A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

Bora looked intrigued. “Really? What size?”

  “Not Merlo’s and not Sutor’s, from what I can judge. Closer to yours, I’d say.” And because this time Bora seemed half-amused, half-vexed, Guidi added quickly, “That is, taller than most. And I found ample proof that for all of his private flaws, Merlo has been a regular terror on party graft in Rome. It explains things, doesn’t it?”

  Bora, who had difficulty using fork and knife, impatiently let go of both. He sat for a moment with frustration on his face. “Only if we can connect with her death the mysterious recipient of the clothes, who may or may not be the secret tenant,” he said afterwards. “You can’t expect much collaboration from us if you start exploring the Sutor lead, or another German lead.”

  “I know. And we have no reason to assume she knew there was anyone hiding in 7B.”

  At that very moment, as they sat across from one another, Guidi had the bizarre temptation to tell Bora the real motive for his preoccupation – that he loathed lying to the Maiulis, that Francesca had been as indifferent to him as before, and that last night he’d managed what amounted to masturbating in her, smothering every sound, fearful that Signora Carmela might walk in on them. Even had they been friends, it was hardly what he could tell Bora over lunch. He watched the hard shaven faces of the Germans at their tables, hair shorn to expose pink napes and bony temples. Would Rau go after them? Sitting here suddenly repelled him. Bora’s trust especially made him sick with guilt but with enmity, too. He saw the fragility of human life in that relaxation, and the impossible task of alerting him, because he did not want to. What if, he thought, what if... What would he do were Francesca to tell him that Bora was to be killed next?

  “You know, I thought things over.” Bora’s calm voice came to him. “I reached at least one conclusion for myself, if it comes to it. To the Americans, I will surrender. To the English, I might. To the Russians or the partisans, never. The only way they will get me is with a fresh hole through my head, which I won’t mind putting there.”

  Guidi looked around significantly. “Major, people might hear...”

  “So? We have to think of possibilities. I’m sure the Americans do the same. I know the partisans do.”

  5

  22 MARCH 1944

  On Wednesday the first issue of Il Messaggero was withdrawn after Bora translated for Westphal the editorial titled “Why Rome Is Bombed”, indirectly suggesting removal by the Germans of targets for further Allied bombing. The second issue was published without the article, but Francesca had already secured several copies.

  The day went by slowly. It was overcast and cool, though greatcoats were no longer necessary and women had started wearing brighter colors. Guidi once more made himself at home in his office on Via Del Boccaccio, at the foot of Via Rasella.

  Bora had a working lunch with Dollmann, and took the chance to mention that General Foa had not yet been transferred to the Italian jail.

  Dollmann groaned. “Why are you obsessed with the old man? Forget about getting him out of the Shambles. He’s done for.”

  “You assured me, Colonel. I can’t stand seeing him abused for doing what you or I would do under the same circumstances – protecting our brother officers. He’s as old as my father.”

  “Oh, stop it. Your father was a famous orchestra conductor, and he’s dead. As for your foolhardy stepfather, you’ll be lucky if he doesn’t land you in trouble, which is just like those Prussian monarchists who began keeping spinsterish diaries at eighteen in Lichterfeld and never quit.”

  “I keep a diary,” Bora said. “And mostly in English besides.”

  “Anything political in it?”

  “No. I’m afraid it’s a spinsterish list of impressions of people and places.”

  “That, too, can be political.” Dollmann played derisive, but pleasantly. “Am I in it?”

  “Yes. Will you speak to Himmler about Foa?”

  “Absolutely not. What do you say about me?”

  Bora took a sip of water. “That you are a man with the threefold soul.”

  “I am, am I? And which one dominates, the intellectual or the irascible?”

  “Actually I was thinking of the concupiscent, though I didn’t put it on paper.”

  Dollmann drew back on the chair, and if there was annoyance in him, he disguised it as one who puts a trim on plain metal. “I do like my comfort. Don’t you?”

  “No. My wife thinks I’ll self-destruct.”

  There was an icy, cautious offer of alliance in Dollmann’s next words. “Just be grateful that you have the aide’s guardian saints – die hochheilige Lampassen.” By which he meant the crimson stripes on Bora’s breeches.

