by Ben Pastor
Suddenly it was a matter of days. Three weeks, two weeks, maybe less. He functioned by methodical routine, concentrating on one thing at a time, and if events did not lose magnitude, they came into focus and perspective. In fact, it would only take three days for the Allies to billow over the Line. In the evening he flew to Soratte, where he learned that as soon as the stronghold at Cassino fell, withdrawal would follow to the immediate periphery of Rome. Bora had to walk out of the conference room to collect himself. Westphal, just arrived, exchanged a grim look with him, and for the first time he seemed to be very close to nervous collapse.
Back to Rome on the following day, Bora found that after a counter-attack German resistance had broken around the hard-held heights facing the valley opposite Cassino, and the Moroccan troops were streaming through. When Sutor laconically called him to communicate that Antonio Rau had forced the guards to kill him before anything could be extracted from him, it came as an anticlimax. Bora actually began to laugh over the telephone.
Guidi debated all day Friday whether he should swallow his pride and approach Bora about the professor, whom he’d seen carting dirt at one of the bends of the Tiber with a handkerchief bound on his bald head to shield it from the sun. A German soldier who looked no older than sixteen sat on an empty oil drum a few steps away, careless about the speed of the operation. Still, it was hard labor for one who had never lifted anything heavier than a book.
Despite encouraging news from the “free” radio stations, Signora Carmela had slipped into a state of mute apathy and had to be all but spoon-fed. She spoke of the professor as if he had died already, and had hung a black ribbon on the front door. At dinner time Francesca received a phone call from a woman who did not identify herself, but only said, “The wine has turned.”
From her reaction Guidi knew it was serious. “Is it good or bad?”
“Good,” Francesca said in a trembling voice. “Antonio died without telling on us.”
On Saturday two more mountains along the Gustav Line fell to the enemy after less than four hours of fierce fighting. Mount Majo went over to the French at three o’clock. At five o’clock Treib called from the hospital to remind Bora of his appointment. It was Westphal who took the line, and told Bora in a rough way, “Get your ass over there. You’re not going to save the front by being here rather than where you’re scheduled to be.”
Guidi was relieved to hear that Bora was not available, because he could tell himself he had given it a try. From the non-committal orderly who took the line at headquarters, he received an unasked-for piece of information. “The major left the following message for you, Inspector. I have news worth reporting. Contact Captain Hanno Treib at the Piazza Vescovio hospital if I am not back in touch by Monday.”
14 MAY 1944
“Well, there’s the curious cat, minus the paw he left in the lard.”
Turning his head on the pillow renewed the agony down Bora’s sutured left arm. “Come in, Colonel Dollmann.”
Dollmann stood by the hospital bed. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having surgery? I looked for you everywhere. Here’s a book of poetry for you.” He sat, with a sweep of eyes at Bora’s figure under the light quilt.
“Thank you. If the stitches hold well, I’ll be out tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. Would you please tell General Westphal?”
“Westphal is at Soratte. He sends word for you to take it easy.”
“I’ll be out in the morning at the latest.”
Dollmann let his attention wander to the heavy bandage at the end of Bora’s arm, supported by a folded towel so that the wrist lay slightly above the level of the elbow. The arm was strong, blond-haired, fatless. Bora closed his eyes so as not to watch Dollmann watching him.
“How’s the front?”
“We’re losing ground fast. St Maria Infante is next. The men are working miracles, but miracles don’t cut it any more.” Dollmann stood up. He went to close the door and walked back to the bed. “God willing, the field marshal will convince the Führer not to torch Rome.”
Bora opened his eyes. “Is it being contemplated?”
“At this point, very much so. Look here, Bora – I only have a few minutes, and came to do more than inquire about your health. I hate to do it this way, but you’re immobilized enough and low enough to have to listen.” Dollmann leaned closer with his torso at an angle, like an anxious priest listening to confession rather than one about to reveal any truth. “I know more than you think about everything. I know what Borromeo is putting you up to, without realizing or caring about the risks it entails. I know about Poland, about Lago. Deny nothing, I know.”
