A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

  Bora didn’t know of any such shipment. He glanced at her, taking a notebook out of his drawer. “Is that what you do, work with children?”

  “And with mothers. I volunteer in the obstetrical ward.” She paused, as if briefly forgetting the business at hand. “This morning I helped coach my first birth.”

  He felt a man’s clumsiness at her words. “It must be – of course I know nothing about it – but it must be hard. For the mother, and for the person who assists her.”

  “I think it’s beautiful.”

  Bora looked away with sudden shyness. He felt vulnerable, because she could read through him and was silently doing it even now. He had no desire to escape: he only wished she’d read him truly. If only he could say to her... Her scrubbed, delicate but healthy face threw him into a turmoil of confusion. With aimless resentment, he felt his married life had been a waste. “Why are you staring at me?” he said in the end, grieved by his mutilation enough without her calm study of him from where she sat.

  “I’m waiting for you to make up your mind. I wish to know if you will help me or not.”

  “You ought to know that you honor me by asking.”

  She dodged his words. “I’m afraid I’m just being pragmatic. Your emotions are rather transparent, Major.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Well, I am not mercenary, but must act as I think right for those under my care.” She sat upright, her shoulders straight under the light blue cloth of the jacket, as unwilling to show weakness as he was. “I trust you will not exact prices I can’t pay.”

  “My emotions are not very transparent if you think I will.”

  “I don’t think you will. I think you might.”

  Bora sighed. He felt weary, drained of combativeness. His mind was clear, but his feelings ran muddled. He ached emotionally. He simply wanted her to like him. “I will do what I can.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I will obtain the powdered milk for you.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Do you have the authority?”

  “I have the authority.” He drew back on the chair and faced her intensely, not as one who wants to intimidate. Rather, as one who lets the sight hurt him, deliberately. And he knew she could see the longing in him, a physical and intellectual hunger for his counterpart, and stern unwillingness to ask for it.

  Mrs Murphy held his stare. He was what women call handsome, even striking: that he was honorable troubled her, because she still did not like him. But she felt she understood him. This, she did not show. What she let transpire was a hint of vexed concern, sharp like a blade kept half-hidden but capable of cutting. “Thank you. What do you ask in exchange?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Here.” He handed her a paper he had been scribbling on. “This is a safe-conduct for you to drive home.”

  When she rose from the chair, the gloves she’d placed on her lap slipped to the floor from it, like lacy birds. Falling like a condescending, unthinking part of her – the glimpse made him ache as if he had seen an intimate part of her revealed and untouchable. Before he could reach for them she’d rescued them at her feet and the image was gone. Across the surface of the desk, Mrs Murphy extended her hand to him and he did not take it, but lowered his head in a stolid, repressed military salute. She left the room.

  He sat at his desk for some time after her departure. Not to relax, because the opposite was happening. He felt a dangerous need to give in. Worse, a lowered threshold of tolerance, reached and passed already. He regretted letting her go without at least exacting from her the toll of accepting his reasons. Couldn’t she tell? And if she could tell, why did she not say, “I cannot, but I understand”?

  Holding the line was no longer enough. He had run on borrowed time and borrowed calm for a full year, putting up a nearly infrangible front of self-control and even cheerfulness, and he saw now that not having taken time to confront crises only multiplied their weight. For the past year he had functioned at an increasing pace but only by inertia, as though speed were gained down the emotional incline he was traveling. Tonight he could no longer hold the line. Her coming had somehow torn resolve from him. The fabric inside was beginning to rend, fraying the weave. What was wrong with him? He could not think. Nothing he thought would not hurt. Tonight not one care allowed itself to be stashed away. From the inner shelves of his orderly mind things were falling of their own accord, and refused to be put back. He let them come down, unwilling to scramble them into their holes.

  He drove through the sad streets of Rome to get away from himself, nearly to the Vatican and back toward – but not to – St John’s Square. He drove circuitously, and finally to Via Monserrato, where he was tossed by an inexorable feeling of being lost and without reprieve. Donna Maria’s old doorway was like a shore to him.

