A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

  Bora made no attempt to conceal his elation. “Well, that’s outstanding. What about the key chain?”

  Guidi shook his head. “It was probably disposed of elsewhere, or taken along.”

  “Well, it’s still good. But why did it take you so long to get this information?”

  “The garbage collector assigned to Magda’s neighborhood had been ‘borrowed’ by your colleagues to clear rubble from the air raids until a week ago. He grudgingly gave up the loot, especially the underpants, which he’d made a present of to some girl.”

  Bora had finished his coffee. He took out a cigarette pack and offered one to Guidi; after a moment of hesitation, he put the pack away without taking one for himself. “I’d be obliged to you if you had the material delivered to my office,” he said. “Much as I dislike the idea, the underwear will fall into my bailiwick, as I’ll have to confront Merlo and Sutor with it. We will be in touch by phone in the next few days.”

  *

  By evening Bora was at Mount Soratte. Hours earlier the field marshal had sent out orders to abandon Cassino. Early on Thursday he visited the troops at Valmontone, on the directly threatened Highway 6. He was weak and in severe pain, but the events were too enormous to dwell on it. On his return to headquarters he reported to Westphal, who looked exhausted, and left work at about eight – in time to join Colonel Dollmann for dinner and the long drive back to Soratte.

  As they traveled along under the cover of night, the conversation circled around the desperate situation of the troops at Fondi, but it was mostly because neither one of them wanted to be the first to resume the conversation initiated at the hospital.

  “Borromeo told me you managed to meet with him briefly yesterday,” Dollmann said when talk of endangered defenses was exhausted. “What is new?”

  “With him, the riots around most every Vatican soup kitchen.”

  “And with you?”

  Bora had agreed to drive the first half of the trip over, and though he knew the road well, he kept absolute attention on the pavement unrolling before them from the dark. “I told him I think I know what happened to Cardinal Hohmann and Marina Fonseca.” Dollmann’s silence he expected, so he added, “For whatever it’s worth, I told him in confession.”

  “Well, I’m not privy to the disburdening of your eternal soul. Where’s the suicide note? Hand it back.”

  “That is in the care of His Holiness himself. As for my hypothesis, Colonel, you might as well hear it. If we both know, after the end of the war one of us can inform Gemma Fonseca.”

  Dollmann groaned from the darkness where he sat. “This is most annoying. Why don’t you tell Guidi?”

  “Because he’s had his troubles from certain quarters already. I dropped the subject with him when I realized where it was going. For now it’s nothing but a hypothesis, as I said, but a more plausible one than the Mayerling scenario prepared for us. What would you say, Colonel, if I told you that Baroness Fonseca, having met the cardinal at a politically friendly home somewhere near the Pantheon between one and three p.m. on 7 April, had to return home to self-administer the second insulin dose of the day?”

  “I’d say nothing.”

  “Well, what if I added that the cardinal, having ample time to return to his residence and get ready for the four forty-five meeting with you, accompanied her there, as the lady sometimes grew unsteady just before her treatment?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “You will if I add that persons unknown, concealed in Marina Fonseca’s city flat and armed with a Beretta removed from her all but inaccessible villa at Sant’Onofrio, and loaded for the occasion, surprised the couple as they entered.”

  “You are being fantastic,” Dollmann commented.

  “Am I? I daresay, Colonel Dollmann, that a sickly woman and an octogenarian make fairly easy prey. I submit to you that she was forced to compose the ‘suicide’ note, but that – even in her extremity of illness and terror – she had enough spirit to embed in it a message of distress by using her right hand to write it. And I don’t think it an abuse of your patience adding that they then injected Marina Fonseca with a massive dose of insulin, causing a nearly immediate collapse. They undressed her and placed her on the bed. With a frail old man like the cardinal, God knows; an insignificant but well-placed blow could bring him down. Afterwards, it was just a matter of securing her fingerprints on the handgun, arranging the distasteful scene, and staging the murder-suicide with the selfsame gun.”

  “That’s even more fantastic, Bora.”

