Liar Moon

by Ben Pastor

  Bora recognized a few important words. Girl’s father – first abortion – money – argument.

  “May I use the telephone, Colonel?”

  “Go ahead,” Habermehl answered from the liquor cabinet. “It’s in the hallway.”

  Soon after, at his address on Via Galileo, Centurion De Rosa cut a less than martial image in his pyjamas, even though he was clutching a handgun. That he was hardly expecting Bora to show up on his doorstep and at this late hour was obvious by the embarrassed way he put the weapon away.

  “One must always be ready, Major.” He stammered an excuse. “Traitors, political enemies, partisans – one must be ready for unforeseen events.”

  Bora overheard a rustle in the bedroom, and assumed that events might include jealous husbands. Without waiting to be invited, he stepped in.

  “You didn’t answer the phone when I called you twenty minutes ago.”

  “I was busy.”

  “Well, I must talk to you. Colonel Habermehl gave me your message.”

  “My message? Ah, yes. Yes. The story of the abortion and the girl’s father.” Sweeping a furtive glance toward the bedroom door, De Rosa stretched on his bare feet to whisper in Bora’s ear. “Give me five minutes. It’s a delicate question, a married lady.”

  “You have five minutes exactly. Be quick about it.”

  De Rosa kept his word. Bora heard him speaking sotto voce, and a somehow familiar woman’s voice answering in a distinct vibrato, “Thank God. I was really scared for a minute.”

  When he came out in his stockinged feet, pulling up his army breeches, De Rosa found Bora standing in the living room with a disapproving look, as if not wearing one’s boots were for a German more inexcusable than having a married lover.

  Bora said, “You told Colonel Habermehl how the father of a girl who died during an abortion had a row with Lisi over money. When did the incident take place?”

  “After 8 September, I don’t recall exactly when. The only reason why I even thought about it, Major, is that you insisted on hearing if Lisi had enemies. The way I see it, there’s no way to prove that any of the girls had even been with Lisi, if you catch my meaning. I told you they swarmed around him like flies.”

  “Does the man in question have a first and last name?”

  “He has both. Neither one begins with a ‘C’, though.”

  Bora sat down in an unpadded armchair, without taking off his cap. “This is very interesting, and I wish to hear every detail of the argument. Tell the lady in the other room to make herself comfortable for an hour at least. There are other things I wish to ask you.”

  “Now?” De Rosa gave him a hateful look. “Major Bora, I understand you’re a man of action, but we can meet tomorrow and nothing will change. It is absolutely necessary that I take the lady home before one.”

  Bora checked his watch. “Go ahead. I’ll wait here.”

  “But—”

  “It’s already half-past midnight. Obviously the lady doesn’t live far from here. Do your bidding and return. I’ll wait here.”

  Rapid-fire whispering ensued from the bedroom, then a completely dressed De Rosa walked angrily toward the living-room door. Bora heard the clicking of a woman’s heels following him out of the flat to the landing, and then the metallic clang of the elevator cage closing shut.

  Alone in the house, Bora looked around. It was an unremarkable place, devoid of books, with a diminutive kitchen off the living room, a single bedroom and a bath. On the writing desk, inside an ashtray encrusted with sea shells, sat two tickets for the past opera season, and some receipts. Flyers from expensive hotels – the Grand Hotel in Gardone, the Metropole Suisse in Como – were stuffed in a manila envelope. Political junkets, Bora thought.

  The kitchen was impractically narrow, but outside it a trellised balcony with lawn chairs extended to the bedroom. There, hooded lights floated the dark-sheeted bed in an underwater azure glare. The scent of woman was deep in the room, and Bora withdrew from it.

  Ten minutes later, the front door was slammed open.

  Surprised at not having heard the sound of the elevator cage beforehand, Bora glanced up from the newspaper he’d been browsing.

  “Swine!” From the hallway a voice came to him strangled by rage and the exertion of climbing several floors. “I caught you without the bolts on the door, swine!”

  Bora put away the newspaper.

