A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

  Guidi gave back the envelopes. “The household staff might be worth talking to again, on the side. What about the bodies? You must have had a chance to observe some details.”

  “Other than the obvious wounds? You perceive it was a challenge for me even to look at them.”

  Only because you knew one of them, Guidi couldn’t help thinking. “Were there noticeable bruises, abrasions? Signs of a struggle?”

  “Nothing I could see without moving the bodies.”

  “Was there sperm?”

  Bora felt a rise of nausea – it was the physical pain, most likely – and managed to keep it down. “I don’t know. There was such a mess of blood in the sheets. What puzzles me is why the cardinal would set up an afternoon appointment he didn’t intend to keep.”

  “Perhaps he forgot about it. Or couldn’t keep it.” Voom-voom-voom. In the dusk, the sky beyond the trees flared and grew dim. Guidi said, turned to the window, “They must be grinding Aprilia to dust.”

  “They must.”

  Still, how sweet the evening air was. Guidi fished into his pocket for cigarette paper, then for tobacco. Slowly. “Major, how could you stand what happened at the caves?”

  “I had no choice in the matter.”

  “That’s what you say, but for three weeks I’ve been asking myself why you did what you did for me. You were under no obligation.”

  No reaction came from Bora. Only after Guidi had finished rolling himself a cigarette did he break his silence. Reluctantly, as it seemed.

  “In Russia, when my brother’s plane crashed near our camp, my men did not know who he was from his documents. We have different surnames. It took the discovery by Sergeant Nagel of the photo of Peter and myself in the flight log for them to know. Even before my regimental staff knew, it was the non-coms who came and stood there and offered me their regrets.”

  “I’m sorry, Major.”

  “Ah, Guidi... I did so well, as expected of a man who leads a regiment. I told them I valued their sentiments, thanked them and dismissed them. Inside my tent the radio was on and I sat by it. That’s all. But you could have shot me and I don’t think a drop of blood would have spilled out of me. I was as dead as a man can get without dying. Could I keep him from being killed? Yes, I could have talked him out of volunteering for Russia, but I encouraged him instead. I was guilty. I stayed guilty and know I am guilty, and that’s why I could not let you die at the caves. Your life had nothing to do with it.” He flicked his lighter and lit the cigarette in Guidi’s mouth. “Here, you see? My brother’s lighter.”

  “You could not have prevented your brother’s death.”

  “I only told you so you know what was on my mind in March.”

  Guidi accepted Bora’s refusal of gratitude because it dispensed him from having to feel any. And he dreaded the idea, but the great difference between Bora and himself was how much suffering each of them had seen so far. Not even his agonizing closeness to execution equated the sum of risks and choices and losses Bora had faced. It dismayed Guidi that he might have to suffer in order to gain punctilious mastery of himself: Bora was bound in it but as wounds are in their dressings, ready to bleed if these are removed. It was fitting, Guidi thought, that Bora should be outwardly scarred, because he was no less so inside.

  When Bora entered his hotel room later that night, he felt a peculiar sense of intrusion that had nothing to do with housekeeping, his change laid out, or fresh towels in the bathroom. No, he thought. Someone has been here, looked things over and left.

  Still, he kept nothing of value in the drawers, and nobody steals books. He checked wardrobe, bed stand, medicine cabinet, and as he did so the feeling dissolved, exorcized by his touch until things were familiar again. Perhaps not. Everything is here. He struggled to remove his boots, but the rest of the uniform came off quickly. He readied a shirt for the morning by hooking the link on the right cuff.

  18 APRIL 1944

  Traveling with Dollmann was new to Bora, who had many times driven to Soratte in a different car from General Westphal’s, but never with an SS.

  The mountains growing in size before them had rounded slopes like tired waves of limestone, purple in color; when the car speeded along maple-flanked stretches, green shadows trembled on the windshield. Small farmhouses, islands in a sea of vineyards, seemed friendly, but Bora looked at them knowing it was in such places that guerrilla activity was planned, and from them that it was carried out. An old want to fight took him – the want he had told Guidi about, which was nearly as good as love. The carefully weighed risk, and freedom to take it.

