A Dark Song of Blood

by Ben Pastor

  “Leaving? That’s quite obvious.”

  “It’s not what I meant.”

  “Well, it’s very contrived for all of you to be here.”

  Bora disregarded what she said, was not listening at all. “It’s been very important for me to make your acquaintance. I have been really thinking about you a great deal.”

  “How so?”

  “With respect. Oh, with much respect.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “If circumstances allowed, I would show my respect for you.”

  She looked behind him, clearly made uncomfortable by his words, but unwilling to concede she was. When she returned her eyes to him, her gracious calm was regained. “I appreciate your intent. Circumstances do not allow. Now, what is the favor you ask of me?”

  “Not to throw my note away.”

  “I don’t even know what it contains!”

  “Please do not throw it away.”

  She could have looked away from him now, but did not. “It’s a silly request.”

  “Not to me. Promise me you won’t.” Bora heard the testy earnestness of his own words, but lack of time made him discard diplomacy for any method that would convince her.

  “Very well, I promise.”

  “Thank you.” He’d have kissed her hand hadn’t Maelzer stepped between them with a champagne glass in each hand, jostling them apart from one another. And already the pockmarked young Patrick rejoined her, with the bored look of one who wants to leave. “Goodbye, Mrs Murphy.”

  “Take care of yourself, Colonel Bora.”

  Grasping her cane, at the same moment Donna Maria told Borromeo, “Nino, you haven’t changed in forty years. You’re still as devious as in the old days.”

  “Alas, Donna Maria, you would know. It’s hard to go straight in this profession.”

  “And on top of it all you’re blasphemous! You never did take your calling seriously.”

  Borromeo smirked. “How can I help it? I was in love with you even as a young priest.”

  “Liar. It’s true that you were in love, but not with me.”

  “There’s no pretending with you, is there?”

  “Well, it makes no difference, but that’s why I’d never use you as a confessor. Now tell me, what will happen to my godchild? I’ve seen tonight what you’ve been up to.”

  “He’s in the hands of God, like the rest of us. And so is she.”

  Donna Maria tapped him with the knob of her cane. What a bad priest you are – the hands of God! God ought to squash you between them like a fly.”

  Guidi’s apartment felt hollow like a seashell, in the silence of the outside. It made thinking too easy. The noise of war had for weeks been used by all of them as an excuse not to think deeply. All unconfessed truths surfaced now, guilts and regrets and what gutless ambiguity had first made him invite Bora to an ambush and then give him a way out of it. In the face of Danza’s quiet decision, he was ashamed of both actions.

  It was common knowledge that German officers attended the opera tonight, but unlikely for an accident to happen in the heavily patrolled surroundings of the theater. He fully expected the young men from Unione e Libertà to bound up the stairs to his door any time, vengeful in their ignorance of Francesca’s dark side. He had no answer ready for them. He’d say what he’d say, whatever came to his mind.

  Donna Maria had already left with Bora when Mrs Murphy opened the envelope. Smoothly Cardinal Borromeo approached her. “Good news?”

  She looked up from the note in disbelief. “Your Eminence, the man is out of his mind!”

  Borromeo smiled. “Whether he’s out of it or not, he certainly has much on it. Well, don’t worry. Only about ten per cent of them will make it past the first miles out of Rome.”

  “And I promised not to throw it away!”

  Borromeo, notwithstanding his abominable English, was nevertheless dying of curiosity to read the note. “You could give it to the Holy Church for safe keeping, thereby observing the promise without having to keep it around.”

  “It’s a rather private note, Your Eminence.”

  “Oh. You are an innocent recipient of it, I hope?”

  “No, because I haven’t discouraged him enough.”

  The cardinal raised his eyebrows philosophically. “You can no more keep a man from falling in love than from getting himself killed for some empty cause. Give it a little more time, and Bora might succeed in both.” He craned his neck, and Mrs Murphy hesitatingly showed him the note.

