A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

  “Correct. Even I am not your friend. Only your ally.”

  “Well, I have had friends, Colonel.”

  “Ha. And what happened to them?”

  “Some died.”

  “And the rest?”

  “We’re no longer friends.”

  Dollmann smiled a clever smile. “Cigarette?”

  “No, thank you. I quit about ten days ago.”

  The menu came, they chose food and wine, and then the SS said, “You quit, why?”

  Bora relaxed eventually, seemingly amused at his own words. “I’m cleansing myself for the pan like a snail. I should probably eat sawdust, too.”

  “You’re superstitious!”

  “And scared.” Bora poured wine into Dollmann’s glass and his own. “I like to call it concern, but it’s fear. I haven’t had the full benefit of it in a while – it feels cozy to get it again. My best risk-taking comes from it.”

  Guidi closed his eyes so as not to see who came out of the car that had just pulled in by the curb. Then he looked, and it wasn’t Bora. He stepped back behind the corner. His mouth was dry.

  He had to leave. As suddenly and erratically as he had come, he had to leave now. Bora would not return tonight. And if he did return, he didn’t want to be here waiting. The stars ran between roofs when he hastened back to his car, where he sat as if hiding from them.

  There were many reasons for him to stay, yet one among them chased him from here. It was true: his anger had started on that day in late March, but when his own men had fired at Bora from the windows of the police command, he had not stopped them.

  How could he stay? Out of guilt, out of that guilt, he was not ready to kill.

  Hours later, on the bleakest spring morning he’d seen, Guidi walked out of the morgue with a loud hum in his ears. His hands shook so badly, he could not search his pocket for the car keys, and he had to sit down in the hallway to regain control.

  It was no comfort that he had lied to himself from the start about her death. For two days, he had said no. Now he felt as if part of him were sick and rotting, and although it was not love – it might never have been – he felt he should cry. His face twisted, but the tears did not come.

  “Does she have relatives?” the morgue attendant asked. “Somebody has to bury her. I read the leaflet and the papers, and I don’t want no problems with the Germans. If there are relatives, you tell ’em to bury her.”

  Guidi said he’d take care of things. How his hands shook. Looking at them made him aware of this weakness that he loathed about himself. His anger was tainted by it, and produced only a stunted, malicious want to find and destroy the man who had killed her: but out of revenge, spite, something less noble and fierce than hatred. If he could only steady his hands.

  From the morgue he drove to St John of the Hollyhocks, a church with three altars and six famous burials, near Ponte Sisto, because its parish priest had been in the square when Francesca had been killed.

  The priest, who needed a shave and a bath, shrugged at the questions. “It’s not like I really saw anything, Inspector. Just the body after it had already fallen. So did everybody else in the square. There were two men standing by her, and soon there were several, some in uniform, some not. All Germans. They might have shot her from a window. I didn’t see her get shot.”

  “She was shot at fairly close range, and from the square.”

  “Well, the SS asked every soldier to take out his gun, so they must have been satisfied none of them had fired.”

  “Are you trying to defend the Germans?”

  The priest shrugged again. “I’m simply telling you what I saw. If you want to put words in my mouth, it’s your words, not mine. I felt badly when they didn’t let me come near to say a prayer over her, but now that we read she was a communist – well, it’d have been a wasted prayer. This is all I saw, and you can stay here all day; there’s nothing I can add. No, I didn’t pay attention to the uniforms. They’re all SS to me. Why don’t you ask the orderlies at the San Giovanni Hospital? Maybe they paid attention.”

  Guidi did. In the square, had he wanted to look for it, no sign remained of where Francesca had been killed, and under an immense blue sky, German patrols stood at all street corners. In a quiet room of the hospital he met the orderly, a white-capped fellow with a brutal face, whose split eyebrows suggested he probably boxed in his spare time. Unlike the priest, he told Guidi he’d seen it all. “All, I’ve seen. Just ask me.”

  “Where were you when the shot was fired?”

