Shadows on the Lake

by Giovanni Cocco

  “Didn’t she ever look into what happened during the war, try to inform herself about her brother? Didn’t she ever do any research?”

  “You have to imagine what those years were like, Inspector. Even if she’d wanted to, she probably wouldn’t have been allowed. First, because the situation made it practically impossible to have any news of the outside world. Second, even if there was news concerning Karl, it would never have reached his family on the other side of the Iron Curtain.”

  “For political reasons?”

  “In a sense. It is quite unthinkable that a collaborationist, or even his memory, could ever, in those years, receive any kind of preferential treatment.”

  “Let’s move forward, Signor Montalti. What will you do now? Will the mortal remains be repatriated to Leipzig?”

  “His sister gave me to understand that she didn’t want this. She also said she’s willing to reimburse me for whatever expenses I’ve incurred. I, of course, declined. Money and logistics have nothing to do with it, for her. Nor embarrassment. I think she wants things to stay the way they are, to avoid stirring up old sorrows and creating confusion among her present family and children by digging up things from more than half a century ago.”

  “I don’t blame her, though in the same position I would probably have acted differently. It’s hard to accept that a person dear to us should lie far away. Our loved ones always remain tied to us in one way or another.”

  “And what will you do, Inspector? You said the case had been closed. The mystery of what happened that night will probably never be unveiled.”

  “You’re right, Signor Montalti. But before closing the book on this story there’s still one more person I have to talk to.”

  20

  She spent the rest of the day doing ordinary things.

  Once back at the office, Stefania took care of a couple of administrative matters, gave some orders to Piras and Lucchesi, and tried to keep her mind occupied. After assuring herself that everything in the house by the lake was in order and that her mother and Camilla didn’t need anything, she decided to hole up in Como for the night.

  For dinner she granted herself the luxury of cooking only for herself. She liked to cook, but the dizzying pace of her days often allowed her little more than snacks on the run, frozen foods, and takeout.

  On her way back from meeting with Montalti she’d stopped at one of the few fresh fish shops by the lake. She felt like eating lavarello, a kind of whitefish, in green sauce, a specialty of her mother’s and a dish that reminded her of her childhood, the dinners with relatives, her father sitting in the living room.

  The fish was perfectly fresh: four whitefish, one perch, and some alborelle, which she would fry up the following day. She liked the idea that they’d been caught by one of the few remaining fishermen on the lake, one of those who got up at three o’clock in the morning to go out on the water in a rowboat.

  The first thing she did was turn her attention to the whitefish. After scaling and gutting them, she cut them into fillets, leaving the layer of skin on the outside. Then she made a fish broth with the heads and bones, adding a glass of water, some white wine, and a clove of garlic. She then finely chopped an assortment of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and added this to the broth.

  She melted two pats of butter in a skillet and then sautéed some finely chopped onion in it. To this she added the whitefish fillets, after first coating them in a paste of flour, milk, and egg. Then she added a pinch of salt and a sprinkle of pepper.

  She fried them for about ten minutes, turning them over several times, until they turned a light golden color. Once browned, she set them down on a serving platter covered with absorbent paper.

  In the meantime she’d prepared the green sauce: two hard-boiled eggs, olive oil from the Tramezzina, parsley, bread soaked in vinegar, salt, and pepper. Working this up into a dense, creamy paste, she spread it in generous spoonfuls over the fillets. A sprinkle of parsley, and the dish was ready.

  Cooking was something that helped her a great deal. She would relax, think of what she needed to do, and the tension of the preceding day would dissolve in minutes.

  She thought of Valli and his local fame. For a moment she felt tempted to ring him, then decided against it.

  The mission she had assigned herself awaited her the following day. She’d already given notice at the station that she wouldn’t be coming in. “Family problems,” she’d said. This was contrary to habit, a sort of violation of the code of ethics she had imposed on herself since her first day on the job.

  After setting the table, she went out on the balcony. Now that the days were growing longer, her desire for a vacation increased. The lake in the distance looked mobbed with tourists, outdoor restaurant tables, families out for a stroll. On the horizon she noticed the steamboat Milano heading out on the water, with its white-and-black smokestack and its suggestive foghorn. At that moment, for the first time in many years, she no longer felt alone.

  The choice to head out on the road to Bergamo early in the morning was dictated more by insomnia than by any real logistical consideration. She had no engagements that day, so she could take things easy. She would do what she’d planned to do and then return to the lake in leisurely fashion. At that hour her mother and Camilla were still sleeping. She thought again of Valli. She would have liked to talk to him. She decided she would do all these things after she had met with Sister Maria.

  On the passenger’s seat lay a folder containing copies of the letters Montalti had given her. They would be her secret weapon. The fact of showing up at the institute without prior warning could backfire. But she’d given it a lot of thought, and it was the only way available to her to catch the old nun by surprise.

  After arriving in the province of Bergamo she stopped in a small town, spotted a café, and grabbed a spot at an outside table.

  It was half past nine, and at that hour, there was only one person who could reassure her and perhaps even help her.

  “Hi, Giulio, already at the office?”