  “Less fantastic than it is for an adulterous couple to leave front and bedroom door unlocked in wartime, or for a diabetic to use up at one sitting the doses expected to last her well past the holiday, and leave the empty vials but not the syringe for the police to find. And certainly less fantastic than the sudden murderous craze of a long-standing member of the Tertiary Order.”

  Bora added nothing else, and Dollmann was as silent as a grave for the following ten miles or so. Even then, he only said, “You have everything but the murderers.”

  It was Bora’s turn to keep his counsel as the glum periphery sank further and further behind them. The lonely fork in the road by the olive groves of Fiano dimly came up before he spoke again.

  “I told you, I have those, too. But – like the policeman whose office was rifled even as my room was – I am not so deluded as to go after them now.”

  As for Sandro Guidi, he did not regret having given a thirty-day notice on his rent. Thanks to Danza he’d already secured new accommodations on Via Matilde di Canossa, off Via Tiburtina, where he’d soon move his few belongings. Truly, he was anxious to go.

  Getting up on Friday, through the half-open door, he could see Francesca massaging her legs on the bed, stretching to reach for them as she sat up with a face of discomfort. These days she was sweaty, often nauseous, not bothering to change from her nightgown.

  “Need anything?” he asked as he went by, and she gave him a look of disgust. “Close the damn windows in your room, will you? I can smell the stinking asphalt and it makes me want to puke.” And it was true, she vomited often, and every half-hour she headed for the bathroom with a waddling walk he couldn’t reconcile to the boyish thinness of a few months ago. Dr Raimondi, whose wife had volunteered to adopt her child, had invited her to stay with them until the delivery, but Francesca made it clear she had no intention of being cooped up anywhere until the time came. So she spent her days reading magazines between the bedroom and the toilet, shrugging off Signora Carmela’s lamentations about the professor. To Guidi she had little to say, but then he acted as if leaving in less than a week’s time meant nothing to him.

  Driving to work on a morning that looked like enamel, Guidi simply wanted to extricate himself from the situation. As for the Reiner case, blanket, can opener and underwear had been duly delivered, but Bora had neither called back nor showed up.

  20 MAY 1944

  Dollmann and Bora were less than half an hour from Soratte when the colonel, who had taken the wheel, silently handed him a folder from the leather case at his side. Bora rested it on his knees to open it. In the delicate light of early morning, as they steadily climbed toward the redoubt, the informer’s nameless photograph and one typewritten page of details already seemed like an obituary. He’d nearly forgotten about this. “As promised,” Dollmann reminded him, observing Bora’s response to the material through the corner of his eye. “Return it as soon as you’re well acquainted with it, no later than on our way back.” All he could see was a setting of the jaw under Bora’s skin.

  “Is this all we know, Colonel?”

  “It’s all you need to know.”

  “How dependable is the informer’s routine?”

  “Very. Never missed a date so far.”

  “So the next trip is on the twenty-first.”

  “Sunday, correct.”

  Bora spoke heedfully, keeping his eyes on the folder. “I will be there.”

  “How do
you plan to do it?”

  “I’ll use my side arm from twenty feet away, no more.”

  “It’s risky.”

  “Everything is risky if it’s not done well. This will be done well.”

  Seeing a column of armored cars approaching in the rear-view mirror, Dollmann pulled to the grassy side of the road to let them pass, and spoke over the idling of the engine. “What if something goes wrong? You know I cannot help you then.”

  “Like all seducers, you’re not expected to be there if there’s hell to pay.”

  “We’re both doing it to spite Kappler, I think.”

  “Not I.”

  Dollmann flicked some ashes from his cigarette off the dashboard with a finicky sweep of his gloved fingers. “How do you know I will not turn you in afterwards?”

  “I don’t. It’s likely that I don’t care. We all go to bed with our conscience and must face it in the morning. I haven’t been to Stalingrad to break down and worry about Kappler.”

  The armored cars went by, so dusty as to be soon indistinguishable from the hillside as they rumbled on. Dollmann lowered his eyes, rubbing his fingers to dust the cigarette ash off them. “What would Wolff think? I have pangs of remorse about him.”

