Liar Moon (28 page)

Bora kept quiet. From the dusk, as the car drove up to them, slack curves emerged one after another, faintly
aglow with icy moisture. The gravelly shoulders bristled with brushwood and collapsed bundles of wild grasses. The season folded upon itself; only the wind would keep the snow at bay.

Guidi had sunk back into his own sad consideration of things when Bora slammed on the brakes, so without warning that Guidi would have rammed his face on the windshield had he not braced himself with both arms on the dashboard. The car, which had been travelling at sustained speed, came to a screeching, complete halt.

Still Bora said nothing.

“What is it, what’s happening?” Guidi asked with heart in mouth, expecting an ambush.

Bora had let go of the wheel and was turning the engine off. Silence was instantly made, a darkness and silence that were wide and eerie. Guidi steadied himself.

“Look outside,” Bora said. Guidi did so, trying to see in the bushes along the road, and Bora corrected him. “No, ahead. Look ahead of us. Look at the moon. All the useless thinking about letters and names in the appointment book, and trying to match the sign in the gravel with someone’s name. We had the answer in front of us all along. Look at the moon.”

Guidi stared up through the windshield. Soft clicks came from the engine as it cooled. Now that they had stopped, the wind braided around the car in whispers. Only now did his mind travel so close to Bora’s path that, finding no resistance, it nearly coalesced with it. In rapid succession ideas fashioned themselves into a mosaic, piece by piece. Guidi turned to Bora, who had gone silent again.

“The crescent moon. Why, sure! The letter ‘C’ has nothing to do with it, and neither does Claretta, or Carlo Gardini. The mark in the gravel is a half-moon. The villa of the Ottoman crescent, with its semicircular colonnade – Mozart’s forgotten
Halbmond
sonata. Lisi drew a crescent to indicate Moser’s house! This is what was on your mind in the cloister of Saint Zeno’s, isn’t it?”

“No.”

Guidi reasoned himself out of hope. “No, Major, it’s a stretch. A coincidence. Moser’s car is badly dented and scuffed, but you rode with him. You’d have noticed…”

Bora wouldn’t look at him. “I noticed a long scrape on the left side of the Mercedes on the morning he drove me to Verona.”

“It doesn’t prove murder.”

“No? I thank you for being so gracious, Guidi, but it all fits together. Moser’s difficulty in keeping his fine house, the electricity cut off from most of it, the unkempt garden – the good times being over. Then there’s Lisi’s acquisition of historical properties, and his interest in the restoration of interiors. It’s true, Guidi.”

“So, Moser was one of Lisi’s debtors.”

“I’m certain he was. That he should run into us, of all people.” Uneasily, Bora stroked the wheel with his gloved right hand, back and forth. “Naturally on Lisi’s papers he would appear as ‘M’. But in Lisi’s last moments of lucidity the house of the half-moon stood for its owner, and besides it’s easier to scribble a crescent than the letter ‘M’.
Halbmond
, half-moon, the crescent. Moser. It’s a final pun from him.” Bora let go of the wheel. “
Luna mendax
, after all. Why didn’t I think of it when you asked me what the proverb meant?”

“I still don’t know what it means.”

“It means that the moon draws a ‘C’ in the sky, but
lies
about it. According to folklore, when you see the moon form a ‘C’ in the night sky, you’d think she’s a
crescent
, waxing moon. But it isn’t. It is a actually a waning moon. When its hump faces the other way and forms a ‘D’, you’d think it is
decreasing
, while it is not. Why didn’t I think that ‘C’ stood for the moon all along?” Bora sighed deeply. “The anguish I felt at Saint Zeno’s was well founded. The biases I criticized in you, I was myself guilty of, and for the most shamefully inexcusable reason: because Moser looked harmless and spoke my language. Christ, because he
understood
me.”

Guidi felt almost sorry for him. “There’s a chance we’re wrong, you know.”

“No. You haven’t spoken with him as I did when we drove to town. What he unsuspectingly said troubled me, but I didn’t know why. Or didn’t want to know. People say all kinds of things. And you’re right, Guidi, it seemed too much of a coincidence. A damning one at that. When you suggested that Lisi might have been a usurer, I knew Moser was probably one of his debtors; still, I had no proof. Worse, I kept the suspicion to myself. I could
see
, as Valenki did in Russia, or like the madman who stole his victims’ shoes for reasons we’ll never know. I could see, and decided I was not seeing.” Bora turned the key in the ignition, reawakening the engine. “We have a long call to pay in the morning.”