Bora felt a surge of nausea. Only having already vomited everything, even saliva, curbed it a little. “I wish you’d let me be, Colonel.”
“Far from it. Whatever you suspect might have happened to Hohmann, I beg of you, let it go in view of what I have to say. It’s because of my knowledge of you and your visit to Foa that I approach you, and expect you to listen as closely as you ever did to anything in your life. It’s the last act of importance you will carry out in Rome, since we are defeated in every other sense. Bora, an informer has been turning Jews in to Kappler for several weeks. Gets paid for it. Hundreds of people – no, do not interrupt – hundreds of people who could have survived this time have been hand-delivered for deportation. What that means, God forgive us, we both know. Hohmann managed to counteract the operation to an extent, but now he’s gone. He would expect you to pick up where he left off.”
“Colonel, Cardinal Borromeo has already —”
“I am not speaking of humanitarian intervention, Bora. Understand me. And answer nothing unless you’re ready to do something about it.”
Dollmann did not let go of Bora’s eyes, and Bora kept track of Dollmann’s features closely. He had to steady his breathing. Deep raw pain traveled from the reopened wound and freshly severed nerves, a debilitating bloody pain. Death, as on the noon hour at Ara Coeli, passed between them quickly, like the shadow of a cloud before the sun lessens the light of day. A transitory darkness which both sensed, and virile grief, different in Dollmann than in him, but no less manly. Bora’s need to rebel gave in to that grief. He made a motion with his head, not quite a nod. “I understand. How can it be done?”
Dollmann’s forehead was sweaty, a reaction that seemed not to belong to such a controlled, sarcastic face. He impulsively reached his hand to Bora’s knee. “Thank God, Bora. Thank God. This is what I came for. Enough for now; details will follow.” He pulled back on the chair, letting go of Bora’s leg with a slow withdrawal of his hand. “Before I leave, tell me if there’s anything I can do for you.”
Bora was anxious to be left alone, and to put out of his mind what had been said until now. “Yes,” he replied. “There is. Do all you can to find me a copy of this.” He passed a handwritten note to the SS. “No, I have no idea where there might be one, but I need it most urgently. And I will need the name and phone number of the records section chief at the Servigliano transit camp.”
Dollmann nodded, already on his feet. “Should I let Guidi know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Very well.” From the foot of the bed where he’d laid it, the colonel moved the book he had brought closer to Bora. “The poems are by that charming American Fascist, Ezra Pound. Do read ‘The Garret’ after I leave. I... Yes, well, Bora, we’ll be in touch.”
Bora swallowed, a motion that sent blind bursts of pain up and down his arm. He watched Dollmann reach the door without turning back, and walk away. His arm seemed to yearn for a mouth to cry with, and he was reminded of the old stoic saying, “But the parts which are beset by pain, allow them, if they can, to give their opinion about it.” His body wanted to shout. He struggled with its need for a time, breathing hard. His soul wanted to shout also, because of what Dollmann had told him.
The book of poetry under his right hand was slim, a fine edition. He fingered its spine, opened it and leafed throu
gh it without large movements, until ‘The Garret’ came before his eyes. It was a short poem that ended, Nor has life in it aught better / Than this hour of clear coolness, / The hour of waking together.
How well Dollmann understood him. It was like everything else with him: the seduction he gave in to was inside him as want already, and it only needed a little chafing to arouse it. There had never been a rape of his mind. On the frontispiece, in black ink, the colonel had penned in lieu of a signed dedication the embittered pun Roma Kaputt Mundi.
Francesca soon grew weary of Signora Carmela’s dejection, and besides, she wanted a warm meal. “You’ll have to get out of this mood,” she told her impatiently. “You’re lucky he’s still in Rome. If you were less useless you’d go and bring him something to eat instead of squatting here doing nothing.”
“I can’t go out alone to the other side of town...”
