by Ben Pastor
“Until morning? Do you mean you’re not continuing the search now?”
“Don’t speak nonsense, Guidi. This is no terrain to go rummaging through unless there’s a damn good reason. I’m not risking my men’s lives to run after a murderer. We gave you a hand, and now we’re going back to Lago. If you want my advice, you’ll get out of the hills before the shots bring the partisans out. They know German rifles when they hear them.” And because Guidi was visibly frustrated by the proposal, Bora added, “I wouldn’t have given the order to shoot had he not opened fire. We had caught sight of him and were following at a distance, when apparently he saw your group and opened fire. I told you we’d shoot.”
“I’m staying until we find him, Major.”
“I’m not.”
Within minutes the Germans had left the hills and were walking back to the road. The snow, which for a time had subsided, was starting again to blow white and blinding and nearly horizontal as the wind carried it. It would, before long, cover the blood.
On Wednesday, 8 December, an air raid struck Verona.
Each in his office, Guidi and Bora witnessed the eastward passage of impossibly high formations of Allied bombers plough the sky in long furrows of vapour. Before long the rumble of anti-aircraft guns reverberated, a deep and dark hammering of the air that shook the window panes at Lago and Sagràte. Frightened birds scattered from the riverside. Bora’s Iron Cross tinkled against the mirror where it hung by its black-red-white ribbon. And during the return flight there was a dogfight between American planes escorting the B-17s and German or Italian fighters, high above the ridge of the northern hills. Guidi could not tell them apart, but Bora recognized the Mustangs’ rat-like profiles, and the Messerschmitts’ squared, slim cockpits.
Half an hour later, although Guidi had an appointment to see Bora that day, Bora acted as though he didn’t expect him. “In case you wish to call Verona from here, my telephone line is down as well,” he began. “And I have no time to speak to you. One of the fighters went down south of the state route: I’m going out to the crash site.”
Guidi was sick with worry about Claretta, it was true. He just didn’t think it was so apparent.
“I’m not here to telephone,” he said. “You promised to share the work you did on Lisi’s accounts, Major.”
“Later, later!” By quick fingering of his right hand Bora was securing the pistol belt around his waist. “Wait here if you want to.”
“May I come along?”
“Absolutely not.” Bora pushed him out of the room ahead of himself. “Move, Christ!”
In front of the post a handful of soldiers were boarding a half-track. Guidi had walked downstairs with him. “So,” Bora said, impatiently waiting for the BMW to be brought around to the kerb. “Did you find the convict, yes or no?”
“Not yet.”
“I could have told you that. If it’s not too cold, the dogs will smell him in a couple of days.”
The half-track had barely left the sidewalk when Bora’s car braked sharply in its place, door swinging open to receive him.
“May I at least wait here, Major Bora?”
“Do that.” Bora went in, and at once the small convoy was speeding out of Lago on a narrow country lane.
Now and then the tyres slid on glassy ice patches, but Bora would not let the driver adjust the speed to the conditions of the road. He kept watchful fixed eyes on the horizon, where a stalk of black smudge fingered up to the sky in the stillness after the snowstorm. Within minutes the car had left the lane and negotiated a snow-quilted trail in the fields. A dip in the terrain concealed the horizon for a time, then untrimmed poplars created a haze of branches that hid the smoke and crash site. Bora sat tightly to ward off his tension. Arm, leg, head. All hurt again, and anxiety made things worse, though he had no hope of finding the pilot alive. Heartbeat clogging his chest, he was the first to get out, the first to find his way through the blackened brushwood to the breach in the martyred earth.
It was well past noon when the patrol returned to Lago. From the doorway of the command post, Guidi watched the vehicles park head-to-tail. Soon Bora approached with his hasty, limping step. Oil and bloodstains visibly smeared the cuffs of his coat when he walked in. He gestured to Guidi to follow him upstairs. In his office, without a word he reached his desk, where he placed a canvas bag. He went to sit behind it, still silent and hard-faced.
