A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

  “Why should I?”

  “That’s what I am asking you, Major Bora.” Irritably, Guidi carefully lifted the collar of his coat against the northern wind. It was a good coat, an expensive new one, and he was proud and protective of it in these lean years. Bora looked elsewhere and was rapidly isolating himself. Nothing else would be gotten out of him today. “I think you’ve shown me enough for now,” Guidi advised. In silence they walked across the belvedere to the Garibaldi monument, where Bora instructed his driver to take Guidi back to work.

  10 JANUARY 1944

  The first thing Westphal asked on Monday was, “What the hell’s going on at Verona? Have the Fascists finished trying their own?”

  Bora nodded. “Ciano has been condemned to death.”

  “Good! I’ll give credit to Mussolini for dumping his son-in-law. He shouldn’t have left his fat post at the Vatican. Who else, besides Ciano?”

  Bora didn’t need to look at the list. “De Bono, Gottardi, Pareschi and Marinelli.”

  “Ha! Two of them are decrepit.”

  “They’re all to be shot as traitors tomorrow at nine.”

  “Serves them right. Now give me the bad news.”

  Bora reported on his meetings with Kesselring and Hohmann, adding that he had already requested an audience with Cardinal Borromeo to sample the moderate Vatican wing. “The worst news is that the Americans made it across the Peccia River. They’ve been at it since Thursday, and now they’ve done it. The French are still north of Cassino, but they may be there for weeks.”

  “So, is it still looking slow?”

  “It’s still looking slow.”

  Westphal went into his office, from where he called out to Bora after a while, “On Saturday there’s a party at Ott’s house. I want you to go if Dollmann is going. Have you met him already? Good. Sit by him. He loves to talk, for an SS.” Westphal came back in, with an ironical bent of his lips. “You know about him, of course.”

  “I heard rumors, General.” Bora did not say the kindest of them had been They say Dollmann fucks his chauffeur.

  “Rumors? By God, you were a good choice. Now we only need to find a way to use your other talent. That’s the one we brought you here for.”

  “Hopefully there’ll be no need.”

  “Don’t delude yourself. We haven’t seen the tip of what clandestine activities are yet to come. Ask Dollmann at the party. By the way, we go to Frascati tomorrow, and on the way back let’s swing by the shore. We won’t leave until 0700 hours, but be here at five as usual.”

  “I suggest we leave at six-thirty. American bombers become active by 0800 or so.”

  “We’ll do as you say. Any news about the Reiner mess?”

  “Only that they have a newcomer looking into it. The official word is still ‘accident’, but we know better.”

  “Wasn’t her door locked from within?”

  “Or from without. Her keys are missing.”

  In the afternoon Bora prepared two itineraries: one through Frascati to Anzio and along the shore to Lido and back to Rome, and another that rejoined the return route inland at Aprilia, skirting the Alban Hills to the south. Their departure, however, was delayed by reports of new fighting around Cervara.

  The sun was almost up when they left the southeastern city limits, and rolling along the horizon by the time they crossed the crowded suburb of Quadraro. Past them went the one-storied little stucco houses, ochre- and mustard-colored, beside postage-stamp courtyards enclosed by fences and paved with cement tiles. Frost-covered cacti sat in pots at the gates of more pretentious tenements, three and four stories in height, belted by unimaginative masonry balconies. Bora was reading from his notes to the general. “The birth rate in this place is huge – over twenty-three hundred a year.”

  Disparagingly, Westphal glanced away from the window. “Mark my words, one of these days we’ll come here and fish out all the men and haul them off. All communists and socialists, ungrateful riff-raff brought here from the slums of the countryside. Now, this is the place where you’ll count yourself lucky if you don’t get yourself blown to bits!”

  Bora had noticed the car lacked the customary sandbags on the floor; a mine would explode the chassis and kill them without hope of escape. But then his car was sandbagged on the day a grenade had been thrown at it, and it had made no difference, really. He simply took note of street names, to be able if need be to find his way around the quarter on foot. Despite his staff position, he wore the ordinance pistol at his belt. His assignments had made him realistic about war exigencies, he had told Westphal, and Westphal had answered that he didn’t mind.

