by Ben Pastor
Guidi was ready. At the end of the street, where the dark was belted by a waving dance of spotlights and gunnery beacons, he made out the stranger coming straight at him, saw him at the last moment try to swerve. Guidi could have fired, but didn’t. They scuffled, and then Guidi managed to throw the man over, shoving him flat on his back. He made out the clump of the handgun and stepped on the squirming wrist, kicking the weapon out of the way. He had no way of knowing if the others had been wounded, or worse. But at least the wail of the siren finally cranked down, winding into an immense, stunning silence.
Guidi called out in the dark, “Major Bora! Stella, how is it going?”
Stella answered from afar in a strangled baritone. “Son of a bitch, he got me in the blooming shoulder!”
Bora came to his knees. He didn’t know where the voice came from to answer that he was fine.
The air raid never materialized. It was likely another false alarm, caused by a play of night clouds in the spotlight. No engine sounds, no distant explosions. The criss-cross of anti-aircraft beacons ceased over the rooftops. In the newly made darkness, Bora sped toward the hospital, carrying Stella, who staunched his wound with a rag and blasphemed in his teeth, and the prisoner under Guidi’s armed guard.
Picking up speed, braking, gears changed every moment, Verona was coming to after the alarm. Thrown out of bed by the air-raid alarm, drowsy tenants climbed back from basements and shelters, ghosts stumbling in their night clothes, here and there crossing at their own risk in front of the BMW’s spanking clip. Stella was let off before the hospital. By the time they reached the central police station in Piazza dei Signori, Guidi found that consignment of the prisoner and all the explaining fell on him. Bora had disappeared with the excuse of washing his face.
“There’s a German officer with me,” Guidi told the policeman on duty. “I’m sure he wants to have his say, too.”
“Well, where is he?”
“He’s coming.”
“Have a seat, Inspector.”
Guidi did not sit down. Only after handing over the prisoner did he take a good look at him. “Sooner or later you’ll have to open your mouth,” he said blandly, and watched while the policeman frisked him. Something about the pinched young face was familiar. Half-lit by the crescent of electric light from the floor lamp, the features seemed not exactly known, but familiar. He was undergoing the search in a straddling stance, grim-eyed, hostile and familiar. Guidi stared. “You’ll have to talk.” Where the hell is Bora? he was thinking meanwhile.
Steps approached in the hallway, but it wasn’t Bora. Two brunettes in short, huge-shouldered furs shuffled by, hoarsely complaining to a fresh-faced patrolman about being brought in. An exchange of looks passed between them and Guidi as they went by, a wary, cynical glance, and no interruption in their groaning. The young patrolman prodded them forward. “Shut up, whores.”
Guidi couldn’t imagine what had happened to Bora. He stepped to the door and looked out into the hallway. There, slumped at an impossible angle on a chair, a drunkard snored, hands palms-up on his knees like a beggar. Next to him a diminutive man with a black eye stood in his pyjamas, and at the other end of the hallway sat a boy with a vice-ridden grin, scratching with a nail the wooden surface between his open thighs.
Guidi turned back to the room, where the prisoner now sat in handcuffs.
“Of course, these documents are false,” the policeman was saying with contempt. “Typical fake Papier they use to take in the Germans. He’s a ‘technical assistant’ same as I am, this one.” He showed Guidi a personal pass that read on one side, German Command of Engineering Liaison, and on the opposite side, Feldnachrichten Kommandantur. It authorized the carrier to circulate freely “at every hour of the day or night, even during air raids”, and informed those whom it may concern that the carrier’s bicycle could under no circumstance be seized or requisitioned. “It’s a good thing he didn’t have the two-wheels with him, or you’d never have nabbed him. Doesn’t want to talk, but before tomorrow morning I promise you I’ll have him cough up his name. Look here.” The policeman pointed out to Guidi the date on the papers. “They haven’t even bothered to write ‘Year XXI of the Fascist Era’ after 1943. Eh, you! Who was the baboon that made you this lousy Papier?”