  My dear Mrs Murphy,

  I realize it sounds highly presumptuous from a man who has no control over his destiny, but some certainties must be spoken despite the oddity of circumstances. For two months now I have been telling myself that, no matter what awaits either one of us in the near future, in five years’ time it will be my honor to marry you. Despite all that cries out the opposite, please believe I know this in my soul. And if my soul should be wrong, then be so good as to think sometimes of this German, whom I do so wish for you not to despise.

  Borromeo made an effort not to smirk at the signature. How truly German Bora was, who should identify himself to his beloved as “Yours respectfully”. He held his hand out, but Mrs Murphy quietly replaced the note in the envelope, and this inside her little purse.

  The dark, younger man was alone. He came close to midnight – a rap on Guidi’s door, a grating of fingers rather than a strike of knuckles. “You shouldn’t leave the door open,” he said, warily walking in.

  Guidi, who had been reading L’Inafferrabile, put it down. “It could only be you, the Germans or the Americans. The way I see it, there’s little I can do to prevent any of you from getting in.”

  The young man sat astride a chair. “We got the German aide,” he announced, eyes leveled at him. “He’s dead.”

  Guidi’s heart felt as if a hand were squeezing it, an unexpected, icy and cruel grasp. “Imagine that.” Words came out of him like drops. “Imagine that. And you didn’t even need my help to do it.”

  “Well, we thought you’d want to know. We must have shot him ten times at least.”

  The icy hand stayed around his heart, much to Guidi’s surprise. And the drops of his words fought to trickle out. “It’s the only way to make sure.”

  With a flourish, the young man whipped his gun out and cocked it. “He begged us not to, but we kept shooting.”

  “He begged you?” Not Bora. Not Bora. Guidi suddenly saw through the lie, and even though the gun was pointed at him, he felt like laughing in relief, and anger for feeling relieved. “I bet you finished him up with a hole through the head.”

  “Right through the head, yes.”

  “Why are you telling him this nonsense?”

  Guidi did not move, though the cocked gun dangerously swayed when the young man turned to the door, where his older companion stood. “I just wanted to see —”

  “What’s there to see, you jackass? And why didn’t you lock the door? Never mind him, Inspector, we wouldn’t be here if we’d gotten the son of a bitch. He was at the opera, all right, but we couldn’t get close. Looks like they’ll pull out tomorrow, so we need you to get him here – not at the park, here. Once we’re done, you don’t even have to worry about the body. The Germans are running to save their skin.” Sheepishly the younger man left the chair, and the balding partisan turned it around to sit in it. “So, what time can you get him here?”

  Guidi picked up his paperback again. “I won’t get him here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you want him, you’ll have to get him yourselves. He’s neither immortal nor invulnerable – you find him and you kill him.” He ignored the men’s incredulous faces, the fierce anger of the younger one. “I had my chance to kill him and didn’t. As for your pointing your guns at me, it can’t be worse than the Germans did to me in March. After waiting hours for death at the caves, I think I can stand under your guns until you fire.”

  4 JUNE 1944

  Most
officers had left before dawn. Bora found Donna Maria ready to see him off. She looked older and frailer but was entirely dressed, down to her jewelry, even though it was five in the morning. “I’m going to work, Donna Maria.”

  “And away.”

  “Yes.”

  She kept up her image of control. Impatiently tapping her cane on the floor, she demanded his embrace and then pushed him back. From the top of the piano she took a flat, soft bundle of fine wrapping paper, bound by a ribbon. “Your next wife’s wedding lace. Take it along.”

  Bora smiled at her hopefulness. “I may not be able to keep it safely in the next few weeks. Won’t you keep it for me?”

  “No. This is the last visit we’ll have with each other, Martin. Every time I knew I’d see you again, but not after this time. And I want to give you the lace with my hands. Put it in your briefcase. Let me see you do it.”

  Bora did so, with care. “Donna Maria, you’ll live to be a hundred.”

  “I hope not.”