  “Actually I’ve been here for over an hour. But what about you? What’s going on? You haven’t called me at this hour since our days at the academy.”

  “I’m in Bergamo, Giulio. I’m on my way to talk to Sister Maria.”

  “Are there some new developments?”

  “Do you remember Montalti, the former owner of Villa Regina? We met yesterday. He gave me some new materials. I’m getting close to solving the mystery.”

  “What do you mean? What have you discovered?”

  “I can’t tell you anything at the moment. I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know. I just wanted to tell you that I was right to carry on the investigation.”

  “But why did you call me if you don’t want to tell me anything?”

  “To thank you for the help you’ve given me.”

  “So what should I expect?”

  “Nothing, as usual. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  Giulio tried to say something, but Stefania hung up at that exact moment, turning off her cell phone. It wasn’t only to reassert her good faith in carrying on the investigation that she’d called him, and to show him that he’d been wrong to underestimate her. She really did want to thank him.

  Now it was ten o’clock. She paid her bill and headed for her car, determined to go straight to the institute. At this point it was only five or six kilometers away.

  Her entry into the main salon of the institute triggered a certain commotion among the maintenance staff still busy cleaning, and sent a number of little nuns running back and forth like wind-up dolls given a jolt of electricity.

  As a third nun was asking her if she was “Inspector . . . ?” the figure of Sister Maria appeared through one of the side doors. At that moment the cleaning ladies resumed sweeping the floor, ending the buzz that Stefania’s arrival had stirred up.
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  “Inspector! What a surprise,” the nun exclaimed with a sardonic smile.

  “I came by to say hello and inform you that the case has been closed,” Stefania replied.

  The nun led the way into one of the inner courtyards, then took a pair of garden shears and started trimming the branches of an enormous rosebush. After a few moments of silence she resumed speaking:

  “And you want me to believe that you came all this way just to tell me that the case has been closed?”

  Stefania was about to answer when the nun turned around unexpectedly:

  “Will you have some coffee, Inspector?” she asked.

  “With pleasure,” replied Stefania, her eyes following the nun’s hand gesture indicating the way to her office.

  They’d just sat down in the office, which Stefania was already familiar with, when a younger nun, not more than fifty, came in with a tray, two cups, and an espresso pot.

  “One teaspoon of sugar?” asked Sister Maria.

  “No, thank you, Mother, I prefer it without.”

  The nun sipped her coffee, set the demitasse down on the saucer, and said:

  “I’m listening.”

  Stefania took in the self-assured tone with which the nun was challenging her. For a moment she thought it might be better to drop the whole thing and feared she might never manage to open a breach in Sister Maria’s defenses. She waited a few moments and then began talking, looking her interlocutor straight in the eye. She had to be able to withstand the nun’s stare. She had to appear determined.

  “As I said, the prosecutor’s office decided to shelve the investigation. Karl Dressler’s mortal remains were interred in Switzerland in the family vault of the Montaltis, the former owners of Villa Regina.”

  She fell silent for a moment, just to allow the nun to open up.

  “Let the dead bury their dead,” commented Sister Maria, who seemed reassured by Inspector Valenti’s words. She’d used the same words as Giulio a few days earlier.

  “In a way, I think the Gospel precept represents the moral of this story,” said Stefania, “even though, to tell you the truth, Karl is not the only one among the dead not to have found peace.”

  “What do you mean?” snapped the nun in a tone that combined curiosity and apprehension.

  “What I mean,” said Stefania, “is that while Karl may have had his funeral, he has not had justice, and that while Margherita is resting in peace, there is another person, too, still awaiting much-deserved justice.”

  Upon finishing her statement she rummaged through her purse and laid Karl’s letter on the desk.

  “Read it for yourself, Mother. It’s only a few lines.”

  “The day Margherita disappeared, I rushed up the mountain to inform my father. It was evening, and the car sent by Durand had already arrived. You can imagine how upset and confused I was as I ran up the road from town towards the mountain, all the way to that cottage of ours. I was the eldest daughter, and I felt in a way responsible for my younger sister. After all, it was I who’d told my father about her relationship with Dressler. But you must believe me, Inspector, I did it only the way an older sister would, out of the fear and dismay that discovery had awakened in me. And I did it above all for her, for everything that might come of such a choice. Don’t imagine for a moment that I’ve spent a single night over the past half century not turning those moments over and over again in my head. I’m the first one to admit that if I hadn’t said anything to my father, Margherita would probably still be alive today, and my father would have lived out his life. And my own life would probably have been quite different, even though, over all these years, I’ve never once regretted or reproached myself for taking the veil.”

  Stefania observed her, trying not to get too drawn in by that display of sorrow and contrition. That was not her role. More pressing was the need to understand what happened on that night in the mountains so many years ago. She had skillfully managed to throw the nun off balance. Having her read Dressler’s letter had achieved the desired effect. In learning that her sister was pregnant at the moment of death, the nun had lowered her defenses. In all likelihood, after all those years of silence, these new details had awakened new emotions in her—of anger, anguish, guilt. And that life—a life whose existence she’d never known about, and which cast her again in a guilty light—was now demanding to be seen, to have a place of its own. A place in a story, if not an outright confession.