  “I pray to them often.”

  “Well, keep a big white page in your diary for tomorrow – we’re both invited to the Fascist celebrations, are we not? Your entry will be a regular bestiary.”

  Bora poured wine for the SS. “General Wolff would be sympathetic if you introduced Foa’s case to the Reich Commissar. He’s liaison to Himmler, but you’re Himmler’s friend.”

  “I do think you’re doing this just to spite Kappler. If that were the reason, and nothing else, I might consider it.”

  “Well, what else could it be?”

  Dollmann laughed. “Hohmann taught you right. We’ll see. But here’s a word of advice, Major. If you don’t do so already, keep your diary under lock and key, and be kinder to me in it.”

  23 MARCH 1944

  Long before dawn, Bora awoke in a sweat.

  It was still pitch dark outside, and the room was an unintelligible void for him to stare into. The nightmare had been much the same, but details had been so vivid he could smell the burning metal, and feel the resistance of the cracked, blood-lined cockpit under his fists as he tried to open it. Yet he could not see his brother in it. And then the spiral staircase, the animal bounding behind, gaining on him, with no hope of escape.

  The phosphorescent hand on his watch marked five o’clock when he sat up. A wolf, he thought, that’s what the animal is. He shaved under the shower (the water was nearly cold, and not much of it), dressed and went downstairs to have a cup of coffee. And it’s a she-wolf.

  No one was at the bar at this hour except the woman who made him an espresso, and she looked like she had had a bad night.

  His schedule for the day was long and busy. He scanned it while the hiss of the espresso machine seemed to be the only thing to keep the woman from falling asleep again. The entries began at six, when he was to be at the office; by seven-fifteen, briefing General Westphal on new business; at seven thirty he was to meet General Maelzer at the Excelsior; between eight forty-five and nine he was expected at Centocelle where the Air Force was assessing damage caused to the airport by the latest air raids. At noon a quick lunch with Westphal before the general left for Soratte, and critical reading of the Roman press. Before two, he was to attend the celebrations either at the Ministry of Corporation, where the Germans had convinced the Fascists to congregate instead of Teatro Adriano, or at the Palace of Exhibitions. These over with, he’d leave for Soratte to join Westphal there and wait for Kesselring to be back from Anzio.

  He drank the coffee and was met by his driver in front of the hotel. As they left in the pre-dawn gray light, Bora glanced down Via Rasella, where cobblestones like fish scales ran down to the police station and the offices of Il Messaggero.

  By the time Bora was done briefing Westphal, Guidi arrived at Via Del Boccaccio, around the corner from Via Rasella, and began to work. At the Excelsior, the King of Rome was not yet out of bed at seven thirty, so Bora waited with an eye on the people who populated the hotel in the morning. He recognized the Minister of Interior among others, several officials who cropped up every time there was free food, and at least two movie stars, who he’d heard took drugs, and looked accordingly glassy-eyed. General Maelzer received him at seven fifty in the unfriendly mood of a hangover.

  And while Bora was getting a flat tire on his way to Centocelle Ai
rport, Guidi called Signora Carmela to find out if Francesca had come home.

  “No, she hasn’t. But she phoned just a few minutes ago and I’m worried sick. Said she couldn’t say where she was calling from, and not to expect her any time soon. It’s not the first time she has done it, but she sounded so strange.”

  Guidi put the receiver down with a bitter taste in his mouth. Before him were the sketchy notes he had gathered on Antonio Rau. Born at Arbatax on the coast of Sardinia, single, officially unemployed. His father had been a miner in Austria, where he had married, which explained Rau’s facility with German. He’d never attended the university and his parents lived nowhere near St Lawrence’s. Was Francesca with him today, and what for?

  “How’s security at the Palace of Guilds?” he asked Danza.

  “Tight as a fist, Inspector. There’s also to be a Mass at St Mary of Mercy’s. The Fascist Republican Guard is keeping watch there. On Via Nazionale they have something else going on, and there’s PAI blocking all entrances to the street.”

