A Dark Song of Blood (6 page)

“I haven’t read it yet.”

“Well, it isn’t enough to go on. Here’s Magda Reiner’s passport photo.”

Bora glanced at the document Guidi handed him. “Some sources,” (he meant Dollmann, who had given him an earful of gossip about the story), “suggest she seemed to be actively seeking a husband, or a similar domestic arrangement.”

“Among the Italians or the Germans?”

“Both.” Bora leafed through the passport, and gave it back. “As for the lesbian angle, it came up after an office party where things got out of hand.” Because Guidi stared, Bora repeated, annoyed, “
Out of hand.
Kissing, touching, and the like.”

“How do you know?”

“I was told by a colleague who attended. But you’re just making me talk, because from what I understand, you already have a suspect.”

Guidi passed his fingers on the dustless bed table. “A fairly untouchable one. He’s
Ras
Merlo, one of the last and highest-ranking Party officials in Rome.”

“Well, could it be?”

“Judge for yourself, Major. He’s a henpecked middle-aged Romeo with a brood of children. His oversized wife is known as ‘the Grenadier’, and apparently not beyond striking him in anger. Jealousy is hinted at as a motive, whether or not it’d be enough for him to kill. He seems to have a history of roughing up occasional girlfriends. We can’t place him in this building on that night, but someone looking very much like him was seen in a distraught state shortly after the incident in Via Santamaura.”

“A parallel to this street.” Bora closed the window. Facing the room, he stared at Magda’s undone bed, and then away from it. “What was he doing there?”

“Throwing up by the open market’s garbage cans. But I should add he lives on Piazzale degli Eroi, not far from here.”

“Does he realize you’re on to him?”

“We’ve been good about playing the accident card. Merlo might suspect there’s an investigation, but he doesn’t know for sure. More importantly, he doesn’t know me. As long as the official word holds, he’ll have no real reason to watch his step.”

“Why not call him in and straighten things out at once?”

Guidi remembered how Bora asked questions for the sake of being provocative. “Clearly not even Caruso wants to touch this one directly. Though he may take it from his wife, Merlo has a reputation for vindictiveness with political enemies.”

“Ah. Not to speak of what he’d do to
you.
I get it. Anyway, tomorrow night we’ll have a chance to see him at the theater. It’s a command performance, and he’ll be there.”

Bora did not follow when Guidi went looking through the rest of the apartment, three rooms in all. At Guidi’s return, he was sitting at the foot of the girl’s bed, weary or melancholy, or unwell. Likely to avoid questions about himself, he came to his feet at once. “Let’s go,” he snapped, “I can’t stay here all day.” As they faced each other in the narrow elevator, however, Bora said without prompting, “The gossip is that she began
secretarial work in Stuttgart. She was from Renningen, nearby. Was attached to the German Olympic Committee in ’36, took on with a foreign athlete, and there were consequences to the relationship. It appears she was briefly married to an army photographer, served with army headquarters, and after a legal separation managed to find a post with the German embassy in Paris. She’d been in Rome six months, and apparently liked it very well. ‘Fun-loving’ they told me. No more than a social drinker, not much more than an easy lay.”

Guidi had not expected the intervention. “But of course,” he thought he should say, “you heard all this from men.”

“No.” They had reached the ground floor, and as Bora walked through the shady archway leading to the main door, Guidi could tell by the stiffness of his torso that he was in pain. “Actually, my first official act in Rome was to phone her mother. It seems a childless cousin is raising Magda’s daughter in Renningen. But it’s true that I haven’t sat to chatter with her girlfriends. That’s policemen’s work.”