  “It was Wolff who to please the Pope released Vassalli from jail, with all that he’s a socialist and a Resistance leader. It seems to me we make our own laws as we go along.”

  Dollmann put the car in gear and started on the road again, and Bora squared an amused look at him. “I will not turn you in, no matter what.”

  They did not come back to Rome until the morning of Sunday, the 23rd, when Gaeta had already fallen to the American troops and the Aquino airfield had been taken – and lost – by the British. Bora skipped lunch to telephone Ras Merlo at the detached office of the National Confederation of Fascist Professional and Artistic Unions.

  Merlo recognized him at once. A confused background noise might have meant he’d gone to close the door, and he followed his greeting with an anxious, “So, Major, have you caught Magda’s killer?”

  “I am trying to.” And though Bora knew he should have added some form of deferential address, he didn’t. “There’s a delicate question I must ask, regarding the matter at hand. No, unfortunately I have no time to meet you in person; the telephone must do.” As he spoke with the receiver cradled between neck and shoulder, Bora undid the brown paper package containing the objects Guidi had recovered from the garbage collector. Setting aside the can opener, he fingered the folded army blanket. “No doubt,” he said, “you perceive the importance of your sincerity in answering me.”

  “Well, of course I do!” Merlo sounded uneasy at the other end of the line. “What is the question?”

  “Did you give the following gift to Signorina Reiner...” Inside the blanket, Bora had found the pair of women’s underwear. Unwilling to touch them, he stared at them as he gave a description. “Silk briefs, off-white, with a double row of gray lace...” but then he had to handle them to look if there was a label. “No label. They were made to measure, as it seems.”

  A dead silence followed on Merlo’s part. Bora kept his eyes on the delicate cloth, meticulously stitched, and as extraneous to the severe top of his desk as he could think of. He had, in truth, a great desire to pass his fingers over the silk, to feel the finely knotted grain of the lace, but it was neither the time nor the place. He was about to insist on an answer when an irate question from Merlo came hissed in return. “Where did you find them? I demand to know.”

  Perhaps because he was aroused, Bora’s irritation followed. “You’re hardly in the position to demand anything, Secretary General. Did you buy this undergarment or not?”

  Merlo snorted into the phone, impatiently. “And what if I did? It’s not a crime to give a gift.”

  “That’s true. Did you?”

  “Yes. I had a set of them made for her after she’d chosen the silk on Via Tritone, at ISIA. This – that pair – she was wearing on the day she died. We... well, suffice it to say I know she was wearing them, Major. And this outrage had better lead somewhere.”

  Magda Reiner was not wearing them under her nightgown when she died. “It will,” Bora said, and put the phone down.

  A few streets away, Francesca told Signora Carmela she did not feel well.

  Guidi was returning from buying the Sunday edition of the newspaper when to his surprise it was Pompilia who rushed out of the Maiulis’ apartment. “Have you got your car out there, Inspector?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “You’ve got to take Signorina Lippi to the doctor, quick. Her sac has broken already!”

  “What sac?” Guidi reached for the keys in his pocket.

  “Never mind, just get the car to the door!”

  “Where’s Signora Carmela?”

  “In the parlor, praying to St Jude, the goose. Will you get the car?”

  Francesca was doubled on the edge of the bed in her room. Pompilia hovered in front of her, and all Guidi could really take in was that the bed was soaked with liquid, and the floor, too, but there was no blood. Francesca fought back help with one hand, and rocked back and forth without straightening up, letting out throaty cries in between the words she moaned: “I’m dying... I’m dying... I’m dying...”

  “You’re not dying.” Pompilia raked back the hair from Francesca’s face as she leaned forward. “You’re just paying back the fun you had.” And to Guidi, who stood, seemingly incapable of getting started. “Grab a quilt and help me take her outside.”