  Five miles out of Rome, when they passed Mussolini’s movie citadel, the general drew back more amiably on the seat. “I don’t need to be briefed about this – most of your colleagues’ lovers are from Cinecittà.” Bora looked up from the topographic spread on his knees. “Maelzer doesn’t like it, but there’s little he can do about it. There used to be a tramway every twenty minutes each way – now it’s all up in the air.”

  Not far from the road Pius IX’s old railway could be now seen penciling a straight parallel line among farmhouses and fields. Past Osteria del Curato, the highway to Frascati and that to Anagni diverged. The staff car bore left at the crossroads and had nearly reached the landmark called Halfway Tower (Westphal was giving Bora his plans for the day) when two British fighters burst into view from the south-east, fast and low and coming their way.

  At Westphal’s order the panic-stricken driver, who had swerved off the road, regained it and continued to travel. The first flyover was deafening, followed by the whine of engines as they pulled up to bank round and return.

  “They’ll strafe,” Bora warned.

  Westphal was stone-faced, but would not order to stop. Over them the fighters swept one after the other, cannons ablaze. A loud dry whipping of shells cracked the air – asphalt flew up around the car and pieces of it hit windshield and side windows, stray metal gouged the doors; the noise was for a moment beyond the edge of hearing, and painful. Against a bare sky the fighters had turned ahead, and were scuttling back with the slick ease of deadly fish. Bora knew a third passage could not possibly miss them. In front of him, in naive self-defense, the driver braked and covered his head. Westphal braced for the explosion; Bora had been holding a pen in his hand, and now absurdly capped it and put it away in his pocket. High grating of engines drowned their thoughts.

  Then, before the Germans’ eyes, the airplanes widely parted and nosed up, their dull bellies giving way to the sheen of cockpits as they veered to rejoin each other to the east. Fire boomed in quick succession from an anti-aircraft post somewhere, aimlessly enough, but sufficient to divert the pilots from the attack. In the suddenly remade silence, Westphal calmly and distinctly blasphemed to himself.

  Bora felt much the same, but chose to note the time on his pad. If either man was shaken, he did not show it. As the car started again, “Forget Frascati,” Westphal said. “Let’s go directly to Aprilia. I want to talk to some of the commanders. Who’s responsible there?”

  “Colonel Holz.”

  Colonel Holz, after uselessly appealing to Westphal, protested that his exhausted men had to remain on constant alert.

  “I don’t think you have much choice,” Bora said.

  “That’s all because the field marshal has an invasion mania,” Holz protested. “We’ve been watching the goddamn shore for three months, and the enemy hasn’t even crept up to the Garigliano River yet, twenty-five miles in all! What good are tired troops going to be?” And, because Bora was unsympathetic, he added, “Look, Major, I see you’ve been to Russia – you know how weary holding the line is.”

  “It’s worse losing it.”

  “Goddamn it, you’re not listening to me! I’m going directly to Kesselring after this!”

  “You do that, Colonel.”

  Holz had begun to turn away from Bora but changed his mind, and faced him again with a sharp half-turn on his heels
. “If Westphal ever leaves you behind, I’ll have your ass for this.”

  Bora nearly lost his temper at the words. “As the colonel wishes.”

  Much the same scene was repeated at Anzio and up the coast from it.

  “They’re going to have their way,” Westphal grumbled as they rushed a lunch somewhere along the road back. “I won’t, but the field marshal will listen, I know.” He had a map laid open on the battered hood of the car, and munched on a sandwich as he looked at it.

  Bora looked down, partly to conceal anger for the response they had met, partly because crippling pain had awakened in his left arm and he did not want Westphal to notice it. He said, watching him pencil circles over the map, “If need be, the Reclamation Land can be flooded.”

  Westphal nodded, swallowing the last of his sandwich. “It’s the interior that will make a difference at this point.” Their glances met above the map. “How well do you know it?”