  “Do you know what Edom means?”

  Dollmann’s question took him aback. “No.”

  “It’s Hebrew, and stands for ‘Rome’ in apocalyptic texts. You should know these things.”

  “Should I?”

  “There’s been a marked increase in the forced exodus from Edom in the past two weeks, which is about as long as our Hohmann has been dead.”

  Bora let some saliva gather in his mouth before swallowing. He was tempted to ask the question, but wouldn’t in the presence of the colonel’s Italian driver. Dollmann understood and said, “Feel free to speak. He’s a good boy.”

  They say Dollmann fucks his chauffeur. Bora thought of the gossip, trying not to look at the young man in the front seat. “Well, Colonel, how active was Cardinal Hohmann in opposing Kappler’s relocation plans?”

  “Plenty.” Dollmann seemed amused by Bora’s intent listening. “In his own intellectual way he was an old ass, Hohmann was. For one thing, either he cared for one or he didn’t. You, he liked, which didn’t keep him from giving you the runaround more than once. He didn’t like me – which is all right, and reciprocated. He had been an early supporter of National Socialism, which says much for you as his student, but then you were young and no doubt soaked in the maudlin revanchism and anti-Bolshevism of our blessed 1930s. The Spanish Civil War didn’t cure you, but cured him. It wasn’t your old philosophy teacher you confronted these past months. It was an embittered elder whose nationalism tottered under the agony of choices. He wasn’t as unscrupulous as Borromeo, bless his heart, who’s a man for the times – he was making amends, something neither you nor I have to do or wish to do. Am I correct?”

  “On which or how many counts?”

  Dollmann simpered. “I know your kind, Bora. You don’t fool me. Politics to you is a cloak for bare militarism, which is as ideologically unsound as I can think of. Kappler suspects it, and Sutor smells it, but I know. Still, you watch yourself by being good at what you do.”

  Bora kept absolute control over the muscles of his face and neck, mostly not to give Dollmann the satisfaction of thinking he had unsteadied him. “I’m a captive audience, Colonel – we have an hour to go.”

  “Oh, I said all I’m going to say about it. Preaching isn’t in my line.”

  In the following minutes, ostensibly spent by Dollmann reading a Roman reportage on Signal, Bora fidgeted. Hohmann had been active in some risky humanitarian concern – he suspected which one – and this concern had been thrown in disarray by his death. It was like fishing with wet wool. The clue had been given, but was flimsy and treacherous, and the forces at play immensely stronger than its unraveled length. “Are you warning me or informing me, Colonel Dollmann?” he asked when he saw that the SS kept silent.

  “La sto aiutando,” Dollmann told him in Italian, without lifting his eyes from the magazine. But “help” was not exactly in Dollmann’s line either.

  At Soratte it became apparent that the field marshal was setting plans for an orderly retreat from Rome in the near future. The 10th Army and 14th Corps were at their extreme point, and the line drawn across Italy too long to man. The French were an unexpected element of worry, and there was talk of a new American landing, even closer to Rome. It was so dismal, Bora caught a flicker of despairing hilarity in Dollmann’s eye, which he shared in a nervous way.

  “May does it, gentlemen,” Kesselring was sa
ying, his big bulldog face low on the maps lining the table. “The not-so-merry month of May only leaves us a chance to save face. When the ‘Spring Battle’ is through we’ll all have learned our propaganda lesson, not to mock the enemy for being slow. We should have told them to take their time instead of taunting them. On a daily basis, Dollmann, keep the spirits up in your social rounds in Rome and you, too, Martin. Having our face bloodied doesn’t mean we lose aplomb.”

  “What about Rome, Herr General Feldmarschall?”

  Kesselring knew Bora had asked the question. His eyes remained on the net of lakes and rivers spider-webbing the site of the city. “The time Rome’d buy for us, we’d lose before History.”

  Kesselring and his commanders were still conferring when Bora and Dollmann left the room and walked outside.

  “Well, Bora, how much worse can it get?”

  “We could commit excesses, Colonel. I’ve seen Sutor round up the people at Quadraro. How is it we always end up being uncivilized?”