  “I was wheeling a patient out of surgery.”

  “So you were not at the window.”

  “No, but I ran to it right away. There was a German standing by the body.”

  “In uniform?”

  “Sure. How else would I know he was a German?”

  “What was he doing? Did you see his face?”

  “No, he had his back to me. He was just standing there. Tall man, an officer. Then a civilian came and they talked to each other. The civilian started going through the woman’s clothing, looking for documents, maybe. Then other Germans came and there was some kind of argument going on.”

  Guidi was disappointed. “But you didn’t see anyone with gun in hand.”

  “No. By this time the Germans started aiming their rifles at the windows, so I backed up and tried to look through the slats of the shutters. There wasn’t much else to see, though. They were all gone in half an hour’s time.”

  “In conclusion, you did not see the murder.”

  “No, but...”

  “You did not see the murder,” Guidi repeated in disgust, and walked away.

  In his office, Bora had just heard the latest alarming news from Velletri and Valmontone, the last obstacles on the Allies’ way to Rome. Time was pitilessly short. For days he had been trying to reach by telephone the transit prison camp at Servigliano, to no avail. Now, with the Reiner folder open in front of him, he tried – and failed – again.

  That Captain Sutor should show up unannounced at his doorstep did not surprise him. He’d dreaded it. Still, calmly putting down the receiver, he said, “I was not expecting you, Captain. I’m due out, so can we meet sometime tomorrow?”

  “Not likely. I’m here to discuss the incident on Sunday.”

  “I see.” Bora unlatched his holster, ignoring Sutor’s startled reaction. “Would you like to examine my side arm?”

  “After giving you ample time to clean it? No.”

  “It’s a serious statement you’re making, captain. I hope you can corroborate it.”

  Sutor looked around, again self-assured. “Actually, the woman’s death is secondary. What I want to know is who else was in the square. Priests, housewives and privates can get away with telling me they didn’t see anything. But you’re not one not to pay attention.”

  “There are times when I am distracted.”

  “Colonel Dollmann was there with you.”

  Bora closed the Reiner folder and put it in his briefcase. “Well, have you asked him?”

  “Some things I cannot do. We understand you were the first to come by the body.”

  “That’s true.” Having locked the briefcase, Bora stood. “But altogether it’s curious that you care. She was a partisan. A communist. Whoever got rid of her did us all a favor.”

  Sutor’s face was unmoved, like a tracking dog’s. “Who shot her, Bora?”

  “I do not know.”

  “The shot came from an army P38.”

  Bora came around his desk, leisurely. “Pity. There are thousands of those around.”

  “Who shot her?”

  “I don’t know. And I resent being cornered this way.”

  “Come, Major, don’t lie to me. Who shot the woman?”

  Aware he could not yet safely leave, Bora faced the SS. “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Somebody shot her. You were there. Either you saw it or you did it. If you didn’t do it, you’re protecting someone.”

  Fo
r an instant, the anxiety of his dream-state flight from a flesh-eating animal risked to undo him. Still, Bora moderately reached for the briefcase, and took a step toward the door as if his patience were being tried by a rude guest. “Captain Sutor, I greatly resent your words, your tone and your intrusion. This concern with the death of an enemy of the Reich is suspicious to me, and I intend to bring it up with General Wolff. I want to hear what unrevealed interest the SS and Gestapo had in this woman, and why one of yours searched her body before my eyes.”

  “That’s none of your business.” Sutor tried to keep the pressure on, but was not as forward. It was like a narrow breach of energy into which Bora slipped and found his way.

  “Am I to understand that your command might have done business with the member of a communist group, possibly the same that caused the massacre at Via Rasella?”

  Sutor’s thick neck turned red, as if someone were choking him. “You’re speaking nonsense to protect yourself.”

  Bora said, “Get out!”

  “You think you’re clever, and so does Colonel Kappler, but it’s not going to work —”

  “Get out!”

  “I will not get out!”

