Liar Moon

by Ben Pastor

  “What if the letters on Lisi’s calendar do indicate the names of his debtors?”

  “Then we’ll have to pick at half the alphabet, because there’s no ‘C’ among them.”

  Guidi found it irritating that Bora should open his book and start to read from it while they were talking. “We can’t give up now!”

  Carelessly Bora turned a page. “To be perfectly frank with you, Guidi, I have had enough of this case. It may be the fever, but I’m starting to dream about it at night, and it’s not the kind of dreams I’d prefer. This morning I woke up with the idea that I ought to mind the meaning of the Immaculate Conception in this affair. What does the Immaculate Conception have to do with it, other than that it starts with ‘C’? No, Guidi, we’ve done all we could for today. Kindly let me read. If you need me after today, I’ll be in and out. Mostly out. Leave a message with Wenzel. He can’t stand you, but he religiously passes all of your notes on to me.”

  With all of this, Guidi knew Bora was being defensive. More than disappointed, he might be avoiding an argument in order to cultivate some troubling thoughts of his own. It was a prudent distancing of his mind, which kept others from following a parallel path.

  10

  Guidi could not get in touch with Bora in the days that followed.

  Lieutenant Wenzel acted as hostile as ever; the BMW was not parked by the kerb. Messages left were not returned. Once more, Bora estranged himself, using his responsibilities to isolate himself from others.

  It occurred to Guidi that he had become oddly used to relating to Bora in their tense confrontational way, a chafing of personalities that functioned at some level. He didn’t need Bora pulling away from the collaboration now that Claretta was about to go on trial.

  After the tears she had listened to him wide-eyed during their last meeting, protesting that she didn’t deserve to be sacrificed. For the first time Guidi had noticed dark hair showing at the roots of her curls when she ran her fingers through them. And, too, there had been that bit of bread crust stuck between her front teeth, sacrilegious to him like the marring of a beautiful portrait. Warily, Guidi kept out of mind the scene that followed Claretta’s tears, unprofessional on his part as it’d been. Kissing had turned into mindless and groggy touching about, until they’d accidentally knocked the chair over, and the racket turned the interlude into embarrassment. Now Guidi felt guilty, and furious with Bora for seeing through him. But that bit of bread – that bit of bread lodged between Claretta’s teeth was even more disturbing, a reminder of mortal vanity. A signal that spoke of tedium, banality and the unflattering physical facts: because fetishes do not show dark roots and do not need to brush their teeth. Guidi was amazed at how abstract his image of Claretta had been before the kiss. Even her beautiful high breasts had been graceful asexual bulges to his eyes, let alone what else there was under pink clothes, sheathed in pink underwear. What did Bora know about a bigoted upbringing? He looked like a man who kept religion out of his bed. All Guidi knew was that his mother was in a sulk, and that damned Bora was nowhere to be found.

  Then, on Wednesday, 22 December, a telephone call arrived from the warden, and Sandro Guidi’s world came crashing down.

  On Thursday afternoon he was still recovering from the news. Morosely sitting in his office, with his feet propped on a small stool by the stove, he stared at his woollen socks, trying to distract himself by thinking of other things. One image after another broke like the surf against his discontent, until he thought of Valenki. He imagined him tall and ragged, like the madman Bora’s men had shot in the hills, for whom Bora had tacitly bought a grave. Poor, desperate, with the curse and blessing of a sixth sense. No doubt Bora had asked Valenki about himself. He was the man to do it, and in a spiteful, self-punishing way, too. Guidi was maliciously curious to know whether Valenki’s answer was ever legible on Bora’s clean-shaven face.

  Warming his feet and digesting his mother’s soup, he let himself doze by the stove. In the superficial sleep that comes with being uncomfortable in a chair, the craziest dreams floated to him. He dreamed of Russian prisoners shooting German dogs and of submarine sailors in the fields of Sagràte. And he dreamed of Bora kissing Claretta on the bed of the command post, at which point he awoke startled and in a rage.

  Turco was in the room, standing by the desk as he spoke into the telephone. “Sissignuri, sissignuri. Yes, sir. I will report to him. Good day to you.”

  “Who is it, Turco?”

