Liar Moon (29 page)

“I’ll have to report this, Major.” Guidi forced himself to sound unaffected.

Bora gave him an outraged, brief glance. “Go ahead.”

Stone benches connected the pedestals. Guidi went to sit on one of the pitted, eroded surfaces and stayed there, drinking in the raw, cold sunshine of year’s end with his eyes closed, so that a floating red-and-blue darkness surrounded him. “At least tell me why you did it.”

“Why shouldn’t I? He asked me to.”

“You could have said no.”

“I had no intention of saying no. It would benefit no one to keep him alive for the trial. All Moser wanted was to die in his house, and I gave him a chance to do it. It was a small concession.”

“Except that you are an accessory to his death.”

“So be it.”

“While Enrica Salviati…”

“Enrica Salviati? Oh, please. It’s a matter of cultural habits, Guidi: we Germans fire bullets into our own heads. In Fascist Italy people
stumble
on the tracks while a train is coming. Or a tramway. What if the comrades had decided to silence her, so that no more gossip could come out about the
departed saint
, Lisi? It could be, couldn’t it? It’s up to you to look into the matter, although I doubt you’ll get very far.”

Guidi opened his eyes, and saw Bora only a few steps away, standing with his head low in the winter sun. “With Moser dead, Major, Claretta is the only one who must answer for her husband’s death. You’ll have to testify in that regard.”

“No.
You
will.”

“From the start, this has been your game. Why should I take it over now?”

“Because I can’t.”

“And why not?”

“I’m being transferred from Lago.” Bora unexpectedly seemed very young to Guidi, younger than himself and, despite his uniform and rank, more vulnerable, more endangered.

“Transferred? For no reason?”

“There are reasons.”

Guidi swallowed. He was, more than ever, aware that Bora shared nothing with him but the filings of his mind, jealously guarding the rest. Only it might not be out of haughtiness, but out of prudence, or decency. Or courage. It came to his mind – a quick thought he chased away at once – that perhaps it had been Monsignor Lai, in Saint Zeno’s cloister. That turning Gardini in to the SS was perhaps the price Bora paid to his military conscience in order to justify what he did for others, to save others, quietly, at the risk of his own life.

“It is up to you to make of this case what you must, Guidi. I have run out of time.”

Guidi was tempted to detect a suggestion in Bora’s words, and was careful not to jeopardize it by sounding impulsive. “So, where will you go?” he asked.

“I hope to be able to get an assignment to Rome.”

“And if you don’t?”

“If I don’t, I don’t know what will happen.”

Guidi closed his eyes again. He knew Bora was walking away by the crunch of gravel under his measured, limping step.

The two of them could never be friends. Even though Bora had called him
mein Freund
, it meant nothing. Unwilling to look around, Guidi felt the wind rising to whisper incomprehensible words in his ears. Snow would soon follow on the north wind’s back as on an invisible saddle. Today or tomorrow Claretta would act once more, according to how he decided to handle her role in Lisi’s death. Would she deny everything? She would, lamb-eyed in her providential pregnancy. She’d either cry or smile at him, and he’d look away from her tears, or her smile.
Tomorrow, Christmas Day,
1943. November is a short and cruel month, and December kills the year.

Soon he could no longer hear Bora’s step. When he looked, he saw that he’d walked back to the BMW. Still Sandro Guidi remained on the bench, tasting the wind from the bitter north. He had to weigh in his heart the truth that Bora and he had, despite all odds, become what in other circumstances anyone would call
friends
. He had to, whatever it meant for their souls.

Beyond the garden, paling over the unruly crest of overgrown boxwood, the moon sank back into the sky. Guidi left the bench, and walked to join Martin Bora in the army car.

 

October 1939, Cracow, Nazi-occupied Poland.

 

Wehrmacht
Captain Martin Bora discovers the abbess, Mother Kazimierza, shot dead in her convent garden. Her alleged power to see the future has brought her a devoted following. But her work and motto, “Lumen Christi Adiuva Nos”, appear also, it transpires, to have brought her some enemies.

 

Father Malecki had come to Cracow from Chicago at the Pope’s bidding, to investigate Mother Kazimierza’s powers. Now the Vatican orders him to stay and assist in the inquiry into her killing.

 

Stunned by the violence of the occupation and the ideology of his colleagues, Bora’s sense of Prussian duty is tested to breaking point. The interference of seductive actress Ewa Kowalska does not help matters.

 

 

 

 

 

BITTER LEMON PRESS

 

First published in the United Kingdom in 2012 by Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW

 

© 2001, Ben Pastor

This edition published in agreement with the Author through PNLA/Piergiorgio Nicolazzini Literary Agency

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher

 

The moral rights of Ben Pastor have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

 

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN : 978-1-904-73883-1

 

Typeset by Tetragon

Printed and bound by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire