by Ben Pastor
“A man as good as he, a master like him? I’ll never find the likes of him again.”
Had Bora’s taste run to dark women, Lisi’s last maid would have been a remarkable specimen. De Rosa, who’d arranged the meeting in his office to be forgiven the impoundment of Claretta’s car, watched him watch her now. “Not bad, uh?” he whispered to him in German. “Wasn’t Lisi a connoisseur?”
Bora replied in Italian. “I wish to wait for Inspector Guidi before the interrogation.”
“As you like.”
The woman was thirtyish, long-legged, shapely, with the tragic face of a Greek heroine. She dressed in modest mourning clothes, but Bora noticed she was wearing silk stockings.
He said, “Please tell me your name, and your age.”
“Enrica Salviati. I’ll be thirty-two next month.”
“Why are you wearing black?”
“For my brother. He was a soldier. He was killed in Africa last year.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
A knock on the door was followed by the dopey face of a guardsman, who said something to De Rosa. “Well, what are you standing there for?” De Rosa said irritably. “Show him in, we’ve been waiting for him.”
Flustered, Guidi walked into the office. “Sorry I’m late. A military column blocked us for twenty minutes just outside Verona.”
Bora pointed out to him the empty armchair behind De Rosa’s desk. “Take a seat, Guidi. You don’t mind, Centurion, do you?”
De Rosa said he did not, but immediately took his leave. Then Bora went to sit on a corner of the desk, resting his right foot on the floor. “Do the asking, Inspector.”
Guidi didn’t expect the title, or the offer. He’d been so certain Bora would take over that he hadn’t prepared a questionnaire. “Fine, sure.” He tried to take time. “I think we ought to begin with a detailed account of the accident. Tell us – Enrica, is it? – what happened from the moment when you left Vittorio Lisi alive in the garden to the time you found him mortally wounded.”
She stood in front of the desk like a sad schoolgirl about to recite a lesson, hands clasping a small pocketbook of cheap, balding leather. “Should I repeat what I told the carabinieri?”
“If you told the truth, yes.”
“I’d just finished clearing the table after lunch, and since it was fine weather the master asked me to accompany him out into the garden for a breath of fresh air. You must go out from the back with the wheelchair, because there are three steps in front of the main door. So we came out the back of the house, by the garage. I pushed the chair until we reached the gravel just inside the gate, because from there the master could wheel himself out onto the private road. He liked to take his ‘exercise’, as he called it, back and forth along the length of the mulberry rows. I’ve seen him do it up to ten times, back and forth. He said it strengthened his lungs.”
Guidi began to take notes. “What time was it when you walked back in?”
“Two o’clock, maybe two fifteen. The master would finish eating at twenty to two, and then smoke a cigarette at the table.”
Guidi stole a quick look at Bora, but all he could see of him from the armchair was the severe, bony side of his face. He took notice, too, of his uncharacteristic silence.
“All right,” he went on. “Describe everything you did after going back into the house.”
“Well, first I washed my hands. I had noticed a weed by the door of the garage, and pulled it. Then I placed a bottle of mineral water in the refrigerator. I had forgotten to do it right after lunch, and the master liked cold water summer and winter. I washed the dishes, and then did some reading. There were always magazines in the house, even though the signora no longer stayed at the villa. She had so many subscriptions, the magazines kept coming every week. The master said I could read them, if I wanted to. One of them has been running a love-story serial by Liala, and I’d started clipping the instalments.”
“So you read. And then?”
“This chapter was longer than the others, more complicated. I’m not a fast reader, and I must have fallen asleep.” Framed by the light of day, Enrica’s sullen face seemed modelled in wax, as if by an experienced, powerful hand. The schoolgirl had given way to a disconsolate, perhaps more reticent adult.
Guidi said, “Major, would you like to continue?”
Bora did not turn, or stir. “No.”
“Well, then. How long did you sleep, Enrica?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know how long I slept. But it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, because I’d put the tea kettle to boil, and when the noise woke me up it was just starting to bubble up.”
“Describe the noise.”
Enrica swallowed. She spoke in her faulty, rough Italian, a self-conscious peasant speech. “A noise, I didn’t know what kind, because I heard it in my sleep. A thud-like noise, like something hitting something hard. It startled me, and right away I heard a car speeding on the gravel, spinning the gravel under its tyres. I thought it was the signora, because she always drove in and out of the gate at full speed.”
“What do you think now?”
She did not answer, and Guidi repeated the question in the same calm tone.
“If you must know, Inspector, I still think the same.”
“That Signora Lisi killed your master?”
“I told you what I think. Just the day before they’d had the biggest shouting match, and she’d driven out of the place like a cat with her tail on fire. She almost hit the gate that time.”
Once more Guidi flashed a glance at Bora’s profile, whose immobility was complete. He seemed to listen intently to what the woman said, yet to be lost in thought. Was he by any chance attracted to her? Guidi couldn’t make it out. What else was the matter with him, otherwise? It wasn’t like Bora to play second fiddle.
“Tell us the rest of the story,” he encouraged Enrica.
“Well, you know how it is when you first wake up. Your mind races and you can’t move. I decided, I don’t know for sure why, to go and look. Maybe because I was afraid that if she’d come to the villa there would be another scene.”
“And why should you care about what took place between your employers?”
It was the first question Bora asked, and as always he went straight for it. Guidi saw by the way Enrica chewed on her bloodless lip that she was inwardly debating an answer.
“I know it was none of my business,” she said at last. “But I was fond of the master, and I didn’t want him to suffer. In a year of service I heard nothing but scenes against him. It wasn’t fair, and if nothing else I wanted her to know there were witnesses.”
“So,” Guidi intervened, “according to you, what were the wrongful accusations that Signora Lisi made against her husband?”
“You think of it, she said it.” As she grew animated, Enrica’s face turned proud and nearly contemptuous, quite a transformation. “She said the marriage had ruined her prospects, when five years before she lived down from my house and bought her potatoes and cabbage in the market square.”
“You knew Signora Lisi beforehand?”
“Not personally. But when the master hired me you could tell from the way she looked at me that the signora recognized me from the days we bought greens from the same vendor. Her prospects! Her father drank himself to death, and as far as I know her mother mended clothes for a living.”
Bora made a calm gesture with his right hand, like a teacher asking for silence. Enrica interrupted herself just when Guidi could hardly wait to hear the rest.
“Please conclude your account of the accident,” Bora said.
Enrica’s hooded eyes travelled to the German, and settled on him.
“On Fridays the master expected a thorough cleaning, and there was always a clutter of chairs and rolled-up carpets until I was done. Half-asleep as I was, I stumbled on I don’t know how many things before I got to the front door. When I got there, all I could see was that
the master had fallen out of his wheelchair. It’d never happened before, and it scared me so, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that the car I’d heard was not around. I ran down the steps to help him, and of course I could tell he hadn’t just fallen. He was white like a sheet of paper, and this little trickle of pinkish blood was running from his nose.” A shiver went through Enrica like a tired whiplash, so that her shoulders slumped. “It’s useless to ask me what happened next, because I don’t remember anything else about it. That’s why I can’t cry now. Something broke inside me. I started shouting, and the next thing I knew I was standing by the state highway. I couldn’t even tell you how I got there.”
“Who called the police, then?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. If you don’t believe me, ask the physicians at the Ospedale Civile: they signed my certificate; they’ll tell you that for three days afterwards I couldn’t even remember my name.”
On his corner of the desk, Bora was motionless again. Guidi noticed a vein pulsing on the side of his neck, where a ragged scar disappeared into his immaculate shirt collar.
“Did you sleep with your master?”
There. Guidi heard Bora callously ask the question, and when the woman did not reply, rephrase it in the same tone. “Did you have sexual intercourse with your master?”
Guidi watched Enrica grow flushed, yet return Bora’s stare.
“Yes.”
“For long?”
“Yes.”
Bora was also blushing, a strange reaction that seemed to have nothing to do with embarrassment. Was it arousal? Guidi couldn’t tell.
“Had you been hired for that purpose?”
“Not for that purpose.” She looked away from the German, unhappily. “I’d been hired because the master hoped his wife would carry the baby to term, and wanted a live-in maid for her.”
Guidi sat up in De Rosa’s armchair.
“When was Signora Lisi pregnant?” Bora asked, the coldness of his tone betrayed by the rise of blood to his face.
“About two years ago. She lost the baby very soon, by the third month. The master was heartsick. Heartsick. He had already bought toys, baby clothes. He’d already chosen the crib and the stroller. After that there was no more mention of children, because she didn’t want any. I even heard her throw it in his face that the baby had died because it’d been made by a cripple.”
Bora winced, and Guidi noticed it. But Enrica was a schoolgirl again, clutching her cheap bag. “Some weeks went by, and then I felt sorry for him. What do you expect? The master was not a man to do without. He wasn’t a monk, was he?”
“Do you mean the Lisis no longer had relations?”
“I never saw them in the same bedroom. And I was the one who offered it to the master, one evening when his wife went to painting class. He didn’t say no.”
For the past two minutes, Guidi had been nervously shredding a folded piece of paper with his nails, without looking at what he was doing. Only after Enrica Salviati finished speaking did he realize that he’d torn to bits a message signed by Mussolini, which De Rosa had apparently received with the morning mail.
Afterward, Bora insisted that he and Guidi stop at the beer hall in King Victor Emmanuel Square before driving back. “Have a pilsner,” he suggested.
“Do you know beers?”
“No. I never drink beer. But I trust the taste of millions of other Germans.”
“What will you have, then?”
“Nothing. I’m not thirsty. You look like you need a drink.” Bora chose the table, and sat down. A pillar offered protection from behind, but his chair was directly exposed to anyone coming from the outside. Whether it was a tactical lapse or not, he seemed absent-minded and on edge.
“Are you thinking about what the Salviati woman said, Major?”
“No.”
When the beer came, Guidi wetted his lips with the cool, bitter foam. He said, “I appreciate your courtesy, but there was no need for you to tell De Rosa that you shredded the paper from Mussolini.”
“On the contrary, there was.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a German officer, and I can do as I please.”
Guidi drank deeply. There was no way to judge whether Bora was poking fun at him or was being friendly. As usual, the German had given him neither the time nor a chance to decline the invitation, and had insisted on riding in Guidi’s battered little Fiat. Since at other times he was not shy about driving his repaired and recognizable Wehrmacht BMW, it might, after all, be his way of offering some protection to someone travelling with him. Guidi took a long sip. But then perhaps Bora was just an egotist. Or he was afraid for himself, and was trying to escape another partisan attack.
In any case, here he sat, green-eyed, with that skullcap of dark hair that lent him the mien of a crusader. Barely thirty, Guidi judged, well bred and self-confident. Women were attracted to Bora, Guidi was sure of it. And this afternoon, God knows why, he was more than a little jealous of him. And yet this is the face, he told himself, of a man who has just shipped men and women to imprisonment or death.
“Major, if what the maid says is true, and the Lisis hadn’t slept together in two years, why would Vittorio wait until four months ago to ask for a separation?”
Bora ordered another beer for Guidi. “I don’t know.”
“Even the Catholic Church grants an annulment if marital rights are denied.”
“Perhaps Lisi loved her.”
After the first beer, Guidi, who was a teetotaler, began to feel unusually merry. The second one worked wonders. He found himself happy that Claretta had kept away from her husband for two years, happy that Bora had brought him here. “Love? Come, Major. A man like Lisi, running after every skirt! Surely he wasn’t the type to fall in love.”
Bora removed an infinitesimal grain of dust from his left sleeve. “Are you engaged to marry?”
“No.”
“Do you have a woman?”
“Why, no.”
“Then what do you know about it? You must live with a woman to know what it means to fear that you might have to live without her.”
Pluckily, Guidi guzzled the second beer. “I don’t think you’re the same type of man Lisi was.”
“The comparison is irrelevant. I wasn’t speaking about myself at all.” With a glance at his new wristwatch, Bora said, “Time to go. Are you up to driving?”
Guidi smiled. “I never felt better.” But for some reason the chair would not budge from under him.
“Fantastic,” Bora grumbled. “Just what we needed. Give me the key to the car.”
“Why?”
Impatiently, Bora stretched his right hand across the table. “Come on, come on, Guidi, hand it over. Now we’ll have to make you down Heaven knows how much coffee! Why didn’t you tell me you’re not used to drinking?”
Guidi searched his pockets, giggling as he did. “Why should I have?”
“Because you’re stone drunk.”
Guidi found Bora’s sternness irresistible. “Me? Drunk? I’ve never got drunk a day in my life!”
5
Less than an hour later, Guidi was taking a frustrated look under the hood. He said something to the effect of an apology, angry for apologizing when it certainly wasn’t his fault if the old Fiat had broken down, especially when Bora had insisted on driving it.
“There’s no chance it’ll start again,” he concluded. “It’s happened before, and we had to haul it.”
Bora stood a few paces away with his back to the car, reading the road map. Whatever he answered, the wind caught his voice, and Guidi didn’t understand what he said. Even so, both knew the closest village was nine and a half miles away, and except for the unlikely passage of a military vehicle, they had a long walk ahead of them.
Bora tossed the map back in the car. “We might as well get going.”
Guidi, whose intoxication had cleared enough for him to question whether Bora could manage the march, volunteered to s
eek help alone.
“Why?” Bora slammed the hood down. “This is nothing. Near Kursk I spent a week on foot behind enemy lines, with a broken arm and no ammunition.”
“I see,” Guidi said. It was difficult to assess how much daylight remained in the muted dimness of the afternoon, because the sky had been overcast all day. Shredded, furious clouds rolled in from the northern horizon in an ever-renewing carpet, dark and less dark, but always compact. A few birds flew askew in the gale. Guidi lifted his collar against that gale. He recognized the weather pattern. The temperature would drop soon enough. By sunset it would either turn to soaking rain, or, if the wind changed, to clear and frigid. He glanced northward for a break in the clouds.
“The forecast indicates fair weather tonight,” Bora informed him. “We ought to have a good frost, too.”
For a few minutes they walked, Guidi with hands driven into the pockets of his coat, all too aware of the raw blasts that came from behind to chill his ears, Bora seemingly indifferent to them but for difficulty in lighting a cigarette. They stopped, and Guidi made a cradle of his fingers, so that Bora could keep the lighter’s little flame from being extinguished. After a few attempts, Bora’s cigarette grew incandescent at the tip, and he passed it to Guidi to start his own.
“There’s nothing like a walk to mull over a problem, Guidi.”
On Bora’s lighter, Guidi noticed, was an embossed Luftwaffe eagle. “Not that we have any solid leads,” he said, idly wondering whether Bora had relatives in the German Air Force.
Bora took a quick draught of smoke. “On the contrary, I believe we have too many, and we haven’t yet looked into half of them. De Rosa can run at the mouth about Lisi’s golden heart, but you and I know Lisi’s wealth had aroused jealousies within and without the Party, not to speak of slighted husbands, former and present wives and pregnant girlfriends.”