Guidi walked to the window. He made no attempt to speak first, turning his back to the room, to create an illusion of privacy between them. His concern about Claretta trapped in Verona was turning to fear; he sensed anxiety in others well enough.
Before long, small sounds indicated that Bora had emptied the canvas bag on the desk.
“Was it a German airplane, Major?”
“No. It was an American machine.”
When Guidi looked, Bora was examining the few objects from the crash site, and it seemed to him that he was very grieved. A log with snapshots in it, keys, a lighter and identification tags seemed to be all there was. One by one, Bora stared at the photographs before laying them aside, and then tilted his chair until the back of it touched the wall.
“Did you retrieve the body?”
Bora nodded with his lips tight. He stretched to take out of a drawer a notepad thick with numbers and handed it to Guidi. “My work on Lisi’s bank accounts.”
During the time it took Guidi to read through the pencilled amounts, Bora simply sat balancing his chair with his eyes turned to the window.
“I knew there was something to it,” Guidi said in the end. “Lisi was lending money, and not only to De Rosa. There seem to be accounts that were not settled.”
“There always are when you die suddenly.”
“And the interest he charged! My God, it was thirty-eight per cent, calculated bi-weekly. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of his debtors did him in. Thirty-eight per cent. You wonder who’d ask for money under such conditions.”
Bora did not comment. He took out of his pocket one of the receipts found in De Rosa’s flat, and gave it to Guidi.
“De Rosa is a gambler?”
“So it seems.” Having returned the chair to its front legs, Bora reached for the telephone. He appeared to be thinking of something else entirely. “Here,” he said after listening to the receiver. “The line’s back on. Why don’t you call Verona?”
Guidi didn’t have to be asked twice. Only with difficulty, however, was he able to secure communication with the city jail. He listened with relief to the warden at first, then his optimism fell. “She has been formally charged with Lisi’s murder, Major.”
“Count your blessings that she’s survived the air raid. When you’re done, I’ll call De Rosa at militia headquarters, if they haven’t blown it sky-high.”
Guidi perceived much tolerance in Bora now, contrary to the inconsiderate haste of his departure. Yet tolerance, like self-control and physical energy, seemed painstakingly sewn over him, until it fitted too tightly for him to escape or reveal anything else about himself. Whatever De Rosa was telling him now by phone, Bora answered in German, coldly and without pause in what Guidi took to be a reprimand with no chance for rebuttal.
“He had the gall to tell me they started the paperwork to deprive Clara Lisi of any inheritance,” Bora volunteered after slamming the receiver down. “Things are moving too fast. Raid or no raid, we had better get to Verona as long as there’s daylight left.” He walked out of the office to snap instructions at someone, and returned to gather the airman’s belongings into his drawer.
“The last time I did this it was near Kursk,” he mentioned in a quick careless way, as if the issue didn’t matter really. But the shattered canopy shone and loomed in his mind, a million pieces of blood-lined thickness like the explosion of a glass world, the breaking of an immense vitreous eye that tumbled into the summer sky noiselessly. Not even his own blood had cried out in outrage to him as his brother’s blood on his hands.
In Ver
ona, smoke mixed with cement dust rose from the periphery struck by bombs, and an odour of wet plaster filled the air.
Bora could still smell it when he entered De Rosa’s office, bypassing the obsequious Italian guards. He said at once, “Why didn’t you tell me Lisi lent money at usury?”
De Rosa had been reading a newspaper, which he now quickly stuffed into a drawer. He stood, flushed with embarrassment and spite, and went to close the door before answering. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Major.”
“It would have made the investigation much easier and saved us time!”
De Rosa swallowed hard. “Well, why did you get that provincial cop mixed up in this? We came to you for the job, and you got that limp noodle Guidi involved in it. The whole idea, I thought we had agreed, was secrecy.”
“Secrecy? Secrecy about what? As if Vittorio Lisi were worth it! Come out with it, did he lend money to you and to others in the Party, yes or no?”
