A Dark Song of Blood (49 page)

“Bora, just out of curiosity – what did your father die of?”

“Cancer.”

“What kind of cancer?”

“Throat.”

“Did he suffer very much?”

Bora was carrying his leather briefcase, which now he placed at his feet to appear calmer and less in haste than he was. “I don’t know, I was just born. I expect he did.”

Kappler nodded. “Do you ever worry you might get the same?”

“Sometimes.”

“And are you afraid of pain, Colonel Bora?”

“Yes.”

“It’s good that you are, you know.” Kappler brought the flat of his hand to the visor of his cap. “Have a good trip north, Bora.”

Back from the Excelsior, Bora made an unplanned stop by his office before driving to Villa Umberto, across the street.

“Colonel, there’s a message from one Inspector Guidi for you,” an orderly informed him as he walked in. “He says he can’t make the appointment.”

“Did he say why?”

“No, sir.”

Guidi arrived alone at Goethe’s monument, and sat by it for half an hour before the blue-haired young man idly strolled by and asked for a light. When Guidi held out a match for him, he said, “It looks like our friend isn’t coming,” and took a drag of smoke.

Guidi blew on the match. The pompous marble group, with the poet standing on a fat, elaborate capital like on a wedding cake, was blinding in the midday sun. “It seems so.”

“Why did you tell us he was?”

“Because he was.”

“Well, make another appointment with him.” Guidi’s lack of reaction made the young man intolerant. “You know, you’re a policeman already, a servant of the Regime. You’ll look an awful lot like a collaborator if you don’t do something
right now
about having dealt with the Germans on a regular basis.”

Guidi gave him a void look. He had been rolling himself a cigarette, and he now ran the along edge of paper with the tip of his tongue to moisten it. One hand on his hip, Goethe seemed about to take flight from his crowded monument. “We’ve all played into the Germans’ hands one way or another. Where were
you
on 23 March?”

“This is June, Inspector. Let March sit where it is.” The man watched Guidi leave the bench, hands in his pocket. “Where are you going?”

“To lunch.”

“We’ll be in touch later today.”

Guidi shrugged.

That afternoon, Bora was driving down Via San Francesco, but even in the car he was aware of the change, not knowing what it was. He rolled down his window and listened. Got out of the car. Against the mirror brightness of the sky, the heads of the pines at the edge of the park rounded dark above him. For the first time in months he heard the wind rustle through them. The sound of the wind whispering in the branches over the silence. He held his breath, listening to the lack of noise. Suddenly the whole city, the whole world had fallen asleep, and enchantment would hold it now for a hundred years in stillness. He could all but hear his own heartbeat. The small creakings of the car that cooled off after stopping. The crinkle of a piece of paper that came wind-tossed over the pavement. And the tidewater sound of the pines over him.

Guidi was eating at his trattoria without hunger. Across the floor, with plates of pasta balanced in his hands, the waiter stopped in mid-stride. His face looked stunned, as if he’d been hit and wondered where the blow came from. Guidi put down his fork and raised his eyes to the door. Silence was a visitor. It came in and people looked at it and were amazed, and didn’t know how to greet it, or what to do with it.

Signora Carmela perceived the cessation of noise, that was all. The glass domes in her parlor ceased tinkling, and, suddenly taciturn, the saints stood beneath them.

The shelves in Donna Maria’s parlor also grew quiet. She set the lace pillow aside and went to open the window. The street was mute. Swallows cut through it as scissors through
cloth. From one of the roses Martin Bora had given her the petals fell, and even the falling of petals on the table had a soft sound of its own in the great silence.

Cardinal Borromeo was saying Mass alone, and stopped. With his face to the altar he listened, so unmoving that the candle flames before him became vertical and long in the twilight of the chapel.

The woman with the cherry lips let go of the skirt she had been zipping on her fleshy side.

At the hospital, Treib sat up in his chair, eyes on the wall clock.