  Dollmann laughed. “What do you mean, ‘end up’? We are uncivilized.” The season was still cold at this altitude, and the noon-time air sunny and bracing. The SS pointed out to Bora some of the trails hidden in the mountainous surroundings in the facetious manner of a merry tourist guide. “From here, unbeknownst to you, you can afford a full view of the hollows wherein at least two communist partisan bands prosper. Now then, don’t be depressed, Major. And in reference to our chat in the car, keep it in mind. Even better, let me quote the Good Book.” Dollmann tossed at him the bundle of soft woolen clues. “That thou doest, do quickly.”

  “I don’t appreciate the simile.”

  “Well, Kappler makes a blasphemous enough Christ, does he not?”

  Bora unexpectedly smiled at Dollmann, without friendliness. “I do believe you are acting the tempter, Colonel Dollmann, but I don’t care to jump from this or any other tower.”

  Dollmann answered the smile testily. “You’re already in mid-air, Major Bora. All you can do is fall well.”

  That evening, Donna Maria looked at him over her spectacles. On her invitation, he’d taken off his tunic and now stood in the collarless white shirt, priestly in appearance but for the gray braces crossing it. “What’s wrong, Martin?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Donna Maria.”

  “You can’t stay put and it’s unlike you.” Bora sat down. “Now your mind’s aimless.”

  He wouldn’t tell, nor would he answer a direct question. Donna Maria seemed to see through him all the same. There went her scrutiny again, which made him feel like sand eroding. He sat under it no differently than on the day he had come to tell her his wife had left him.

  “Tomorrow they’re burying Marina Fonseca.”

  “Well, it’s time they did, don’t you think?”

  “Once she’s in the vault, there’ll be no telling how they really died.”

  Donna Maria frowned. “You should put that ugly story out of your head, Martin. It’s done, and that’s how it happened. Let the old man lie in peace, if that’s how he lies. Leave it alone, Martin.”

  “I can’t.”

  How could he tell her he was physically afraid? Not since many months had he been so afraid. Things, matters were looming again. His senses were mercilessly keen. Like months and months ago, he’d have to revert to a stage of elementary denial, and head straight for danger.

  She motioned with her head to the growing length of lace like a delicate, intricate tongue hanging from her tatting pillow. “That’s lace for a wedding dress, Martin. I wouldn’t be straining my eyesight on it if I didn’t think you had enough sense to live to get yourself married again. Whatever it is, leave it alone.”

  “Donna Maria, I can’t.”

  “Then I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Bora listened to the tinkle of knick-knacks on the massive buffet, thinking that, like the little warnings coming to him, it was caused by a much larger rumble. He could not take heed anymore than he had two years ago in Russia, or in Poland. He watched Donna Maria with an odd sense of comfort. She was safe, yet not maternal – there was no taboo to her. He could tell her what he didn’t tell his parents, as he had in no way referred to Dikta’s leaving him in his recent letters to them, to ensure they would not, either. But Donna Maria – he was comfortable with her like with a wise old lover. And so grateful for the emotional shelter she provided him, the quirky need to confess an ancient sin came to his lips, as if owning it would somehow ward off evil to come.

  “Donna Maria, do you remember when I was a boy, the day I came home so late? I was not locked in the museum as I told you. I went to see Anna Fougez at the Jovinelli. And before that I’d been with your friend, Ara Vallesanta. I should have told you then, but I was ashamed – I did make love to her that afternoon at The Seagull.”

  Donna Maria giggled, bent on her pattern of pins. “Why did you think I suggested you go to the country with her? If you had to learn, I wanted you to learn from the best. She was good, wasn’t she?”

  “You knew!”

  “I couldn’t very well let you try your luck in Rome by yourself at less than sixteen. Of course I knew. What else was there to do? Your mother had begged me not to assign you a worldly uncle, as we always did with our boys in Rome. As for your stepfather, he wasn’t the kind who would have a man’s talk with you on anything else but horses and artillery guns.”

  “It weighed on me these many years, Donna Maria.”

  She sought his hand across the tea table, and he offered it.