  “Fine.” Guidi left his desk and walked to the window. To the left, he could see the steps leading to Via dei Giardini. In the moist spring sky, the first swallows flew like shuttles on a loom.

  At Centocelle, the combination of badges on the Air Force uniforms was too much like his brother’s for Bora to look at it. He listened with his eyes low to the pilots’ requests for labor to repair the runways and took notes.

  At eleven thirty one of Guidi’s colleagues left for the movie house down the street to watch a foreign film. “It’s cheaper than lunch, and there’s nothing good to eat anyway.”

  At noon Westphal grumbled to Bora that they should close Il Giornale d’Italia. “That’s what happens when you have a founder who’s half Jewish and half English! ‘Obstinate defense of the Gothic Line’, eh? I want you to call the editor and ask him who wrote that.”

  The Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista had until recently had its seat in the Palace of Exhibitions on Via Nazionale, the long stretch connecting Diocletian’s Baths to Trajan’s Market. Bora went there directly at one o’clock, noticing the security checks at every intersection.

  Militia Guards lined the steps in their black uniforms. Inside there were already several guests. All were inevitably treated to talk of past glories, for want of present ones, and Bora was just grateful that he hadn’t had to attend the official swearing in of Pietro Caruso at the Ministry of Corporations. And he fared better than those who had after that ceremony overindulged in food and wine at the Excelsior. He tried to attend tedious functions on an empty stomach, and – having limited his lunch with Westphal to a mouthful – from long practice of political rallies could hold yawns in by nothing more than a quick swallowing.

  The two o’clock speaker, worse luck, was a one-legged elder whose nobility of sentiments was affected by slurred Southern speech and unbearable long-windedness.

  “Jesus, this is boring,” someone whispered behind him. The cramming of similes, hyperboles and quotations continued for more than an hour, by which time Bora followed nothing of what was being said. Left wrist in hand, he had assumed a lock-kneed immobility that allowed him to think of something else entirely. As always when he was under tension or stress, his left arm ached dully, a warning of pain that might unpredictably rise high from the severed muscles and nerves. Before him drifted thoughts of the trip to Soratte and of Mrs Murphy, and of the kind of pain a man with a leg amputated at the groin must have gone through.

  “I wish somebody would pull the crutches from under his armpits.” This time Bora recognized Sutor’s voice behind him. He looked back to see if Dollmann was here also, but he wasn’t. Sutor whispered, “What the hell is the old prick saying? Someone ought to cram a foot in his mouth.” But they all had to endure the speech to the end, and clap, too.

  Afterwards, Bora was about to leave when Sutor told him of a party at the German embassy in Villa Wolkonsky.

  “If it’s tonight, I can’t.”

  “It’s tomorrow night, and it’s the aftermath that counts.”

  “I have no objection. Where’s the aftermath?”

  “At Lola’s house, in the country, and it’s an all-night affair because of the curfew.”

  Lola was Sutor’s present lover, Bora knew. “How do I get there?”

  Sutor gave him directions. “Nineteen hundred hours, sharp. There’ll be intellectuals and movie people, and you can count on several of the women being high.” He grinned. “By morning they won’t know what got into them, or who.”

  They had drawn close to one of the windows, talking. Both were alerted to the shaking of glass panes by four distinct, close explosions. By habit, Bora checked the time: three thirty-five. His first thought was that the anti-aircraft was firing at enemy planes. A disorderly flight of pigeons rose from the Ministry of Interior garden. Sutor crowded him to watch. “What happened?” By this time the militiamen were in turmoil, looking over to their right and grasping their rifles. “Something’s been blown up back of us!” Sutor shouted, and withdrew precipitously from the window. Before everyone else, both officers rushed from the hall, Sutor to find a telephone and Bora out of the building, where the militiamen spoke agitated nonsense.

  “They blasted the Excelsior!” they told Bora, who got into the car and urged the driver down Via Quattro Fontane to Via Veneto. His car careened past the unstrung troops of the security checks, beyond the American Church and the block of the Ministry of War. Here it became clear to Bora that neither the Excelsior nor the Flora nor Ministry of Corporations had been targeted. Dark smoke was coming out of Via Rasella at the Hotel d’Italia end of it, where a bus lay on its side and people were crawling from it. Bora ordered the driver to bear left and approach the street from the opposite side by the parallel Via dei Giardini.