  “My father and brother were out. Only my mother and my brother Battista had stayed behind in the house up the mountain. The hut was empty, there was nobody there. When I tracked down one of our men, he told me they were working on an expedition. In those months the number of expeditions increased beyond all measure. A great many people were asking to be taken over the border, and my father would take on anyone who could pay. He’d managed to work out a tacit arrangement with the partisan fighters in the area. The people who came to my father were political prisoners, dissidents, former Fascist turncoats, and partisans. And, naturally, many Jews. I decided to go and find them up in the mountain, despite the obvious dangers. You can’t imagine how surprised I was when I came upon a band of men that included Colonel von Kesselbach and Dressler. Surprised, but also heartened, because their presence there increased the chance of finding Margherita, even though there was still the possibility that she’d decided to cross the border on her own. She was very familiar with the terrain, and knew all the paths and escape routes through the net at least as well as my father did.”

  “So what happened, Mother?”

  “I took my father aside and told him what had happened. First he went and discussed the matter with Giovanni. I don’t know what was said, but to judge from his gestures and whatever I was able to intuit, my father was very hard on my brother for giving Margherita news of Dressler. They decided to go and look for her in the surrounding area. But in order to do this, they had to bring the two Germans back to the cottage. He ordered me to go back to my mother, and I obeyed. My father assigned two men to watch over the cottage from a distance after escorting Kesselbach and Dressler back there himself, using their slowness as an excuse. The expedition was carried on with the other men, who then came back. They broke up their search into the areas around the border and spent a good part of the night and the entire morning combing all the trails. But there was no trace of Margherita. Around midday my father and Giovanni went back to our mountain house for a quick meal. Giovanni kept insisting that in his opinion Margherita at that hour must have already crossed the border. But my father didn’t agree. At that point he decided to settle the matter on his own. He told us to stay put and not to tell anyone about what had happened. He didn’t return until much later, when it was already evening.”

  “Where did your father go?” asked Stefania, who sensed that Sister Maria, this time, was telling the truth.

  “I never did find out with any certainty, but to judge from what happened that night, it’s not hard to imagine. In short, when it got dark my father went out again, this time in the company of two of his most trusted henchmen. My brother had to stay behind at the house, despite his pleas. My father didn’t want any arguments. I overheard their last conversation outside the kitchen door. After my father left I decided to follow him at a distance. I knew they would be going back to the cottage to get the two Germans, so I positioned myself outside and waited. They finally came out in the middle of the night, with one of my father’s men leading the way, followed by Kesselbach and Dressler, with my father and another man behind with rifles at the ready.”

  The nun heaved a long sigh.

  “As they were huddled a few hundred meters from the border, I heard my father’s whistle, and then two screeches in reply, a bit like a buzzard’s cries. This was the arranged signal. At that point the colonel crossed the short stretch of meadow and reached the other side.”

  Stefania was at the br
eaking point. The tension had been rising as the nun told her story. The solution to the mystery was finally within reach. The nun closed her eyes, trying to summon the courage to recount the final moments of that night so many years ago that had changed the course of her life and that of her entire family.

  “For several minutes nothing else happened. I tried to get as close as possible without making any noise. I could see the silhouettes of the men lying on the ground. There was Dressler, my father, and his two men. At a certain point I heard a sound, a kind of hissing that came from the woods. It wasn’t the same sound as a few minutes earlier. I saw my father’s silhouette get up and crawl on hands and knees towards the wood. The rest of the small group stayed put. A few more endless minutes passed.”

  The nun clutched her Basque rosary between her fingers.

  “At that point I heard the distinct sound of footsteps in the woods. They were clearly not my father’s. It sounded like numerous people, and to judge from the racket they were making, they didn’t care if they attracted attention. Then I suddenly saw some lights as well: one of them was carrying a lantern. I saw the silhouette of my father at the head, and beside him, four partisans with their weapons cocked.”

  “He’d decided to sell him to the partisans,” Stefania interjected. A moment later she bit her tongue.

  “I don’t know what my father had decided. But I remember perfectly what immediately ensued. Everything happened very fast. The partisan fighters advanced towards the small group hiding in the grass. I heard Dressler’s voice shout something in German. At that moment, from another part of the woods, another person appeared: Margherita. She’d been following the whole scene from a distance. She yelled some incoherent words at my father and then ran towards Dressler, who in the meantime had come out into the meadow, having slipped the grasp of my father’s men. Then everything happened at once. My father shouted something at Margherita. My sister, after running to Karl and embracing him, had grabbed his arm. Karl pulled out a pistol hidden in his trousers and aimed it straight at my father. It was over in an instant. A burst of machine-gun fire came from the group of partisans. My sister shielded him with her body and fell to the ground, cut down by the shots. The young German was wounded. At that moment I, too, came out from my hiding place and ran to the spot of the shooting. Dressler, though bleeding, kept firing his pistol. Then a shot struck him from the side, and he fell beside Margherita’s body. They had just enough time to look each other in the eyes, and that was when my sister took off her locket and put it in his hand.”