by Ben Pastor
Moser said, “Well, Major, it is hardly the case of denying the truth at this point. I was brought up not to lie.” His round, mild face showed overt sympathy for the young men facing him. “Killing is one thing, and lying about it quite another. As a good soldier, Major, you know that murder can be rationalized. You are welcome to take a look at the car. It’s parked in the back.”
“We’ve already done it,” Guidi said.
The cruel light of early morning filtered with a mute, rosy hue through drapes and dusty window glass. Up in the domed vault, nascent sunbeams were just starting to criss-cross through opaque bull’s heads. From the awakening glory of painted clouds, the crescent-bearing Turkish flags flashed to Guidi as he looked.
Moser caught his attention. “Life has ways of gaining on us, Inspector. The night I happened upon you, I would have treated you no differently had I known you were investigating Lisi’s death. Had you known about me, I trust both of you would have accepted my hospitality all the same.” He took a step toward Bora, whose emotions were not so safely checked. “It was very clever of you to understand Lisi’s pun. Who’d have supposed he would draw a crescent to point to me and my house? It made my house into a liar moon. But when all is said, even doing away with that usurer would not save this place. It was merely time I was borrowing, in hopes I would die before the day of reckoning. Dies Irae, Major Bora.” Moser walked to the piano, and sat facing the keys. “I want you to know that only after Lisi told me he’d turn this house into a hotel did I make up my mind. My house, a hotel! The soldiers’ haven, where Mozart had played the Silbermann as a child! He had to die.” Moser seemed himself surprised by the logic of the argument. “Who’d ever think that the last of the Mosers would summon the criminal courage to commit murder? Murder, it was. Yes. And I rationalized it much as you explain your own career, Major Bora. After all, I had a gun. My father’s, last used to hunt boars in Serbia, but how appropriate. I planned to drive to Lisi’s country house, let myself in and shoot him. The plan changed when I saw him alone in his wheelchair by the flower beds. God, that tawdry house of his, pink as a harlot and horribly furnished! I knew what to do, Major. I careened through the open gate and struck him at full speed. Then I put the car in reverse. But in driving out I miscalculated the width of the gate, and grazed one of the pillars. All in all, the deed was easy. Morally reprehensible, but easy.”
Guidi said, “The fender of your car is also damaged.”
“Good Lord, Inspector, it should be! I struck Lisi with all the bitterness of poverty and solitude in the face of his ill-gained wealth and abominable poor taste!” Because Bora had drawn close to the piano, Moser turned a friendly face to him. “Na, Herr Major – I hope for your own good that you never stand to lose your dear house as I did.”
Bora was amazingly candid, considering that Guidi was present. “I think of it often, with the War going the way it is. If my Turks defeat me, I’ll lose much more than my house. I may lose my country.”
“You understand, then.”
“No. I understand the necessity to kill, not to commit murder. And for my sanity, as a soldier I must be able to differentiate between the two.”
Moser smiled a little. “My ancestors must have reasoned in the same way, but there’s no difference really. Look at the ceiling, and tell me if it isn’t fancy butchery that built this house, crescents trodden underfoot and all, the portico laid as a Turkish crescent in a flag of land. War is a great homicide, Major.”
Sad, but thank God it’s over, Guidi thought. He stepped toward the door to fetch the notebook, which he’d left in Bora’s car. At that moment, Bora – looking at the ivories on the keyboard, not at the old man – posed another question.
“Herr Moser, when did Signora Lisi ask you to do it?”
An immediate, perfect silence came over the hall, suspended and intricate like a spider’s web. Delicate and difficult to break, but Bora was not done asking.
“When did you talk to her, Herr Moser?”
Moser took a long, resigned breath before answering. He looked caught for the first time since Bora and Guidi had walked in. “That, too, you understood. By telephone, Major, in mid-November. By accident. You see, I was late for my payment that month, by no means an unusual event. But Lisi insisted that debtors call and set up a time to see him in Verona. Usually he added something to the dues, you know. So they were always hard calls to make, and from a public phone, too. That day his wife Clara answered, and we got to talking. I must tell you, Major, a good woman such as she, abused in spite of all she did for him – it revolted me.”
Guidi was stunned. He watched, rather than heard, Bora calmly say to Moser, “Indeed. How much did Signora Lisi tell you about herself?”
“Not much, reserved as she is. She mentioned the children she bore him, her hard work as an actress before he forced her to leave the stage. Her parents’ tragic death in the Spanish flu. She mentioned – no, I really understood it, from her reticence – how Lisi dared lay hands on her, despite her illness.”
