A Dark Song of Blood (23 page)

Sutor had also come. He stood blankly, rooted to the spot where a man's intestines had bowled out onto the pavement. “Help me out,” Bora said, unbuckling his belt. “I can't do it with one hand.” Together they tied a soldier's leg, blown off at the knee. Their sleeves and cuffs and the hems of their tunics became drenched with blood, shreds of flesh stuck to their fingers. Hunching over, Sutor had barely time to turn away before starting to vomit. Bora thought it cowardly, though only an empty stomach kept him from doing the same. He overheard Maelzer's hysteria and Dollmann trying to speak sense to him. Army and SS were pouring into the street. They forced their way into the houses scarred by the blasts. Loud crying and shouts soon came from the houses as well.

“Get some more medics!” Bora heard himself shouting. “Block the goddamn streets!”

Dollmann rudely turned him around, and Bora could see he was exasperated. “Try to speak to that Maelzer windbag instead, or the whole block goes up in the air. There are engineers coming at his orders with enough charges to do it.”

Bora came close to panic. “What can I tell him that you haven't,
Standartenführer
?” But he went to the place where Maelzer mopped his face, exhausted with screaming at the German Consul. All it took was for Bora to address him and he reverted to his ranting until saliva sprayed all around him. “Don't you tell me what Kesselring ought to know and not know, Major!” and upon Bora's insistence, “Shut up, I'm telling you! If you don't shut up I'll have you sent to the Russian front!”

“I've been there.”

The rashness of his answer struck Bora only after uttering it, but Dollmann stepped in to deflect Maelzer's anger with a timely objection of his own.

Confusion reached an extreme. The engineers had come. Bodies were moved to the sidewalk, sometimes piecemeal, while
crowds of detainees were herded with hands clasped behind their heads to Via Quattro Fontane, and lined against the gates of Palazzo Barberini. The last to arrive at Via Rasella, with a face of chilly composure, was Lieutenant Colonel Kappler.

At a quarter past five Bora was back at the Flora, where he spoke by telephone with Westphal. The general, just arrived at Soratte, glumly informed him that orders had already been received from Hitler's headquarters at Rastenburg. “He's asking fifty to one,” he said. “How many died?”

“Twenty-five at least. Several were badly injured and will probably die overnight. It could be thirty and more.”

“It comes to fifteen hundred hostages. Too much, Bora. Too much. Were any of the attackers caught?”

Bora removed his tunic, and was in his shirt. The blood-spattered cloth was wringing wet with perspiration and clung to him. “Unless they were grabbed among the local tenants, I doubt it. It was bedlam and no one cordoned off the streets for ten minutes or so. I'm sure it was TNT, yes, at least twenty kilos' worth. It damaged the walls badly, and there must have been some other charges also, hand-thrown. Clearly several people were involved. They must have been at the corners of the streets perpendicular to Via Rasella, where they could get away quickly.”

Westphal went silent at the other end, or else was speaking to someone with his hand on the mouthpiece. “Has General Maelzer calmed down?” he asked then.

“Somewhat.”

“Who else is with you?”

“Colonel Dollmann stepped in a moment ago.”

“Try to talk to him.”

Dollmann stood on the threshold, his narrow, ugly face blotched and weary. “You'll have enough to fill the rest of your diary with this.” He valiantly tried to make light of things.

“Colonel, you must agree that this will be most unfortunately army business, whether or not it was an SS unit that was targeted. So far we've had politicians, diplomats and SS
giving recommendations, and it should be our own General Mackensen's decision.”

“It will be General Wolff's, I'm thinking. But I agree.”

Bora had not expected the quick assent and was disarmed by it. “What weight will Mackensen carry in the decision-making, then?”

“Don't know.”

“The field marshal is due back to Soratte at seven. If you must contact Germany, I hope you will delay until his return.”

“I'm going to the embassy now, Bora. You realize there will be a reprisal.”

