Liar Moon (11 page)

Nagel came and went, without rapping on his door. Bora recognized his step, his refraining from the knock on the door. The room was cold and no longer identifiable by shape. Only the limned strip under the door
marked the existence of reality. Bora bent over from where he sat, feeling around for the bootjack. After taking off his boots, he began to undress, until he was naked, and, without prosthesis, he lay motionless under the covers.

 

There had been a season, still fresh in Bora’s memory, when the fastidiousness of German uniforms would have put to shame the Italian Militia. This late morning of 1 December 1943, it was all washed-out field-grey. Everywhere. He could look at the truck pulling into the place in the street where yesterday the SS car had sat, and judge vehicle and men alighting from it as no shabbier than his own soldiers.
I’ve done this before
, he thought,
I’ve done it before and know how to manage it; there’s no great expenditure of emotions once one has done it the first time.

He went downstairs and into the street, where the truck rattled in idle. The driver saw him through the window and hopped out, baggy trousers and ankle boots mud-spattered. He gave the Fascist salute, and presented a piece of paper signed by one high official or another. Bora no longer looked at names; it made no difference what the alphabet combination might be – it was all power about to slip away, and not even history’s footnotes would pick up those names tomorrow.

“These prisoners are to be delivered to Gries,” the driver said. “So we need an escort.”

“I’ve been informed.” Bora walked around the truck. The guardsman who was in the back had also alighted and was standing at cramped attention, his black fez impossibly stuck to the back of his head, as if nailed in. Without a word, Bora indicated by a short wave that he
wished to have the canvas flaps lifted. When it was done, he looked in from where he stood. “How long have you been riding?” he asked the guardsman, as if the information were no more than a formality.

“Ten hours,
signor maggiore
, with eight more to go.”

Bora was in full sight of those sitting in the truck. Indistinct faces were within, people he had no desire to get to know. In the frigid morning it made him unusually comfortable and secure to be warmly dressed, well dressed, to appear every inch authoritative. “Jews, all?”

“All of ’em.”

Bora turned on his heel and went indoors. When he returned outside, Nagel was with him. The guardsmen had got
Sondermischung
cigarettes from the German soldiers. The driver, resuming the at-attention stance, said, “
Signor maggiore
, we haven’t had anything to eat since last night.”

“That happens, at war.”

“We could use something to eat, if you could spare some.” And, because Bora didn’t answer, “The prisoners haven’t had anything in forty-eight hours.”

“What’s that to me? You have a schedule to keep. It is already an imposition for me to give you two of my men as an escort. You should have organized yourselves better, and brought provisions.” But even as he said so, Bora ordered a soldier to get some food ready. “Go inside,” he said in Italian to the guardsmen. “It will be charged to your command. So will the petrol for your vehicle, since undoubtedly you carry no extra fuel.”

The guardsmen wasted no time going indoors, while Nagel drove the truck to the back of the building for refuelling. Bora followed him there. He commanded
the flaps of the truck to be lowered again. How many times had this happened, with small variations? A vehicle bringing prisoners from somewhere to somewhere, his part in it. “Take care of everything, Nagel,” he said. “You know how. When you’re done, go upstairs, and get Colonel Habermehl’s cognac from my room. Open it and give it to the Italian guardsmen. Monsignor Lai is to join the prisoners – no special treatment.”

 

Turco, who happened to be in Lago on an errand for Guidi’s mother, had caught the last moments of the transfer from the German command post.

“
Gesummaria
, Inspector, it was a terrible sight. You wouldn’t expect it of our major,” he reported to Guidi at midmorning.

“
Our
major? Since when is he
our
major?” It irritated Guidi that the Sicilian should imply that he trusted Bora. “He’d do the same thing to you or me if he were ordered. It’s a good thing he didn’t ask us to participate, given what came over the radio last night.”

“
Cosi di cani. Di cani!
He wined and dined the guardsmen until two o’clock, but he wouldn’t give the prisoners the time to get a sip of water, or do what nature commands.”

Guidi slammed his hand on the desk. “It won’t make much difference to them, going where they’re going.” But it bothered him. Not because he trusted Bora. Because it confirmed what he suspected about him. “Do you think it’s the first time he does this? Partisans, Jews, priests – it’s all the same to him.”

“The sexton says the Germans dragged Monsignor Lai out of church right after the broadcast. Charged
with having a good radio, as far as anyone can tell. To think the old women bragged about the major being so devout, spending all that time in confession every Sunday!
Cosi di cani.
”

“Goes to prove he needs confession more than most, Turco. Speaking of which, I’m off to Verona to meet Bora. If he doesn’t mention the Jews, I’m not about to bring them up. We don’t need to give him any ideas. Tell my mother I’ll get back when I get back, not to stay up, and while you’re at it, remind her I don’t want you to go grocery shopping for her.”

 

“A man as good as he, a master like him? I’ll never find the likes of him again.”

Had Bora’s taste run to dark women, Lisi’s last maid would have been a remarkable specimen. De Rosa, who’d arranged the meeting in his office to be forgiven the impoundment of Claretta’s car, watched him watch her now. “Not bad, uh?” he whispered to him in German. “Wasn’t Lisi a connoisseur?”

Bora replied in Italian. “I wish to wait for Inspector Guidi before the interrogation.”

“As you like.”

The woman was thirtyish, long-legged, shapely, with the tragic face of a Greek heroine. She dressed in modest mourning clothes, but Bora noticed she was wearing silk stockings.

He said, “Please tell me your name, and your age.”

“Enrica Salviati. I’ll be thirty-two next month.”

“Why are you wearing black?”

“For my brother. He was a soldier. He was killed in Africa last year.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

A knock on the door was followed by the dopey face of a guardsman, who said something to De Rosa. “Well, what are you standing there for?” De Rosa said irritably. “Show him in, we’ve been waiting for him.”

Flustered, Guidi walked into the office. “Sorry I’m late. A military column blocked us for twenty minutes just outside Verona.”

Bora pointed out to him the empty armchair behind De Rosa’s desk. “Take a seat, Guidi. You don’t mind, Centurion, do you?”

De Rosa said he did not, but immediately took his leave. Then Bora went to sit on a corner of the desk, resting his right foot on the floor. “Do the asking, Inspector.”

Guidi didn’t expect the title, or the offer. He’d been so certain Bora would take over that he hadn’t prepared a questionnaire. “Fine, sure.” He tried to take time. “I think we ought to begin with a detailed account of the accident. Tell us – Enrica, is it? – what happened from the moment when you left Vittorio Lisi alive in the garden to the time you found him mortally wounded.”

She stood in front of the desk like a sad schoolgirl about to recite a lesson, hands clasping a small pocketbook of cheap, balding leather. “Should I repeat what I told the
carabinieri
?”

“If you told the truth, yes.”

“I’d just finished clearing the table after lunch, and since it was fine weather the master asked me to accompany him out into the garden for a breath of fresh air. You must go out from the back with the wheelchair, because there are three steps in front of the main door.
So we came out the back of the house, by the garage. I pushed the chair until we reached the gravel just inside the gate, because from there the master could wheel himself out onto the private road. He liked to take his ‘exercise’, as he called it, back and forth along the length of the mulberry rows. I’ve seen him do it up to ten times, back and forth. He said it strengthened his lungs.”

Guidi began to take notes. “What time was it when you walked back in?”

“Two o’clock, maybe two fifteen. The master would finish eating at twenty to two, and then smoke a cigarette at the table.”

Guidi stole a quick look at Bora, but all he could see of him from the armchair was the severe, bony side of his face. He took notice, too, of his uncharacteristic silence.

“All right,” he went on. “Describe everything you did after going back into the house.”

“Well, first I washed my hands. I had noticed a weed by the door of the garage, and pulled it. Then I placed a bottle of mineral water in the refrigerator. I had forgotten to do it right after lunch, and the master liked cold water summer and winter. I washed the dishes, and then did some reading. There were always magazines in the house, even though the
signora
no longer stayed at the villa. She had so many subscriptions, the magazines kept coming every week. The master said I could read them, if I wanted to. One of them has been running a love-story serial by Liala, and I’d started clipping the instalments.”

