Bloodline (3 page)

They assured Anna that she was getting better every day, but she was becoming frightened. Something was happening to her that she did not understand. Walther would arrive and take her hand and say good-bye, and she would look at him in surprise and start to say, “But you just got here…” And then she would see the clock, and three or four hours would have passed.

She had no idea where they had gone.

She had a vague recollection that they had brought the children to her in the night and that she had fallen asleep. She could not remember too clearly, and she was afraid to ask. It did not matter. She would have them to herself when Walther took her home.

The wonderful day finally arrived. Anna left her hospital room in a wheelchair, even though she insisted she was strong enough to walk. She actually felt very weak, but she was so excited that nothing mattered except the fact that she was going to see her babies. Walther carried her into the house, and he started to take her upstairs to their bedroom.

“No, no!” she said. “Take me to the nursery.”

“You must rest now, darling. You’re not strong enough to—”

She did not listen to the rest of what he was saying. She slipped out of his arms and ran into the nursery.

The blinds were drawn and the room was dark and it took Anna’s eyes a moment to adjust. She was filled with such excitement that it made her dizzy. She was afraid she was going to faint.

Walther had come in behind her. He was talking to her, trying to explain something, but whatever it was was unimportant.

For there they were. They were both asleep in their cribs, and Anna moved toward them softly, so as not to disturb them, and stood there, staring down at them. They were the most beautiful children she had ever seen. Even now, she could see that the boy would have Walther’s handsome features and his thick blond hair. The girl was like an exquisite doll, with soft, golden hair and a small, triangular face.

Anna turned to Walther and said, her voice choked, “They’re beautiful. I—I’m so happy.”

“Come, Anna,” Walther whispered. He put his arms around Anna, and held her close, and there was a fierce hunger in him, and she began to feel a stirring within her. They had not made love for
such a long time. Walther was right There would be plenty of time for the children later.

The boy she named Peter and the girl Birgitta. They were two beautiful miracles that she and Walther had made, and Anna would spend hour after hour in the nursery, playing with them, talking to them. Even though they could not understand her yet, she knew they could feel her love. Sometimes, in the middle of play, she would turn and Walther would be standing in the doorway, home from the office, and Anna would realize that somehow the whole day had slipped by.

“Come and join us,” she would say. “We’re playing a game.”

“Have you fixed dinner yet?” Walther would ask, and she would suddenly feel guilty. She would resolve to pay more attention to Walther, and less to the children, but the next day the same thing would happen. The twins were like an irresistible magnet that drew her to them. Anna still loved Walther very much, and she tried to assuage her guilt by telling herself that the children were a part of him. Every night, as soon as Walther was asleep, Anna would slip out of bed and creep into the nursery, and sit and stare at the children until dawn started filtering into the room. Then she would turn and hurry back to bed before Walther awoke.

Once, in the middle of the night, Walther walked into the nursery and caught her. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” he said.

“Nothing, darling. I was just—”

“Go back to bed!”

He had never spoken to her like that before.

At breakfast Walther said, “I think we should
take a vacation. It will be good for us to get away.” “But, Walther, the children are too young to travel.”

“I’m talking about the two of us.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t leave them.” He took her hand and said, “I want you to forget about the children.”

“Forget about the children?” There was shock in her voice.

He looked into her eyes and said, “Anna, remember how wonderful it was between us before you were pregnant? What good times we had? How much joy it was to be together, just the two of us, with no one else around to interfere?”

It was then that she understood. Walther was jealous of the children.

The weeks and months passed swiftly. Walther never went near the children now. On their birthdays Anna bought them lovely presents. Walther always managed to be out of town on business. Anna could not go on deceiving herself forever. The truth was that Walther had no interest in the children at all. Anna felt that perhaps it was her fault, because she was
too
interested in them.
Obsessed
was the word Walther had used. He had asked her to consult a doctor about it, and she had gone only to please Walther. But the doctor was a fool. The moment he had started talking to her, Anna had shut him out, letting her mind drift, until she heard him say, “Our time is up, Mrs. Gassner. Will I see you next week?”

“Of course.”

She never returned.

