A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

  “I hope not, Cardinal. Give me six months and I’ll be running the distance up.”

  “In six months you won’t be in Rome.”

  “‘Man proposes and God disposes,’ Cardinal. Miracles happen.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Borromeo preceded him into the church, cool in comparison with the dazzling warmth of its threshold. “In miracles, I mean.”

  “Well, they’re a tenet of the Church.”

  “So’s the Virgin Birth, and you and I know it’s physically nonsense.”

  “I won’t discuss theology with my betters.”

  “But you discussed philosophy with Hohmann.”

  “I know philosophy.”

  Dressed in a plain black cassock, Borromeo seemed very long, a string bean of a man. Negligently he kneeled facing the main altar and signed himself before taking a place in the first pew. From a rich leather folder he extracted a coverless journal, which Bora recognized with a start to be in Hohmann’s handwriting. “I believe this is what you were after when you came the other day, and I wouldn’t see you.” He allowed Bora to follow a paragraph or two with his eyes, then replaced the journal in the folder. “If it is, here is how things stand. Number one, I will not give it to you. Hohmann’s secretary, who is not as dull as he seems, took it home when the cardinal failed to stop by his residence after meeting Marina Fonseca, as perhaps he’d been instructed to do in such cases. It is now in Vatican hands, never to emerge again if we can help it. Number two, this encounter will have never taken place. You must deny it if need be even in the confessional.”

  Bora lifted his eyes to the opulent ceiling of gilded wood and stuccoes, as if to find inspiration there. “Why would the cardinal’s journal be of such interest to me?”

  “My dear Major, I am a bit older and worldlier than you are, with all that my little kingdom is not of this earth. I keep myself informed. Hohmann kept a journal at the university. You have friends in common – you are his spiritual heir. There is no reason to keep from you what he initiated. What he initiated, you must continue.”

  “And what would that be, Cardinal?”

  With a condescending smile Borromeo laid the folder in his lap and rested his hands on it. “Now, then, Major, do not ask the obvious.”

  Bora felt exposed, just one step below vulnerability. “Why don’t you give the charge to Colonel Dollmann?”

  “Because he has a hard time keeping things to himself. Besides, you are Hohmann’s great admirer, he who defends his honor in death. What is it, Major Bora, are you getting cold feet as the Americans draw near?”

  “It isn’t the Americans who worry me.”

  “I see.” Borromeo studied him. “Since surely you agonized over it, be informed that Hohmann was asexual like an old capon, and Marina Fonseca the frustrated widow of an impenitent sinner, a typical case of vagina dentata. I was her confessor, you can take my word for it. Now, what are your conditions to continue Hohmann’s work? I am ready to negotiate.”

  At this point of his bachelorhood, even a vagina dentata sounded fleetingly attractive. Sullenly Bora held his hand out. “Two. The first is, let me have the journal.”

  “Sorry, I don’t intend to let anyone have it. I’m already bending the law in the Jesuit style. It’s written in Italian, as you see, and be content that it refers not so cryptically to individuals identified as Vento, Bennato and Pontica.”

  What learned but hopelessly transparent covers for Bora, Eugene Dollmann, and Marina Fonseca. It seemed to Bora that danger had entered the holy space and crammed it full of shadows. He’d run away if he could, wanting none of this. So he said, “I will do nothing before being granted to read this text at leisure. Nothing. Not even show an interest.” And when Borromeo, after a dry silence, seemed to waver, he prompted him, “When and where? I’ll give you my second condition then.”

  The cardinal stood to leave, without bothering to cross himself before the main altar this time. “Tomorrow evening at the infirmary of Santo Spirito. At seven o’clock. You’ll be interested to know that Mrs Murphy volunteers there,” he added with a smile entirely out of place. “It will give you a chance to practice your excellent English.”

  Once at the foot of the stairway, Bora was about to enter his car when he recognized Dollmann at one of the tables of a café across the street. The colonel lifted a cup of espresso in a toast. “This city is getting smaller and smaller, Bora! Fancy seeing you here. Are you skipping lunch for church these days?”