While Guidi was rooted midway between the foot of the stairs and the door, Bora kept absolute control on his words, and the situation. “Really. How ill do you think Clara Lisi is?”
“I take it you haven’t met her, Major. I haven’t either, but we spoke again by phone, two or three times. Poor Clara, confined to bed ever since their last child was born months ago. When she asked, Major…” Moser straightened his shoulders. “This, you must understand. It was suddenly like a knightly deed, for me. My crass desire to see him dead was ennobled by her request. There was now something sacred in bringing that monstrous human being down. Not only would I and God knows how many others be free of our debts, but a pure and good woman would be avenged for her years of suffering. I’d hoped to go up to her small bedroom after the shooting, and tell Signora Clara that her troubles were over. But the monster was in the driveway, and the rest, you know. The gun, Inspector, you’ll find in the cellar.”
Guidi said a mechanical yes. For some reason, what he feared most at this time was Bora’s telling the truth about Claretta. But Bora said nothing more about her. “Herr Moser, is there anything I can do for you?”
As one suffocating, Guidi had to get out of the house. The few steps to fetch his notebook from the car exposed him to the chill of an astonishingly clear day, filling the ample semicircle of the colonnade. Only minutes ago, the thought of being able to tell Claretta that she was free had made him euphoric. Now – he didn’t know what he felt now, other than confusion. What would happen next was so different from what he had envisioned, it took more than he had in him to make plans. When he walked back inside, Moser was standing at the centre of the hall and Bora several paces away from him, still facing the piano.
“Are we almost ready, Inspector?”
“Yes. I expect I could book you in the car.”
With old-fashioned courtesy Moser bowed his head. “I thank you. Just the time to gather my change, then.” Slowly but straight-backed, Moser walked to the beautiful stairway. Once at the top of the ramp, again he bowed to the men. “With your permission.”
“Major,” Guidi began, “I can’t begin to say…” But Bora gave no sign of listening. Turned away from the stairs, he stood fixed to the honey-coloured silhouette of the Silbermann. Keeping watch, it seemed. For what, Guidi could not tell. “I’ll phone the Verona police as soon as we reach a public phone.” Oblivious to him, Bora stared at the beautiful length of the piano. “Of course you’ll want to phone De Rosa as well, and Colonel Habermehl—”
The loud report from upstairs sent a burst of echoes through the vault. Guidi was so unprepared for it, it took him a moment to react. Then, “Damn, no, no!” He scrambled to the stairs, flinging the unlit cigarette over his shoulder. Past Bora, he reached and bounded up the steps. Bora let him go. His tense face flashed pale and was left behind.
Guidi shouted at him, “You gave him your gun! I stepped out for a moment and you gave him your gun!”
Bo
ra unlatched his empty holster. At a deliberate pace, he followed up the stairs. In the bedroom, Guidi was kneeling by Moser’s body. Blood had soaked the threadbare carpet under his head in a dark semicircle. Bora stayed only long enough to retrieve the P38, which without wiping he returned to the holster, and walked downstairs again.
When Guidi joined him in the garden, Bora had gone beyond the colonnade. There, pedestals overgrown with vines held statues of the four seasons. The time-worn statues resembled much-nibbled sugar, and the field-grey uniform stood like a shadow among them.
“I’ll have to report this, Major.” Guidi forced himself to sound unaffected.
Bora gave him an outraged, brief glance. “Go ahead.”
Stone benches connected the pedestals. Guidi went to sit on one of the pitted, eroded surfaces and stayed there, drinking in the raw, cold sunshine of year’s end with his eyes closed, so that a floating red-and-blue darkness surrounded him. “At least tell me why you did it.”
“Why shouldn’t I? He asked me to.”
“You could have said no.”
“I had no intention of saying no. It would benefit no one to keep him alive for the trial. All Moser wanted was to die in his house, and I gave him a chance to do it. It was a small concession.”
“Except that you are an accessory to his death.”
“So be it.”
“While Enrica Salviati…”
“Enrica Salviati? Oh, please. It’s a matter of cultural habits, Guidi: we Germans fire bullets into our own heads. In Fascist Italy people stumble on the tracks while a train is coming. Or a tramway. What if the comrades had decided to silence her, so that no more gossip could come out about the departed saint, Lisi? It could be, couldn’t it? It’s up to you to look into the matter, although I doubt you’ll get very far.”