  A distracted middle-aged man flew into the living room and, having done so, he remained agape long enough for Bora to light himself an American cigarette.

  “Are you looking for Centurion De Rosa?” he asked.

  The man took a step backward. “I thought…”

  Bora looked away from the man’s humiliation, from the absurdity of the situation. Half-heartedly, without lying, he said, “Centurion De Rosa isn’t here.”

  At three in the morning, Colonel Habermehl found the De Rosa episode much more amusing than it had seemed to Bora. Laughing until he had tears in his eyes, he asked for more details.

  “There isn’t much else to say, Herr Oberst. I was bracing myself for a tasteless scene, Italian-style, but Bruni’s husband was so disappointed to find me alone instead of De Rosa in good company, he couldn’t even keep up his fury. He started bawling in front of me, and gave me an earful about faithless women.”

  “And you? What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. What could I tell him? My only reason for being there was to find out the address of the man who fought with Lisi. I needed to keep De Rosa in one piece for the time necessary to hear the information. Fortunately Bruni left without seeking redress. A few minutes later De Rosa showed up, out of breath. It seems he hid himself in the porter’s booth on the ground floor, and had been praying to all the saints while Bruni climbed the stairs to catch them by surprise.”

  Habermehl poured himself an abundant nightcap. “Good thing you chanced upon the love scene! Tomorrow we’re stuck with the joint operation plan, but you will follow up on the new lead the day after tomorrow?”

  If he shut his eyes, Bora could see the ants labouring up Gerhard’s bloody side. “No, sir. The day after tomorrow I’m on patrol.”

  6

  The new hospital complex lay north-west of Verona, between the Adige’s riverside and the foothills of Quar-tiere Pindemonte, where houses gave way to fields and the Industrial Canal could be seen steaming in its banks. Before joining Habermehl and the others at German headquarters, Bora had an early morning appointment with the head surgeon, who’d treated him on the day of his wounding.

  “Sunday is a good day.” A smiling nun preceded Bora down the perfectly scrubbed, phenol-scented corridor. “Doctor Volpi is less busy than usual. How is your left leg?”

  Bora was not surprised to be addressed with lei here. He knew the Vatican had instructed its religious to “abstain with garb and prudence” from adopting the Fascist mode of address. The abstention clearly included addressing Italian-speaking Wehrmacht officers.

  “Better, thank you. Do you remember me, Sister?”

  Her hands in the folds of her sleeves, the nun halted in front of a glass door, which she opened for him. “Yes, indeed. Your other leg sent some good kicks my way.”

  Bora entered.

  “Good morning, good morning.” Unceremoniously the surgeon had Bora undress and sit on the examination table, and started to cut the bandages around his knee. “Just as I thought, it’s become infected again. How many times must I tell you, Major? All this activity, with badly healed wounds – you had better watch out.”

  “I’m busy, I can’t.”

  “Do less, or do otherwise. The human body deserves respect, and you’re paying none to yours at the moment.” After disinfecting the wounds, the surgeon probed for the metal fragments still embedded around Bora’s knee. “At least a couple must come out today, more if we can. You’ll have to lie down for it, it serves no purpose for you to watch what I’m doing. Mark my word, without sulpha drugs, without antibiotics, one
of these days we won’t be able to prevent a serious infection. What then? Do we amputate the leg we fought to save, or do we let you go to your Maker with septicaemia?”

  While the surgeon dug into the taut flesh, Bora stared at the sterile blankness of the ceiling. It cost him a muscle-breaking effort not to let fear overtake him, as he again lay on the table, smelling disinfectant, smelling blood.

  “Did you know you’re running a fever?”

  “I don’t feel feverish.”

  “Put this under your arm.” A thermometer came his way. “Ah, here is one of the fragments,” he said, as if Bora didn’t know from the burst of pain travelling up his thigh. “Just a little more patience, it’s coming.”

  Bora held his breath until he heard the clink of metal being dropped into a basin. A warm stickiness ran down his knee, sponged off at once.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “A little.”