  “It was Major Bora, Inspector. He left word that he will meet you in Lago at thirteen hundred hours to go with you to Verona.”

  Guidi tried to disentangle himself from sleep, but not from his irritation toward Bora. “That’s twenty minutes from now! To do what, did he say?” As if Bora were one to discuss issues with the lower ranks.

  Turco’s answer surprised him. “Quannu mai, Inspector. He said something about a church.”

  “A church?” Guidi sat up in his chair. “What does a church have to do with anything? What the devil does he mean?”

  “A church is all he said.”

  Bora was still uncommunicative when they met. He led Guidi to the BMW, and started the engine. “We’re going to Saint Zeno’s,” he merely informed him.

  “I see. What’s the occasion?”

  “Other than the day after tomorrow is Christmas Day? It’s a Benedictine abbey.”

  “I know. But why?”

  “Zeno’s main theological concern was the Virgin Birth.”

  “You’re speaking in riddles, Major Bora.”

  “Vittorio Lisi would appreciate that, wouldn’t he?”

  Guidi made an effort not to raise his voice. “I hope the visit is related to the job at hand. I’m not in the mood for sightseeing.”

  “All you have to do is listen. In keeping with wartime, in tempore belli, they’ll perform Mozart’s Requiem instead of Christmas music. His wonderful last piece; you’ll like it even if you’re not familiar with it. It helps me to think, Mozart does. His original family name was Motzert, did you know that?”

  “Major, let’s not play around. Did you hear about Claretta?”

  “No. What?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  Bora jerked the car to an unnecessary halt. “I knew it. Holy Christ, I knew it!”

  “She took ill on Tuesday evening. They called a physician, and it became clear that’s what it was. She’d said nothing to anyone.”

  “How many months?”

  “Four.”

  “Ha! At least for the law, the child might figure to be Lisi’s after all.”

  “I don’t know how you can laugh about any of this.”

  “I’m not laughing, it’s a legal question.”

  Guidi looked down. “Anyway, she told me she was not with Gardini on the day of the murder, so her alibi is no better than it was.”

  “Here you’re mistaken. I’ve known where she was for the past week. Look in my briefcase. There’s a sheet with the address of a physician’s office where Clara Lisi spent the afternoon of 19 November. Thanks to my impartiality, I had the stroke of genius to contact the best gynaecologists in Verona. There was always a chance she might have gone out of town, but it was worth trying.”

  Guidi did not bother to look for the address. “Forgive me, but I have a hard time believing that a physician would share the names of his clients, and by phone besides.”

  “I didn’t ask for a name. My question” – Bora did not specify that Sister Elisabetta had been the actual caller – “was simply whether anyone found the purse Signora Lisi had left in the waiting room on Friday, 19 November. As I expected, all answers were negative. But a nurse at the right address said she remembered seeing Signora Lisi that day.”

  Guidi fumed. “And why didn’t you tell me all this? Why didn’t you show up at all for a week?”

  “Because not all women who visit a gynaecologist are pregnant. I know that well. I didn’t want to disillusion you if there was no need.”

  The
words infuriated Guidi. “As if you gave a damn.”

  The church of Saint Zeno’s rose from an open space at the western periphery of Verona. A monumental structure of alternating brick and limestone, it loomed alongside the slender tower of its ancient abbey. Bora parked the BMW in the alley that separated the two buildings, out of sight. The day was overcast; a wind had risen to curl the wispy clouds into tendrils of icy crystals.

  Bora went directly in. Guidi, who had cooled down considerably, lagged behind. At the entrance, he stopped to look at the reliefs on the bronze door. Set off by disquieting, open-mouthed masks, the panels told the story of Saint Zeno, whose symbol seemed to be a fishing cane with a perch-like thing at the end of it.

  Inside the church, the nave was cut short by stairs that descended to a deep crypt below; beyond this, a higher balcony with statues edged another level, and past it a third one reached the apse, where the long main altar stretched. Chairs had been lined on the ground floor, and some of the singers were already assembled on the floor above. Hardly any of the public had assembled. Bora sat in the first pew, where Guidi joined him. Within minutes people began to trickle in, bundled in the sombre hodge-podge clothes of wartime. The orchestra came last.

