A Dark Song of Blood (34 page)

“What utter nonsense, Major!”

“I'm not done. As Fräulein Kund told you, one afternoon he ran into Sutor in the lobby of the Reiner apartment, and did not buy the tale Magda told him – that Sutor was there for Hannah Kund. Had a militiaman spy on Sutor's movements after hours and was aware he visited her. Says he never heard of Emilio or Willi, but by the third week in December, his love had turned to hatred, like Othello's for Desdemona – his own words.”

“But of course, he swears he didn't kill her.”

“Quite the opposite, he won't swear either way.” Bora glanced down in the street, still speaking in a good-natured voice. “You can be sure I pressured him, but he's quite more defiant than I'd have given him credit for. Challenged me to prove he killed her. Didn't threaten me, because he knows better. As for you, Guidi, after I told him you would not blindly accept Caruso's indictment of him, Merlo said he expects you to do your duty as an honest functionary. And added
you
'll never be able to prove he did it.”

“That remains to be seen. What about the glasses?”

“As poor Sciaba said, he'd returned them to the store. Claims that the case – which is interesting – disappeared from his office at the beginning of February, and that he doesn't know how either object ended up in her apartment.”

“Naturally he'd claim
that.
And does he admit to having seen the body?”

“He does.”

Guidi clammed up. It vexed him that Caruso had given him to believe Merlo was too powerful to be trifled with, and had thrown his own weight around when the provincial policeman
had not toed the line. What Bora said was true, he had no power. But it remained to be seen whether he couldn't prove Merlo's guilt.

“I tried to reach the Reiner elders,” Bora tried to mollify him. “No success thus far, as their house was bombed and they moved in with friends. As soon as they're tracked down, however, I'll ask more questions about our Greek-Front Wilfred, the 1936 affair and any present liaisons the girl might have gotten into. Unless of course she fell in love with a partisan in hiding, and we're back to square one.”

Guidi did not notice how punctilious Bora's pretense of levity was. His mind went back to Antonio Rau, whose movements in Rome before his coming to Via Paganini for Latin lessons were shadowy. He was not especially tall, but would the clothes Magda had bought fit him otherwise?

27 APRIL 1944

Cardinal Borromeo distanced himself from people by refusing audiences and making them sit through long waiting periods indoors, and by other but no less successful methods out of doors. This time he gave an appointment to Bora at the Ara Coeli shrine by the Capitol Hill. There was a measure of malice in it, since Bora's leg injury made the vertiginous climb of one hundred and twenty-two steps a reminder of a bodily as well as moral need for humility. Borromeo watched him, standing on the slab of an ancient scholar who had mortified himself by choosing burial in a much-trafficked threshold. “You're not panting,” was the first thing he said.

“I hope not, Cardinal. Give me six months and I'll be running the distance up.”

“In six months you won't be in Rome.”

“‘Man proposes and God disposes,' Cardinal. Miracles happen.”

“Do you really believe that?” Borromeo preceded him into the church, cool in comparison with the dazzling warmth of its threshold. “In miracles, I mean.”

“Well, they're a tenet of the Church.”

“So's the Virgin Birth, and you and I know it's physically nonsense.”

“I won't discuss theology with my betters.”

“But you discussed philosophy with Hohmann.”

“I know philosophy.”

Dressed in a plain black cassock, Borromeo seemed very long, a string bean of a man. Negligently he kneeled facing the main altar and signed himself before taking a place in the first pew. From a rich leather folder he extracted a coverless journal, which Bora recognized with a start to be in Hohmann's handwriting. “I believe this is what you were after when you came the other day, and I wouldn't see you.” He allowed Bora to follow a paragraph or two with his eyes, then replaced the journal in the folder. “If it is, here is how things stand. Number one, I will not give it to you. Hohmann's secretary, who is not as dull as he seems, took it home when the cardinal failed to stop by his residence after meeting Marina Fonseca, as perhaps he'd been instructed to do in such cases. It is now in Vatican hands, never to emerge again if we can help it. Number two, this encounter will have never taken place. You must deny it if need be even in the confessional.”

Bora lifted his eyes to the opulent ceiling of gilded wood and stuccoes, as if to find inspiration there. “Why would the cardinal's journal be of such interest to me?”

“My dear Major, I am a bit older and worldlier than you are, with all that my little kingdom is not of this earth. I keep myself informed. Hohmann kept a journal at the university. You have
friends
in common – you are his spiritual heir. There is no reason to keep from you what he initiated. What he initiated, you must continue.”

“And what would that be, Cardinal?”

With a condescending smile Borromeo laid the folder in his lap and rested his hands on it. “Now, then, Major, do not ask the obvious.”

Bora felt exposed, just one step below vulnerability. “Why don't you give the charge to Colonel Dollmann?”

“Because he has a hard time keeping things to himself. Besides, you are Hohmann's great admirer, he who defends his honor in death. What is it, Major Bora, are you getting cold feet as the Americans draw near?”

“It isn't the Americans who worry me.”

“I see.” Borromeo studied him. “Since surely you agonized over it, be informed that Hohmann was asexual like an old capon, and Marina Fonseca the frustrated widow of an impenitent sinner, a typical case of
vagina dentata.
I was her confessor, you can take my word for it. Now, what are your conditions to continue Hohmann's work? I am ready to negotiate.”

At this point of his bachelorhood, even a
vagina dentata
sounded fleetingly attractive. Sullenly Bora held his hand out. “Two. The first is, let me have the journal.”

“Sorry, I don't intend to let anyone have it. I'm already bending the law in the Jesuit style. It's written in Italian, as you see, and be content that it refers not so cryptically to individuals identified as
Vento, Bennato
and
Pontica.
”

What learned but hopelessly transparent covers for
Bora, Eugene
Dollmann, and
Marina
Fonseca. It seemed to Bora that danger had entered the holy space and crammed it full of shadows. He'd run away if he could, wanting none of this. So he said, “I will do nothing before being granted to read this text at leisure. Nothing. Not even show an interest.” And when Borromeo, after a dry silence, seemed to waver, he prompted him, “When and where? I'll give you my second condition then.”

The cardinal stood to leave, without bothering to cross himself before the main altar this time. “Tomorrow evening at the infirmary of Santo Spirito. At seven o'clock. You'll be interested to know that Mrs Murphy volunteers there,” he added
with a smile entirely out of place. “It will give you a chance to practice your excellent English.”

Once at the foot of the stairway, Bora was about to enter his car when he recognized Dollmann at one of the tables of a café across the street. The colonel lifted a cup of espresso in a toast. “This city is getting smaller and smaller, Bora! Fancy seeing you here. Are you skipping lunch for church these days?”

8

28 APRIL 1944

The evening sky was turning above the tangles of wisterias, filling the Roman gardens with deeply scented grape-like clusters. The heavy perfume, breathed elsewhere, brought to mind days and images of other days, words heard and said to others, a different world of which Bora no longer was a part, because that world had altogether gone.

At the Santo Spirito infirmary, Borromeo was nowhere to be found, likely to avoid hearing Bora's second condition. A plump nun handed him a sealed envelope. In it, an unsigned and typewritten message read,
Ask for Mrs Murphy. She knows nothing, but has the folder for you.

Not knowing what to think of the arrangement, but less disappointed now by the cardinal's absence, he did ask for her, and was waiting in the hallway when a young woman's voice reached him from a double door. “You realize you shouldn't be here in uniform.”

Bora recognized the singing American speech and turned on his heel. Mrs Murphy stood a few steps away, holding a tray of bloodstained bandages.

“You're right,” he admitted. “I'm sorry – I come directly from work.”

Had she been less beautiful. Unhappily Bora looked at her, and she at him.