“I understand, Colonel.”

Eyes closed, Dollmann inhaled deeply. Bora was self-conscious of his sweat and bloody smell, but Dollmann filled his nostrils with it. “Do you?” he was saying. “
I
don't.” The colonel dragged his fine hands over the red blotches on his cheeks. “It was done to make us react, and if Kappler doesn't see through it, we deserve whatever trouble will follow. As for you, Major, if you really wanted to make Maelzer angry you should have answered that there's no Russian front left to send you to.” After a moment in which they looked at one another, listening to telephones ring throughout the building at long, lugubrious intervals, he rapped Bora's shoulder with his knuckles. “Now comes the killing time. God help us all.”

Signora Carmela expected Guidi to come through the front door. It was Francesca instead, breathless, wide-eyed, who rushed past the parlor to her room.

“Are you all right, dear?” With cautious small steps the old woman approached Francesca's room and looked in.

Doubled over on the bed, Francesca was sobbing. Signora Carmela made out that German soldiers had followed her for a stretch of the way and nearly caught her. They had lost her only when she had turned into Via Paganini and stepped into a doorway.

“Why would they follow you, poor lamb? A young woman with a baby on the way!”

Francesca went from tears to laughter at the words, a frightful voiceless laugh that stiffened her into rigidity. Signora Carmela couldn't get her to stop. Scared, she called her husband in.

“Her nerves are shot,” he gravely said. “This requires
Aurum.
” In the Maiuli house the aromatic liqueur was the ultimate resource, and what there was of it in a bottle was jealously kept under lock and key. Now the professor poured a generous dose in a glass his wife held before Francesca. “This is so unlike her, the poor girl. Now we'll get the doctor to come.”

Francesca gulped down the drink. “No.” She coughed. “No, doctor. Nobody. I'm not home for anybody. No one, no calls. Nobody, do you understand? Not even my mother. Something went on downtown, the Germans are berserk.”

“Goodness.” Signora Carmela wheezed. “And Inspector Guidi hasn't come home either.” She drew away from Francesca, who was regaining her self-control and angrily wiped the tears off her face. “Where could he be, do you think?”

“Don't ask me where he is.” Shivering, Francesca kicked her shoes off. “I'm tired, I want to sleep.” And even as the old couple stood there, she climbed into her bed and covered herself, turning her back to them.

Shortly after seven that evening, Bora called Guidi to confront him about the shots fired from the police station. There was no answer there, so he tried Via Paganini. Timidly Signora Carmela picked up the phone. Bora's Italian reassured her, and – assuming he was a friend – she shared her worry about the inspector, who hadn't come home from work.

“Did he say he might be late?”

“On the contrary. It was his turn to buy bread and he's always been good about that. He's a thoughtful man and wouldn't let us go without bread for supper.”

Bora hung up with a queasy feeling.

At nine Westphal called back from Soratte: Field Marshal Kesselring had just deliberated with Hitler and the head of the 14th Army, General von Mackensen. The reprisal would stand at ten for every German killed. Bora called the embassy in hope of finding Dollmann still there, but was told that he had left for the Vatican. He phoned the Vatican next and learned that the colonel was no longer there. So he waited until nearly ten o'clock to call his apartment.

Dollmann answered, and when he heard the final number, he cried out, “What a mess! And I haven't had time to speak to General Wolff yet!”

On his way to the hotel Bora stopped at the foot of Via Rasella, blocked off and eerie in the dark. The houses around it were empty and silent. At the corner of Via Del Boccaccio, the Public Security office was barred shut. Guidi's little car was still parked at the street corner, with the windows smashed by gunfire.

24 MARCH 1944

The sun came up in a glory of little clouds, but Bora felt a noxious darkness inside. He had not been able to sleep all night, and today he ached dully. He decided against taking painkillers because they might make him drowsy, and he didn't need that. Westphal would not be back from Soratte today, which he had expected. Kesselring was taking grave military decisions, and likely would visit the Anzio front again in the next few hours.