  “I’ve been to Sora, Anagni – Tivoli I know well.” Bora spoke as Westphal pointed out the places. “Impregnable citadels for three thousand years. The monastery above Cassino, too – I wouldn’t want to have to take it.” Moving back on the map, the general’s forefinger drew a circle on the flat area immediately around Rome, and Bora shook his head. “The rest is mush.”

  Westphal assented gloomily. He was pressing with his knuckle on the resort town of Lido, directly in line with Rome. “God forbid anything from happening there – Il Duce’s Imperial Way would deliver them into our lap in an hour’s time.”

  “Would they land so far from the bulk of their forces?”

  “With Americans, one doesn’t know what they would do.” The general folded the map and handed it to Bora. “Let’s go. I want to be at Soratte before any of the commanders get in touch with the field marshal.”

  *

  The new address, Guidi had to admit, was more convenient than the decentralized Via Merulana. Now from his doorstep on the elbow-shaped Via Paganini – if the public cars failed – he could manage the walk to his office on Via Del Boccaccio. The owners, Maiuli by name, were from Naples – a retired professor of Latin and his wife, a “remarkable hunchback”, as he described her. Given the southern penchant for superstition, Guidi suspected a less than disinterested affection on the part of the professor, who was an inveterate lotto player. He listened to the old couple, lost in the array of knick-knacks and plaster saints that crowded the parlor, inform him of the house rules.

  “The bathroom is at the end of the hallway, and the maid comes to clean in the morning.”

  “Dinner is at eight on the dot.”

  “Overnight visitors are discouraged. This is a well-regulated house and we pride ourselves in keeping only selected guests.”

  “... And no more than two at a time.”

  “Who else is staying here?” Guidi asked.

  “An art student by the name of Lippi.” Professor Maiuli hastened to say, “You’ll have a chance to become acquainted before long.”

  “Will either of you or that gentleman mind if I smoke?”

  Donna Carmela made a face. “We’d rather you didn’t, but I suppose that a cigarette after dinner will not kill anyone.”

  Once in his room, Guidi sat on the bed, staring at the lurid lithograph of St Gennaro’s execution hanging above it. It was a beheading in full colors, especially unwelcome as he’d just viewed the photos of Fräulein Reiner after the fall. Guidi planned to ask Bora about her again, since she was apparently well known among the officers. For now, he avoided making conjectures, waiting for clues to roll out of a well-rehearsed nowhere, as they often did. After making sure his door was locked, he reached for the lithograph, took it off the nail and slipped it under the bed face down, where it’d stay until the maid came in the morning to clean.

  11 JANUARY 1944

  In the morning, as he was preparing for his first meeting with the head of Rome police, Guidi cut his chin while shaving in his room. Remembering he’d seen a bottle of alcohol in the bathroom, he walked down the hallway in that direction, with a handkerchief pressed to his jaw. Just as he reached the door, a young woman walked up from behind and took hold of the handle.

  “Sorry, I’ve got to use it first.”

  Guidi was surprised, but automatically stepped back. He was standing a few feet away when she came out. “By the way, what’s happened to you?” she asked.

  Guidi told her.

  “Oh, I thought you had a toothache.” So, this was the art student, whom he’d assumed to be a man. In her mid-twenties, Guidi judged, excessively thin. Clothes hung loosely on her. Still, her face was fine and luminous, and she had beautiful dark eyes. “Are you the policeman?”

  “I’m Inspector Sandro Guidi.”

  “And I’m Francesca Lippi. Pleased to meet you.” Heading for her room, she added, “I use the bathroom a lot, ’cause I’m pregnant.”

  The newly arrived head of police, Pietro Caruso, looked myopic. On his long head, graying hair sat brushed in a tamed bristle. He was already occupying his desk at the Questura Centrale, a post he was due to take over officially in a few weeks.

  “Do you know what my name means?” he asked Guidi, whose credentials lay before him. “It means apprentice in a sulphur mine. That’s what it means.”

  Guidi failed to understand why the subject was introduced, if not to enhance the achievements of the man facing him. He was anxious to be given the Reiner folder, but Caruso’s second question had no more bearing on the issue than the first.

  “Where did you attend school?”

