stockings he’d given her, carefully folded.

Professor Maiuli stood by the door with the look of a beaten dog. “Inspector, tell me the truth – did you know about her activities?”

Guidi did not turn around. He was holding up the mattress with one hand, rummaging under it with the other. “Yes, I knew.”

“You could have told me, at least.”

“You would not have been able to lie when the Germans came.”

“Maybe not, but it’d have been with some sense of honor that I’d have let myself be arrested then.”

“It makes no damned difference now.”

Maiuli chewed on his dentures like a calf on cuds. “And the German officer who had me hauled in, he was the same man who came to talk to you at night. He knows you well. The reason why you didn’t try to talk him out of arresting
the rest of us, who had nothing to do with politics, was to protect Francesca. I understand. But you didn’t have to act behind my back.”

Guidi let go of the mattress, tossing up the quilts with both hands. His anger at her death was starting to peak. His motions were disorderly, pretexts to move his body around to discharge energy. Having found nothing else, he stormed past Maiuli and across the hallway to Francesca’s old room.

Maiuli did not follow him. “I’m glad you no longer live with us.”

The furniture in the other room was empty. Still Guidi searched corners and crannies the Germans would surely rifle. He even picked up a folded piece of paper stuffed under the lame leg of the writing table. It was blank. Some phone numbers scribbled on a pad he crumpled and drove into his pockets. There were sketches of nudes and faces on top of the tall wardrobe, which he took down and lay on the bed – no date on them later than 1943. Reaching over his head Guidi felt behind the molded rim crowning the wardrobe, and at last his fingers met with paper. Standing on a chair, he discovered several carbon copies stuck tightly between the molding and the top of the wardrobe. He pulled them out and chose one of the sheets at random.

What he read were the names Bora and Montini had read, but neither of them had reacted as Guidi did. For a moment his sight went dim, because this was an inconceivable, frightening second death of Francesca in him. In a feverish sequence he read names of unknown people, names he had vaguely heard, entire families locked in the brevity of the typewritten space condemning them. He was unable to remove his eyes from the name of Francesca’s mother, neatly printed beside her address on the riverfront.

30 MAY 1944

Their ears were no longer paying attention to the shooting. With the tense mask of his face drawn over the skull, Kesselring looked aged in excess of his years, and only the jutting double row of his teeth gave him an appearance of aggressiveness. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re having trouble with Via Tasso, Martin?”

“The field marshal has other things to worry about.”

“I thought it’d had all been resolved after March.” A shell came whistling by, and promptly both men ducked. The trench was built into a natural escarpment, edged with belabored shrubs and skinny trees. American troops could be seen now and then to the south-west, glimpses of dull cloth at which sharpshooters aimed.

When Bora looked, the shell had lifted much dirt, raining back mostly on the American side. Compared to the last one, the aim had been adjusted: a little more fine-tuning and they’d be bursting on this side of the escarpment. German artillery fire whirred overhead, aimed at British positions. He knew what the odds looked like on the map. The next shell fell much closer, fifty yards away. Someone was making mistakes on the German side, too. An 88 came down far too short and burst into a thicket where the soldiers had spent the night; trees splintered in all directions and branches went flying like javelins and arrows, along with clumps of dirt and roots.

Kesselring was steadily walking the line of the trench, his big head sunken into his shoulders. “We’ll have to withdraw.” He chewed on disappointment. “Or by this afternoon all we’ll have on both sides will be meat in the dirt. How’s morale?”

“The men don’t want us to quit Rome.”

“I can’t blame them, but we will quit it. Take me back to Frascati.”

When they had driven a stretch toward the rise of the town, amid gray puffs of explosions flitting before the sun, Kesselring
said, “Martin, I want you to apologize to Kappler and Sutor both.”

Bora, who was concentrating on driving, felt his hair stand on hand. “
Herr General Feldmarschall
, I have just requested the opposite!”

“That’s precisely why you will express your regrets to them.”

“But the honor of the army... It’s unheard of! Put yourself in my place,
Herr General Feldmarschall.
”

“If I were in your place I would apologize.”

Bora saw well how it was. “With all respect, Colonel Dollmann had no right to inform you.”

“Bigger fish have been speared for less. As you know, tomorrow night there’s a party at the Flora, and it is proper you should apologize then.”

“In public?”

“It won’t kill you.”

Bora was so angry, he nearly went off the road. “
Herr General Fieldmarschall
, I’d rather you directly reprimanded me.”

Kesselring grunted. “I don’t want to reprimand you. I want you to apologize to Kappler and his adjutant. I expect to hear from Dollmann that it has been done. Be stark sober when you do it, and make sure you do it with the decorum befitting your post and your family.”

In her small kitchen, Francesca’s mother wept. Hands knotted under her chin, she wept big tears and Guidi felt powerless to console her. He was full of loathing, and of course must warn her of danger without telling her how he knew. What he should do with the money found in Francesca’s room had been unclear to him until now, though he’d taken it along. Now he slipped it out of his pocket, still tied with a rubber band, and placed it on the table.