  The carving into his flesh resumed.

  “You should thank God that you were holding a briefcase on your lap that day, or else you’d have got a burst of shrapnel into your belly. You’d have lost more than one hand, and we wouldn’t be here talking about it. Wait, the other piece is coming out. Frankly, I can tell you now, when they brought you here I knew you wouldn’t die only because you struggled like an animal.”

  Bora glanced at the surgeon’s white crew cut, low over his bloody knee. “Sister, out there, told me I kicked her.”

  “You also nearly crushed the bones in her hand, as for that. Give me back the thermometer.”

  Disinfection, bandaging. It was then the arm’s turn. The amputation seemed to be healing. Bora said nothing about it, but the surgeon fingered the stump with a frown.

  “Don’t tell me it doesn’t hurt. I cut my share of arms and legs and hands during the Great War. In my opinion, there are neuromas forming at the nerve tips. Not the sort of pain you chase with aspirins. If you have someone at the post who can give you shots, I’ll give you morphine to take along.”

  Bora was in pain even now, and the words gave him a sinking feeling, as though the room were trying to slip from under him and he’d have nothing to hold. “No.”

  “Well, think about it.”

  “It’s out of the question. I can’t possibly make use of such strong medication.”

  The surgeon went to wash his hands in the sink. “It’s your call. You’ve got a high fever. I advise lukewarm compresses on your arm, rest in bed and antipyretics.” Standing by his desk, he dried his hands with a spongy cloth, then scribbled something in his prescription book. “Meanwhile here’s a prescription for plain old Veramon. Take it. Providing of course that a bland painkiller does not contrast with a soldier’s stiff upper lip. You’ll find a pharmacy at the end of the street.”

  On the same day, Guidi arrived in Verona for his appointment with Enrica Salviati. Although it was already one in the afternoon and milder, with rain beginning again, a lacy, white trim of frost still edged the tramway tracks.

  The girl waited by the park fountain, a sombre, sleek-lined silhouette turned away from him. Guidi approached her, and she returned his greeting.

  “I’m sorry I made you come all the way here, Inspector, but the other day I couldn’t tell you the whole story. That’s why I had to see you alone.”

  Guidi nodded. “If it’s because of the German officer, haven’t they explained to you that we’re working together on this case?”

  “No, it isn’t because of the German. It’s the other one.”

  “De Rosa?”

  “Yes, him. I didn’t want to say anything about him that he could hear from outside the door.”

  Guidi was suddenly hopeful and curious. Fascist plots and revelations that could alter the game tumbled like playfully tossed cards in his head. “Tell me,” he encouraged her. “Tell me everything.”

  On Enrica’s bare head, little drops of rain sparkled like broken glass in the blackness of her hair. She said, her doleful face upturned, “I had seen De Rosa before. He came a couple of times to visit the master. They would lock themselves inside his office. And you could tell from the way he showed up that he was coming to ask for favours. He crept against the walls and asked ‘May I?’ every five minutes. If the signora was in, he’d bring flowers or chocolates. When he talked to the master he even called him ‘Your Excellency’.”

  Guidi was impatient. “Fine, fine. And then?”

  “You could just feel the master didn’t want to talk to him.” Enrica chewed on her clumsy Italian. “You know? You can tell. For two days in a row he told me to say he was not at home, and De Rosa took it badly. He bullied me to find out when he’d be back. One afternoon, about six weeks ago or so, he came on Sunday, and you could hear them argue in the office. The master didn’t want anyone on the ground floor when he discussed business, so I couldn’t make out what it was all about.”

  “What did Signora Lisi do, during these visits?”

  A grimace discomposed Enrica’s dark beauty. “When she happened to be at home, you mean. She’d have to stay upstairs, like me. She’d listen to Rabagliati records or paint her nails. She couldn’t care less about the master’s business, as long as she had schei – I mean money – to spend. I think the master didn’t want to meet De Rosa in his house, because once I heard him call back to him from the door, ‘The next time we meet in Verona, or we don’t meet at all.’ But, as I told you, six weeks ago De Rosa was back, hat in hand as every other time.”