  “Urbino.”

  “The boarding school or the reformatory?” Caruso seemed amused by his own joke. “No, seriously – the Piarist Fathers, eh? Good. And then?”

  “The university there.”

  “How could you afford it?”

  “I had a bursary to attend. My father was awarded a gold medal posthumously, and the educational opportunity came with it.” Anticipating Caruso’s next question, Guidi explained, “He was killed in the line of duty at Licata in ’24.”

  “Was he carabinieri or police?”

  “Police.”

  “That’s good. Any foreign languages?”

  “Four years of school French.”

  “People should learn German, these days.”

  Guidi did not know what to say to that, so he said nothing.

  “Well, we’ll have to do with what we have,” Caruso grumbled. With his nose on the paper, he read through Guidi’s file. “It says here you have worked with Germans before.”

  “Well, in a manner of speaking, not really —”

  “Did you get along?”

  “I got along.”

  Caruso stared at him from above his glasses. “Before we get into the Reiner case, let me see your Party card.”

  Guidi took it out, and handed it across the desk.

  Cardinal Giovanni Borromeo, better known to his many friends as Nino, had not – despite his saintly ancestry – started out as a priest. He had once been prominent in the useless young society of Rome, when the city was newly a capital to the unified kingdom of Italy. You could travel it then as an archipelago where hotels stood out like islands of elegance and decadent living in the sea of streets being just then widened and modernized. Borromeo had frequented the racecourse and the theater, had “loved much” as he himself admitted, and had been much loved. “But God loved me best of all,” he would unfailingly add these days. “He knew. He knew all along, and when He got me, He wouldn’t let go. He’s the last of my lovers. Of course,” he would conclude, “keeping in mind that God is neither male nor female.”

  Bora’s request for a meeting did not surprise him. He knew Cardinal Hohmann well enough to be in competition with him – a friendly competition but one nonetheless; and he appreciated that the German aide wisely tried to take advantage of it. Still a young man as cardinals go, he figured as fifty-five in his passport, though he was a couple of years older than that. Tall and elegantly built, he s
poke Latin with the same heavy Roman accent he put into his Italian speech, and the unaffected ease of one who doesn’t have to prove himself.

  He’d first met Bora at a papal audience for German officers during Hitler’s visit in 1938, and they had fallen in to talking about church music and the organs in Roman churches. Today Bora found him at his house office in Via Giulia, sitting at his desk with a pile of newspapers to his right and empty cups of coffee lining the windowsill. The first thing he wanted to know was how the interview with Hohmann had gone, and despite Bora’s reserve, he gleaned what the results had been by the very fact that the officer was appealing to him.

  “Don’t resort to my common sense because I have none,” he lightly told Bora. “I’m not German.” When Bora accepted the invitation to sit, and took place on a skinny sofa padded with red brocade, Borromeo smirked. “And I’d rather you just called me ‘Cardinal’. Let’s leave the ‘Eminence’ to those who’d like to be Pope.” He listened to what Bora had to say, frowning now and then but mostly looking outside of the window, over the well-trimmed oleanders of his balcony, still green in the crisp winter wind. “So, why should I answer differently from Hohmann?” he said then. “You ask us to accept that you cannot, or will not curb the excesses of the Fascist administration in Rome.”

  “I believe I’m telling the cardinal nothing new if I assure him that the German Army is not pleased with any interim government.”

  “You’d rather have the city to yourselves?”

  “We’d rather have no interference from PAI and what else remains of Fascist police units.”

  “That’s neither here nor there. We expect you to curb the zeal of the Blackshirts left in town – even though I’m a Fascist of sorts myself. The Church was Fascist long before Il Duce planned his ‘March on Rome’. We marched on it in AD 64 with Peter and Paul at the lead.” Borromeo rang a bell on his desk. At the timid appearance of a cleric on the threshold, he merely gestured. Shortly thereafter, a tray with a coffee urn and cups was brought in. “I don’t trust people who don’t like espresso.” He ensured that Bora should accept the drink. “Your ambassador gets along with us – why shouldn’t the army?”