  “Then I will.” Bora walked past him, and across the threshold. “Search my office while you’re at it. See what else you can find.”

  Signora Carmela didn’t understand why Guidi had asked to speak privately to her husband. She sat in the kitchen waiting, until the men joined her there.

  “There is bad news,” the professor told her then in a forcible monotone. “Francesca has been killed.”

  The old woman heard him very clearly, but turned to Guidi all the same. “Inspector, what is he saying? I don’t understand.”

  “It’s true. The Germans killed her. She is the one we read about in the newspapers.”

  “My God!” Signora Carmela cried out. “Oh, my God, my God!” Her husband tried to reach for her but she eluded him, fleeing to her room and what saints she kept there. “Oh my God, the poor child! Oh my God, my God!”

  Maiuli seemed unable to lower his arm, still poised to catch his wife. When he did, he had tears in his eyes. “Was her death hard?”

  “No.” Guidi had to unlock his jaw to speak intelligibly. “A clean shot through the head. She died instantly. Probably never knew what happened.”

  “But why would anyone...?”

  “It appears she was involved in politics more than you or your wife realize, Professor. I’m going into her room to remove anything that might be dangerous for you.”

  “She... Do what you must, Inspector. She slept in your room, lately.”

  Guidi chased all nostalgia in order to function. The trained policeman in him searched the room, the other Guidi being kept out of the way. Quickly enough, he found some money rolled tightly at the bottom of the dresser, about six thousand lire. There was an empty envelope with her name on the table, no return address. Magazines, paperback mysteries, her old shoes. A small bottle of cologne. Her cotton dresses. The silk stockings he’d given her, carefully folded.

  Professor Maiuli stood by the door with the look of a beaten dog. “Inspector, tell me the truth – did you know about her activities?”

  Guidi did not turn around. He was holding up the mattress with one hand, rummaging under it with the other. “Yes, I knew.”

  “You could have told me, at least.”

  “You would not have been able to lie when the Germans came.”

  “Maybe not, but it’d have been with some sense of honor that I’d have let myself be arrested then.”

  “It makes no damned difference now.”

  Maiuli chewed on his dentures like a calf on cuds. “And the German officer who had me hauled in, he was the same man who came to talk to you at night. He knows you well. The reason why you didn’t try to talk him out of arresting the rest of us, who had nothing to do with politics, was to protect Francesca. I understand. But you didn’t have to act behind my back.”

  Guidi let go of the mattress, tossing up the quilts with both hands. His anger at her death was starting to peak. His motions were disorderly, pretexts to move his body around to discharge energy. Having found nothing else, he stormed past Maiuli and across the hallway to Francesca’s old room.

  Maiuli did not follow him. “I’m glad you no longer live with us.”

  The furniture in the other room was empty. Still Guidi searched corners and crannies the Germans would surely rifle. He even picked up a folded piece of paper stuffed under the lame leg of the writing table. It was blank. Some phone numbers scribbled on a pad he crumpled and drove into his pockets. There were sketches of nudes and faces on top of the tall wardrobe, which he took down and lay on the bed – no date on them later than 1943. Reaching over his head Guidi felt behind the molded rim crowning the wardrobe, and at last his fingers met with paper. Standing on a chair, he discovered several carbon copies stuck tightly between the molding and the top of the wardrobe. He pulled them out and chose one of the sheets at random.

  What he read were the names Bora and Montini had read, but neither of them had reacted as Guidi did. For a moment his sight went dim, because this was an inconceivable, frightening second death of Francesca in him. In a feverish sequence he read names of unknown people, names he had vaguely heard, entire families locked in the brevity of the typewritten space condemning them. He was unable to remove his eyes from the name of Francesca’s mother, neatly printed beside her address on the riverfront.

  30 MAY 1944

  Their ears were no longer paying attention to the shooting. With the tense mask of his face drawn over the skull, Kesselring looked aged in excess of his years, and only the jutting double row of his teeth gave him an appearance of aggressiveness. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re having trouble with Via Tasso, Martin?”