  Even as he left the car, a burst of machine-gun fire filled the steps leading to Via Del Boccaccio. Blindly Bora fired back. From here he could not see the top of Via Rasella. Midway up the incline, rags of smoke obscured the explosion area. A red froth of blood and sewage water ran down from it, and against that slippery waste Bora climbed to the screaming gate of hell.

  The blasted pavement resembled a slaughterhouse. Gore splashed on the walls of houses seven and eight feet high, torn pieces of human bodies emptied themselves on the cobblestones. Men crawled screaming in their blood. The cries, smell and sights briefly overwhelmed him in an agonizing flashback. It was the continued shooting that kept Bora in control.

  “Block the west end!” Bora ordered some dazed soldiers who were spinning around and firing at windows. Shouldering past them, he entered one of the houses at random. Before the terrified tenants, he grabbed a phone and sent word to Soratte that an SS battalion had just been decimated near Via Veneto.

  When he stepped back into the street, Maelzer and Dollmann had joined in from the Excelsior. Maelzer was drunk, ranting for revenge. Medics knelt in the blood and called for stretchers.

  Sutor had also come. He stood blankly, rooted to the spot where a man’s intestines had bowled out onto the pavement. “Help me out,” Bora said, unbuckling his belt. “I can’t do it with one hand.” Together they tied a soldier’s leg, blown off at the knee. Their sleeves and cuffs and the hems of their tunics became drenched with blood, shreds of flesh stuck to their fingers. Hunching over, Sutor had barely time to turn away before starting to vomit. Bora thought it cowardly, though only an empty stomach kept him from doing the same. He overheard Maelzer’s hysteria and Dollmann trying to speak sense to him. Army and SS were pouring into the street. They forced their way into the houses scarred by the blasts. Loud crying and shouts soon came from the houses as well.

  “Get some more medics!” Bora heard himself shouting. “Block the goddamn streets!”

  Dollmann rudely turned him around, and Bora could see he was exasperated. “Try to speak to that Maelzer windbag instead, or the whole block goes up in the air. There are engineers coming at his orders with enough charges to do it.”

/>   Bora came close to panic. “What can I tell him that you haven’t, Standartenführer?” But he went to the place where Maelzer mopped his face, exhausted with screaming at the German Consul. All it took was for Bora to address him and he reverted to his ranting until saliva sprayed all around him. “Don’t you tell me what Kesselring ought to know and not know, Major!” and upon Bora’s insistence, “Shut up, I’m telling you! If you don’t shut up I’ll have you sent to the Russian front!”

  “I’ve been there.”

  The rashness of his answer struck Bora only after uttering it, but Dollmann stepped in to deflect Maelzer’s anger with a timely objection of his own.

  Confusion reached an extreme. The engineers had come. Bodies were moved to the sidewalk, sometimes piecemeal, while crowds of detainees were herded with hands clasped behind their heads to Via Quattro Fontane, and lined against the gates of Palazzo Barberini. The last to arrive at Via Rasella, with a face of chilly composure, was Lieutenant Colonel Kappler.

  At a quarter past five Bora was back at the Flora, where he spoke by telephone with Westphal. The general, just arrived at Soratte, glumly informed him that orders had already been received from Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg. “He’s asking fifty to one,” he said. “How many died?”

  “Twenty-five at least. Several were badly injured and will probably die overnight. It could be thirty and more.”

  “It comes to fifteen hundred hostages. Too much, Bora. Too much. Were any of the attackers caught?”

  Bora removed his tunic, and was in his shirt. The blood-spattered cloth was wringing wet with perspiration and clung to him. “Unless they were grabbed among the local tenants, I doubt it. It was bedlam and no one cordoned off the streets for ten minutes or so. I’m sure it was TNT, yes, at least twenty kilos’ worth. It damaged the walls badly, and there must have been some other charges also, hand-thrown. Clearly several people were involved. They must have been at the corners of the streets perpendicular to Via Rasella, where they could get away quickly.”