Liar Moon (7 page)

Guidi didn’t trouble himself with looking up from the papers. “Yes, he knows.”

“And when did you inform him?”

“Last night.”

De Rosa sneered. “We’ll see. I will telephone the major and ask to speak to him directly.”

“It’s not necessary,” Guidi hastened to say. “I mean, what need is there to call?”

“Let us say that if you’re telling the truth you have nothing to worry about. I’m going to call from my office.”

Guidi had carefully kept from Bora his intention to visit Claretta. He anxiously awaited De Rosa’s return, ready to justify himself or to argue. But it was apparent from De Rosa’s expression that he had got no satisfaction.

“The major isn’t in,” he grumbled. “They don’t know when he’ll be back. I regret I can’t kick you out of here as I’d like to. But I’m keeping an eye on you. Trust me, Guidi. I’ll sit here and keep a hawk’s eye on you.”

“Please yourself. Considering that this dossier ought to be with the police or the
carabinieri
, you are hardly in the position to point out irregularities.”

 

Bora was then walking out of the tenement house. He breathed the cold night air fully, to cleanse himself somehow from the oppression of the visit.

He wanted to think,
I’m a childless man, what’s any of this to me?
But talk of abortion and death by abortion unnerved the soldier in him, because of the fragility of a soldier’s life.

The BMW was parked at the end of the street. Walking stiffly toward it, Bora welcomed the darkness and the cold around him, as if they were a dense liquid in which he had to sink in order to escape. From the darkness he looked up at the sky above the street, reduced to a star-studded belt stretching between the eaves. The moon had waned into a worn sickle, but its blade shone exceedingly bright at the edge of a roof. It was the same unemotional, clear moon he’d seen from the balcony of his parents’ elegant town house in Leipzig, or through his brother’s telescope up in Trakehnen. And, later, from
the mortal vastness of Russia.
Liar moon
, he thought. A liar moon. Bora sighed, feeling lonely. He was a soldier, and a childless man.

Unexpectedly, a dance of flashlights criss-crossed at the end of the street.

“Who goes there?” German voices called out.

Bora stepped up and showed his pass. The soldiers snapped to attention, saluted with a clatter of heels. The leading non-com, who was a grey-haired man, escorted him to his car. “
Herr Major
,” he said concernedly, “these aren’t the times to walk around alone.”

Bora thanked him, and started the engine.

Back in Lago at about midnight, he was too tired to sleep. He sat up to read, and then wrote a long letter to his wife. No mail had come from her in two months. Since the incident, in fact, when Habermehl had sent her a telegram with the news of his wounding.

Bora had last seen Benedikta during a furlough from the Russian front, a few hours in the unmade bed of the Prague hotel where she’d come to meet him like a lover. Hurriedly, because there was no time, they’d undressed each other behind the barely shut door, in a frenzy to touch each other’s bodies. The scented wetness of her thighs, he could have died kissing, each hollow and mound, shaven bare or blond. But, as always, talk had sunk into motion, hard muscles and searching hands had been words and sentences between them, and once more there’d been no time to give intellectual shape to love. She remained unknown as an island, the surge and heave of the sheets like surf around her, bringing him to her and yet surrounding her in ultimate safety and unknowableness. So he had her body, each sweet fold of
it memorized and surely to be with him at the moment of his death, but her mind eluded him and he stayed hungry and frustrated for that part of love. And, even as they possessed one another physically, death was in the room, kept at bay by lovemaking alone.

In his loneliness he’d hoped – expected, even – that she would become pregnant, but the card just arrived from his mother made it clear it had not happened.

“She’s too active, Martin. Riding or in the pool from morning till night, every day. When you return for good you’ll calm her down. The babies will come.”

Bora couldn’t get out of his mind the crude, defensive words he’d heard from the midwife in the squalid tenement room. They were the only thing in the way of unrestrained arousal now. And the soldier’s anguished need to leave something of himself before another accident, before anything else happened, rushed at him again, like rising blood. “Dikta, let’s make a baby as soon as I get back,” he wrote as a postscript to his letter. But then he crumpled the sheet and threw it away.

As for Guidi, he returned to Sagràte at one thirty in the morning. It had started to snow in squalls of icy pellets across the bare countryside, and it was very cold.