“You’ll have to if you want to see him.” And because the old woman seemed not to respond more than by shrugs, Francesca sought to distract her. “Come on, I’ll let you feel the baby move.”
Signora Carmela had never thought of the possibility. “Feel the baby move?”
Hesitatingly she drew close to Francesca, whose light dress draped the front of her body so that the out-turned navel was perceivable under the cloth. Signora Carmela would not touch her on her own, so she guided her hand to the flesh. “Wait. There it goes.”
Signora Carmela was stunned. Again and again she reached for her belly throughout the morning, curious as a child. “Does it hurt? It must hurt. Does it hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt. Why don’t you make some soup? The baby would like that.”
On Monday, Bora felt at his lowest physical ebb since coming to Rome. He had hoped to be out by noon but began hemorrhaging at five in the morning. After a brief struggle to stop the blood flow, Treib would not hear about his leaving. “If you stay very still and do as you’re told, I might let you out by Wednesday. If anyone calls for you, I’ll tell them to come back then.”
So Bora lay flat, grimly conserving energy. He let the nurses wash, shave, feed him, check his temperature, blood pressure, inject him, ask him if he wanted anything for the pain. Only to this he said no, because he wished to keep his head clear. He tried to sleep instead, and drifted in and out of strange images. Behind the door of the room was a calendar print of the she-wolf (a gas company used it as an advertising device), and with that before him he fell asleep.
In his dream, the Bronze Wolf came to crouch on the bed, but not as a watchdog: as an animal bent on keeping him from ever getting up, ever getting out. The price to be let go was, he knew, his right hand and he said, “I can’t, I can’t – what would I be able to do then?” Then it was Mrs Murphy who was sitting at his side, and she kissed him and was so good to him, he thought he could not possibly love anyone else. Dollmann walked in the dream next, in a bizarre white summer uniform, looking like a prim Navy commander. He asked Mrs Murphy to leave, and told him, “You can’t have her until you do what you must do,” and then he saw that both his hands were gone, and the she-wolf sat by the door with his medals in her mouth.
Pompilia Marasca returned on Monday afternoon, to a reception of anxious faces from doors and landings. She looked no worse for her arrest, and even wore a pair of new stockings, with seams marking her strong calves. She walked to her door without paying attention to looks and comments. Only when one of the second-floor tenants asked her how it had gone, she looked up with the gathered brow of a martyr, a sign that she was ready to be interrogated on her ordeal. It turned out that she had been brought to the Mantellate female prison and kept there overnight, with all kinds of horrors going through her mind. She had been asked questions and then released.
“Have you seen the professor?” Signora Carmela asked from her door.
“Not since they divided men and women, and I was the only woman. They brought them to work.” Pompilia glanced at another inquirer, her cherry lips pursing. “Me? They wouldn’t make me work. I’m all nerves. They could tell that.”
“So,” a third questioner pitched in, “Where have you been since they let you out?”
She would not answer. “I need to rest.” She tossed her head in a motion of long-suffering determination and disappeared into her apartment. But to those who were persistent enough to find out, it appeared that – in a tucked-away little day hotel near the Termini Station – to the great satisfaction of her late captors, Pompilia had done some hard labor in her own way.
17 MAY 1944
When Bora left the hospital on Wednesday morning, Guidi sat by the entrance. He explained he’d called on Monday as per their agreement, and Captain Treib had told him to return today. Seeing Bora’s arm in a sling and without prosthesis, he said nothing and Bora volunteered nothing about his health.
“I’m glad you’re here, Guidi,” was his greeting, as though they hadn’t left one another a week earlier in the worst way possible. “I managed to telephone Magda Reiner’s parents before being admitted.”
In the same tone, Guidi replied, “I assumed that’s what your message meant. Did you find out anything of use?”
A row of uncomfortable chairs lined the anteroom’s wall, and Bora used one of them to lay his briefcase flat and open it. “The little girl’s father was an American.”
“I don’t see how it helps us.”
“It doesn’t.” Bora took out a large book from the briefcase. “Courtesy of Colonel Dollmann. The man in question was an obstacle-race finalist. She named her daughter after him.”
“Well, that’s good. I still don’t see...”
After showing Guidi the title – Die Olympischen Spiele, 1936 – Bora opened the book to the illustrated pages covering the 110-meters obstacle race. “Here. Please look. The gold medalist, and holder of the new world record, was Forrest Towns, USA, with 14.2 seconds. Another American, Pollard, won the bronze medal with 14.4 seconds. After the Canadian O’Connor, who came in sixth, was a third American, William Bader. Magda’s parents never knew his last name, as she kept mum about it; but the little girl was baptized Wilhelmina.”
“Well, Major – William is not a rare first name, is it?”
“No. And Willi, as mentioned in Magda’s letters, is a German endearment for Wilhelm or even Wilfred, not a nickname for William. I just thought it was interesting. Her parents told me the athlete was from St Louis, a city in Missouri.”
Guidi had so many worries – about Francesca, about the aftermath of Rau’s killing, about Caruso’s hatred for him – Bora’s eleventh-hour interest in Magda’s love life was infuriating to him. “So now we know who the child’s father is, Major,” he said under his breath. “Is this what you called me here for?”
“In days to come I hope to know more than that.” Quickly Bora replaced the book in his briefcase, and with it in hand preceded Guidi out of the hospital. “I also wanted you to do this for me.” He handed a scribbled list to the inspector. “We need to get all the details possible on what was dumped in the garbage in Magda Reiner’s neighborhood on the night she died. Surely with the open market nearby, the garbage men go through the bins.”
Guidi put the list in his pocket without reading it. “I imagine you have no interest in hearing what I might have found out in the past few days.” In the sunny springtime air, he felt alive and rebellious, and just about as sick of Rome as he was sick of the war, Bora, the Germans and the Americans, too, who might be good at winning Olympic medals but didn’t seem capable of breaking through Nazi defenses.
Bora tossed the briefcase in the back of his Mercedes, waiting by the curb. “But I do. I am most curious, and frankly, without your standing up to Caruso, I might have been tempted to throw Ras Merlo to his compatriots. Please tell me, but not here. I abhor talking in the street.”
They drove in the Mercedes (the side window was still without glass) back to the city center. Bora felt a deep dislike for the encroachment of modern housing on the once suburban villas. Guid
i kept his counsel until they reached Latour’s at Via Cola di Rienzo, since it was clear Bora craved coffee and would have it in the best place available. Facing the major over a steaming demitasse, and resolute not to inform him that Sutor had been inside at the time of the murder, he announced, “It wasn’t Magda who went shopping for clothes. The description fits Hannah Kund.”
Bora looked genuinely interested. “It may be because Hannah spoke Italian and Magda didn’t.”
“In any case, she certainly did not volunteer that piece of information when I spoke to her. Also, the neighbors noticed that Magda often stopped by the market bins on her way to work and dumped garbage from a paper bag. People notice these things, in times of scarcity, as she seemed to go through more cans than you’d expect one person to consume. And I am ahead of you as regards any evidence thrown out on the night of her death.”
“Excellent. Is there a blanket on your list?”
“A German army blanket, which a garbage collector took for himself – yes, it’s in my office now. The man reported finding in the same bin a stack of German military magazines, some of them ripped crosswise, apparently to make them into toilet paper – these, too, he brought home. I showed him a few recent issues I’d gotten my hands on, and as far as I can judge he recognized the headings of Signal, Adler and Wehrmacht.”
Here Guidi stared at Bora, who only said, “Well, at least they planned to send all branches of the service down the drain. What else?”
“A sealed bottle of mineral water, three unopened cans of meat, a can opener and a pair of fancy women’s underpants. The magazines are long gone, and also the bottle and the cans. Can opener and underpants are in my office with the blanket. All of it was stuffed in a pillowcase.”
