The Secret of Santa Vittoria (41 page)

The men were passing around the
grappa
bottle, drinking deeply from it and encouraging the others while being encouraged, when Bombolini surprised them by telling them each to hide in a house that faced on the piazza from which they could watch the piazza but not be seen from it. They were to stay there until he waved them to come out. Some of them were disappointed and even angry.

“I thought we were to be courageous?” one of them said. “Now you have us running and hiding.”

“I'm ready,” another said. “I'm ready for the sons of bitches. I'll take everything they can hand out.”

But he sent them away and they went, and so it was that when they came, the four of them, von Prum and Traub and two young soldiers from the SS, Bombolini was alone in the Piazza of the People, this time without even Vittorini to stand behind him in his uniform. They came on the motorcycle and they were followed by a small compact truck that held the SS men's equipment. Sergeant Traub stopped the motorcycle near the edge of the Corso Cavour, and Captain von Prum stepped out of the sidecar and as he came across the piazza toward Bombolini, even the most unobservant among us could see that some change had taken place in the captain. The age that had altered his face seemed to have passed in this one night and he walked with an easy confidence and his motions were slow and controlled; the stiffness that had caused him to move like the overwound toy was gone and with it the wildness about the eyes. We didn't know then that he had made a sixth and a seventh entry in his log that morning, on the page that follows the other five.

6. Much that is dreadful and inhuman in history, much that one hardly likes to believe, is mitigated by the reflection that the one who commands and the one who carries out are different people. The former does not behold the sight and does not experience the strong impression on the imagination. The latter obeys a superior and therefore feels no responsibility for the acts.

—Nietzsche

7. I give myself up to Old Fritz. I prepare myself to perform my duty and I feel a happiness about it.

—Sepp von P.

“So. You put everyone away this morning,” Captain von Prum said. Bombolini nodded.

“Or did they run away?”

“No, sir. I hid them.”

“The same as your wine.”

“No, Captain.”

“We'll soon find out.” The captain began to walk across the piazza toward the Palace of the People and so Bombolini went along with him. “I'm going to use your place, because it's bigger.”

They stood in the doorway of the Palace and examined the large dark room, and Bombolini found himself wishing that he had kept it more neatly because he could see von Prum's disapproving face.

“And because it's very filthy,” Captain von Prum said. “They bleed and vomit, and all of the rest of it. I'm told that every orifice comes into use.”

Bombolini understood that this would be his one opportunity to do what he had to do, and although he could see that the captain didn't wish to hear him he seized the chance.

“Which is why I have this one thing to ask of you,” Bombolini said. “I don't want to have to be responsible for picking any man,” the mayor said.

“I'll do the picking if you wish,” von Prum said.

“I told the people not to come into the piazza until after you had come,” Bombolini said.

“And? What about it?”

“The first one who comes into the piazza is the one who will have to taste it first.”

The captain was interested, Bombolini could see that.

“In that way I don't have to have his blood on my head. And you don't have to be the one to choose, Captain. God will decide. Or fate. I don't know if you believe. The first who walks into the piazza is the one fate has determined to choose.”

“I would have said the devil, not God,” von Prum said. But he was smiling. The idea appealed to him. Sergeant Traub had come into the room then, and he was followed by the two SS men. Bombolini was surprised to see how young they were. They were boys. The captain turned back to Bombolini.

“So you can control who faces these men,” von Prum said. “You have all of your brave boys ready to walk into the piazza by fate.”

“No, it isn't true. Have
them
”—he nodded toward the SS men—“try me if you don't believe me. I have no one ready for you.”

Von Prum then explained the situation to the younger of the two soldiers who, despite his age, appeared to be the leader.

“It makes no difference,” the soldier said. “It makes no difference at all. They all talk.”

He was very casual and totally confident in his work, and his voice had the unconcerned quality that those who possess the truth often use.

“No. It doesn't matter,” the second soldier said. “A matter of time sometimes, a few minutes this way or that. But they break.”

“Yes, they all talk.”

“We never fail,” the older one said.

“No, we have never failed.”

Captain von Prum turned back to Bombolini.

“All right. It's in the hands of God,” the German said.

“My hands are clean,” Bombolini said.

“And mine,” von Prum said. But he was smiling. “God has the dirty hands now.” Both of the soldiers gave the captain a questioning look and he decided that he had gone far enough in that direction.

They were very young and very clean. When they laughed, which was often, their teeth were even and clean and strong. If one word alone could be used to describe them, it would be clean, and after that young, and after that strong. They weren't dressed the same as the other soldiers. Their uniforms were black with white piping, and the darkness of their dress made their skins seem fairer and their eyes bluer and their blondness more striking. The men had studied them from behind the doors and from the roof tops around the piazza.

“They don't look like devils,” someone said.

“Devils come in all disguises,” Pietrosanto told him.

They unloaded their equipment from the back of the small truck, and even von Prum helped them with it. It was pleasant outside in the early morning and the captain suggested that perhaps they would prefer to do their interrogations outside.

“No, it will be better inside,” one said. “The sun will be up and it will get hot.”

“It's hard work, you know,” the second said. “Hot and tiring.”

“
You
try pulling teeth all morning long.”

“When the people don't want them pulled.”

They smiled at one another. It was an old line of their own; they had many of them.

It was impossible for even Bombolini not to admire the neatness and precision of their work. In a very short time they had cleared out the truck and set up their equipment. The last piece was a wooden table, a narrow, thin plank of wood not much wider than an ironing board, which folded into sections, very much like a portable operating table. From the sides of the table hung three black leather straps, very wide and strong and three large, strong metal buckles.