“He’ll deny everything.”

“No. I’m afraid it will be all too easy speaking to him.”

Bora did not say another word for the rest of the trip. After dropping Guidi at his house in Sagràte he drove on to Lago, followed by the waxing moon.

 

It sickened Guidi that Moser would not even try to argue the point, as though he expected this to happen, and he was relieved that it had come through Bora and himself after all. By the steady and defensive bent of Bora’s lips, Guidi felt how it strained him to address the old man.

Moser said, “Well, Major, it is hardly the case of denying the truth at this point. I was brought up not to lie.” His round, mild face showed overt sympathy for the young men facing him. “Killing is one thing, and lying about it quite another. As a good soldier, Major, you know that murder can be rationalized. You are welcome to take a look at the car. It’s parked in the back.”

“We’ve already done it,” Guidi said.

The cruel light of early morning filtered with a mute, rosy hue through drapes and dusty window glass. Up in the domed vault, nascent sunbeams were just starting to criss-cross through opaque bull’s heads. From the awakening glory of painted clouds, the crescent-bearing Turkish flags flashed to Guidi as he looked.

Moser caught his attention. “Life has ways of gaining on us, Inspector. The night I happened upon you, I would have treated you no differently had I known you were investigating Lisi’s death. Had
you
known about me, I trust both of you would have accepted my hospitality all the same.” He took a step toward Bora, whose emotions were not so safely checked. “It was very clever of you to understand Lisi’s pun. Who’d have supposed he would draw a crescent to point to me and my house? It made
my house into a liar moon. But when all is said, even doing away with that usurer would not save this place. It was merely time I was borrowing, in hopes I would die before the day of reckoning.
Dies Irae
, Major Bora.” Moser walked to the piano, and sat facing the keys. “I want you to know that only after Lisi told me he’d turn this house into a hotel did I make up my mind. My house, a hotel! The soldiers’ haven, where Mozart had played the Silbermann as a child! He
had
to die.” Moser seemed himself surprised by the logic of the argument. “Who’d ever think that the last of the Mosers would summon the criminal courage to commit murder? Murder, it was. Yes. And I rationalized it much as you explain your own career, Major Bora. After all, I had a gun. My father’s, last used to hunt boars in Serbia, but how appropriate. I planned to drive to Lisi’s country house, let myself in and shoot him. The plan changed when I saw him alone in his wheelchair by the flower beds. God, that tawdry house of his, pink as a harlot and horribly furnished! I knew what to do, Major. I careened through the open gate and struck him at full speed. Then I put the car in reverse. But in driving out I miscalculated the width of the gate, and grazed one of the pillars. All in all, the deed was easy. Morally reprehensible, but easy.”

Guidi said, “The fender of your car is also damaged.”

“Good Lord, Inspector, it should be! I struck Lisi with all the bitterness of poverty and solitude in the face of his ill-gained wealth and abominable poor taste!” Because Bora had drawn close to the piano, Moser turned a friendly face to him. “
Na, Herr Major –
I hope for your own good that you never stand to lose your dear house as I did.”

Bora was amazingly candid, considering that Guidi was present. “I think of it often, with the War going the way it is. If
my Turks
defeat me, I’ll lose much more than my house. I may lose my country.”

“You understand, then.”

“No. I understand the necessity to kill, not to commit murder. And for my sanity, as a soldier I must be able to differentiate between the two.”

Moser smiled a little. “My ancestors must have reasoned in the same way, but there’s no difference really. Look at the ceiling, and tell me if it isn’t fancy butchery that built this house, crescents trodden underfoot and all, the portico laid as a Turkish crescent in a flag of land. War is a great homicide, Major.”

Sad, but thank God it’s over
, Guidi thought. He stepped toward the door to fetch the notebook, which he’d left in Bora’s car. At that moment, Bora – looking at the ivories on the keyboard, not at the old man – posed another question.

“
Herr
Moser, when did
Signora
Lisi ask you to do it?”

An immediate, perfect silence came over the hall, suspended and intricate like a spider’s web. Delicate and difficult to break, but Bora was not done asking.