  The Requiem’s opening strains were low, but at once mounted into a rich chorus, from which the soprano voice bloomed in There shall be singing unto God in Zion.

  No one after Guidi came to sit in the first pew. Everyone except Bora seemed aware of how misplaced his uniform was here. Eagle-studded cap on his knees, he listened with an unusual, intent humility, as though music and words alike were in earnest and he should take warning.

  When they came to the ominous Dies Irae, Guidi recognized the words and glumly let his mind drift, eyes now on the keel-shaped vault, now on the statues of the baluster above the crypt. If he cast an occasional glance at Bora, it was to learn the reason for his being here, through observation if by no other means. But Bora’s face revealed nothing, except that the music moved him.

  And when Guidi had resigned himself to sit through the performance, at the strophe, Weeping day shall be the day / When from ash where sinners lay / They will rise to judgement, Bora unexpectedly stood and without a word to him crossed the nave under the scrutiny of the audience, aiming for a side door. Guidi uneasily waited for the next “Amen” before following through the same exit.

  The side door led to the cloister. And there Bora sat with his back to a hazy swatch of sky framed by thin red columns. Thorny links of climbing roses festooned the archways between them. From the church, music rose and fell in waves as if the great flank of the building were breathing pure sounds. Bora sat, and held his face low.

  Guidi did not attempt to draw close. Something in Bora was untouchable at this moment, a loneliness different from that of a soldier, although the soldier was responsible for it. Beyond the arches, an intimation of evening already dimmed the afternoon. The sky seemed to swoon in its hazy light, but the night would be clear, and the moon would shine.

  “Well, Major. What is it?”

  Bora looked up without lifting his face. “I left because I understood what I had to understand. But also because this, the last part of the Requiem, isn’t Mozart’s.”

  “Do you mean you found out who the killer is?”

  Whether in denial or in refusing to answer, Bora shook his head. “I was listening to the music and thinking of Zeno and his pious tracts. How the Virgin Birth – the Immaculate Conception – stands for lack of dependency, the ultimate absence of bias. It’s all my fault, Guidi. I’ve known, and still remained prejudiced. Now I deserve what comes.”

  For a moment, no more, Guidi grasped what Bora’s mind tossed at him, but not so well that he could hold on to it and feel its shape. He chose to let it go. “If you have no solution, what good are these feelings of yours?”

  “No good. But now you see how fortunate Valenki was, that madness made everything fit neatly in his mind.” Bora stood. Heading for a doorway at the end of the cloister, which likely led to living quarters, he said, “Kindly wait for me here, I have to check on someone.”

  Guidi watched Bora reach the doorway, and knock. For a moment he thought he’d recognized Monsignor Lai in the tall figure that came to open, but it couldn’t be. How would Monsignor Lai?… No, it couldn’t be.

  By the time Guidi and Bora left Saint Zeno’s, the countryside appeared sunken in blue dimness. A fat, waxing moon had risen ahead of them, a memory of the scythe it had been and would be again, reaping stars in the circle of its wide halo.

  Bora had scarcely spoken a word since they had left the darkened city of Verona. Whether he had lost interest in the case or simply had nothing more to contribute to it, Guidi sensed that meaningful things had shifted in the German’s mind, and he was not talking about them.

  Guidi said, “If we call tonight, we could still keep them from transferring Claretta for the trial.”

  Bora kept quiet. From the dusk, as the car drove up to them, slack curves emerged one after another, faintly aglow with icy moisture. The gravelly shoulders bristled with brushwood and collapsed bundles of wild grasses. The season folded upon itself; only the wind would keep the snow at bay.

  Guidi had sunk back into his own sad consideration of things when Bora slammed on the brakes, so without warning that Guidi would have rammed his face on the windshield had he not braced himself with both arms on the dashboard. The car, which had been travelling at sustained speed, came to a screeching, complete halt.

  Still Bora said nothing.

  “What is it, what’s happening?” Guidi asked with heart in mouth, expecting an ambush.

  Bora had let go of the wheel and was turning the engine off. Silence was instantly made, a darkness and silence that were wide and eerie. Guidi steadied himself.