At one side of this table was a battery-operated portable generator to which they began attaching coils of wire with little metal clips that had rows of teeth like ferrets. On the other side was a smaller table on which rested pincers and pliers, hooks, rubber hoses, a large funnel, surgical scissors, metal clamps, an iron grappling hook, a gouge, a hammer with a long thin head and claws like the horns of a ram, handcuffs, a blowtorch.

“You're young but you know your business, you interrogators,” Captain von Prum said.

“We like to think of ourselves as a truth squad,” the youngest of them said. “Going about the land uncovering truth.”

Again they smiled at one another. There was nothing solemn about them.

“Now hand me the gloves, Hans,” the younger one said. They had already put on black rubber aprons over their black uniforms, and now Hans handed the younger, who was named Otto, black rubber gloves. “Sometimes it gets a bit messy, you see,” Otto said. “You haven't even seen this before?” he asked von Prum. The captain shook his head.

“After a while you get used to it,” Otto said.

“After a while you get to like it,” Hans said.

“I have a special treat for you, Captain Bombolini,” von Prum said. “I am going to allow you to watch it all.
All
of it.”

Otto looked up at them. “Uh, uh, uh,” he said. “That's not very nice, Captain. Sometimes it's harder to look, you know.”

“Sometimes the one who is looking does all the talking,” Hans said.

“You don't look very happy,” Otto said to Bombolini. They both spoke very good Italian. “We'll put on a good show for you, don't fear.”

Bombolini went to the window and looked out into the piazza. It was still empty. For a moment he was happy for that, but by then there should have been some sign of Pietrosanto in the far edge of the piazza or coming down the hill from High Town. He tried to keep looking into the piazza, but against his will his eyes kept going back to the table of instruments, the hard cold metal of them, the sharpness and hardness of the things, the hooks and hammers, the silver pliers—he knew, for toes and teeth and fingernails—the fat rubber hoses, the torch. Captain von Prum was looking at them as well, and his tongue kept wetting his lips, which would have surprised him had he known it.

“Do you actually use these?” he said. It seemed to be a stupid question to Bombolini, but he was wrong.

“No, not often,” Hans said. “We have used them, but this does the job, you see.” He pointed to the generator to which a magneto had now been attached. A wire ran from the magneto to the handle of a metal hammer to which the wire was clipped.

“Are you ready to test?” Hans asked. Otto nodded. The older soldier nudged the brass arm of the magneto, and there was a sputtering sound, and sparks began to shoot from the head of the hammer, and the hammer itself actually began to leap on the wooden table.

“They do the same,” Hans said to von Prum. “The people. They leap.”

“And scream, I'm afraid,” Otto said. “That takes a bit of getting used to.”

“They hit high C sometimes,” Hans said, “but you won't like the lyrics they sing.”

So they smiled at one another again. Otto pointed to the instrument table.

“All the while it's going on they never stop looking at these,” he said. “The pain is unbearable, of course, but they look at these, like these pliers, for example, and think we are saving the worst for last.”

“And so they talk.”

“They can't wait to talk. They demand to talk. They cry out to talk. They beg to talk.”

“And sometimes we let them.”

Von Prum noticed that he was wetting his lips with his tongue, and he stopped.

“How long,” he said. “For how long?”

The two soldiers studied one another.

“A minute sometimes. Five sometimes. Three or four minutes on an average, wouldn't you say, Hans?”

“Three or four, yes. We ask them later sometimes, the people we have treated, and they think they have been on the table for hours.”

“Time is strange,” Otto said. “Pain stretches time.”

“Time is strange. We do something to it. Sometimes when we're through we're surprised to look up and find it's still day. I'm ready. Are you ready?” He looked at Otto and then at Captain von Prum.

“There's a final question,” the captain said. “How do you know when they're telling the truth?”

“Because they always do. But we make it a matter of numbers,” Hans said. “When we really put the juice to them, when we cook them good, you know.”

“When we set fire to their hair, you know.”

“They tell you. They always tell you, but we aren't allowed to take just one man's word. Even when we know what the patient has said is true, we have to do a second and a third. Sometimes we do five. Just to look good.”

“Although one would be enough.”

“Oh, yes. One is enough,” Otto said. “But it makes
them
feel happier.” By “them” he must have meant the officers who order the interrogations.

“We'll do five,” Captain von Prum said. He turned to Bombolini. “Did you hear that?”

“If one will do…” the mayor began.

“Five,” von Prum said. “I want five.” His voice was hard and cold.

“Do you want him?” Hans asked the captain, nodding at the mayor.

“No, I like him where he is.”

Hans tested the leather straps. He pulled them hard and they snapped; they were strong and they held. He tried the blowtorch, and the hot blue flame licked out. There was a branding iron, which Bombolini had not seen before, and Otto held it in the flame of the torch.

“No, we don't use it,” Hans told von Prum. “That would produce evidence. But people hate the brand.”

“They hate the idea of burning. Of the brand sinking in.”

“Especially on the soles of the feet.”

“But this,” Otto said, patting the magneto, “this hurts more. Still they're more afraid of the hot iron.”

“Some day when they've all had more experience,” Hans said, “they'll come to respect Sparky more.” It was their name for the magneto. “They'll beg us for the branding iron.”

“But we'll just give them Sparky.” They smiled at one another again. “Where are they, sir?” Otto said. “We're ready for them.”

Bombolini found that he was trembling and that he felt sick, not as if he were about to vomit, but sick in the entire self, in the heart and the soul and the brain. There was no one in the piazza but Germans.

“All right,” von Prum said. “We'll give fate a minute or two, and then we'll have to go and get someone.”

They waited after that in silence broken only by the metallic sound of Otto moving the instruments in a kind of nervous irritation.