“Major, I resent your barging in here just after a raid blew our railroads into disarray.”
Bora could have smacked him. The urge was irresistible for no more than a moment; still he had to stiffen to repress it. “I couldn’t give a damn about your railroads. Did he lend you money or not?”
“He gave money to the Party, for God’s sake! He contributed generously, that’s all. To me, he extended some financial courtesy, I don’t deny it, but I always paid back every cent.” As he spoke the words, it seemed to dawn on De Rosa what else Bora had in mind, because his whole expression changed in an instant. “Major Bora, I am appalled, appalled by your insinuations! Do you really believe the Verona Fascists would stoop to kill for money? You insult us all by even thinking of it. Besides, Vittorio Lisi was a consistent and willing source of revenue. Why should we kill the goose that laid the golden egg?”
“It seems to me the Party acted with admirable haste in manoeuvring to delete Clara Lisi from the will. What are you planning to do about the other wife: bump her off, maybe?”
“Major, Major, Major! You’re being unfair. Had we something to hide, why would we come to a German brother officer for a solution to the crime?”
Bora had no ready answer, which was enough for De Rosa to try to seize the moment.
“Believe me, Lisi was very secretive about his business. Wherever his money came from, it was hardly our concern. All we want to know is who killed this prominent man. We can’t feed a scandal to the people of Verona. I gave you a clue about the dead girl’s father, Zanella. See what you can do with that. But keep in mind it’s money he came to ask for, not moral satisfaction. And there’s no signature on pregnant bellies, is there?” When Bora gave him a disgusted look, De Rosa changed his tune. “You must concede that an upstart, spendthrift wife with a dented car and no alibi is highly suspicious.”
“So is someone who fixes the dented car for his lover. As far as I can tell, you have no alibi for the afternoon of Lisi’s death.”
De Rosa opened his mouth. No immediate sound came out of it, but the caterpillar moustache cambered as if it’d been stung. “I refuse to submit to—”
“Spare yourself, it’s my profession to find out things. No one in your office seems to know where you were. You left at ten and didn’t come back until the following morning.”
“You should have no problem divining were I was,” De Rosa said acidly.
“Marla Bruni, you mean? I’m sure she’d cover for you. But who covers for her?”
“I… we… man to man, Major Bora, I was with her in my flat, and we made love during that time.”
“For twenty-four hours straight? God in heaven, I’m a damn good lover, and I couldn’t pull off that kind of marathon!” De Rosa’s provoked face was laughable, but Bora could not bring himself even close to laughter. His headache was turning into a nauseous need to vomit. All morning his left arm had ached, and from the maimed wrist agonizing stabs travelled to his shoulder and up the nape of his neck. Just above his riding boot, the mortified flesh of his knee throbbed like a second, painful heart. Bora steadied himself enough to put a cigarette in his mouth, but did not light it. “I want to know what else there is, who else there is. It comes down to money, so I want to know who might have killed the man for money.”
De Rosa frowned until his eyebrows drew a furry right angle on his forehead. “What about Clara Lisi, who wanted more money than he was willing to give?”
“Never mind about Clara Lisi. I’m going to see her next.”
Bora did. His headache made the prison’s bright lights a sea of malicious sparks, through which he waded, growing angrier by the moment.
In the beginning, Claretta withstood his uncompassionate questioning. Then she burst out crying and asked for Inspector Guidi. In the end, because Bora was not about to relent, she let herself go into a half-swoon in her chair.
“She hasn’t eaten all day,” the guard who came to assist her told Bora. “With the fear of the air raid besides, she’s taken ill.”
Bora was sceptical, but the faint showed no sign of turning into consciousness again as long as he stayed around. Finally he left, with little more than exasperation to his credit. Not looking where he was going, at the front door he whacked the incoming Guidi out of his way.
“Where the devil are you headed, Major?”
Bora said nothing.