  “I’d do the same now if I thought you wanted it, but you’re like me – always looking for more than a lover. It’s hard, Martin. Hard and lonely. So I watch you, and work at your next wife’s dress.”

  Back at the Hotel d’Italia, the dining room was half-empty. When Bora entered, one of Sutor’s women – Sissi or Missy, with the sequined ribbon in her hair – recognized him from the party at Dollmann’s, and promptly made for his table.

  “Well, if it isn’t the major who learned tricks in Spain. May I join you, Major?” When Bora said nothing, but gestured to the chair facing him, she sat down. “They say that all German women must leave Rome by the end of the month. It’s because the Americans are coming, right?”

  “You seem to know more than I do.”

  “Well, I wish you and I would get our heads together before then.”

  Bora snickered, because she was good-looking and silly. “I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

  “Why? Is there somebody else?”

  “There’s something else.” For a foolish moment Bora was tempted to tell her that it wasn’t until 30 April that his final Wassermann test would run. But he caught himself, since Sutor would hear of it then. A waiter came to ask whether the lady would stay for dinner, and readily she said she would. Unimpressed, the waiter turned to Bora, who managed not to compromise himself, saying, “If she wishes.”

  “So,” she took up, “why did you say you were staying at the Flora?” Her disillusioned, young mouth smiled widely. “No, come to think of it, don’t answer that one. Tell me, are you going out again tonight?”

  “No, I’m going to bed.”

  “It’s a good place to go.” She said little during dinner, ate with enviable appetite and then asked for a cigarette. Butter and lipstick left a ring around it with her first draught, as they had on the rim of her glass. Bora looked at her uncritically, as one observes a strange carnivorous plant.

  “So, Major, will you give a working girl a chance?”

  “No.” He moved the chair back to stretch his legs without meeting hers. “I hate to say this, but I really don’t like being solicited.”

  “Well, that’s flattering. It’s not what you told Captain Sutor.”

  “I like to be wanted, which is very different. You don’t want me, Miss.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I hope I can tell want when I see it.”

  She had taken her compact case out, and – peering into the squ
are little mirror – was applying heavy strokes of lipstick on her lower lip. “That’s funny, because you look to me like the kind who falls for a woman who doesn’t even know he exists.”

  Bora followed the motion of her hand on the upper lip and the grimaces she made in the process. Yes. That was true enough. And what would Mrs Murphy say?

  19 APRIL 1944

  On Wednesday afternoon, Westphal gave him leave to attend Marina’s burial, a strictly private matter to which Bora had however been invited by Gemma Fonseca.

  The area of the cemetery where the family vault lay bore signs of hasty repairs to monuments and intricate crosses. In the devastation, wreaths of palm leaves and fresh flowers seemed to mourn the loss of monumental art no less than that of human life. Only Gemma was present with her mother, a decrepit figure in a wheelchair, wrapped in mourning like a winter night.

  After the ceremony, Gemma handed Bora a manila envelope. “I wanted to give you these also. I thought of them after you left the other day.”

  Bora looked inside, where several postcards from Marina were gathered.

  She lowered the veil in front of her face. “Those, the police – who took the letters – had no interest in. You will find the messages altogether of a trite nature, I fear, but they are other samples of her handwriting.”

  It was Dollmann’s chauffeur who’d driven the women here. Bora accompanied Gemma to the car, where he made sure her mother was comfortably returned to her seat, and then asked for a few minutes more. From the Verano gate they walked back, only far enough inside the cemetery to be safe from prying eyes, before Bora showed the suicide note. He was ready for the reaction that must necessarily follow, but not for the words she pronounced, still weeping.

  “Marina wrote this with her right hand – why?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “She was left-handed. Ambidextrous, actually, but never used her slower right hand for correspondence. Never with me, certainly.”

  Seated behind the wheel of his car, afterwards Bora compared all the samples he had. The unsteadiness Guidi had remarked upon, and ascribed to the writer’s state of mind, could well be explained by Gemma’s comment. He tried to contact the inspector upon his return to the office, but heard he was off to Tor di Nona after a gang of tire thieves, and not expected back for the day.