Guidi’s knuckles were beginning to ache from the blows he’d landed on the man’s face. He glanced away from the papers, and at the prisoner’s face again. “I think I know who he is,” he said, surprised that it had taken him this long to remember. Out of the room, down the hallway and down the steps, he walked into the street, where the BMW was parked. Surprisingly the major had forgotten to lock it. Guidi took from the front seat the folder Bora had obtained from the navy and, leafing through it, climbed back into the police station.
The photos were what he wanted. He unclipped a group photograph of sailors from the rest, looking for the circled figure. Sure, the beard had been shaven clean. A wintry pastiness had replaced the tan. Some weight had been shed. But the face, especially the grim deep-set eyes, and the straddling stance were the same.
“And a civilian gun licence? How did you get it?” the policeman was braying at the prisoner when Guidi re-entered the room. “This is an English gun, you son of a whore, where did you get this?”
A few steps away, with his back to the door, Bora stood listening.
“Finally, there you are,” Guidi said. “Major, you don’t know who we’ve got!”
Bora looked over. He had his usual countenance, cool and undemonstrative. Aside from a pronounced pallor and the fact that he seemed to have held his head under the faucet, nothing looked amiss. “Who did we get?”
“This is Claretta’s ex-boyfriend!”
“I see.” Bora turned his attention to the prisoner, without any anger whatever. “He’s tall for a submarine sailor.”
They remained at the central police station until about ten.
Once the prisoner had been removed to a cell, Bora spent some time convincing the policeman on duty to refrain from interrogation until he received “further instructions”. He’d minutely examined handgun and false papers, photos and navy documents. “This is very interesting, Guidi,” he said. Soon he dialled a number on the policeman’s telephone. The paleness on his face had extended to his lips, a paper-white, dead man’s paleness. It stood out as a silver stain above the field-grey collar, even in the half-light of the floor lamp. When the call went through Bora spoke in German, perhaps to his headquarters, perhaps elsewhere.
Guidi understood he was asking for a captain in the SS.
“Ja. Ja. Ich glaube, dass er ein Bandit ist,” Bora said in a low voice. And he betrayed himself by briefly closing his eyes, as if the revelation or the simple effort of speaking exhausted him.
Guidi tried to understand whatever else he could from the whispered German conversation. So, Claretta’s ex-boyfriend was a partisan. It wasn’t the first partisan he’d seen, but this one seemed bellicose and intractable like a wild bird. Contrary to expectation, it wouldn’t be easy getting anything out of him. Hence Bora’s phone call. Guidi left the room.
In his cell, deprived of ammunition and what little else he had, the young man sat in his shirt-sleeves and barefoot, without even his socks on. Guidi thought of the Russian prisoner Bora had spoken of. “Poor Valenki”, as Bora called him. And he thought of the madman the Germans had brought down with three shots in the body. With a battered, dark air of challenge, Carlo Gardini, Class of 1915, avoided Guidi’s stare.
“It is all arranged,” Bora informed the policeman as he and Guidi prepared to leave. “At seven hundred hours tomorrow, a representative of the Security Service will come to interrogate him.”
A delicate layer of sleet had fallen on the city in the meantime. When Guidi and Bora walked out of the police station, the few cars parked near by had shiny, granulated white roofs. It was bitter cold, an aching cold. Guidi tied the scarf around his neck. Too bad he hadn’t worn his hat. This was one of the times he r
egretted not listening to his mother’s advice, waiting for Bora to precede him inside the BMW. But Bora handed him the keys.
“You may drive.”
It wasn’t like Bora to entrust himself to others, especially when it came to speed and timeliness. Without comment, Guidi took the keys and sat behind the wheel. Bora leaned against the other door before letting himself in. Once inside, Guidi heard him breathe laboriously, and try to control his breathing. “Here we go,” Guidi said, and turned the key in the ignition.
The car had a powerful engine. Guidi was not used to anything of the sort. It zoomed on the icy surface from its parking place, grazing the opposite sidewalk before regaining an even keel. Guidi did his best. Even on the city streets he had to take care at each corner to keep from skidding. Soon enough he was gaining speed and stepping on it, across train and tramway tracks. Bora did not criticize him, and by the time they left downtown, Guidi had gone from prudence to a measure of pleasurable foolhardiness.
