anyone take that away now. Not that girl. Does she think she can bring the father back? I did what I did. There was a reason-at least for me it was a reason. Now you know it. Maybe it’s still not enough for you. But maybe it’s enough for a truce. That’s why I told you. If it’s enough to make a truce.”
“What do you mean by truce?”
“An end. Talk like this, it can make trouble for me. I want her to stop.” He looked directly at me. “I want you to stop.”
“You mean you want me to leave.”
He held my eyes for a second, then nodded. “After the wedding.”
Rosa Soriano was blond and stocky, the weight, I assumed, a matter of inheritance, because she took nothing with her morning tea, not even glancing at the rolls and jam the Bauer had laid out for breakfast. She had a heavy person’s surprising grace, her thick fingers barely touching the cup, lifting it in a delicate arc. Only her walk was clumsy, an awkward shuffle, still new to her, her body pitching forward but held back by the stiff leg she dragged along. “From the war,” she said when she saw me looking at it. “A German souvenir.” When she sat down she breathed out, a barely audible sigh of relief, and brought the leg under the table. The dining room was warm, despite the rain spattering on the terrace, but she had wrapped a shawl over a heavy jacket, a huddled, almost peasant look in a room walled with damask. Joe had said she’d wanted the trip, so I apologized for the rain, but she looked at me blankly, as if she hadn’t noticed it. She had come ready for business-a folder with papers and a notebook were at the side of the table.
“My mother was German,” she said, when I asked how she knew the language.
“So that explains the hair.”
She shrugged. “Italians are blond too. But not many speak German. So it was useful. My mother said it would be. Maybe not this way, working for the Americans.”
“Joe said you recognized his name.”
“The name, yes. Not his. His brother’s.”
“His brother? Paolo?”
“Yes,” she said, patting the folder. “Him I know well. But the other-” She shook her head, then gently put down the cup. “Then Joe asked me and ha, I thought, another Maglione, maybe that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“The brother, Paolo, was often at Villa Raspelli. They kept a record of the visitors every day, so we only have to look at the sheet to see who was there. And then, I couldn’t understand it, his name was there after he died. How? I thought maybe the records made a mistake, but how do you make that mistake? A ghost signs in? So I look, and the writing is different, only the name is the same. G. Maglione.”
“G? Paolo?”
“Gustavo, his first name. That would be the name on any document, so of course the Germans-”
“But I don’t understand. He wasn’t a doctor.”
“Well, Villa Raspelli wasn’t a hospital. It’s-how do you say, casa di recovero? ”
“I don’t know-rest home? Recuperation center, I guess.”
“So, recuperation. You know, an officer is wounded. Maybe tired of the war. He goes to Villa Raspelli. He looks at Lake Garda, breathes the good air, he eats, he gets better. Maybe he has to practice walking. Maybe the arm is like this.” She made a gesture to indicate a cast. “But no one is dying. It’s casa di recovero, not a hospital. A club for butchers,” she said, her voice suddenly bitter.
“But then why did Gianni go there?”
She looked over, almost delighted, pleased with me. “That is an excellent question. A doctor from Venice? From the big hospital? Why not someone in Verona? I have the records. There were no serious illnesses there in this period. And you know, if it was serious they moved them out to a real hospital. This was der Zauberberg, a place to rest. But a doctor comes from Venice. So why?”
I said nothing, waiting.
“Of course, it is an excellent excuse. Doctors do go there. Maybe not from Venice, but they go. To make the checkups. How is the cast? You know. No one would think it unusual if he went there.”
“But you did.”
“Because I know what it was like. He wasn’t needed. Still, there he is. Not once, several times.” She pulled out one of the sheets and pointed. “G. Maglione. Not a ghost. As I say, an excellent excuse, if you were meeting someone. No suspicion at all. You meet the SS at Quadri’s, everyone notices. You meet secretly, someone finds out. But at Villa Raspelli no one questions it. You’re a doctor. Maybe someone has asked for you. Take a black bag, all out in the open. Wonderful.”
“Wait a minute. Back up. His brother went there. He wasn’t a doctor.”
“Well, Paolo didn’t need an excuse. They were his friends. You know about him?”
“Only what I read in the papers. A playboy.”
She nodded. “Yes. Racing cars. Then more games. The Order of Rome. You know that?”
I shook my head.
“A club, for boys like him. Young Fascists. Rich, stupid. For the new empire. Ha. Abyssinia. What did they care about Abyssinia? An excuse to get drunk, be stupid together. Harmless, and then not so harmless. The Germans began to use them. Of course, it was the Duce at Salo, but really the Germans.”
“Used them how?”
“To inform. To help fight the Communists. For someone like Paolo, that’s all you had to say. The Communists-that would be the end of everything, wouldn’t it? Better to make a bargain with the devil. So they did.”
“Over drinks at the Villa Raspelli.”
“Yes, many times. He was a favorite there-he must have been good company. Still a playboy. And of course there was the work to discuss. No more Abyssinia. Now he was saving us from the Communists. A hero. For Italy. For the Church. He wasn’t the only one like that, you know. There were lots of heroes. And now they answer for it.” She placed her hand on the folder, as if it were the prosecutor’s case.
“But not him.”
“No, he answered earlier.”
“A car crash.”
She took a sip of tea, calm. “No, he was killed.”
“I thought it went off the road.”
“It did. After.”
I looked at her, surprised. “Do you know that?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
I reached for the coffeepot, something to do while I took this in.
“But Gianni,” I said, “he wasn’t-what was it? Order of Rome?”
“No. I only knew about the brother. That’s why I’m here. To talk to you about this one.”
“Well, he wasn’t that. Like Paolo, I mean. Not a playboy. Not stupid, either. I can’t imagine him joining anything. He likes to keep his hands clean.”
“Not too clean. Isn’t that why you came to us?”
“That was something else. Not the Order of Rome. In his own way, he-” I looked up from my cup. “He told me he did it to save someone else. Who was in the hospital at the same time. A partisan.”
She lifted her head in surprise, then tipped it to one side, thinking. “A partisan,” she said quietly, turning it over another minute. She pushed at her sleeve, an absentminded gesture, moving the heavy cloth back until a splotch of white appeared, new skin, without color. I watched, fascinated, as she rubbed her finger over it, idly scratching. Another souvenir of the Germans? There was more of it, running up under her sleeve. How large had the burn been, the old skin blistering, coming off in peels? “Then he’s lying,” she said finally, startling me. I looked up from her arm. Her eyes were certain, not even a hint of doubt, so that suddenly I had to look away, ashamed somehow of feeling relieved, oddly elated.
“Are you sure?”
“The partisans in the Veneto were Communists. Does he seem to you a man who would help the Communists?”
“But not all-”