Two hours later, Bora and his men went out on patrol.

In the morning the temperature had risen a few degrees. Although a rabid northerly kept up its strength, the snow patches on the fields had melted. Only on the shady side of the streets, powdery white handfuls lingered, but they wouldn’t last. In the western sky a consumptive moon looked like the ghost of a pruning knife.

A block away from the Sagràte police command, German soldiers were alighting from a half-track in front of the local post, usually manned by just three men and a sergeant, and occasionally by Wenzel. All answered to Bora in Lago. Guidi recognized the red-haired, lanky Lieutenant Wenzel as the first man out of the half-track. Clearly the Germans had been scouting the hilly piedmont overnight, seeking out partisans in the woods. Shots had rung out for hours. Lining up to enter the Sagràte post, the ten or so soldiers looked for all the world like hungry young farmers, clumsy and rosy-cheeked. Guidi understood that Bora was in the army vehicle that had just pulled in, by the zeal with which Wenzel came to open the car door. But the vehicle only halted for a moment, before continuing on its way to the police command.

Bora was pale with weariness when he walked in from Guidi’s doorstep. “I hope you have some coffee ready,” he said in lieu of a greeting.

“Turco!” Guidi called out. “Prepare a strong cup for the major.” Stepping back, he let Bora in. “Instead of drinking coffee, why don’t you get some sleep?”

Bora waved his right hand to dismiss the comment. Without waiting for an invitation he walked into Guidi’s office and sat in a chair by the window. After Guidi followed, Bora had taken off his camouflage jacket, and was nestling three hand grenades in the folds of the cloth, right on the floor. “Left over,” Bora explained. In the bald morning light he stretched, sat down again. “Holy Christ, what time is it?”

“Eight fifteen.”

“Ah, good. I thought it was later than that. My watch stopped.” Like many Germans Guidi had seen, despite the darkness of his hair Bora was fair-complected, and only when he turned to the light could one see the blond stubble on his face. “Have you continued working on the Lisi affair?”

Guidi kept mum about last night. “Yes.”

“So have I.” Bora yawned into his cupped right hand. “But I don’t have time to discuss it now.” Turco brought the coffee. There was enough chicory in the grains to dilute the stimulating effect of the drink. Its bitterness, on the other hand, would have woken up the dead. Bora gulped it down. “How did it go with the dogs?”

Guidi told him of the shoeless body.

Bora listened leaning back on the chair, with a relaxed air rare in him. He said nothing until Guidi pointed out on the wall map the place where the dead man had been
found. Then he reached over to dig out of the army jacket a box of matches, a pipe, a shell casing and a few Italian coins. He went to place everything on Guidi’s desk, and returned to his seat. “We ran into a corpse, too.” Whether Guidi’s surprise tickled him or not, Bora allowed himself a smirk. “I know what you’re thinking. But don’t you worry, we’re not in the habit of claiming bodies we didn’t shoot. We didn’t kill this one. I even left a couple of men to guard him.”

“Who was it, Major, do you know? Where did it happen?”

“We stumbled onto him two hours ago, behind a rubble wall. Two miles to the east of the ditch where you found the first body. Fosso Bandito, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this other place is nameless on the topographic map, and just marked as a farmhouse. But the house is long gone. Only a watering trough and the rubble wall are left. From what I could judge, it was an old man. The shot was fired point-blank and it all but blew off his head. There were fragments of brain tissue stuck to the wall all around.” Bora waited for Guidi to examine the objects before asking, “Are you sure your lunatic carries an army rifle?”

Guidi took from his desk drawer the two bullets he’d recovered. “That’s the report we have. But look how smashed these are.”

Closely Bora studied the shapeless bits of lead, running the fingers of his right hand all over them. “That’s why I asked, Guidi. Whoever it is, he tampered with the bullets by filing the tips or cutting the casing crosswise. The Russian partisans did the same; I recognize messy butchery. It’s not army-rifle butchery.”

Guidi kept for himself the clever comment that had risen to his lips. He limited himself to saying, “How long had the man been dead, in your opinion?”