“So you read. And then?”

“This chapter was longer than the others, more complicated. I’m not a fast reader, and I must have fallen asleep.” Framed by the light of day, Enrica’s sullen face
seemed modelled in wax, as if by an experienced, powerful hand. The schoolgirl had given way to a disconsolate, perhaps more reticent adult.

Guidi said, “Major, would you like to continue?”

Bora did not turn, or stir. “No.”

“Well, then. How long did you sleep, Enrica?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know how long I slept. But it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, because I’d put the tea kettle to boil, and when the noise woke me up it was just starting to bubble up.”

“Describe the noise.”

Enrica swallowed. She spoke in her faulty, rough Italian, a self-conscious peasant speech. “A
noise
, I didn’t know what kind, because I heard it in my sleep. A thud-like noise, like something hitting something hard. It startled me, and right away I heard a car speeding on the gravel, spinning the gravel under its tyres. I thought it was the
signora
, because she always drove in and out of the gate at full speed.”

“What do you think now?”

She did not answer, and Guidi repeated the question in the same calm tone.

“If you must know, Inspector, I still think the same.”

“That
Signora
Lisi killed your master?”

“I told you what I think. Just the day before they’d had the biggest shouting match, and she’d driven out of the place like a cat with her tail on fire. She almost hit the gate that time.”

Once more Guidi flashed a glance at Bora’s profile, whose immobility was complete. He seemed to listen intently to what the woman said, yet to be lost in thought. Was he by any chance attracted to her? Guidi couldn’t
make it out. What else was the matter with him, otherwise? It wasn’t like Bora to play second fiddle.

“Tell us the rest of the story,” he encouraged Enrica.

“Well, you know how it is when you first wake up. Your mind races and you can’t move. I decided, I don’t know for sure why, to go and look. Maybe because I was afraid that if she’d come to the villa there would be another scene.”

“And why should you care about what took place between your employers?”

It was the first question Bora asked, and as always he went straight for it. Guidi saw by the way Enrica chewed on her bloodless lip that she was inwardly debating an answer.

“I know it was none of my business,” she said at last. “But I was fond of the master, and I didn’t want him to suffer. In a year of service I heard nothing but scenes against him. It wasn’t fair, and if nothing else I wanted
her
to know there were witnesses.”

“So,” Guidi intervened, “according to you, what were the wrongful accusations that
Signora
Lisi made against her husband?”

“You think of it, she said it.” As she grew animated, Enrica’s face turned proud and nearly contemptuous, quite a transformation. “She said the marriage had ruined her
prospects
, when five years before she lived down from my house and bought her potatoes and cabbage in the market square.”

“You knew
Signora
Lisi beforehand?”

“Not personally. But when the master hired me you could tell from the way she looked at me that the
signora
recognized me from the days we bought greens from the
same vendor. Her
prospects
! Her father drank himself to death, and as far as I know her mother mended clothes for a living.”

Bora made a calm gesture with his right hand, like a teacher asking for silence. Enrica interrupted herself just when Guidi could hardly wait to hear the rest.

“Please conclude your account of the accident,” Bora said.

Enrica’s hooded eyes travelled to the German, and settled on him.

“On Fridays the master expected a thorough cleaning, and there was always a clutter of chairs and rolled-up carpets until I was done. Half-asleep as I was, I stumbled on I don’t know how many things before I got to the front door. When I got there, all I could see was that the master had fallen out of his wheelchair. It’d never happened before, and it scared me so, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that the car I’d heard was not around. I ran down the steps to help him, and of course I could tell he hadn’t just fallen. He was white like a sheet of paper, and this little trickle of pinkish blood was running from his nose.” A shiver went through Enrica like a tired whiplash, so that her shoulders slumped. “It’s useless to ask me what happened next, because I don’t remember anything else about it. That’s why I can’t cry now. Something broke inside me. I started shouting, and the next thing I knew I was standing by the state highway. I couldn’t even tell you how I got there.”