  She kept entirely quiet even after Bora walked into her music room. She had been horribly anxious for him, and now that he was here she sensed that although he was physically unhurt something was very wrong. But she knew men, and how they do not want to be asked as they first come in, so she sat with her bobbin lace at hand, following the pattern drawn by pins on the cushion, deftly criss-crossing the ivory pieces.

  Bora had taken his cap off and unbuckled his holster belt, tossed the weight of leather and metal on the armchair, was undoing his collar. She could follow his movements without lifting her eyes, by the rustle of cloth when he removed his tunic and threw it on the back of the same armchair. It slipped off from it with a soft sleek sound of lining. The car keys were coming out of the breeches’ pocket. His boots silently crossed the carpet as he walked over to the piano to lay the keys on it.

  She could hear him heave and looked up at last. Bora stood in the middle of the room, lips tight, blinking hard to keep control but fast losing it. She felt him break down inside, piecemeal, so quickly that no wilful opposition to it could avail. A long time she had been waiting for this, unsure that she wanted to witness it. The lace-making pillow left her lap for the basket alongside her, because a woman’s knees are where sometimes men are brought by great anguish and grief. Still she did not look at him, out of pity mostly. How long since a man had come to her to cry.

  10

  29 MAY 1944

  Sandro Guidi realized that if the Germans were involved in the killing at St John Lateran’s, no photos of the victim would be forthcoming. What summary information about the incident available at the police station on Monday was useless, and he’d put her out of his mind when Danza came in to hand him a leaflet claiming the dead woman’s affiliation to a resistance group. On a hunch – he was not yet worried, just uneasy – Guidi called the Maiulis to ask for Francesca. The maid answered that the couple was out, and as far as she knew, Signorina Lippi was at work.

  At lunch he drove to the address Francesca had given him as her mother’s. When he rang, a middle-aged woman came leerily to open.

  Before long, they were sitting across from one another. She kept her hand on a pack of cigarettes, so that Guidi wouldn’t see they were a German brand – but he had already. In the small kitchen, a sword of sunshine created dancing reflections on the tiled wall. She yawned. There were deep circles under her eyes, but her eyes were beautiful. The beauty of her face was different from Francesca’s: there was a disillusioned, yet less harsh cast on it, as though life had dealt differently with her, or she had reacted differently to it. She was wearing a house robe and the generosity of her body showed, but neither nor was Guidi was concerned about it. The deep cleavage of her breasts was simply there, like the light on the wall.

  “Is she in trouble?”

  Guidi shook his head. “Not with us, anyway,” meaning the police. “I’m a co-tenant.” By professional habit Guidi took note of, but did not judge the undone bed, clothes on the floor, twisted newspapers used to start the fire in the cooking stove, cigarette butts overflowing from the ashtray and from cups and saucers, no t
wo the same.

  In a way she was more beautiful than Francesca. The hands were the same, slim and long, with fingers that seemed four-jointed in their length. She pushed back the hair from her face as Francesca did. “I don’t know where she is. She seldom comes here. I know she had the baby a week ago. Sorry I can’t help you.”

  “Has she mentioned she might leave Rome?”

  “Not that I know of. But she’s done this before.” She hungered for a cigarette, obviously, and was trying to find a way to reach for the pack without exposing it. She finally drew it closer to her by backing it up slowly in her hand while she talked, and next the stubby cigarette was in her mouth. Guidi took his matches out and lit it for her. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with her. I drove by her workplace and found it closed for good.”

  “So are most stores, until the Americans come.”

  Guidi kept his mouth closed. Since yesterday, he had run in circles without facing the possibilities. He was afraid of viewing the body of the dead woman at the morgue. So he sought Francesca elsewhere. Her mother’s face grew pinched when she took a drag. Smoke from the cigarette was blue, but that which exhaled from her mouth was slightly yellowed. It came to Guidi that perhaps Francesca had mentioned his relationship to her, and tensely he wondered what she thought about it.