Anna felt that the problem was as much Walther’s
as hers. If her fault lay in loving the children too much, then his fault lay in not loving them enough.

Anna learned not to mention the children in Walther’s presence, but she could hardly wait for him to leave for the office, so she could hurry into the nursery to be with her babies. Except that they were no longer babies. They had had their third birthday, and already Anna could see what they would look like as adults. Peter was tall for his age and his body was strong and athletic, like his father’s. Anna would hold him on her lap and croon, “Ah, Peter, what are you going to do to the poor fräuleins? Be gentle with them, my darling son. They won’t have a chance.”

And Peter would smile shyly and hug her.

Then Anna would turn to Birgitta. Birgitta grew prettier each day. She looked like neither Anna or Walther. She had spun-golden hair and skin as delicate as porcelain. Peter had his father’s fiery temper and sometimes it would be necessary for Anna to spank him gently, but Birgitta had the disposition of an angel. When Walther was not around, Anna played records or read to them. Their favorite book was
101 Märchens.
They would insist that Anna read them the tales of ogres and goblins and witches over and over again, and at night, Anna would put them to bed, singing them a lullaby:

Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf, Der Voter hür’t die Schaf…

Anna had prayed that time would soften Walther’s attitude, that he would change. He did change, but for the worse. He hated the children. In the beginning Anna had told herself that it was because
Walther wanted all of her love for himself, that he was unwilling to share it with anyone else. But slowly she became aware that it had nothing to do with loving her. It had to do with hating her. Her father had been right Walther had married her for her money. The children were a threat to him. He wanted to get rid of them. More and more he talked to Anna about selling the stock. “Sam has no right to stop us! We could take all that money and go away somewhere. Just the two of us.”

She stared at him. “What about the children?”

His eyes were feverish. “No, Listen to me. For both our sakes we’ve got to get rid of them. We must.”

It was then that Anna began to realize that he was insane. She was terrified. Walther had fired all the domestic help, and except for a cleaning woman who came in once a week, Anna and the children were alone with him, at his mercy. He needed help. Perhaps it was not too late to cure him. In the fifteenth century they gathered the insane and imprisoned them forever on houseboats,
Narrenschiffe,
the ships of fools, but today, with modern medicine, she felt there must be something they could do to help Walther.

Now, on this day in September, Anna sat huddled on the floor in her bedroom, where Walther had locked her, waiting for him to return. She knew what she had to do. For his sake, as well as hers and the children’s. Anna rose unsteadily and walked over to the telephone. She hesitated for only an instant, then picked it up and began to dial 110, the police emergency number.

An alien voice in her ear said,
“Hallo. Hier ist der Notruf der Polizei. Kann ich ihnen helfen?”

“Ja, bitte!”
Her voice was choked.
“Ich—”

A hand came out of nowhere and tore the receiver from her, and slammed it down into the cradle.

Anna backed away. “Oh, please,” she whimpered, “don’t hurt me.”

Walther was moving toward her, his eyes bright, his voice so soft that she could hardly make out the words.
“Liebchen,
I’m not going to hurt you. I love you, don’t you know that?” He touched her, and she could feel her flesh crawl. “It’s just that we don’t want the police coming here, do we?” She shook her head from side to side, too filled with terror to speak. “It’s the children that are causing the trouble, Anna. We’re going to get rid of them. I—”

Downstairs the front doorbell rang. Walther stood there, hesitating. It rang again.

“Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll be back.”

Anna watched, petrified, as he walked out the bedroom door. He slammed it behind him and she could hear the click of the key as he locked it.

I’ll be back,
he had said.

Walther Gassner hurried down the stairs, walked to the front door and opened it. A man in a gray messenger’s uniform stood there, holding a sealed manila envelope.

“I have a special delivery for Mr. and Mrs. Walther Gassner.”

“Yes,” Walther said. “I will take it.”

He closed the door, looked at the envelope in his hand, then ripped it open. Slowly, he read the message inside.

DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT SAM

ROFFE WAS KILLED IN A CLIMBING

ACCIDENT. PLEASE BE IN ZURICH

FRIDAY NOON FOR AN EMERGENCY

MEETING OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
.

It was signed “Rhys Williams.”

Rome.

Monday, September 7.

Six p.m.

Ivo Palazzi stood in the middle of his bedroom, the blood streaming down his face.
“Mamma mia! Mi hai rovinato!”

“I haven’t begun to ruin you, you miserable
figlio di putana!”
Donatella screamed at him.

They were both naked in the large bedroom of their apartment in Via Montemignaio. Donatella had the most sensuous, exciting body Ivo Palazzi had ever seen, and even now, as his life’s blood poured from his face, from the terrible scratches she had inflicted on him, he felt a familiar stirring in his loins.
Dio,
she was beautiful. There was an innocent decadence about her that drove him wild. She had the face of a leopard, high cheekbones and slant eyes, full ripe lips, lips that nibbled him and sucked him and—but he must not think of that now. He picked up a white cloth from a chair to stanch the flow of blood, and too late he realized
that it was his shirt. Donatella was standing in the middle of their huge double bed, yelling at him. “I hope you bleed to death! When I’ve finished with you, you filthy whoremonger, there won’t be enough left for a
gattino
to shit on!”

For the hundredth time Ivo Palazzi wondered how he had gotten himself into this impossible situation. He had always prided himself on being the happiest of men, and all his friends had agreed with him. His
friends? Everybody!
Because Ivo had no enemies. In his bachelor days he had been a happy-go-lucky Roman without a care in the world, a Don Giovanni who was the envy of half the males in Italy. His philosophy was summed up in the phrase
Farsi onore con una donna
—“Honor oneself with a woman.” It kept Ivo very busy. He was a true romantic. He kept falling in love, and each time he used his new love to help him forget his old love. Ivo adored women, and to him they were all beautiful, from the
putane
who plied their ancient trade along the Via Appia, to the high-fashion models strutting along the Via Condotti. The only girls Ivo did not care for were the Americans. They were too independent for his tastes. Besides, what could one expect of a nation whose language was so unromantic that they would translate the name of Giuseppe Verdi to Joe Green?

Ivo always managed to have a dozen girls in various states of preparation. There were five stages. In stage one were the girls he had just met. They received daily phone calls, flowers, slim volumes of erotic poetry. In stage two were those to whom he sent little gifts of Gucci scarves and porcelain boxes filled with Perugina chocolates. Those in
stage three received jewelry and clothes and were taken to dinner at El Toula, or Taverna Flavia. Those in stage four shared Ivo’s bed and enjoyed his formidable skills as a lover. An assignation with Ivo was a production. His beautifully decorated little apartment on the Via Margutta would be filled with flowers,
garofani
or
papaveri,
the music would be opera, classical or rock, according to the chosen girl’s taste. Ivo was a superb cook, and one of his specialties, appropriately enough, was
polio alla cacciatora,
chicken of the hunter. After dinner, a bottle of chilled champagne to drink in bed…Ah, yes, Ivo loved stage four.

But stage five was probably the most delicate of them all. It consisted of a heartbreaking farewell speech, a generous parting gift and a tearful
arrivederci.

But all that was in the past. Now Ivo Palazzi took a quick glance at his bleeding, scratched face in the mirror over his bed and was horrified. He looked as though he had been attacked by a mad threshing machine.

“Look at what you’ve done to me!” he cried.
“Cora,
I know you didn’t mean it.”

He moved over to the bed to take Donatella in his arms. Her soft arms flew around him and as he started to hug her, she buried her long fingernails in his naked back and clawed him like a wild animal. Ivo yelled with pain.

“Scream!” Donatella shouted. “If I had a knife, I’d cut your
cazzo
and ram it down your miserable throat”

“Please!” Ivo begged. “The children will hear you.”

“Let them!” she shrieked. “It’s time they found out what kind of monster their father is.”

He took a step toward her.
“Carissima—”

“Don’t you touch me! I’d give my body to the first drunken syphilitic sailor I met on the streets before I’d ever let you come near me again.”

Ivo drew himself up, his pride offended. “That is not the way I expected the mother of my children to talk to me.”

“You want me to talk nice to you? You want me to stop treating you like the vermin you are?” Donatella’s voice rose to a scream.
“Then give me what I want!”

Ivo looked nervously toward the door.
“Carissima
—I can’t. I don’t have it.”