Having parted ways with Guidi, Bora walked to the pharmacy where the dead girl had been brought. It was an interesting narrow building on Via Andrea Doria, with an oval plate by the door that read “Free Medications Distributed to the Poor.” Inside, with the pretext of buying a painkiller, he conversed with Dr Mannucci, asking him first about the collection of fine apothecary vases on display, and then about the events of 29 January. The pharmacist – a hale old man with an old-fashioned mustache and a keen interest in the humanities – no doubt understood the reasons for Bora’s inquiry, but graciously acted as though it were just a friend’s concern. Patiently picking up and setting aside the well-fed cat that played with pen and papers on the counter (“Down, Salolo, down. You know better”), he said, “Yes, I did suggest that she be carried to Santo Spirito’s hospital.
Carried
, mind you – not rushed. You understand there was no reason to rush her to an emergency room, as her skull was crushed beyond repair and even recognition.”

Bora had laboriously opened the Cibalgina container, and now swallowed two tablets. Showing a soldier’s pragmatic empathy, “The incident must have required much cleaning of your beautiful floor,” he observed.

“Well, blood is less problematic than vomit – and that, too, we had to clean up on the same night.”

“Oh? One of the policemen who brought her in?”

Dr Mannucci looked Bora in the eye, both of them fully understanding the gist of the conversation. “Not at all.”

At his return home, Guidi found its small population in a state of hushed exhilaration. Tenants from all floors had gathered in the parlor, where Francesca curled like a cat on the floor closest to the radio. “You must hear this.” Signora Carmela grabbed him by the arm. “The Americans have really come!”

Her husband hastened to top the news. “The Germans are pulling out. They say there are none left in the city – they’re leaving by way of the Cassia.”

Guidi glanced at Francesca, who remained turned to the radio, listening intently with her face low. “Who’s saying this?” he asked.

“Who cares? The Americans are here!” The cherry-lipped woman – Pompilia Marasca, known as Pina – was ecstatic. “Just think of it – the
Americans
!”

Guidi stared at the odd circle of people. Smiling, the professor said he’d use today’s date as a lotto number. The two students from upstairs – on the uneasy verge of being drafted – nudged one another and cracked juvenile jokes of relief. Signora Carmela blew kisses to the saints in their glass domes. “I hate to tell you,” Guidi spoke up. “The Germans have not left. The Americans may be coming, but there are Germans still here. Go see for yourselves.”

“It doesn’t mean anything!” Angry-eyed, Francesca looked up at him, her paleness stark in the dim little parlor. “It’s the end for the Germans, can’t you see? It’s a matter of time!”

“And,” the professor whistled through his false teeth, “how long can it take some seventy thousand fully armed men to reach us? I used to run bicycle races to Anzio and back.”

The students swore they had seen the glare of battle in the past nights, contradicting each other as to direction and hour, but agreeing that it was the American advance.

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Guidi said.

“What happens if the Germans don’t leave Rome?” Pompilia suddenly considered. “Does it mean they’ll fight in the streets?”

“I expect so.”

“
Oh, Jesus
!”

“Except that they’ll get it from all sides.” Francesca stood up to leave, contemptuously. What else she meant to say – and Guidi wished she would not – remained unsaid. She pulled back her hair with both hands, hard, until her features were lifted and she looked like a strange geisha. After she left the room, it was as though the space had grown dimmer yet.

The perspective of a battle in Rome started a disagreement as to whether the Germans would line up outside the walls, or make a stand in the Vatican. “Open city or not, the Allies could carpet-bomb Rome,” one of the students said. At the ill-advised words, Pompilia saw fit to slump into a faint at Guidi’s feet.

“Someone turn the radio off,” he ordered. “No point in worrying ourselves sick until some reliable news comes on the air. Professor, will you help the lady?”

Pompilia remained in a stiff faint despite all gentle slaps and sprinkles of water, and only when Guidi relented enough to say he’d take her by the ankles if someone took her by the armpits, she came to with a flutter of eyelids. “I can walk,” she piped, lifting herself and proceeding out of the room.

That night Guidi went to bed early. He slept fitfully, dreaming that the Americans had come and he told them how to get to Bora’s office. In the dream Bora phoned him to say that he appreciated having the Americans over, since they would all go to a Pirandello play. But the Americans killed Bora instead.