“One hour. Maybe less. There was no
rigor mortis
yet, not even on the neck muscles. Let’s say he was killed within thirty minutes of six hundred hours. This is all he had in his pockets, and we found the casing a few feet away. Now, Guidi, do me the favour of sending someone to fetch the body. I need my men back.”

Bora was about to add something else, Guidi could tell. The fact that he kept from doing so meant he wanted to be asked directly, and Guidi let him wait for a moment before satisfying him with a question. “Did you notice anything unusual about the body, or around it?”

“I suppose you expect I’ll tell you whether he had shoes on.”

“Did he?”

“No. He was barefoot. No shoes, no socks. Oh, and there was also a tobacco pouch, but I wasn’t about to pick it up from where it had fallen.” Bora closed his eyes in the sunlight, uneasily stretching his left leg. “He must have been a beggar, a vagrant. Or a very poor farmer. You might recognize him when you see him, Guidi. As far as I’m concerned, all I know is that I don’t want to end up like him. He’d made a little fire of sticks and apparently walked to the wall to take care of a physical need. They killed him in his own excrement.”

Guidi shrugged. “It isn’t less honourable than any other death, Major.”

“No, but it’s
unaesthetic.
” Opening his eyes, Bora smiled unaffectedly. “I believe a dignified death is of the greatest importance.”

“Maybe.” Guidi walked out to dispatch a couple of men to the place indicated by Bora. When he walked back into his office, Bora was standing at the window, slowly massaging his neck.

“About the Lisi affair, Guidi, you ought to know there’s another wife to contend with. No, no, don’t ask me now. I’ll tell you in a moment. I have also met with one of the midwives.”

Claretta’s lonely pink figure rose in Guidi’s mind. “Another wife? Do you mean to tell me that Lisi was also a bigamist?”

“I’ll tell you everything. One thing at a time. I have been thinking that the letter ‘C’ might not stand for a person’s name. It could indicate, I don’t know, the name of a bank, or a company. It could mean ‘communists’. It could be the Latin cipher for one hundred.”

“Come, now!” Guidi was so pressed for real news that Bora’s interest in word games seemed inopportune. “I doubt Lisi was proficient in Latin, Major Bora. But I do agree the clue in and of itself is not sufficient to incriminate Claretta.”

Perhaps because he’d heard him call the widow by her first name, Bora turned to Guidi with a curious stare.

“The circle of suspects,” Guidi continued, “is only limited by the fact that a car was used to commit murder. Since he certainly did not hail a taxi for the purpose, the assassin must have used a private vehicle, and have a good reason to drive around. Why are you smiling, Major? Have I said something that amuses you?”

“No. I was trying to imagine the old lecher as he struggled to get away while the car aimed at him. It’s not
funny, you’re right. I’m just tired. The strangest things seem humorous when one is tired.”

“At any rate, we should set a date to visit the crime scene and to interrogate the maid.”

“I’m glad that’s how you see it,” Bora said. He took a road map of the Verona province out of a leather case at his belt. “I’m ready.”

Guidi was taken aback. He’d hoped to visit Claretta again, and Bora’s zeal came at the wrong time. “I didn’t mean this morning,” he said. “There’s no hurry, is there?”

“There is. Life is nothing but hurry.”

Under Bora’s stern supervision Guidi donned coat, scarf and gloves, instructed Turco to apologize to his mother and to carry on for the day, and followed the German outside.

The army vehicle had already been refuelled. Bora told Guidi, “Come, let’s take mine for a change,” and dismissed the driver. “Not
mine
, actually. The BMW is being repaired.” Despite his mutilation, he promptly started the engine. “Well, which way?” He turned to Guidi, who was unfolding the map.

Guidi told him. And when Bora steered the wheel to leave the kerbside, he saw why his watch had stopped. Half-hidden by the cuff of the army shirt, the watch’s face had been shot clean off its metal band. Bora burst out laughing. “Didn’t I tell you that the strangest things become humorous after a while?”

The state highway traversed a stretch of land rich in deeply curving brooks and linked chains of low hills. Now and then, tall, svelte belfries signalled distant villages, with bells in their arched top windows like pupils in hooded eyes. At the edge of the fields,
much-pruned trees stood guard like wounded bodies, ready to bud again in the spring from their mutilated branches.