  It was difficult to sustain Francesca, who had to be all but dragged through the hallway and past the parlor where Signora Carmela covered her ears with her hands. It was even more difficult to pass through the front door, so Guidi went first, sideways, then Francesca, knees bent, her great body rubbing against the stationary leaf, and finally Pompilia. The neighbors were strung along the ramp of stairs, and their presence only elicited a more clamorous display from Francesca. She is doing it on purpose, Guidi thought stolidly. It’s just like her. Or else she’s really in pain.

  “How long do I have to take her there?”

  “You’ll get there all right – just don’t stop on the way.”

  They placed Francesca on the front seat, and covered her with the quilt. She was sweaty and red-faced with strain, but the neighbor said, “As long as she moans like that you’re fine. If she starts holding her breath in to push, you’d better step on it.”

  The Square of St John Lateran was divided into light and shadow by the great masses of the basilica and its annexes. Hopeful pigeons speckled the sky over it in search of food. Two German soldiers sat on a green wooden bench, young and lost in their oversized, faded field-gray uniforms. An old priest, looking like a black mushroom under his wide-brimmed hat, climbed the steps to the church. Enormous apostles perched in two rows as frozen suicides on the edge of the awesome facade, at the sides of a titanic cross-bearing Christ.

  Bora had left his car at the corner of Via Emanuele Filiberto and walked into the blue shadow projected by the Lateran Palace to wait. He was efficiently not thinking of things at hand. He enjoyed the morning, the city. He felt a brimming love for the city today, a juvenile irresponsible romantic love for it. There was the narrow entrance to Via Tasso, cut through the block of buildings fencing the northern side of the square. An army truck was parked at the beginning of Via Merulana. The few soldiers in it were invisible to him. He walked out of the shade after checking his watch. His arm ached deeply in the sling, but differently from before – the ache was fresh and crude, bearable. And the holster of his gun was unlatched already.

  Guidi welcomed the emptiness of the wartime Sunday streets as he raced through them, a white handkerchief secured between the glass and the upper edge of the window to mark an emergency. He’d studied the itinerary, just in case, and confidently drove toward Via Morgagni.

  Francesca did not answer his attempts to distract her. Her face was contracted and she let those deep moans out, gr
abbing at her body. “Hurry up,” was all she said to him in a husky voice. “It’s killing me, hurry up —” and then she’d cry out and start moaning again.

  They’d come halfway down Viale Liegi before Guidi saw the German roadblock ahead, barring the crossroads of Via Tagliamento and Viale della Regina. There was nothing to do but stop and frantically reach for his papers to show to the soldiers. But the soldiers did not want to see papers: they were here to keep all traffic from Viale della Regina. Guidi left the car and showed his police identification, which did not impress them. Polizei, it was all very well. But even the police couldn’t go through,

  “I have a woman in labor in the car!”

  At his gesticulations the Germans grew wary and lowered the guns from their shoulders. One of them shoved Guidi toward the car and Guidi answered in kind. The muzzle of the gun found the pit of his stomach, and then an army lieutenant came from across the street to see what was going on. Guidi tried to explain. The lieutenant understood and spoke back in heavily accented Tyrol Italian. “These are all excuses – we’ve seen plenty of women pregnant with pillows. Go back, go back.”

  “Will you take a look at her?”

  “No, go back.”

  “If you don’t let me through she’ll have the child right here!”

  An acute cry from Francesca drew Guidi back to the car, and the lieutenant too, but warily. She cried out, “Ooooh, it’s coming, it’s coming...” and the German was less rigid, but still unconvinced. Then she did the unthinkable, lifting up her nightgown and exposing the dome of her belly. The German turned crimson.

  “I’m sorry...” he stammered. “Get going, then, get going!” And to the soldiers, “Nur heran!” to make them get out of the way.

  It was under the unlikely escort of a German army motorcycle that Guidi drove Francesca to the Raimondis’ home. Things moved quickly upon their arrival. The doctor and his wife helped Francesca in, to a room already prepared for her. “Is it almost time?” Guidi anxiously asked.

  “Not quite.”

  “But she said...”

  “She said you had to get out of the jam with the Germans. She’s definitely in labor, but it’s going to be a few hours yet.”