  8

  28 APRIL 1944

  The evening sky was turning above the tangles of wisterias, filling the Roman gardens with deeply scented grape-like clusters. The heavy perfume, breathed elsewhere, brought to mind days and images of other days, words heard and said to others, a different world of which Bora no longer was a part, because that world had altogether gone.

  At the Santo Spirito infirmary, Borromeo was nowhere to be found, likely to avoid hearing Bora’s second condition. A plump nun handed him a sealed envelope. In it, an unsigned and typewritten message read, Ask for Mrs Murphy. She knows nothing, but has the folder for you.

  Not knowing what to think of the arrangement, but less disappointed now by the cardinal’s absence, he did ask for her, and was waiting in the hallway when a young woman’s voice reached him from a double door. “You realize you shouldn’t be here in uniform.”

  Bora recognized the singing American speech and turned on his heel. Mrs Murphy stood a few steps away, holding a tray of bloodstained bandages.

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “I’m sorry – I come directly from work.”

  Had she been less beautiful. Unhappily Bora looked at her, and she at him.

  “What are you doing here, Major Bora?”

  “I’m here at Cardinal Borromeo’s prompting.”

  “Very well.” She handed the tray to a gliding little nun, stepped into a doorway for a moment, and came out of it with a sealed manila envelope, which she stretched to him without coming close. “As I understand, you are to return this within three hours at the latest. You may sit in there. And please have Sister inform me when you’re done.”

  Bora struggled to remove his eyes from her. “Thank you.”

  “Good night, Major.”

  Bora stepped toward the small room, but halted on the threshold to watch her as she walked down the hallway, away from him. Under the electric light she was ruddy-haired and very different from Dikta, who was fair and good-looking as mares are good-looking, strong and tall. Mrs Murphy was not frail but smaller, daintily made – she had nice hips, fine ankles, an adorable curve of the spine onto the small of her back. Bora felt lonely for his wife’s want of him and wished there were someone with the same want.

  The reading took two hours, at the end of which the web had so closely been woven around him, even the instinct to escape he had felt at Ara Coeli was impossible to heed. Aside from mentioning frequent meetings with Pontica, whom Bora understood to mean Marina Fonseca, Hohmann – who had not seen fit to speak openly to him in life – was compromising him in death: and not so indirectly, laying out unfinished plans that begged to be taken up.

  He was aching and in a despondent frame of mind when he returned to the hotel. Had Dollmann not waved at him, he’d have ignored his presence at the bar. But now he had to join the colonel, though he politely refused to drink a sambuca – he detested the drink’s soapy taste and its turning milky when water was added.

  “We didn’t have a chance to speak after you left church yesterday.” Dollmann spoke over his drink. With a finger he was drawing slow circles on the rim of the glass, in a gesture Bora had seen women make, and which in women he had always found attractive. Not here and now. He ordered mineral water and gave up thinking of a way to take aspirin without Dollmann inquiring about it. So he placed the medicine bottle in plain sight on the counter, deftly unscrewed its cap, let three tablets roll out and put them in his mouth, all with his right hand, taking a sip of water after them.

&nbs
p; “I’m glad you don’t toss your head back when you drink,” the colonel only observed. “Some people do. I find it doltish.”

  Nothing ever happened by chance with Dollmann, this much he knew. Nothing he said was accidental. When their elbows nearly touched, Bora avoided the contact. He felt very insecure near the SS. There were sexual reasons for it as well as political ones, and knowing how well informed Dollmann was, how much he had to do with all that went on, he kept aloof – not hostile, but watchful. Only when the colonel said, “It was fortunate you had nothing compromising in your address book,” temper got in the way of prudence.

  “Was anyone expecting there should be? I’m a creed-bound officer.”

  Dollmann shook his head. He lay the address book on the counter, and because Bora did not motion toward it, he pushed it over to him. “Be quick and copy the addresses you most care about. It has to go back. I warned you.”