They roared through the suburbs. Guidi even regretted having to stop by the German roadblock in the open countryside, where all documents were duly asked for and read. Bora presented his papers first, and when the soldier peered in to see who was at the wheel, he briefly added, “Polizeikommissar Guidi, mein Freund.”
Then they were in the lonely countryside again. Dark houses, abandoned factories and farmsteads rolled by, eaten by the night behind them. No perspective, no horizon was visible for a long time, then the sealed obscurity began to break into luminous stripes, fleeting and colourless, as the rising moon filtered among the clouds. A river came up, like a strip of foil.
“Be careful, there’s already ice on the bridge.” Despite his efforts at self-control, Bora was trembling, and his voice gave him away.
Guidi glanced at him. “I will.” He slowed down, approached the bridge at a moderate speed and crossed it without incident. “What will happen now to Carlo Gardini?”
Bora did not answer at once. “The Security Service will take over the interrogation,” he said after some time. “Gardini carried an Enfield with plenty of ammunition. It isn’t a revolver easily found in Italy. It’s a good war weapon, I had one in Spain back in ’37.”
“If the SS take him into custody, the Italian authorities can forget about a chance to interrogate him.”
Guidi’s words fell into several minutes of silence this time. From what he could make out in the darkness, Bora was sitting back, breathing hard. Whether he was fighting not to tremble, or trying to stretch his left leg, he didn’t seem to consider there wasn’t nearly enough room, and his knee struck the edge of the dashboard. Guidi sensed a whiplash jerk going through him, and was aware of how precariously Bora hung on to self-control.
“Are you all right?”
Bora mumbled a strained sentence in German. Correcting himself, he added in Italian, “I’ll speak to Hauptsturmführer Lasser. He knows why I have to do it.”
“Who’s Lasser? And why you have to do what?”
Bora didn’t say.
Half an hour later, Guidi was wondering what in God’s name he should do. He kept talking to Bora and Bora answered less and less lucidly.
“Should we stop a moment, Major?”
“No. Keep going, keep going. I’m fine. Just a little tired.”
“It may be better if I take you directly to Lago and then have Turco come and get me.”
“I told you, no. Mind the road.”
Silence followed again. Bora leaned away from him, and all Guidi could hear was his quick, laboured breathing. When the first sparse houses of Sagràte grew out of the darkness alongside the road, followed by church and town office and finally police station, Guidi drew a sigh of relief.
Bora’s strained voice said, “Do not stop here. Drive straight to your house.”
“I can walk from here, Major.”
“To your house.”
Guidi drove to his house, which was at the opposite end of town. His mother’s window was dark, but he wagered she was sitting there, waiting.
Bora asked to have the keys back.
“Should I call Lieutenant Wenzel, Major?”
“No need.”
But Bora knew he couldn’t possibly manage the few miles to Lago. He drove back toward the police station, and past it, stopping as he’d done many times in front of the army post near by. He could see that Wenzel was still up by the barely visible line of light that marked his blackened window on the upper floor.
It seemed suddenly absurd that he should find himself here. Bora wondered how he had arrived here, and why. He wondered where here was, certain for a moment that this was Russia and that never in his lifetime would he leave Russia again.
His hands trembled too much for him to pull the key out of the ignition. He struggled with it, grasping at it until he succeeded. Next, he opened the car door to get out, or perhaps it was the soldier on guard who did it for him.
Bora answered the salute. This he knew. He took the few steps that separated him from the entrance to the post, and said something. He had no idea what he said. The door was tall and black, astonishingly narrow, menacing, dangerous somehow. When Bora tried to enter, it slipped away from his field of vision, sinking deep under him.
Early in the morning Turco stuffed rolled-up newspapers into the wood stove, careful not to stain the cuffs of his shirt. He had found some dry wood too, and crisp chestnut peels to start the fire.
Guidi found him crouching there.