“Then get it for me!” she cried. “You promised!”

She was beginning to get hysterical again, and Ivo decided the best thing for him to do was to get out of there quickly before the neighbors called the carabinieri again.

“It will take time to get a million dollars,” he said soothingly. “But I’ll—I’ll find a way.”

He hastily donned his undershorts and pants, and socks and shoes, while Donatella stormed around the room, her magnificent, firm breasts waving in the air, and Ivo thought to himself, My God, what a woman! How I adore her! He reached for his bloodstained shirt. There was no help for it He put it on, feeling the cold stickiness against his back and chest. He took a last look in the mirror. Small pools of blood were still oozing from the deep gashes where Donatella had raked her fingernails across his face.

“Carissima,”
Ivo moaned, “how am I ever going to explain this to my wife?”

Ivo Palazzi’s wife was Simonetta Roffe, an heiress of the Italian branch of the Roffe family. Ivo had been a young architect when he had met Simonetta. His firm had sent him to supervise some changes in the Roffe villa at Porto Ercole. The instant Simonetta had set eyes on Ivo, his bachelor days were numbered. Ivo had gotten to the fourth stage with her on the first night, and found himself married to her a short time later. Simonetta was as determined as she was lovely, and she knew what she wanted: she wanted Ivo Palazzi. Thus it was that Ivo found himself transformed from a carefree bachelor to the husband of a beautiful young heiress. He gave up his architectural aspirations with no regrets and joined Roffe and Sons, with a magnificent office in EUR, the section of Rome started with such high hopes by the late, ill-fated Duce.

Ivo was a success with the firm from the beginning. He was intelligent, learned quickly, and everyone adored him. It was impossible not to adore Ivo. He was always smiling, always charming. His friends envied him his wonderful disposition and wondered how he did it. The answer was simple. Ivo kept the dark side of his nature buried. In fact, he was a deeply emotional man, capable of great volatile hatreds, capable of killing.

Ivo’s marriage with Simonetta thrived. At first, he had feared that marriage would prove to be a bondage that would strangle his manhood to death, but his fears proved to be unfounded. He simply put himself on an austerity program, reducing the
number of his girl friends, and everything went on as before.

Simonetta’s father bought them a beautiful home in Olgiata, a large private estate twenty-five kilometers north of Rome, guarded by closed gates and manned by uniformed guards.

Simonetta was a wonderful wife. She loved Ivo and treated him like a king, which was no more than he felt he deserved. There was just one tiny flaw in Simonetta. When she became jealous, she turned into a savage. She had once suspected Ivo of taking a female buyer on a trip to Brazil. He was righteously indignant at the accusation. Before the argument was over, their entire house was a shambles. Not one dish or piece of furniture was left intact, and much of it had been broken over Ivo’s head. Simonetta had gone after him with a butcher knife, threatening to kill him and then herself, and it had taken all of Ivo’s strength to wrest the knife from her. They had wound up fighting on the floor, and Ivo had finally torn off her clothes and made her forget her anger. But after that incident Ivo became very discreet He had told the buyer he could not take any more trips with her, and he was careful never to let the faintest breath of suspicion touch him. He knew that he was the luckiest man in the world. Simonetta was young and beautiful and intelligent and rich. They enjoyed the same things and the same people. It was a perfect marriage, and Ivo sometimes found himself wondering, as he transferred a girl from stage two to stage three, and another stage four to stage five, why he kept on being unfaithful. Then he would shrug philosophi
cally and say to himself, Someone has to make these women happy.

Ivo and Simonetta had been married for three years when Ivo met Donatella Spolini on a business trip to Sicily. It was more of an explosion than a meeting, two planets coming together and colliding. Where Simonetta had the slender, sweet body of a young woman sculpted by Manzu, Donatella had the sensuous, ripe body of a Rubens. Her face was exquisite and her green, smoldering eyes set Ivo aflame. They were in bed one hour after they had met, and Ivo, who had always prided himself on his prowess as a lover, found that he was the pupil and Donatella the teacher. She made him rise to heights he had never achieved before, and her body did things to his that he had never dreamed possible. She was an endless cornucopia of pleasure, and as Ivo lay in bed, his eyes closed, savoring incredible sensations, he knew he would be a fool to let Donatella go.