The darkening street was alive with a furious wind. From the street, in the moaning dusk Guidi watched Bora hastily limp to his car and sit behind the wheel without starting the engine. It was exceedingly cold. Too cold to snow, even. Still Bora sat in the car, and all that was visible of him was the firefly glow of his lighter when he lit a cigarette.
Guidi crossed the threshold to enter the prison.
7
Nando Moser shuffled to open the great door of his house. “Na, Herr Major!” he greeted the visitor. “Come in.”
Bora acknowledged the invitation, but did not move from the threshold.
“I realize it’s late in the day,” he said, by way of apology. The truth was that he was almost too weary to take another step.
“Only six o’clock. Not late at all.” After letting him in, Moser latched the door again, and followed Bora to the poorly lit centre of the hall. “It’s good to see you again. What brings you here?”
Bora was staring at the Silbermann piano. “I don’t know, I just drove by.” He was grateful that Moser faced him from a distance, without forcing him to talk. The very act of standing here, of speaking his native language, affected him tonight. Bora felt as if an immense burden were trying to roll off his shoulders, a burden he wondered at having carried as long as he had. He was tired, inside and out. “I only need a moment,” he said, shamed by the awkwardness of his words.
Were the burden physical, no less pain would weigh on him than did now. Bora looked at the piano and nearly let go enough to shiver, but would not allow himself that weakness.
Moser, too, turned to the Silbermann.
“This house was built as a haven, Major. Army men need a place to go. I’m glad you came, and I’m glad you played, the other night. You’re very good.”
Bora shrank back at the compliment, feeling repugnance for the word “good”, when he knew what “good” had been.
But Moser smiled. “Music is something we were taught to judge, in this house. I heard your late father conduct The Flying Dutchman at Bayreuth, in 1913. It was Friedrich von Bora’s last and grandest performance. Walter Soomer sang lead, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yes. My mother owns a recording of it.”
“What excerpt?”
“From the distance of times long gone before.”
“It fits us well.”
“It fits us well,” Bora repeated. He glanced away from the piano, and at the old man. “I really don’t know why I came. I needed a respite, I think.”
“To get away from your Turks?”
“Inner and outer, yes. The inner ones are the worst.”
“All the same, I sho
uldn’t let you stand here. Would you care to sit down? We could go by the stove.”
Bora was already walking toward the staircase. He sat there, his back against the wall. He removed his cap and laid it on the next step.
Unobtrusively Moser came to sit on the piano stool.
Bora couldn’t look at him just now, nor speak. Vulnerable like glass, like thin glass, he avoided looks and words as unsafe, when he had a craven urge to weep for his dead brother. Far from any concerns about career or safety, his brother’s death was tonight’s great burden. Also his loveless wife, his loneliness. The burden weighed with all the unwept deaths in his life, the unwept losses suffered and yet to come. Ever since driving to the crash site today he’d carried the urge inside, like a wound more cruel than those healing on his body, a sore that was intimate and endless and could no longer be sewn shut like the rest.
So Bora chose not to resist physical pain. It was perhaps the first time since September that he did not oppose some resistance to it. Tonight he’d rather mind the flesh than his grief. In the end, in the end he cared nothing about himself, which was why his body would not forgive him. He was grateful that Moser sat quietly in the semi-darkness, hands on his knees. Silence and shadow were all Bora could endure now that the burden was about to fall.
Pain racked him then. Still, grief was absolute and full of guilt and useless anger. Such frustrated grief, such long-frustrated grief. Pain was less frightening. Bora looked at it, and did not dare pick up the burden again. So he sat and gave himself up to pain. There were other weights, other responsibilities. Tonight he refused them all. He did not want to seek out those who had killed Lisi. He resented Lisi, Lisi’s wife, Lisi’s money. The very task disgusted him tonight. It unnerved him, God knows why. Perhaps because others had something to gain from solving the crime, and he did not. Nothing would come to him from a solution. No relief, no peace.
“It’s difficult to find peace.” Moser spoke calmly. “One never finds it outside. Conquering the enemies outside only gives you spoils to build a house with.”