  Guidi noticed that Enrica was shivering. Although they had stopped under one of the trees in the park, they were getting thoroughly wet.

  “Let’s go to the café across the street,” he suggested. “We’ll catch pneumonia out here.”

  Reluctantly Enrica followed him, arms folded, head low in the rain. “I can’t stay long, Inspector. I have an appointment.”

  “Yes, but I want to hear whatever else there is. It can’t be all you had to tell me.”

  Guidi was disappointed, and he knew it showed. He’d hoped for a more sensational revelation. Of course Lisi apportioned favours and exacted obeisance; it didn’t take Enrica Salviati to figure that out.

  They entered the café. The place was crammed full with people who had come in from the weather. Squeezing among shoulders and backsides, Guidi remembered what Bora had told him to ask, and was suddenly resentful of the charge.

  At first Enrica pretended she did not hear, or else the hubbub of the crowded room truly kept her from hearing. Guidi repeated the question, and she turned slowly to him.

  “If she had a lover? It isn’t you who wants to know.”

  “Never mind who wants to know. What do you know about it?”

  “Nothing, that’s what. If I knew I’d tell you, you can be sure, but the signora was not stupid. If she played around, she did it away from home. Since they were practically separated, it wouldn’t be that difficult now, would it? She came to visit only when she needed money.”

  Even in the crush of trench coats and folded umbrellas, Guidi felt a liberating sense of relief at the words, as if Bora’s spite and Enrica’s jealousy had been smashed against the impeccable wall of Claretta’s conduct.

  “So, what you had to tell me is that De Rosa frequented Vittorio Lisi. You never saw Signora Lisi with other men, either. Anything else?”

  “Yes, something else. Just before the separation – it must have been around the end of May – there was a telephone call at the villa. I was in the kitchen, and the signora answered herself. I don’t know who it was, but she closed the parlour door and whispered for a good half-hour, and her eyes were red when she came out. The master had told me to report any telephone calls that came while he was outside gardening. He loved roses, he was very good at growing them and he’d won prizes for it. When he came back in, I informed him someone had called, and his wife had answered. I don’t know what tales she told him afterward, but for sure she didn’t tell him she’d been crying over it.”

  By the force of his skinny elbows, Gu
idi had cut through the crowd to reach the counter, followed by Enrica. “How did Lisi travel from the country to Verona? How did he travel by car? I heard nothing about a chauffeur.”

  “He’d ordered a one-of-a-kind car from Fiat in Turin. It cost him a fortune, but it was designed so that he wouldn’t have to use the pedals. He always drove it himself.”

  “There were no cars in the garage.”

  “Well, Inspector, ask De Rosa. The Fascists came to pick it up the day after the incident. I heard it was given to an army general who lost his legs in the war.”

  “Very well. Let me know if you remember anything else, but make sure you call me at this number.”

  Without comment Enrica took the slip of paper with Guidi’s office number. She then told him she was looking for employment, and was due at Via Mazzini for an interview at three-thirty. Guidi bought her a cup of coffee, and let her go.

  Only after he left German headquarters did Bora recall he was supposed to stop by the pharmacy. He instructed the driver to stop by the first one on the way, and began rereading the report on anti-partisan warfare the Italian officers had given him. The rambling document went into great detail about the organization of partisan bands in the valleys of north-eastern Italy. Bora, who was familiar with the manual published on the subject in ’42, was not surprised by the bad news. With resignation, he read carefully and did not grow angry.

  Brusquely the BMW came to a halt. “Are we at the pharmacy?” Bora asked without lifting his eyes from the paper.

  “No, Herr Major. There’s a traffic jam ahead.”

  Bora looked. Given the scarcity of wartime traffic, he could hardly believe the confusion. Immediately ahead of the BMW was a delivery van, and in front of it two German army trucks, part of a convoy that had somehow become separated. A tram idled across the street beyond, and passengers clustered at its doors to get off.