  “Look.” She glanced at a cheap little watch on her wrist. “I don’t mean to send you away, but I’ve got a painter coming. He’ll be here in minutes, and if you don’t mind...”

  A painter. Sure. Guidi stood up, and she didn’t. He left, careful not to stumble on the worn steps that led outside. At the bottom of the stairs, the sidewalk shone like an explosion of light.

  Bora’s first care that morning was to ensure that the Red Cross shipment was delivered to the Vatican. The second was to follow up, at last, on what had happened to Antonio Rau in Via Tasso. Sutor answered the call and at once launched into an invective against Rome, the Resistance, and how there just wasn’t enough time to haul the bastards in. “That double-crossing son of a bitch Rau was just one. If the army had done its duty in the field there wouldn’t be so many alive and in hiding.”

  Bora sensed Sutor’s anger, but still said, “Had you not shot Foa, you might have a voice of sanity in this mess. You could have shot somebody else other than Foa.”

  “Yes, we should have shot you.”

  “I hope you’re speaking in jest, Captain, and even then I’m not amused.”

  “Just wait until you remove those stripes from your breeches...”

  Bora laughed into the telephone. “You’re so used to threatening, I think at times you forget to whom you’re speaking.”

  All of Sutor’s repressed bitterness surfaced, so that his voice grew shrill as it did. “I’m speaking to a meddlesome English half-breed whose ass we should have broken long ago, but will soon.”

  “Well,” Bora said acidly, “we will see about that.”

  “Yes, we’ll see about that. This isn’t Verona, you know. You keep on that path and you’ll end up in the German People’s Court!”

  Kappler picked up the line then. Bora couldn’t tell whether he’d stood by or just walked into Sutor’s office. His tone was collected. “You do irritate my officers badly, Major Bora.”

  “Only because I refuse to be bullied, Colonel.”

  “You have your flaws. Overbearing cuts it in the field, but won’t do with brother officers.”

  “Are you talking about me or Captain Sutor?”

  “A bit of both. But in a pinch I know where my loyalties lie.”

  “Well, tell the captain I don’t like being threatened. I will not stand for it.”

  “There’s much you don’t stand for, Major Bora.”

  Dr Raimondi was friendly and brief when Guidi called his office. “We haven’t seen Francesca since last Friday, Inspector. Would you tell her, when you see her, that the baptism will be on 4 June, at St Francesca Romana’s? We’d love to have her there. You, too, if you wish to come.”

  Guidi swallowed. They must think I’m the father.

  That evening, at the military hospital, Treib returned the diary with the same lack of comment shown upon receipt of it. His tolerant face resembled dough under the feeble overhead light. “Do you still want me to hang on to the letters?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “You trust me because I’m a physician.”

  “No. I trust you because you were in Russia, as I was.”

  Treib made a grimace of agreement. “Very well. And how is your arm? Let me take a look at it.” He went through the observations of the case, and then, helping Bora to put his tunic back on, said “So, have you found a clean piece of ass in the past month?”

  Bora, who was thinking of Mrs Murphy, was startled. “No.”

  “Time is getting short if you want to do it in Rome. Truth be told, I’d be too tired to make love even if the chance came. How does the song go? ‘Maschine kaputt...’ You’re probably one of those whom strenuous activity arouses.”

  The surgeon needed a ride, and gladly Bora drove him to his flat a few streets away. Treib stumbled out onto the sidewalk. “I’d invite you over for a drink, but I’m too tired.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.” With sudden concern, Treib leaned in, through the side window. “What will you do now? Where are you going?”

  “Not to the hotel. If I go back now, I’ll bed a whore.”

  “Watch it, friend. It’s not worth it.”

  Bora nodded and drove away.