  “The field marshal has other things to worry about.”

  “I thought it’d had all been resolved after March.” A shell came whistling by, and promptly both men ducked. The trench was built into a natural escarpment, edged with belabored shrubs and skinny trees. American troops could be seen now and then to the south-west, glimpses of dull cloth at which sharpshooters aimed.

  When Bora looked, the shell had lifted much dirt, raining back mostly on the American side. Compared to the last one, the aim had been adjusted: a little more fine-tuning and they’d be bursting on this side of the escarpment. German artillery fire whirred overhead, aimed at British positions. He knew what the odds looked like on the map. The next shell fell much closer, fifty yards away. Someone was making mistakes on the German side, too. An 88 came down far too short and burst into a thicket where the soldiers had spent the night; trees splintered in all directions and branches went flying like javelins and arrows, along with clumps of dirt and roots.

  Kesselring was steadily walking the line of the trench, his big head sunken into his shoulders. “We’ll have to withdraw.” He chewed on disappointment. “Or by this afternoon all we’ll have on both sides will be meat in the dirt. How’s morale?”

  “The men don’t want us to quit Rome.”

  “I can’t blame them, but we will quit it. Take me back to Frascati.”

  When they had driven a stretch toward the rise of the town, amid gray puffs of explosions flitting before the sun, Kesselring said, “Martin, I want you to apologize to Kappler and Sutor both.”

  Bora, who was concentrating on driving, felt his hair stand on hand. “Herr General Feldmarschall, I have just requested the opposite!”

  “That’s precisely why you will express your regrets to them.”

  “But the honor of the army... It’s unheard of! Put yourself in my place, Herr General Feldmarschall.”

  “If I were in your place I would apologize.”

  Bora saw well how it was. “With all respect, Colonel Dollmann had no right to inform you.”

  “Bigger fish have been speared for less. As you know, tomorrow night there’s a party at the Flora, and it is proper you should apologiz
e then.”

  “In public?”

  “It won’t kill you.”

  Bora was so angry, he nearly went off the road. “Herr General Fieldmarschall, I’d rather you directly reprimanded me.”

  Kesselring grunted. “I don’t want to reprimand you. I want you to apologize to Kappler and his adjutant. I expect to hear from Dollmann that it has been done. Be stark sober when you do it, and make sure you do it with the decorum befitting your post and your family.”

  In her small kitchen, Francesca’s mother wept. Hands knotted under her chin, she wept big tears and Guidi felt powerless to console her. He was full of loathing, and of course must warn her of danger without telling her how he knew. What he should do with the money found in Francesca’s room had been unclear to him until now, though he’d taken it along. Now he slipped it out of his pocket, still tied with a rubber band, and placed it on the table.

  “Six thousand lire,” he said, and though it was hardly believable, he added, “from Francesca’s savings.”

  To the south the Germans must be blowing up another bridge or ammunition dump. The windowpanes shook hard. She made a humming sound as she wept, neither moving nor looking at the money.

  “The child will be christened on Sunday, in case you wanted to see him. And in case you wanted, you know, to dress her and —”

  “No.”

  “They’ll bury her in the morning.”

  She looked at him despairingly. “I don’t want to touch her. Don’t ask. I can’t touch her, I can’t go see her. Here, take the money, give her a good burial.”

  Guidi stared at the stained tablecloth. “It’s not necessary. It’s taken care of. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  When she reached for his hand he did not expect it, was startled by the contact and drew back, but she held him. Her hand was cold, wet with tears. “But you – are you sad about it?”

  “I’m numb. I don’t know what I am.”

  Though he returned to Rome late in the evening, Bora received a call from Cardinal Borromeo, who sounded worried and wanted him to stop by his residence before leaving the office for the night. At his arrival – they met privately in a small studio hung with tapestries – the prelate showed himself even more agitated than over the telephone. It seemed that Kappler had warned the Vatican to surrender partisans and defectors hiding in the Lateran Palace.