Guidi opened his eyes, and saw Bora only a few steps away, standing with his head low in the winter sun. “With Moser dead, Major, Claretta is the only one who must answer for her husband’s death. You’ll have to testify in that regard.”
“No. You will.”
“From the start, this has been your game. Why should I take it over now?”
“Because I can’t.”
“And why not?”
“I’m being transferred from Lago.” Bora unexpectedly seemed very young to Guidi, younger than himself and, despite his uniform and rank, more vulnerable, more endangered.
“Transferred? For no reason?”
“There are reasons.”
Guidi swallowed. He was, more than ever, aware that Bora shared nothing with him but the filings of his mind, jealously guarding the rest. Only it might not be out of haughtiness, but out of prudence, or decency. Or courage. It came to his mind – a quick thought he chased away at once – that perhaps it had been Monsignor Lai, in Saint Zeno’s cloister. That turning Gardini in to the SS was perhaps the price Bora paid to his military conscience in order to justify what he did for others, to save others, quietly, at the risk of his own life.
“It is up to you to make of this case what you must, Guidi. I have run out of time.”
Guidi was tempted to detect a suggestion in Bora’s words, and was careful not to jeopardize it by sounding impulsive. “So, where will you go?” he asked.
“I hope to be able to get an assignment to Rome.”
“And if you don’t?”
“If I don’t, I don’t know what will happen.”
Guidi closed his eyes again. He knew Bora was walking away by the crunch of gravel under his measured, limping step.
The two of them could never be friends. Even though Bora had called him mein Freund, it meant nothing. Unwilling to look around, Guidi felt the wind rising to whisper incomprehensible words in his ears. Snow would soon follow on the north wind’s back as on an invisible saddle. Today or tomorrow Claretta would act once more, according to how he decided to handle her role in Lisi’s death. Would she deny everything? She would, lamb-eyed in her providential pregnancy. She’d either cry or smile at him, and he’d look away from her tears, or her smile. Tomorrow, Christmas Day, 1943. November is a short and cruel month, and December kills the year.
Soon he could no longer hear Bora’s step. When he looked, he saw that he’d walked back to the BMW. Still Sandro Guidi remained on the bench, tasting the wind from the bitter north. He had to weigh in his heart the truth that Bora and he had, despite all odds, become what in other circumstances anyone would call friends. He had to, whatever it meant for their souls.
Beyond the garden, paling over the unruly crest of overgrown boxwood, the moon sank back into the sky. Guidi left the bench, and walked to join Martin Bora in the army car.
LUMEN
Ben Pastor
The first in the Martin Bora series
October 1939, Cracow, Nazi-occupied Poland.
Wehrmacht Captain Martin Bora discovers the abbess, Mother Kazimierza, shot dead in her convent garden. Her alleged power to see the future has brought her a devoted following. But her work and motto, “Lumen Christi Adiuva Nos”, appear also, it transpires, to have brought her some enemies.
Father Malecki had come to Cracow from Chicago at the Pope’s bidding, to investigate Mother Kazimierza’s powers. Now the Vatican orders him to stay and assist in the inquiry into her killing.
Stunned by the violence of the occupation and the ideology of his colleagues, Bora’s sense of Prussian duty is tested to breaking point. The interference of seductive actress Ewa Kowalska does not help matters.
PRAISE FOR LUMEN
“Pastor’s plot is well crafted, her prose sharp…a disturbing mix of detection and reflection” Publishers Weekly
‘And don’t miss LUMEN by Ben Pastor. When an abbess thought to have supernatural powers is murdered in Nazi-occupied Cracow, the Wehrmacht captain’s investigation is complicated by his compatriots’ cruelty and the Catholic Church’s secrecy. An interesting, original and melancholy tale.’ Literary Review
“A mystery, it rivets the reader until the end and beyond, with its twist of historical realities. A historical piece, it faithfully reproduces the grim canvas of war. A character study, it captures the thoughts and actions of real people, not stereotypes.” The Fredericksburg Free Lance Star
www.bitterlemonpress.com
BITTER LEMON PRESS
First published in the United Kingdom in 2012 by Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW
www.bitterlemonpress.com
© 2001, Ben Pastor
This edition published in agreement with the Author through PNLA/Piergiorgio Nicolazzini Literary Agency
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher
The moral rights of Ben Pastor have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978-1-904-73883-1
Typeset by Tetragon
Printed and bound by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire
