A Dark Song of Blood (25 page)

If he let go of tension for a moment, dangerous weariness came on him, a desperate need to sleep after thirty-six hours of waking. It was by inertia that he functioned now, because hope could not possibly attach itself to such slim possibility as Guidi’s survival until this time.

He grew so dazed at one point that his car went off the road and into the grassy verge, where he steered away barely in time to avoid crashing against the wall. There was a fountain a few steps ahead, just a metal pipe spouting water into a mossy basin. Bora walked to it and put his head under the cold flow.

Less than a mile from the city wall was a fork in the road. A wild, romantic place he knew well, with fig trees peering from fenced yards and the baroque facade of a chapel by the curve. Here at
Quo Vadis
the fleeing Peter encountered Christ and turned back to Rome in shame, having asked the question that became the name of the chapel, “Whereto Goest Thou?”

There was no one in sight he could ask for advice, and Bora had no time to look for anyone. He bore left and continued until the road divided again. He ignored the lane descending into a field. He’d passed the entrance of one catacomb, and already the side road leading to the Cemetery of Praetextatus came up. This entire area was honeycombed with underground passages used as Jewish and Christian burials in Roman times. Tunnels extended for prodigious distances beneath the surface, intersecting at angles on several levels of resilient but easily cut volcanic stone. Bora traveled on a crust under which thousands were buried.

It was too coincidental for him not to draw the grim parallel. He soon dismissed it because of the repercussions such violation would have in the Vatican: yet everything else about the idea made sense, when the catacombs themselves had been dug in abandoned stone quarries. The grim image of a natural grave spurred Bora to press on, to Praetextatus’ burial ground. He’d ask at St Sebastian’s, where Via delle Sette Chiese merged close by.

The door to the ancient basilica was not locked. Inside, the darkness within was nearly complete, though it was one of those clear, sweet springtime evenings laced with sparrows and scent of blooming grasses.

Hearing the sound of army boots, a man kneeling in the front pew got up and made a sideways motion to slide away. Bora told him to stop. It was a small priest with a suffering face, a bird’s neck swimming in his collar. Bora dragged him toward the faint light of the doorway. He spoke to him curtly, barely in control of his words: it was now seven o’clock.

“I don’t know,” the priest moaned. “I don’t know who you are.”

It was abject, complete fear, Bora understood, but had no time to examine or allay. He dug into his shirt collar and held out a medal by its ribbon. “Look, the scapular medal. I’m Catholic. I must know if German trucks have gone by.”

“I have seen none.”

Bora took a deep breath. Good. Good. It meant the execution place lay somewhere between here and the walls. “Are there any quarries or sandpits nearby?”

The priest rolled his eyes. “Quarries? Yes. No one has used them in a long time, though.”

“
Where
?”

The directions included country paths and backtracking at right angles toward the ledge of a small river due north. “Don’t go into the valley. Keep to the ledge.”

Bora ran to the car. In the waning light things were seen and unseen, their contours blurred. He drove on, remembering to swerve toward the ledge only after he had nearly come to the river. No signs of trucks. Darkness below. He rolled down the window. No sounds.

Again the need to let go and close his eyes came. He was in the middle of nowhere and it was dark. It was late. The dead were all around, old and new, but he could not see them. He felt an unbearable nearness and yet a sense of being utterly lost. Why had he been allowed to come so far and fail? A taut braid seemed to be unraveling inside him. It would fast become frayed unless he held to it somehow, in some other way. He mechanically began to say the old Latin words as if it’d make a difference, arms folded on the wheel and his head on them. Broken thoughts, old Latin words, over and over, to keep the braid inside from growing slack.
Illuminare his, qui in tenebris et in umbra mortis sedent
—

Then he heard the sound. Eyes wide open in the dark, he sat up. It was the muted, distant sound of gunfire coming at intervals as if from a distance, or an enclosed place. The car
faced south, and the reports came from the west, past the wide band of catacombs along the Appian Way.

Bora jerked the car into reverse, backing through the countryside onto the road. He rejoined it near Via delle Sette Chiese, which he found blocked by the SS where it crossed the Ardeatine. His mind was working now in reckless but logical patterns. He turned around and careered toward Rome nearly two miles in order to enter the Ardeatine from its north end, although there would be troops there, too. Soon he could see the slits in the blackened front lights of trucks entering the road from the opposite direction. Gaining speed, he caught up with them as they went through the roadblock, where no one stopped him. They were engineers’ trucks, and even so Bora refused to let his heart sink.

The convoy pulled into a depressed space right of the road, where a ledge concealed pits or caves. The shots came from there. At the glare of lanterns Bora distinguished twenty or so men huddled by the entrance to the caves. They neither moved nor spoke, while the guards watching them were as loud as drunks. They took notice of him, but did not stop him from approaching. In a yellow shaft of light Bora saw Captain Sutor walk out with two soldiers, and at the same time, from his tall figure and sloping shoulders, he recognized Guidi in the group of prisoners.

The rest was like a fast-paced dream. Bora ordered the closest SS to free the tall man, receiving a stuporous look in response. Guidi might have heard, but did not react at all. When Bora yanked him from the group, he also jogged the two men bound to him back to back. Relief and frustration ran so high in him, Bora could no longer manage them. With the switchblade he hacked at the rope, careless of wrists and hands. After the rope gave way Guidi still did not move. Bora pulled him to himself, and Guidi, whose feet were bound, fell on his knees. Exasperated, Bora threw the switchblade at him. “Here! Run to my car when you’re done!”

“Not without the others —”

“
Fuck, Guidi
! Get to the car!”

Guidi’s companions were desperately trying to hopscotch away when the guards began to make hazy sense of things and fired at them. The men fell, and the whole group of prisoners was frantic now. Sutor turned on them, shouting. Then he saw Bora and flew at him.

“Are you out of your mind?” he howled. “What do you think you’re doing?

Bora’s gun swung up from the holster. “I’m carrying out Kesselring’s orders. Try to stop me.”

Guidi was staggering in a daze when Bora came running, jostled him forward and at the inertia of his response put the gun to his head and forced him to race to the car. Still Guidi absurdly resisted entering it, but Bora’s toughness was like metal under the uniform. By brutal kicks he drove the prisoner in at last, knees crashing against him until he was inside and the door locked.

When Bora went to open his door Sutor’s face floated out of the dark into the shaft of light behind him, a disembodied mask of strain. He was trying to maintain some check on himself, but his mouth twitched hard. Bora entered the car and gave gas to the running engine. As he backed up to regain the road, Sutor spoke over a small burst of gunfire from the caves.

“You think you got something, Bora. Do you hear those shots? They just put two bullets through your General Foa’s skull.”

The car roared out of the gravel-strewn space. Its tires spun and flung rocks around as the guards herded the last prisoners back toward the cave with the butts of rifles, Sutor at the lead, blaspheming and throwing punches into them.

They had come several miles through roads unknown to Guidi before Bora drove off the pavement and braked on a rise in the land. He turned the motor off.

Sweat drenched his armpits and stomach; his face was bathed in it. He let go of the wheel and rested his shoulders against the
seat, too tense to shiver, the whole of him keyed hard for the fight and unable to relax. He glanced over to Guidi, slumped on the seat by him.

Dark and complete silence, though Guidi was breathing – he could hear that. The front lay silent Anzio’s way, but a reflection from burning fires was a mockery of dawn. Cool night air trickled from the window. Young trees with new leaves made soft sounds as of paper.

Bora feared letting go. He sat up because he feared letting go and growing weak thereby. An extreme need to weep mounted in him, which he held down by anger but not very well. He swallowed his need to weep, feeling as if someone had flayed him open and exposed the raw vulnerability beneath, his intimate self turned inside out like a jumble of guts for people to see. Had Guidi said something at least, he needed to hear talk. But Guidi was still and silent.

Around the car, above it, the night wove on looms of silence and untenable emptiness. Bora looked up at the cruel star-pricked sky without turning his head, and the effort of rolling his eyes to one side sent shooting sparks of pain into his temples. He could not let go.

Men’s life was nothing, nothing. At any time the stars could crush them from their pointed and multiform distance, a cascade of worlds against their weakness. It was only anger that kept grief at bay, but the emptiness was untenable. The silence, absolute. Bora looked in disgust at the pitiful tangle of his soul. It was like bloody offal and deserving mercy only in the measure he could give mercy to any human being for failing himself and others. He deserved nothing if he let go.

And yet, one by one, by physical process, the knots of his tension began to fray. One, then another and another, and he was terrified to come unstrung when the work was not yet done.

When he tried to fight it he began to ache from within his contracted shell, a deep mortal ache and strain of all his muscles, as if his body were a wound crying for him. Bora did not let go.

Neither would he drive back to Rome. He went to Donna Maria’s country house, sitting by itself on a hillside. He parked in the yard. Through the dark soft night he walked to the house, opened the door.

Guidi did not move until Bora swung the car door wide and said, “No one will look for you here. The bedrooms are upstairs. Go to sleep. I’ll come tomorrow as I can.”

At the Flora only some of the offices were manned. Dollmann’s message on his desk was over nine hours old. Bora called Soratte and spoke to Westphal, who said, “Get a hold of Dollmann at once.”

As Bora sat down to dial the colonel’s number, Dollmann called from the Excelsior.

“Bora, thank God you’re back. Get here immediately. No, I can’t tell you. I’ll meet you upstairs.”

Like a machine, Bora got up. He had no idea of how he looked until he stepped by a mirror in the lobby of the hotel and saw his face. Even then, he merely took care to tuck the scapular under his tunic and to straighten his ribbons on his way to the elevator.

Dollmann greeted him outside of the banquet hall. “Wait in the next room. Kappler is here, and so is Wolff. I will keep you informed. You must call the field marshal as soon as this is through, and before the conference breaks. If you think what you witnessed is bad, wait until this is done with.”

In a daze Bora watched the colonel re-enter the room. He was too tired to stand, but did not dare sit down lest he fall asleep. So he walked the floor back and forth, the line of marble tiles waving before his eyes as he did. He was too numb to ache by now.

It was eleven before Dollmann came out. Bora had crawled to an armchair and was trying to steady his hand enough to drink coffee without spilling it on himself.

“Bad news,” the colonel said. “We’re still discussing the
situation, but it seems as though the consensus is to deport all Roman males. Envision that.”

Bora was appalled, but things were entirely out of proportion in his mind, and he found nothing to say. Two more hours passed, which he could not recall as anything but a blur, though he managed to stay awake. He even stood up at Dollmann’s next appearance.

“It’s coming soon now, Bora. We’re approaching a decision. Himmler will be called next. At my message you must rush out of here.”

Bora said he would. Less than twenty minutes later Dollmann came out in a hurry. Bora was sitting by a small table with his head on the folded arms. A fourth cup of coffee sat by, untouched. Gently Dollmann shook him with the news.

“The last trip for today, Major. Then you can go to bed.”

It was past three when Bora walked into his room at the Hotel d’Italia and stumbled across his bed. It had been forty-six hours since he had last slept in it.

Two hours later, when the alarm went off, Bora cried tears of exhaustion as he struggled up, because he did not want to face the day. In the shower he turned the water on and – having found it warm – he let it grow warmer, then hot, and stood under it in a cloud of vapor, scalding his neck and shoulders until they painfully turned red. Then he wore the dress uniform required for the SS funeral and went to work.

6

25 MARCH 1944

When he drove to the service, an SS lieutenant tried to prevent him from dismounting. Bora pushed him aside with the door and the lieutenant pinned him against the side of the car.