Maelzer poured himself a glass of Frascati wine and gulped it all.

Bora realized how much he had missed silence, and welcomed it no matter what it meant. The living and the dead, he felt, could now rest within themselves. Jails and barracks and graves would feed on silence, and hope for peace. His last orders in Rome entailed the destruction of barracks, depots and dumps, but not until tomorrow. He was grateful, ever so grateful he did not have to break the silence today.

When Guidi returned to the office, Danza, who was a model of timeliness, was not there. On his desk, just outside the inspector’s door, his uniform was neatly folded, cap and pistol holder laid above the rest. No pistol in the holder. On a sheet of notebook paper, in pencil, the words,
It is more honorable now to be a partisan than a policeman.
And several banknotes were clipped to the paper, so that it couldn’t be said he’d made off with state property without paying.

Nothing in some time had seemed as bizarre as the opening of the opera season Saturday night. Bora sensed great relaxation in the air, even humor. The theater blazed with elegance of dresses and uniforms, beautiful women and decorated men. The Fascists had nearly all gone, but Germans filled the audience. Rumors were that troops had taken position
south of the city, but the exodus of entire units continued in the dark outside.

Having arrived with Donna Maria, whom he had after much insistence convinced to come, Bora saw among others General Maelzer accompanied by two women, and Kappler with his lover, a discreet Dutch girl Dollmann had heartlessly bad-talked to him. Without much hope he looked around to catch a glimpse of Mrs Murphy. She’d mentioned studying Italian as a child in Florence. Did she truly like opera? Were all the diplomats still around? Borromeo’s box, which Donna Maria pointed out to him, was still empty when she and Bora took place in their box opposite to it. By a stir of clothing in the semi-darkness, after the lights went down, he perceived that he’d come, not alone, just as the curtain rose.

At the intermission he was about to ask the old lady to join him in the foyer. He did turn, and that was all he did. Across the theater, in a lilac gown that enclosed her like a flower, Mrs Murphy sat in Borromeo’s box.

Donna Maria, sunken in her seat like a black satin turtle, noticed his stare. “I don’t want to go downstairs,” she said, peering at the box through her opera glasses. “You go.”

Bora paid no attention. He disappointedly watched the cardinal’s box fill with visitors, and did not move.

“Well, Martin, weren’t you to meet the cardinal?”

“Not with other people there, Donna Maria.”

“If I wanted to talk to somebody, a mob wouldn’t keep me from doing it.”

Bora faced her frankly. “It’s propriety, not shyness.”

She sat in her jet-embroidered satin with a scowl. When she shook her head, the diamonds at her ears flashed their diminutive lightning. “Martin, pay attention to the opera. You might learn something from the love story in it.”

At the second intermission she caught Borromeo’s eye and signified she wanted to meet him in the foyer, to which she descended, leaning heavily on Bora’s arm. Immediately
cornered by General Maelzer, Bora had to shoulder his way among epaulets and bare backs to the other side of the hall in order to approach Mrs Murphy before the start of the third act. She saw him coming and did not move from where she stood. “I can hardly believe you are still all here,” she coolly interjected. “The silence of the guns is ominous.”

“I am so glad to see you, Ma’am.”

As once before, she smiled at the British formality of his address. “Thank you.” At her side was stationed a tall adolescent, whose face was ridden with acne and incipient fuzz. “May I introduce my stepson Patrick Junior? Patrick, this is Lieutenant Colonel Bora.” Bora nodded his head, ignoring him entirely. “Patrick will be entering Columbia in the fall.”

An impatient glance was all Bora could volunteer in the way of acknowledgment. He understood the meaning of the boy’s presence, but was so desperately pressed for time, he rejected it. With a slight bow of his head, he said, “Mrs Murphy, I ask you the kindness of allowing me to speak to you privately after the performance.”

“For what reason?”

He found himself justified in lightly touching her elbow to guide her aside. “There’s a favor I must beg of you.”

“Is it in return to yours? I should have known.”