Despite tales of overflowing death cells, Bora knew there were not enough capital punishment inmates in Roman jails to make up the number of hostages to execute. The SS death toll had risen overnight to thirty-two, and from Dollmann he heard that until late at night Kappler and Caruso had been discussing quotas. He still wondered what to make of Guidi's disappearance, and it was with some hope that he called again
at his workplace and at home. The police phone still rang empty. Signora Carmela began to weep when he asked her the question. Next, he was debating whether to contact Kappler, to whom he had not spoken at all the day before. Once Kappler had his orders he would carry them out with unshakeable thoroughness, and there was nothing to gain by irritating him. Uneasily Bora sat by the phone with an ear to the relentless cannonade from Anzio, resting his forehead in the palm of the right hand.

At seven thirty he went to report to Maelzer. As yesterday, he was told to wait. When, half an hour later, the general had not yet left his breakfast table, Bora was curious to see Caruso come in. The head of police saw him and said nothing; looking haggard, he went past him to the concierge's desk. Bora assumed he came to consult Maelzer, and prepared himself to wait longer; after overhearing Caruso ask for the Minister of Interior instead, he knew that the Italian police would fill in the names missing from Kappler's death list.

Maelzer came out of the dining room and was very brief and businesslike, as if yesterday's anger had not spilled out into today. He looked well rested. He told Bora that in case the field marshal inquired, he was to report that all had been taken care of. By noon all major selections would have been made.

Bora asked who would materially execute the order. Maelzer said he would know by noon, which to Bora meant there was uncertainty whether the army, the SS or the Fascists would carry out the sentence. Who was to be included in the list? Maelzer spoke fast. Criminals, partisans and Jews, three hundred and thirty of them.

Bora was glumly returning to his battered car when the thought first came to him that Guidi might be among those arrested at Via Rasella. Any anger he'd felt for police apathy during the attack left him. His foreboding grew worse after he was unable to phone anyone in authority at Regina Coeli. Bora
had
to talk to Kappler now, but all the while the dark inside him widened at tremendous speed.

Francesca ate breakfast in bed, nursed by Signora Carmela. She was hungry, and when she finished, she asked for more. Signora Carmela said there were only dry beans and a small piece of bread in the house, because the inspector had not come home or sent the groceries.

“Well, I'm hungry,” Francesca snapped back. “Why don't you send the professor to buy something at the store? I pay the rent, and board goes with the room. If you and your husband don't want to go out, then ask for something next door.”

Signora Carmela would not argue. It was cherry-lipped Pompilia who gave her a generous piece of nearly fresh bread and a small hunk of cheese, with ill-concealed satisfaction at being asked. From the threshold she watched the old woman trip back to her door. “Aren't the lovebirds up to doing their own shopping?” she called after her.

“I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” Signora Carmela said.

Francesca was on the telephone when she came back in, and quickly lowered the receiver.

“I feel much better,” she said, in a pacifying tone.

Signora Carmela placed bread and cheese on a plate, and this on the kitchen table.

At Via Tasso the atmosphere was feverish. It didn't take much observation to notice that several of the officers had worked through the night. Kappler had had time to shave but was filmy-eyed, going in and out of doors; Sutor wore dirty-blond stubble on his face, and was gulping coffee in thirsty draughts. “Hey, here's Bora,” he announced to someone in the office behind him, who turned out to be Captain Priebke. “Bora, have you brought some names?”

“No. I've come to talk to Colonel Kappler.”

“What about? We're busy as hell.”

“I suspect an Italian police official was detained by mistake at Via Rasella.”

“Who?”

“Sandro Guidi.”

“The horse-face of the Reiner case? What the hell would he be doing at Via Rasella?”

Bora ignored the question. “If I'm right, it's obviously a mistake. Please check your list of detainees.”