  “Look outside,” Bora said. Guidi did so, trying to see in the bushes along the road, and Bora corrected him. “No, ahead. Look ahead of us. Look at the moon. All the useless thinking about letters and names in the appointment book, and trying to match the sign in the gravel with someone’s name. We had the answer in front of us all along. Look at the moon.”

  Guidi stared up through the windshield. Soft clicks came from the engine as it cooled. Now that they had stopped, the wind braided around the car in whispers. Only now did his mind travel so close to Bora’s path that, finding no resistance, it nearly coalesced with it. In rapid succession ideas fashioned themselves into a mosaic, piece by piece. Guidi turned to Bora, who had gone silent again.

  “The crescent moon. Why, sure! The letter ‘C’ has nothing to do with it, and neither does Claretta, or Carlo Gardini. The mark in the gravel is a half-moon. The villa of the Ottoman crescent, with its semicircular colonnade – Mozart’s forgotten Halbmond sonata. Lisi drew a crescent to indicate Moser’s house! This is what was on your mind in the cloister of Saint Zeno’s, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  Guidi reasoned himself out of hope. “No, Major, it’s a stretch. A coincidence. Moser’s car is badly dented and scuffed, but you rode with him. You’d have noticed…”

  Bora wouldn’t look at him. “I noticed a long scrape on the left side of the Mercedes on the morning he drove me to Verona.”

  “It doesn’t prove murder.”

  “No? I thank you for being so gracious, Guidi, but it all fits together. Moser’s difficulty in keeping his fine house, the electricity cut off from most of it, the unkempt garden – the good times being over. Then there’s Lisi’s acquisition of historical properties, and his interest in the restoration of interiors. It’s true, Guidi.”

  “So, Moser was one of Lisi’s debtors.”

  “I’m certain he was. That he should run into us, of all people.” Uneasily, Bora stroked the wheel with his gloved right hand, back and forth. “Naturally on Lisi’s papers he would appear as ‘M’. But in Lisi’s last moments of lucidity the house of the half-moon stood for its owner, and besides it’s easier to scribble a crescent than the letter ‘M’. Halbmond
, half-moon, the crescent. Moser. It’s a final pun from him.” Bora let go of the wheel. “Luna mendax, after all. Why didn’t I think of it when you asked me what the proverb meant?”

  “I still don’t know what it means.”

  “It means that the moon draws a ‘C’ in the sky, but lies about it. According to folklore, when you see the moon form a ‘C’ in the night sky, you’d think she’s a crescent, waxing moon. But it isn’t. It is a actually a waning moon. When its hump faces the other way and forms a ‘D’, you’d think it is decreasing, while it is not. Why didn’t I think that ‘C’ stood for the moon all along?” Bora sighed deeply. “The anguish I felt at Saint Zeno’s was well founded. The biases I criticized in you, I was myself guilty of, and for the most shamefully inexcusable reason: because Moser looked harmless and spoke my language. Christ, because he understood me.”

  Guidi felt almost sorry for him. “There’s a chance we’re wrong, you know.”

  “No. You haven’t spoken with him as I did when we drove to town. What he unsuspectingly said troubled me, but I didn’t know why. Or didn’t want to know. People say all kinds of things. And you’re right, Guidi, it seemed too much of a coincidence. A damning one at that. When you suggested that Lisi might have been a usurer, I knew Moser was probably one of his debtors; still, I had no proof. Worse, I kept the suspicion to myself. I could see, as Valenki did in Russia, or like the madman who stole his victims’ shoes for reasons we’ll never know. I could see, and decided I was not seeing.” Bora turned the key in the ignition, reawakening the engine. “We have a long call to pay in the morning.”

  “He’ll deny everything.”

  “No. I’m afraid it will be all too easy speaking to him.”

  Bora did not say another word for the rest of the trip. After dropping Guidi at his house in Sagràte he drove on to Lago, followed by the waxing moon.

  It sickened Guidi that Moser would not even try to argue the point, as though he expected this to happen, and he was relieved that it had come through Bora and himself after all. By the steady and defensive bent of Bora’s lips, Guidi felt how it strained him to address the old man.