“Six thousand lire,” he said, and though it was hardly believable, he added, “from Francesca’s savings.”

To the south the Germans must be blowing up another bridge or ammunition dump. The windowpanes shook hard. She made a humming sound as she wept, neither moving nor looking at the money.

“The child will be christened on Sunday, in case you wanted to see him. And in case you wanted, you know, to dress her and —”

“No.”

“They’ll bury her in the morning.”

She looked at him despairingly. “I don’t want to touch her. Don’t ask. I can’t touch her, I can’t go see her. Here, take the money, give her a good burial.”

Guidi stared at the stained tablecloth. “It’s not necessary. It’s taken care of. You don’t have to worry about that.”

When she reached for his hand he did not expect it, was startled by the contact and drew back, but she held him. Her hand was cold, wet with tears. “But you – are you sad about it?”

“I’m numb. I don’t know what I am.”

Though he returned to Rome late in the evening, Bora received a call from Cardinal Borromeo, who sounded worried and wanted him to stop by his residence before leaving the office for the night. At his arrival – they met privately in a small studio hung with tapestries – the prelate showed himself even more agitated than over the telephone. It seemed that Kappler had warned the Vatican to surrender partisans and defectors hiding in the Lateran Palace.

“You also hide enemy soldiers, Cardinal. But I’m in no position to intercede with the Gestapo or the SS.”

“That’s what Dollmann told me, and he is an SS! Who is to speak for us?”

“If the Holy See didn’t have a guilty conscience, you wouldn’t mind Kappler’s intrusion. I feel no differently from the way he does on this one. The men you conceal are the same who shoot my men in the field – there can be no commerce between
us on the abetting of enemies. I tried to do what I could for others,” he would not use the word
Jews
, “but if I had the authority, I’d go through your labyrinthine rooms looking for partisans myself.”

“So we’re to be trespassed against!”

“You haven’t been trespassed against yet, unless you count that stupid Caruso’s raid on St Paul’s. The fact that Kappler gives you fair warning surprises me. I wouldn’t.”

“Well, and you tell me this even as His Holiness expresses paternal feelings toward you.”

“I’m in debt to His Holiness. I should try to kill informers more often.”

Distractedly Borromeo paced the small room back and forth, three long strides each way. “That shipment of Red Cross milk – I saw your signature on the papers. How did you think of it?”

“I’d rather not say.”

The cardinal stopped with a half-turn that made his gown flash red. “I hear the officers’ luggage has been packed out of hotel rooms.”

Bora didn’t look at him. It was the reason why he had come back from the front, to gather his things from the hotel and Donna Maria’s, and to say farewell to Treib, who was likely to leave early with the less gravely wounded. Of course, there was still the call to Servigliano, and wrapping up the Reiner case with Guidi as much as he could.

Borromeo was staring at him. “Tell me at least this, Major – do you believe Kappler will have time to raid the Lateran?”

“Well, it
is
across the square from Via Tasso. He could be there in three minutes.”

“I am speaking of psychological time.”

Bora kept his cool. “If I say yes, you might try to remove those you are hiding, and if I say no, you will surmise that we are abandoning Rome. I refuse both alternatives. Forgive me, Cardinal, but I won’t answer you.”

“Hohmann taught you well.” Borromeo opened the door for him.

From Via Giulia, a long, dark distance separated Bora from Piazza Vescovio. He drove there nonetheless, past the long solitude of Villa Ada, facing the serpentine course of the Aniene. The hospital was dismal at night. Its halls looked longer, like guts full of waste. More acutely the stench of disinfectant rose from the floor and breathed from the walls. Bora shivered while passing between the rows of metal beds. From the indistinct darkness of their blankets one of the men breathed hard and loud as from a split throat, and another one whimpered. And there was in the shadow a double line of trembling, swallowing, or staring upward waiting for death.

Treib sat by himself in his office, slumped on a cot. He made a jerky gesture with his head at Bora’s coming and wearily waved for him to come closer. He said nothing, his head lolling as if too heavy for his neck when he tried to sit up. He looked exhausted.

“I won’t stay long, Treib. I only stopped because I thought you’d be leaving by now.”

“Who’s leaving? The transportable wounded have already gone off this morning.”

“And what are you doing here?”

“I stay with the rest. There are twenty-five thousand German wounded in Rome. If I don’t stay, I won’t be able to sleep at night for the rest of the war.” The muscles of his cheeks tried to pull the sides of his mouth into a grin. “I stay for the same reason you go.”

Bora shook his hand. “Take care of yourself.”

“Oh, I will. All I have to do is surrender.” Treib pointed at a gray residue in a small steel basin. “That’s what remains of your two letters. I’m glad there was no need to send them.”