“When did you talk to her,
Herr
Moser?”

Moser took a long, resigned breath before answering. He looked caught for the first time since Bora and Guidi had walked in. “That, too, you understood. By telephone, Major, in mid-November. By accident. You see, I was late for my payment that month, by no means an unusual event. But Lisi insisted that debtors call and set up a time to see him in Verona. Usually he added something to the dues, you know. So they were always hard calls to
make, and from a public phone, too. That day his wife Clara answered, and we got to talking. I must tell you, Major, a good woman such as she, abused in spite of all she did for him – it revolted me.”

Guidi was stunned. He watched, rather than heard, Bora calmly say to Moser, “Indeed. How much did
Signora
Lisi tell you about herself?”

“Not much, reserved as she is. She mentioned the children she bore him, her hard work as an actress before he forced her to leave the stage. Her parents’ tragic death in the Spanish flu. She mentioned – no, I really understood it, from her reticence – how Lisi dared lay hands on her, despite her illness.”

While Guidi was rooted midway between the foot of the stairs and the door, Bora kept absolute control on his words, and the situation. “Really. How ill do you think Clara Lisi is?”

“I take it you haven’t met her, Major. I haven’t either, but we spoke again by phone, two or three times. Poor Clara, confined to bed ever since their last child was born months ago. When she
asked
, Major…” Moser straightened his shoulders. “This, you must understand. It was suddenly like a knightly deed, for me. My crass desire to see him dead was ennobled by her request. There was now something sacred in bringing that monstrous human being down. Not only would I and God knows how many others be free of our debts, but a pure and good woman would be avenged for her years of suffering. I’d hoped to go up to her small bedroom after the shooting, and tell
Signora
Clara that her troubles were over. But the monster was in the driveway, and the rest, you know. The gun, Inspector, you’ll find in the cellar.”

Guidi said a mechanical yes. For some reason, what he feared most at this time was Bora’s telling the truth about Claretta. But Bora said nothing more about her. “
Herr
Moser, is there anything I can do for you?”

As one suffocating, Guidi had to get out of the house. The few steps to fetch his notebook from the car exposed him to the chill of an astonishingly clear day, filling the ample semicircle of the colonnade. Only minutes ago, the thought of being able to tell Claretta that she was free had made him euphoric. Now – he didn’t know what he felt now, other than confusion. What would happen next was so different from what he had envisioned, it took more than he had in him to make plans. When he walked back inside, Moser was standing at the centre of the hall and Bora several paces away from him, still facing the piano.

“Are we almost ready, Inspector?”

“Yes. I expect I could book you in the car.”

With old-fashioned courtesy Moser bowed his head. “I thank you. Just the time to gather my change, then.” Slowly but straight-backed, Moser walked to the beautiful stairway. Once at the top of the ramp, again he bowed to the men. “With your permission.”

“Major,” Guidi began, “I can’t begin to say…” But Bora gave no sign of listening. Turned away from the stairs, he stood fixed to the honey-coloured silhouette of the Silbermann. Keeping watch, it seemed. For what, Guidi could not tell. “I’ll phone the Verona police as soon as we reach a public phone.” Oblivious to him, Bora stared at the beautiful length of the piano. “Of course you’ll want to phone De Rosa as well, and Colonel Habermehl—”

The loud report from upstairs sent a burst of echoes through the vault. Guidi was so unprepared for it, it took him a moment to react. Then, “Damn, no, no!” He scrambled to the stairs, flinging the unlit cigarette over his shoulder. Past Bora, he reached and bounded up the steps. Bora let him go. His tense face flashed pale and was left behind.

Guidi shouted at him, “You gave him your gun! I stepped out for a moment and you gave him your gun!”

Bora unlatched his empty holster. At a deliberate pace, he followed up the stairs. In the bedroom, Guidi was kneeling by Moser’s body. Blood had soaked the threadbare carpet under his head in a dark semicircle. Bora stayed only long enough to retrieve the P38, which without wiping he returned to the holster, and walked downstairs again.

 

When Guidi joined him in the garden, Bora had gone beyond the colonnade. There, pedestals overgrown with vines held statues of the four seasons. The time-worn statues resembled much-nibbled sugar, and the field-grey uniform stood like a shadow among them.