And so Donatella had become Ivo’s mistress. The only condition she imposed was that he had to get rid of all the other women in his life, except his wife. Ivo had happily agreed That had been eight years ago, and in all that time Ivo had never been unfaithful to either his wife or his mistress. Satisfying two hungry women would have been enough to exhaust an ordinary man, but in Ivo’s case it was exactly the opposite. When he made love to Simonetta he thought about Donatella and her ripe full body, and he was filled with lust. And when he made love to Donatella, he thought of Simonetta’s sweet young breasts and tiny
culo
and
he performed like a wild man. No matter which woman he was with, he felt that he was cheating on the other. It added enormously to his pleasure.

Ivo bought Donatella a beautiful apartment in Via Montemignaio, and he was with her every moment that he could manage. He would arrange to be away on a sudden business trip and, instead of leaving, he would spend the time in bed with Donatella. He would stop by to see her on his way to the office, and he would spend his afternoon siestas with her. Once, when Ivo sailed to New York on the
QE 2
with Simonetta, he installed Donatella in a cabin one deck below. They were the five most stimulating days of Ivo’s life.

On the evening that Simonetta announced to Ivo that she was pregnant, Ivo was filled with an indescribable joy. A week later Donatella informed Ivo that
she
was pregnant, and Ivo’s cup ranneth over. Why, he asked himself, are the gods so good to me? In all humility, Ivo sometimes felt that he did not deserve all the great pleasures that were being bestowed upon him.

In due course Simonetta gave birth to a girl and a week later Donatella gave birth to a boy. What more could any man ask? But the gods were not finished with Ivo. A short time later, Donatella informed Ivo that she was pregnant again, and the following week Simonetta also became pregnant. Nine months later, Donatella gave Ivo another son and Simonetta presented her husband with another daughter. Four months later, both women were pregnant again and this time they gave birth on the same day. Ivo frantically raced from the Salvator
Mundi, where Simonetta was encouched, to the Clinica Santa Chiara where Ivo had taken Donatella. He sped from hospital to hospital, driving on the Raccordo Anulare, waving to the girls sitting in front of their little tents along the sides of the road, under pink umbrellas, waiting for customers. Ivo was driving too fast to see their faces, but he loved them all and wished them well.

Donatella gave birth to another boy and Simonetta to another girl.

Sometimes Ivo wished it had been the other way around. It was ironical that his wife had borne him daughters and his mistress had borne him sons, for he would have liked male heirs to carry on his name. Still, he was a contented man. He had three children with outdoor plumbing, and three children with indoor plumbing. He adored them and he was wonderful to them, remembering their birthdays, their saints’ days, and their names. The girls were called Isabella and Benedetta and Camilla. The boys were Francesco and Carlo and Luca.

As the children grew older, life began to get more complicated for Ivo. Including his wife, his mistress and his six children, Ivo had to cope with eight birthdays, eight saints’ days, and two of every holiday. He made sure that the children’s schools were well separated. The girls were sent to Saint Dominique, the French convent on the Via Cassia, and the boys to Massimo, the Jesuit school in EUR. Ivo met and charmed all their teachers, helped the children with their homework, played with them, fixed their broken toys. It taxed all of Ivo’s ingenuity to handle two families and keep them apart, but he managed. He was truly an exemplary father,
husband and lover. On Christmas Day he stayed home with Simonetta, Isabella, Benedetta and Camilla. On
Befana,
the sixth of January, Ivo dressed up as the
Befana,
the witch, and handed out presents and
carbone,
the black rock candy prized by children, to Francesco, Carlo and Luca.

Ivo’s wife and his mistress were lovely, and his children were bright and beautiful, and he was proud of them all. Life was wonderful.

And then the gods shat in Ivo Palazzi’s face.

As in the case of most major disasters, this one struck without any warning.

Ivo had made love to Simonetta that morning before breakfast, and then had gone directly to his office, where he did a profitable morning’s work. At one o’clock he told his secretary—male, at Simonetta’s insistence—that he would be at a meeting the rest of the afternoon.