  “You warned me about my diary. As for whatever else they might have been looking for, it’s where it won’t be found.”

  Even after the sambuca was gone, its soapy, pungent aroma stayed in the glass. It was a tiny glass and Dollmann poured himself another dose. “Bora, what does it take to seduce you? Most men like being seduced, even on a national scale.”

  “Kappler tried it before you, Colonel.”

  “Do you presume to compare my reasons to Kappler’s?”

  “No, but seduction is what it is.”

  “Let me give it to you straight, then – unless something is done to restore the fabric broken by Hohmann’s unfortunate death, there will be disaster coming to the Vatican, the Lateran, St Paul’s and everywhere else Jews are hidden.”

  “Well, you’re Himmler’s friend.”

  Dollmann made a significative gesture by joining his wrists, fists closed. “You may have one hand, but it’s free.”

  And this was no spiderweb that he might hope to tear. Bora felt as though a wild animal inside him were trying to sniff the trap, going in circles to recognize the smell of the hunter. He resisted Dollmann even to the extent of avoiding his glance, though he was not one to be spoken to without facing his questioner.

  Leaning with his elbows on the counter, the colonel spoke nearly into his ear. “Have you not put your career and your life at risk for Guidi, who is nothing to you, just like your wife was nothing to you? Are you not sticking your neck out for a dead priest? It’s time you joined your own.”

  “No one is my own that I can tell.”

  “Except for me.”

  Bora heard the sentence slide into him, and was hurt by it in an unexpected, personal way. “Then prove it to me – you know as well as I do who is behind the cardinal’s death. What will you do about it?”

  Dollmann laughed a low gurgling laugh. “That’s not a good move, Bora. Take the pawn back and place it somewhere else – I won’t penalize you for it.” Then he was silent for a time, during which tension strained between them. People came and went to and from the counter, and to them they must have seemed only officers drinking after hours. But in the end Dollmann turned Bora around, grimly. “Listen to me. I speak to you from your shadow side – not quite your dark side, but the one that receives less light. I come closer to what you are seeking than any surrogate brother. Guidi is not your counterpart – I am. He is weak because he does not dare and is without passion, and so he cannot and will not be your friend. His heart is dull. But you and I, we are two of an intellectual kind, we play the game well. We have played it since we met, and we could as easily as not have been enemies, but had too much in common. We have a kinship, and I claim it.”

  “And what will come of it?”

  Dollmann forced the address book into Bora’s hand, and Bora saw there was a piece of paper in the middle of it. He pulled it with thumb and forefinger, carefully. He unfolded it and recognized it as an SS list of families due for arrest in the morning. By their surnames he knew they were Jews. “This is a restricted document!”

  “It is.”

  Bora swallowed. “What do you expect me to do, sleep over the knowledge of it?”

  “No. I plan to make you uncomfortable.”

  How well the trap worked. Bora was close enough to smell the steel of its hinge. He said, staring the SS in the face, “Colonel Dollmann, it may have been different for you, but in the past five years I tried to look at this ordeal as having the only redeeming quality of every war – that all issues are clear-cut in it, all allegiances beyond question. I had my doubts and God knows I dealt with them as best I could, but the awful moral choice won’t go away. I don’t need you coming here to remind me we’re all hanging from its noose.”

  “Nicely put. Would you care for a sambuca now?”

  “God, no.”

  Dollmann placed the piece of paper in Bora’s pocket. With his back turned, while the major scribbled a few addresses on his calendar, she said, “There’s Tosca with Maria Caniglia coming up at the opera. Will you join me?”

  Bora gave back his address book, coldly. “Who is singing Cavaradossi?”

  “Gigli, who else.”

  “I’ll come.”

  29 APRIL 1944

  On Saturday morning, Bora’s secretary put away bundles of papers in the drawers of her desk, cleared her few things and asked General Westphal whether she could leave now.

  “Don’t you want to wait until the major comes back from Soratte? It’ll be less than an hour now.”