  For reasons so obscure he couldn’t bring himself to look at them, Guidi left his apartment late that same evening and returned to his office on Via Del Boccaccio. There he parked the car and walked up the sad climb of Via Rasella to the opposite end, Via Quattro Fontane. A stenciled quarter moon allowed him to judge that Bora’s Mercedes was not by the curb, but he paced the length of the street to make sure. PAI guards and German soldiers stopped him, in both cases satisfied with his papers. Nowhere was Bora’s license plate – WH 1377445 – to be seen. He had not yet come to the hotel. Guidi stood by the corner, waiting and wondering what he waited for, other than for Bora to arrive and walk out of the car. He had nothing to tell him. Why should he wait for Bora? His mouth felt bitter.

  It was Bora, somehow. It was Bora’s fault. Guidi stood there with a lunatic, befuddled want to hurt him, this obstacle to his hate for the Germans. It was all because of what Bora had done, whatever he had done. Whatever. He was angry with him, resentful of the offer of friendship and – tonight – angry enough to hurt him.

  Scattered echoes from the Anzio front seemed palpable, as if sounds and lights flashing could be reached for and somehow held in hand. Guidi waited, his soul numb and motionless like a hub in the reel of his thoughts.

  The telephone rang in the dark. How Dollmann found him at Donna Maria’s was a mystery. His voice came over the wires, unmistakable in the prudence of his approach.

  “Are you alone, Bora?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “I just wanted to make sure I didn’t interrupt anything. Knowing your interest in anti-partisan warfare, I wanted to pass on the following item to you. Leaflets were printed overnight and circulated by a group that calls itself Unione e Libertà. I quote, ‘Once more the hideous game of barbarism has been played out in our city. On the twenty-eighth of the current month a woman comrade was without provocation gunned down by a German assassin in the Lateran Square. We who knew her hold firm the belief that love of freedom will not be extinguished with her death. Meanwhile we call on the Roman people to rise against murder and abuse,’ et cetera. I thought you’d be interested in knowing. It’s amazing where one has to find good news any more. Have you had dinner yet?”

  Bora glanced at the fluorescent dial of his watch. “It’s nearly midnight!”

  “No matter, I know a place where we can still dine.”

  Two cars had arrived since Guidi’s coming, neither of them disgorging Bora onto the sidewalk. Guidi lean
ed against the wall and wondered whether he’d be here at all, had he heard from Francesca tonight. Facing him, the hefty garden gate of the Barberini Palace reminded him of the awful Thursday in March. Any closeness to Bora had ended that day, in spite of the fact that he’d survived. The others had died. Being here with his anger was part of reclaiming his place with the others. The creeping of the stars above seemed to come through an effort of the celestial vault, marred by the glare of war at the horizon.

  What did ‘hurting Bora’ mean? How do you hurt a soldier? The only way, of course – Guidi shifted his weight on his feet, back and forth. Bora was sometimes unaware. He might be, coming back to the hotel. Slowly, slowly, the stars crept above, seeking the eaves of the roofs to disappear. It surely could be done, if someone had shot a woman at midday in the public square and got away. Guidi needed to be here with his anger and fear and grief. He needed to believe that a massacre and the outrage of barely living through it brought him here, not something else.

  No chink of light, nor outside activity revealed that the restaurant was open. Dollmann must have called in advance, because there was a waiter standing at the door to let them in. A few privileged guests sat at the tables, some of them well-dressed women. Dollmann watched Bora watch the women, and daintily picked up the napkin from the glass where it sat, spreading it on his knees. “I have my problems, too,” he ambiguously confided. “No intellectual should be burdened by the misery of our lapsed state, but here we are. You should have made provisions for – shall we say – your human frailty.” And because Bora testily avoided an answer, Dollmann answered, “Your flaw is that you need friends. You should settle for lovers, relatives and colleagues. Your quest is useless.”

  Bora sighed. “You surmise that lovers, relatives and colleagues cannot be friends.”