to me, grinning. A minute later I led Giulia onto the floor. “These Foolish Things,” slow enough to talk, my hand barely touching her back.
“What do you mean, they can’t prove it?” she said, still turning this over.
I hesitated, trying to think, feeling the sweat at my hairline. “They’re Paolo’s journals, aren’t they? He was already dead when the house was attacked. So how could they prove anything?”
“Oh, I see. No, they don’t say my father gave Moretti the medicine. But of course we know he did. Moretti said so.”
“So what do they say? You figured out the missing pages?”
She nodded. “I found the other books.”
“But he destroyed them. Didn’t you say?”
“Well, a Maglione. He gave them to Maria to be destroyed. The maid, you saw her.” Entering nervously with a phone. “Loyal to Paolo, it turns out. Maybe the only one.”
“She read them?”
“No, she doesn’t read. She can write her name, that’s all.”
“But she kept them.”
“You know you forgot to take the books away, the day Vittorio called. So that night I was looking through them. The missing pages, what did they mean? And she saw me and said, would I like to see the others? My father had told her to burn them, but she thought, these are Paolo’s, the history of the family, and they’re not my father’s to burn.” She smiled. “He wasn’t the first son. She thinks that way.”
I nodded, encouraging her to go on, but there was no reluctance now, almost a rush to get it out.
“Once I had those, it was easy enough to guess the rest. Because I know my father’s businesses so well.”
“His businesses?”
“Yes, it was always about that. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. If he had believed in something-anyway, he believed in this.”
Over her shoulder I could see Claudia signaling me.
“You had to work with the government,” Giulia said. “Everything was like that here. Licenses. Friends.”
“It’s like that everywhere.”
“Yes, but here it was Fascists. And then the Germans.”
“He sold arms? My mother said he didn’t.”
“No, not that. One factory in Turin, it makes forks, then it makes forks for the army. Little things, not the Agnellis. Uniforms. Electrical pieces. Many things. So, the Italian army, that’s one thing, it’s still your country. But then the Germans come. Not your country, but you supply them too. Ha, one partisan. My wonderful father.”
“He worked with the Germans? Paolo says so?” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, finally there.
“Paolo worked with them. Paolo was perfect. The older brother. It was his name on the companies, the ones that were all ours, not just a piece. He was already friendly with them-a puppet, like everybody in the Salo government. The worse things got, the happier he is in the books. ‘I presented our proposal to Donati.’ So who is ‘our’? Him? No, my father. ‘I met with Rohrer and told Gianni that the plan had met with approval.’ His plan? No. So busy now, so important. Head of the family. Even his brother praises him, confides in him.”
“Uses him.”
“Yes. It’s my father who’s working with them. But no one knows that. They only see Paolo.”
“And kill him for it.”
She looked away for a minute, just shuffling to the music.
“I don’t blame my father for that. Paolo did that to himself. I don’t know, did Paolo have to do everything he did for the Germans? Help them with-whatever they asked. I think with my father it would have been different. But Paolo didn’t know where to stop. He was important, he liked that. So, you know, it’s his fault too. I don’t blame my father.” She looked up. “But my father did. He blamed himself. Now I understand it, how he was when Paolo died. His fault.”
“And now there was no one to run interference.”
“No. Now he had to deal with the Germans himself. It was too late to back out. If he wanted to. I don’t think he did. He hated the partisans for killing Paolo. Maybe he hated the Germans too. But it was the end, they would be gone soon, and he was still safe, if he was careful. No one knew. He was a doctor, a good man. You know, when the trials came right after the war, no one even thought of him.”
I remembered Rosa at the Bauer, her face filled with excitement, a new quarry.
“Work with the Germans? That was Paolo, it all died with Paolo. So my father survived the Germans, then he survived you.” She waved her hand a little, taking in the rest of the room, the Allied occupation. “With his good name. My god, and now an American wife. And all the money. The money Paolo earned for him.” She looked down. “Sometimes I think I should admire him. It’s not so easy to survive. But then look what he did to Paolo.”
“And this is all in there? The Germans he worked with?”
“That Paolo worked with, yes. And him. I’ll show you. You have to know how to read them, how the businesses are connected.” She paused. “Are you still trying to defend him?”
“I just want to be sure.”
“You think I want this to be true? I wasn’t even going to tell you about them. But it was your idea, wasn’t it? Look through the papers. And what did we find? A man who sells his brother to the devil.” She paused. “And maybe Paolo had his revenge. His friend comes to the hospital. Such a small thing, and then it starts-” She drifted, following the bullet that didn’t stop, her chain of events, unaware that it had been an even smaller thing, a mere nod. I saw Gianni’s face twisted with fury in the entrance hall, thinking I was about to ruin everything because of something so small it hadn’t mattered to him.
“So this is who he was,” she said, her voice unsteady, eyes filling.
I glanced down at her. What I’d wanted to know, but not this way, making another wound.
“Part of who he was,” I said, trying to salvage something.
“Oh, because he was Papa? Well, which part do you pick? You think they’re all the same, all equal?”
“No.”
“No. Those people in the house are dead. Who knows, maybe others. What part was that?”
“We still don’t know he did that,” I said. “Just because he did business with the Germans. It doesn’t prove-”
But she wasn’t listening. “For me, Paolo, that’s the worst. His own blood. My blood. And I never would have known. Nobody would.” She looked up. “And nobody has to know now. Just the family. They can never put him on trial now. Moretti saved us all from that.”
For a second, the back of my neck prickling, I thought how easy it would be to let it happen, let Moretti save all of us, just by being guilty.
“But now there’s his trial,” I said. “It’ll come out.”
“Not if he confesses,” she said, her eyes firm, not flinching, maybe the way they were when she talked to Cavallini. Family matters.
Mario cut in on me at the end of the song, so that both girls were now on the floor with the soldiers. Behind them, others were standing with their drinks, waiting a turn. The band, surprised to find a party, didn’t even break before moving into the next number.
“Well, I’m glad for this,” Cavallini said, watching the dancers. “I wanted to talk to you. That business at the hotel, asking questions about Signorina Grassini-I’m sorry for that. An absurdity. I assure you, not my men.”
“No? Then who?”
“I told you, some at the Questura, they’re not happy about Moretti. It’s politics, of course, but they don’t say that.”
“So they’re investigating Claudia?”
“No, no. Please don’t upset yourself. Reviewing the case, they say. Going over everything. Why? A waste of time, but there’s Moretti’s lawyer, making trouble for them. So there has to be the pretense. Looking at everything. I tell you this because I know they called your mother.”
“In Paris?”
“Yes, such an expense. And for what? What they already knew in the report. If she mentions it, tell her it’s nothing-some foolishness here, that’s all. She’s well?”