The room was odiously dark and cold when Guidi awoke with a sore neck. Unable to find a comfortable position, he tossed for some time, until his trained ear was alerted to the opening of the door at the end of the hallway. Francesca was going to the bathroom. He heard a second door squeak on its hinges as she pulled it closed.

Guidi sat up to fluff his pillow. Germans, Americans – Bora might have been pretending today, and even now he could be on his way north with a retreating army. Back north, where the partisans had as good a chance of killing him as the Americans.
Good riddance
, Guidi wanted to say, but he didn’t really mean it as far as Bora was concerned.

He lay back. What took Francesca so long? He hadn’t heard water flushed or running, nor had the door opened a second time. Guidi waited a few more minutes, then slipped out of bed. In the dark he groped for the door, listening. Carefully he turned the key in the lock, and stepped out into the hallway. No candlelight filtered from under the bathroom door. Before knocking, he felt the door for resistance, and it gave way under his hand. “Francesca?” he whispered, forgetting the embarrassment that would follow her answer. But no answer came. A chilly draft prompted him to turn the light on: the bathroom was empty, and the window on the street stood ajar.

24 JANUARY 1944

Monday night, Bora said Pirandello helped him understand Italians.

“You must be joking.” Guidi took exception. “His plays are absurd.”

“Exactly.” From where they sat, now that the intermission allowed a full view of the audience,
Ras
Merlo’s pomade-shiny head could be seen bobbing up and down at the side of a bright green hat. Bora looked in that direction with an unkind grin.
“The man has the authorities of two nations at his heels, and he’s watching a tale about getting caught.”

All evening Bora had been of a merry disposition, scarcely due to the sarcasm of the play, and closer to relaxation than Guidi had ever seen. Guidi could share none of the good cheer. He had stayed awake until dawn, waiting for Francesca’s return to the house. Without confronting her directly, he’d called for a routine check on her background. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but his heart was heavy.

Soon Bora headed for another box, where Guidi saw him greet an elegant group, kiss the ladies’ hands and chat nearly until the end of the intermission. “People I used to know,” he explained at his return. “Is Merlo still here? I don’t see his gummy head.”

“He’s just picking up something she dropped.”

At the next intermission, Bora left the box again. Guidi saw him below, easily finding his way across the partly empty row of seats to accost Merlo and his companion. Next he was clumsily stepping on the man’s foot, and apologizing gave him a chance to make small talk. He was even invited to sit to the left of the young woman, where he spent the rest of the intermission. He rejoined Guidi when the lights – miraculously working tonight – were already off.

“Are you out of your head, Major?”

“Why? Merlo doesn’t know me.”

“He knows you’re a German aide-de-camp.”

“There’s scads of us, Guidi. I wanted to make sure I got close in case the power fails. Don’t be a killjoy. He looks like a chummy ad for Brillantina Linetti, and she’s... Well, what can I say. She’s half his age.”

“Well, don’t be misled by his fat innocent looks. If he hasn’t done in the Reiner girl, he was directly involved in the Matteotti affair.”

“You mean his
murder
?” There was no discouraging Bora tonight. “A nasty way of disposing of socialist opposition. Did
I tell you I was in Rome when it happened, twenty or so years ago? My stepfather’s wife told me how they stuffed the poor man in a shallow grave in the Campagna. Yes, I can see Merlo digging it. My first summer here, and everybody and his brother searched for this cadaver that no one wanted to find. How can you tell me the Italians aren’t absurd?” He sat back, lowering his voice as the curtain rose. “It
was
Merlo throwing up in the neighborhood of the Reiner house, by the by. How do I know? Not everyone is afraid of telling on a Fascist
Ras
, as it seems.”

When they left the theater it was very cold and clear. Even Bora admitted it was cold. A distinct rumble of cannon fire was audible past the expanse of city blocks. Guidi glanced at him in the semi-darkness, and Bora said, “It’s a beautiful night.” The truth was that after his visit at the front he knew how by tonight the worst was past, and the enemy contained. But he didn’t let Guidi have a chance to surmise that much. “I just received a telegram from my stepfather,” he told him. “My wife is coming next week.”