  She said she didn’t. Westphal felt sorry for her, but let her go.

  Professor Maiuli told Antonio Rau that he believed no progress had been made during the weeks of Latin lessons. At this speed, they’d still be at the second declension by Ferragosto. He had to apply himself, what the devil. It was almost like stealing, to take money for lessons that did not seem to penetrate, as he said, “past the auricular pavilion”. Rau apologized and promised to do better: it was a privilege coming here in any case, even if just to listen to one who knew Latin better than an ancient Roman. Besides, there might be a chance to intensify his study. With his mother who had been ill, and relatives come to crowd their house after the raid on Via Nomentana, he wondered whether he could impose himself for a couple of weeks. He was ready to pay a hundred lire per day and he’d be content to sleep on the sofa in the parlor.

  Signora Carmela, who’d been listening, said that of course it was up to the professor, but she thought it would be more equitable to calculate a monthly rate and divide it in half. Rau acted insulted. It was out of the question.

  “Do I really look like I can’t afford it? Besides, I don’t know how long I need to stay. Could be less than two weeks, but it could be more. It all depends on my relatives, you see, whether they find other accommodations or not. I have permission to relocate from the authorities.” If they didn’t mind, Rau added, he’d bring along three or four suitcases from his parents. They contained nothing breakable and would fit under any bed.

  The perspective of fourteen hundred lire spoke black-market meat and cheese to the conservative Maiulis. And everything about the agreement told them not to inform Guidi for now.

  30 APRIL 1944

  At eight o’clock in the morning, on a Sunday when the Piazza Vescovio hospital was unusually quiet, Captain Treib told him, “You’re back in business. Your last Wassermann test is OK.”

  That he should say so made Bora smile, not only because of what it meant, but for the informal concession to American talk. “Let’s go to my office,” Treib was adding now. “There’s something else I want to discuss with you.” And once seated behind the metal desk, he came to the point. “How often are you in pain? Every day?”

  It’d be no use hiding things from him. “Nearly every day,” Bora said.

  “It’s not going to get better, you ought to know. I’m sure they told you up north, and they might even have tried to fix things. You’ll have to have it opened again.”

  For a moment it was like sitting in front of the Italian surgeon, five months earlier. Bora lit himself a c
igarette. “I can’t afford time in a hospital.”

  “The question is, can you afford being ill on the job?” Treib kept calm watery eyes on him, leaning with his chair against the drab gray wall of the room. “When this is over you’re going back to your regiment, I’m sure – I’ve seen you under the bombs at Aprilia. The diplomatic interlude has been for recuperation.” He lowered his eyes from Bora’s stare. “So, what’s the story of this pain? Are you one of those whom luck made feel immortal?”

  Bora smirked. “Two years in Russia, including being caught by, and escaping from the Red Army, with hardly a scratch. It was difficult to accept that the same invulnerable body should be injured on a useless Italian country road.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I ask myself whether a man in pain acts as he would in normal circumstances, or reacts to his own suffering, projecting it. Is well-being a prerequisite to restraint?” Bora half-smiled. “I maintain balance, but at what cost, I don’t know. My wife tells me I’m stoic. I’m not. I just put things off. I refuse them. If I say there’s no pain, by God, there’s no pain.”

  “But there is.”

  “There is. And it’s true that what I want is field duty. That’s where life is real.”

  “Only because the opposite is so real.” Treib lifted his own hand, scarred by the partisan bullet near Albano. “As I found out two months ago.”

  Glad to change subject, Bora stalled the talk of surgery. “So, what about the prisoners who got away when you were waylaid?”

  “Well, they got away. They were two of the wounded we originally caught at Salerno, one of them for the second time.”

  “Wounded twice?”

  “No. Captured twice.” Treib’s smile did not relieve the weariness of his eyes. “But he managed to escape twice, so we’re even. Even with a bullet in his thigh, he jumped like a rabbit over a maze of hedges and was gone.”