“What are you doing here, Major Bora?”

“I'm here at Cardinal Borromeo's prompting.”

“Very well.” She handed the tray to a gliding little nun, stepped into a doorway for a moment, and came out of it with a sealed manila envelope, which she stretched to him without coming close. “As I understand, you are to return this within three hours at the latest. You may sit in there. And please have Sister inform me when you're done.”

Bora struggled to remove his eyes from her. “Thank you.”

“Good night, Major.”

Bora stepped toward the small room, but halted on the threshold to watch her as she walked down the hallway, away from him. Under the electric light she was ruddy-haired and very different from Dikta, who was fair and good-looking as mares are good-looking, strong and tall. Mrs Murphy was not frail but smaller, daintily made – she had nice hips, fine ankles, an adorable curve of the spine onto the small of her back. Bora felt lonely for his wife's want of him and wished there were someone with the same want.

The reading took two hours, at the end of which the web had so closely been woven around him, even the instinct to escape he had felt at Ara Coeli was impossible to heed. Aside from mentioning frequent meetings with
Pontica
, whom Bora understood to mean Marina Fonseca, Hohmann – who had not seen fit to speak openly to him in life – was compromising him in death: and not so indirectly, laying out unfinished plans that begged to be taken up.

He was aching and in a despondent frame of mind when he returned to the hotel. Had Dollmann not waved at him, he'd have ignored his presence at the bar. But now he had to join the colonel, though he politely refused to drink a sambuca – he detested the drink's soapy taste and its turning milky when water was added.

“We didn't have a chance to speak after you left church yesterday.” Dollmann spoke over his drink. With a finger he was drawing slow circles on the rim of the glass, in a gesture Bora
had seen women make, and which in women he had always found attractive. Not here and now. He ordered mineral water and gave up thinking of a way to take aspirin without Dollmann inquiring about it. So he placed the medicine bottle in plain sight on the counter, deftly unscrewed its cap, let three tablets roll out and put them in his mouth, all with his right hand, taking a sip of water after them.

“I'm glad you don't toss your head back when you drink,” the colonel only observed. “Some people do. I find it doltish.”

Nothing ever happened by chance with Dollmann, this much he knew. Nothing he said was accidental. When their elbows nearly touched, Bora avoided the contact. He felt very insecure near the SS. There were sexual reasons for it as well as political ones, and knowing how well informed Dollmann was, how much he had to do with all that went on, he kept aloof – not hostile, but watchful. Only when the colonel said, “It was fortunate you had nothing compromising in your address book,” temper got in the way of prudence.

“Was anyone expecting there should be? I'm a creed-bound officer.”

Dollmann shook his head. He lay the address book on the counter, and because Bora did not motion toward it, he pushed it over to him. “Be quick and copy the addresses you most care about. It has to go back. I warned you.”

“You warned me about my diary. As for whatever else they might have been looking for, it's where it won't be found.”

Even after the sambuca was gone, its soapy, pungent aroma stayed in the glass. It was a tiny glass and Dollmann poured himself another dose. “Bora, what does it take to seduce you? Most men like being seduced, even on a national scale.”

“Kappler tried it before you, Colonel.”

“Do you presume to compare my reasons to Kappler's?”

“No, but seduction is what it is.”

“Let me give it to you straight, then – unless something is done to restore the fabric broken by Hohmann's unfortunate
death, there will be disaster coming to the Vatican, the Lateran, St Paul's and everywhere else Jews are hidden.”

“Well, you're Himmler's friend.”

Dollmann made a significative gesture by joining his wrists, fists closed. “You may have one hand, but it's free.”

And this was no spiderweb that he might hope to tear. Bora felt as though a wild animal inside him were trying to sniff the trap, going in circles to recognize the smell of the hunter. He resisted Dollmann even to the extent of avoiding his glance, though he was not one to be spoken to without facing his questioner.