“Good morning, Inspector. Ossequi.”
“Hello, Turco.”
“Have you by chance spoken to the major this morning?”
“Bora? No.” Guidi took off his greatcoat. “Why, has he called?”
Satisfied with the way the fire was going, Turco closed the stove door and regulated the valve. “Nossignuri. I thought that maybe he told you what happened next door.”
“At the army post? I didn’t notice anything as I drove by.” Guidi unrolled the scarf from around his neck, without removing it altogether. “Why, what do you think happened?”
“Vah, you know last night I was on duty. Since I know you don’t like it if I smoke inside, at two o’clock I stepped out for a moment to roll myself a cigarette. The door of the Germans’ place was wide open, and there was an ambulance parked near by.”
9
Bora woke up in a hospital room, with a nun praying at the foot of his bed.
“I must be worse off than I feel,” he told her.
“Oh, don’t worry about this.” The nun put away her rosary. “I do this every chance I have.”
Bora heard himself trying to laugh, though there was hardly a motive.
“Don’t move,” the nun added. “You just came out of surgery. Doctor Volpi took advantage of the fact that you couldn’t keep him from it, and cleaned up your knee once and for all. He worked on your arm, too.”
“How did I get here?”
“I don’t know exactly; I was in the chapel. It seems you were running a terrible fever. Your men urgently called the local physician, who gave you a shot of ephedrine and, fearing septicaemia had set in, sent you our way at once. You were unconscious when I first saw you, and the doctor says your blood pressure was down to nothing. You’ve been here two days already. I’ll shave you, if you wish.”
As his whole body began to wake, Bora was starting to feel pain, and it was rather more than he wished for just now. Nausea was setting in also.
“I can shave myself, Sister.”
The nun made a self-conscious, shunning little gesture, and walked to a metal table to fetch a basin with soap and water. “Stay down, be good. Give me a chance to earn Paradise.”
With deft, experienced gestures, she began to lather his face. Her hands were bony, lukewarm. Safe hands. Bora recalled the grasp they had offered him to escape the bite of death, and it seemed impossible they would have the strength. “I’m sorry I kicked you in September,” he said.
“Never mind September, Major. You should have see
n how furious Doctor Volpi was this time. He started calling here and there like a madman until he found some military hospital where they had some penicillin. Taken from the Americans in Sicily, they say: the Lord knows how they got it all the way here.”
Bora had no desire to find out more about his health. He knew he should be asking if there were messages for him, but didn’t want to. He felt worse by the minute, and resigned himself to let the nun work on him. “What day is it, Sister?”
“Tuesday, 14 December.”
“Tuesday. And I’m here wasting time!”
The nun put the shaving kit away. She walked to adjust the wooden blinds of the drapeless window, dimming the harsh flow of daylight. She told him, as she prepared to leave the room, “You should try to love yourself a little, Major Bora.”
Unlike her, Doctor Volpi had no sympathy in voice or manner. He stepped in as soon as the nun left, with the untactful crankiness that revealed more than worry. “You don’t even deserve to feel as good as you feel. I only had colloidal silver on hand, and that brings about fever in itself. If it wasn’t for the penicillin I scrounged… You owe your skin to a non-commissioned officer at the Padua military hospital, a Sicilian by birth. Thank goodness he kept in touch with those of his brothers who managed to avoid confinement – and not confinement for political reasons.”
Bora understood. The Mafia gave information to the Americans in exchange for precious medicines, and sold them for high prices elsewhere. He’d have protested were he not facing Volpi, who said, “The non-com owed me a favour, and as a man of honour, he would not default. Have I injected penicillin into you these past forty-eight hours! You’ll have a hard time sitting for a while, but it’s nothing compared to what could have happened.”
Bora was beginning to recognize the room. Off-white nuances, details. Blinds, the veined marble window sill, small cracks in the plaster of the wall beneath it, like a horse’s head. Nausea. The smell of disinfectant. Even the mutilation of his left wrist was bandaged as on that day in September. He said, as an apology, “I can’t imagine what happened.”