  Guidi sat by the window and rolled himself a morning cigarette. Swallows criss-crossed the space in front of the window, calling to one another with shrill cries. He’d already gone down the flight of stairs to the telephone, but the line was dead. Anyway, what could he tell Bora, short of informing him the partisans would wait for him here? He couldn’t think of a practical way to keep him away if he ever planned to come. To distract himself, he tried to turn the radio on. There was no power. No tramways would function, no lights would go on. And the silence continued.

  When he left home to buy the Sunday edition, Guidi found that none had been published. Stray groups of Germans were still shuffling past, dazed and hollow-eyed; those crowded in the back of trucks slept on one another despite the uneven ride on cobblestones. The last of the Fascist leaders rolled on, their faces hidden by spread magazines as they read yesterday’s news to hide themselves from the people. A few militia privates who tried to hitch rides were knocked about by cars and trucks, and the Germans woke up then and struck them with the butts of their rifles to keep them down.

  The Lesson for the day read, “The just man, though he die early, shall be at rest.”

  Bora came out from early Mass at St Catherine’s, down the street from Donna Maria’s. He walked to his car and drove to the Excelsior, where he sat about half an hour with commanders of the Corps of Engineers. Then he took from the Hotel d’Italia what remained of his few things, leaving only a razor on the side of the sink. By old war superstition, he’d learned always to leave one small object behind, as his security for coming back.

  The hotel lobby was empty. While he had a cup of coffee, an SS man came looking for a colleague. Bora knew him from Kappler’s office, and asked him how things were. He heard that Kappler had left Rome at eight o’clock.

  The SS looked unnerved. “There’s terrible strafing on the way, Colonel. Airplanes swooping down from all sides – we might as well have been killed fighting in the street. Goodbye, Colonel.”

  From the sidewalk, as he returned home from the newsstand, Guidi recognized Ras Merlo only by his shiny pomaded head. In hastily thrown together civilian clothes, he was stepping across the street with a small suitcase, likely bound for the Tiburtina train station. What better place to hide from his own, principally Caruso, than this peripheral working-class district? He must be trying his luck out of the city now. Guidi was about to call out to him to stop a moment. He’d introduce himself and – mostly to spite Caruso – tell him that Magda’s death had been solved. As if this were the right moment to talk of German lovers.

  All the while Merlo kept going toward Via della Lega Lombarda, taking quick short steps like a toy that has been wound, a scene of haste as grotesque and surreal as the Pirandello play now so long ago. Even when a confusion of loud voices was heard behind the street corner, he did not relent his march, but, white-faced, he made straight for it.

  Mobs of exasperated people roamed the streets looking for swift vengeance, Guidi knew well enough. “Merlo!” he shouted. “Here, Merlo!” He was unable to make him stop, though his eyes darted toward the sidewalk where Guidi stood waving to him “Into the doorway, quick!”

  Merlo continued to walk mechanically. “I’m an honest man!” he shouted back. “I’ve done nothing wrong, the people know I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “Come into the doorway!”

  Guidi had no time to insist. A screaming crowd came from around the corner, men in shirtsleeves and hatless women. It would have parted and streamed past Merlo, too, had one of the women not recognized him. Promptly the mob surged and tightened around him like a knot.

  “Fascista, Fascista!”

  Merlo’s voice was only heard once, crying out that he had never stolen from the people. His suitcase, snatched from him and held aloft, traveled over the crowd from hand to hand.

  “Fascista!”

  Punches and kicks were flying already. Appalled, Guidi ran upstairs to fetch his pistol. When he opened the window to look again, he saw how tearing and throwing blows, men and women exorcized the suffering of months, and by their motions Guidi knew the man in the middle had fallen and was now being trampled.

  It took all of five minutes, after which the third shot Guidi fired in the air was finally heard. The undulating mob drew away from Merlo and looked down at him, half-naked and bloodied, his face smashed into an unrecognizable pulp. Next, they went for his suitcase, which was forced open with a renewed frenzy in search of money and stolen goods.

  There was only underwear in it.

  The engineer yelled, “She sure went down beautifully!” meaning the Macao Barracks by the university.

  Bora had a list, from which he scratched another line. The telephone office at the Ministry of Communications had gone first, followed by dumps and fuel depots; next would come train stations, radio stations, the block-long Fiat Works. “Try to avoid the houses around,” he said.

  “We’ll do the best we can.”

  Before noon Bora reported to Maelzer with the Reiner dossier, to be forwarded to the German ambassador.

  “Fine, fine.” Maelzer put the folder on a chair, shook his hand, gave him a sealed bottle of vodka and left Rome.

  The trattoria had been badly shaken by the explosions of the barracks nearby. Curtain rods had fallen from the windows, and two panes had been blown right off the sashes. Stacks of dishes had cascaded onto the floor and Guidi had to stumble past them to sit down at his usual place. Lunch was served in pots and pans. But the waiter had a sparkle in his eye. “The English are in Rome already!”

  Guidi, who’d done all he could to get the sight of Merlo’s mauled body out of his mind, finally succeeded in doing so. “No-o!” he said, making an incredulous face.

  “I’m telling you they’re at Porta Maggiore, or just outside. Look – meat!” The waiter placed a pan under his nose. “I bought it from the Germans this morning, and ten minutes later they were giving it away. Flour, sugar, canned pork – I couldn’t haul all of it!”

  Bora had a glass of water for lunch. It was all he could hold down. He hadn’t been so nauseous since Stalingrad, but that’s how it was. He continued going down the list, and looking at the map of Rome on his knees he realized he had long ago stopped viewing it as the old exquisite organism it was. Today it only looked like a combination of checkpoints to destroy.

  Back in his apartment, Guidi sat on his bed and then lay on it and fell asleep. For all he knew, the partisans were watching his house, and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t reach Bora and warn him – hell, Bora was probably long out of Rome. So he slept.

  When he awoke, the clock marked five in the afternoon. No more explosions. Silence once more. He went to the window. The streets were empty. The Germans had left. And the Americans – the Americans must be entering from the south. The electricity was still off.

  Bora left headquarters for the last time at six o’clock in the evening. He checked the amount of fuel in his car. With a letter from Maelzer to
hand-deliver to the Secretary of State, he drove to St Peter’s. The square was empty. No German guards cordoning it off as in months past. He walked the interminable, echoing corridors behind a swift, young Irish priest who kept his hands clenched against his chest like a maiden.

  For about an hour Bora sat with Cardinal Montini, answering his many questions. At the end of the meeting, he was given a cased rosary “from His Holiness”. It was the third or fourth he had received since coming to Rome, but politely he thanked the Secretary and put it in his briefcase. The orderly mound of other such cases, he perceived, awaited the first Americans who should walk in here hours from now.

  At nine o’clock there was some shooting near St Mary Major, apparently an engagement between the last of the Germans and soldiers of the 5th Army, then no more sounds. Guidi blew out the candle and sat waiting in the dark, not knowing for what.

  At ten o’clock suddenly the power came back on. His radio began to blare some happy music and the light flashed bright. By habit, Guidi hastened to the window to close it, but saw that all lights at all windows were on too, none shielded, none covered. They were only windows, but seemed an unbearable blaze of splendor coming through the night. Scampering was heard below, running in the street. Faint voices of rejoicing traveled from all corners of the city, a long way off.

  The knock on the door he had expected all day. He went to open, fully ready to confront the partisans, but it was Martin Bora.

  He nearly jumped back in surprise. Bora did not convey the image of being in haste, though he must be. Guidi was too astonished to say anything. He waved an invitation to come in. Whether Bora understood it might be so that a German would not be seen at his doorstep, he gave no impression of minding it. “I have come to say goodbye,’ he said.

  Finally Guidi got his wits together. “What are you still doing here at this hour? Everyone has gone. The Americans are already at the outskirts...”

  “They’re in the city,” Bora mildly corrected him. “I know. But this is the earliest I could find a moment to stop by.”