Her face, her eyes. I must remember them, must remember the way her lips move, the cast of her face when she looks away. The color and scent, her small perfection.
“Please give me a few moments after the opera, Mrs Murphy.”

“If you insist.”

The third act went by, with Donna Maria quite sure Bora had heard none of it. He slipped so quickly out of the box afterwards, she decided to wave to Cardinal Borromeo for him to accompany her below. Soon she saw how Bora, having succeeded in dodging Maelzer, other uniforms and the pimple-faced boy, was now talking to the woman in the lilac gown.

“I wasn’t hoping to see you here, Mrs Murphy, so I planned to give this to Cardinal Borromeo.” Unobtrusively, he placed a small envelope into her hand.

“Is it for the cardinal, or for me?”

“It’s for you.” She began to open it, and he prevented her. “I’d rather if you didn’t. I’d like to talk to you for a minute. There’ll be time enough to read that.”

Mrs Murphy slipped the envelope into a round, beaded purse. “I cannot imagine —”

“I believe you can.” Bora had such a cowardly desire to hold her, he had to force himself from doing it. “Mrs Murphy, I am —”

“Leaving? That’s quite obvious.”

“It’s not what I meant.”

“Well, it’s very contrived for all of you to be here.”

Bora disregarded what she said, was not listening at all. “It’s been very important for me to make your acquaintance. I have been
really
thinking about you a great deal.”

“How so?”

“With respect. Oh, with much respect.”

“You flatter me.”

“If circumstances allowed, I would show my respect for you.”

She looked behind him, clearly made uncomfortable by his words, but unwilling to concede she was. When she returned her eyes to him, her gracious calm was regained. “I appreciate your intent. Circumstances do not allow. Now, what is the favor you ask of me?”

“Not to throw my note away.”

“I don’t even know what it contains!”

“Please do not throw it away.”

She could have looked away from him now, but did not. “It’s a silly request.”

“Not to me. Promise me you won’t.” Bora heard the testy earnestness of his own words, but lack of time made him discard diplomacy for any method that would convince her.

“Very well, I promise.”

“Thank you.” He’d have kissed her hand hadn’t Maelzer stepped between them with a champagne glass in each hand, jostling them apart from one another. And already the pockmarked young Patrick rejoined her, with the bored look of one who wants to leave. “Goodbye, Mrs Murphy.”

“Take care of yourself, Colonel Bora.”

Grasping her cane, at the same moment Donna Maria told Borromeo, “Nino, you haven’t changed in forty years. You’re still as devious as in the old days.”

“Alas, Donna Maria, you would know. It’s hard to go straight in this profession.”

“And on top of it all you’re blasphemous! You never did take your calling seriously.”

Borromeo smirked. “How can I help it? I was in love with you even as a young priest.”

“Liar. It’s true that you were in love, but not with me.”

“There’s no pretending with you, is there?”

“Well, it makes no difference, but that’s why I’d never use you as a confessor. Now tell me, what will happen to my godchild? I’ve seen tonight what you’ve been up to.”

“He’s in the hands of God, like the rest of us. And so is she.”

Donna Maria tapped him with the knob of her cane. What a bad priest you are –
the hands of God
! God ought to squash you between them like a fly.”

Guidi’s apartment felt hollow like a seashell, in the silence of the outside. It made thinking too easy. The noise of war had for weeks been used by all of them as an excuse not to think deeply. All unconfessed truths surfaced now, guilts and regrets and what gutless ambiguity had first made him invite Bora to an ambush and then give him a way out of it. In the face of Danza’s quiet decision, he was ashamed of both actions.

It was common knowledge that German officers attended the opera tonight, but unlikely for an accident to happen in
the heavily patrolled surroundings of the theater. He fully expected the young men from
Unione e Libertà
to bound up the stairs to his door any time, vengeful in their ignorance of Francesca’s dark side. He had no answer ready for them. He’d say what he’d say, whatever came to his mind.