it’s me, then everything comes out about him-what he did in the camp, why they hadn’t turned him over. They were supposed to do that. But they didn’t want a trial. Like Cavallini. How they stick together in the end.”
“But what were you doing there? I don’t understand.”
“How was it possible to stay with him after the camp? How could I do it?” she said slowly, as if someone else had asked the question. Then she shrugged. “Where was I supposed to go? The soldiers come and open the camp and what’s their idea? Another camp. Refugees. Then where do we go? Back to what? My father’s dead, everyone. I knew I could get money there. What was the difference, I was already a whore. And now it’s all upside down, now he’s afraid people will come for him, afraid of me even, that I would give him away. You know the Allies always wanted the people at the camps-not the Magliones, just people like him. So it ends up that I protect him. I don’t say anything. Maybe I felt I owed something to him-he saved my life. I had to pay, but he did it. Anyway, I went there. And do you know what? He wouldn’t give me any money. He said he would, but always later, another time. He wanted it to be like the camp again. A prisoner. It excited him, I think, if I was a prisoner. So I had to take the money after.”
“After?”
“After he was killed. I hid it, so the police never knew. I walked out of Modena. I didn’t want them to know I had any money. I thought they’d arrest me if I paid for the train. So maybe they said it was a robbery, I don’t know. I thought, That’s the end of it. But I knew it wouldn’t be. And now look how perfect. Link one with the other. If she can do one, she can do the other.”
“But they can’t prove you did it.”
“What does it matter? They can’t prove Moretti did it-in fact, he didn’t — and they still want to hang him. Who had a better motive than me? I’m glad he’s dead.” She stopped. “Oh, that’s what the boy said, isn’t it? In the bar. So now we’re the same.”
“Nobody’s accusing you. They would have done it then.”
“Maybe your friend Cavallini gives them new ideas. It’s easy to believe.” She looked up. “You believed it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“What? That it was even worse? That I was worse? I went to him. How do you tell somebody these things? Maybe I wanted you to think-” She came over and touched my arm, then glanced at a couple passing on the bridge and let her hand fall. “Well, that was before. So what do we tell Cavallini? What story?”
“We don’t have to tell him anything. There’s no link.”
“I’m the link. I’ve always been the link-one murder to the other.”
“There’s no connection to Gianni.”
“No, not at first. At first he’s just missing. Then killed. Who knows why? But then you help them. You have to know. So now he works with the Germans, like Vanessi. Now he’s someone I would kill.” She took my arm, pressing the point. “Someone I did kill.”
I moved to the right, blocking her from the others on the bridge. “Somebody will hear.”
“Oh,” she said, flinging up her hand, “everybody hears me but you.”
She turned away and walked fast down the other side, so that we were in the campo next to the Accademia before I caught up to her and took her by the shoulders.
“Listen. He believes it happened just the way we said it did. We were there, at Mimi’s. With him. He’s part of the story. He’s not looking at us.”
She put her hand on my chest. “Then why don’t we go before he does? To New York. We’d be safe there.”
“We are safe. As long as we’re together.”
“No. At first I thought that. Now maybe it’s worse. Can I leave? Not alone. Just married and she leaves? So we stay, and every day they get closer. We’re together, but we’re not safer. She killed Vanessi, why not Maglione?” She held up her left hand, showing me the ring. “You think this protects me?”
“No, I protect you.”
“Why? Because I can tell them about you?”
I looked at her, my face suddenly warm. “But you can’t,” I said slowly. “Neither can I. That’s the point. We protect each other.” I turned slightly, away from her eyes, glancing back at the canal. In the light from the bridge you could see the waterline on the building, the mortar dark and pitted, eaten away bit by bit. “We can’t let this fall apart. Do you understand?”
She said nothing, then slowly nodded.
“All right. Come on,” I said. I reached over to take her hand, but she pulled away and walked alone, not saying anything until we’d crossed San Ivo and reached the sluggish back canal. The restaurant on the other side of the bridge had already closed, and there were no lights in the windows, just a streetlamp at either end and the bright moon.
“Is this where she saw me?”
“Yes.”
“Coming to find you. To think, if I had waited at the hotel-” She looked up. “So maybe she’s watching tonight too. Somebody’s always watching us now. Which one, do you think?”
I cocked my head at the window. “She’s not. It’s dark.”
“Maybe she sits in the dark.”
We kept walking. “Well, now she can’t see anyway. Not this far down. She didn’t see which way Gianni turned.”
“Like this,” she said, pretending to turn left at the end. “But not this way.” She turned toward Ca’ Venti. “Why not? How does Cavallini know he turned that way?”
“Because it’s the only way that makes sense to him.”
“And one day he says, What if? And he goes this way.” She started down the calle. “To us.” She grabbed the air with one hand. “Snatch. And will we be safe then? Together?”
I stopped. “We can’t walk away. We can’t let someone hang for this.”
“You’ll never save that boy. Don’t you know that? A man like that,” she said, clutching her hand, Cavallini again, “he doesn’t let go. He has his victim. What are you going to give him instead? A story?”
I turned away. “I don’t know. Let’s wait to hear from Frankfurt. Gianni didn’t deal directly with the Germans- there was always a go-between. So maybe there’s something.”
“Something what? This boy is here, right now. You want to save him? Then you have to give them someone else to hang. Another body.” She took my hands. “Whose blood do you want on them? Mine?” She held them in front of me, her hands locked around my wrists, and for a second I couldn’t breathe, trapped in the hermetic logic of it. Someone else.
I shook my head. “But not his either.”
“Then whose? Whose would be acceptable to you?” She dropped my hands. “Who are you going to give them?”
“Nobody,” I said, but quietly, not wanting to hear myself, knowing as I said it that she was right, that Cavallini would never settle for another mystery now, with the taste of blood in his mouth. He’d want a body. But he already had one. Our perfect alibi. All we had to do was let it happen. I felt something jump in me, my skin hot. Worse than murder.
“You can’t save him.”
“We have to.”
“We have to save ourselves.”
“You don’t mean that. You’re just-” I started to walk, then stopped again and waited until she was next to me. “You don’t mean that,” I repeated. “We can’t live that way.”
“How do you think people live?”
“In Fossoli. Not out here.”
“Where it’s so different.”
I said nothing for a moment, looking at her, then nodded. “It has to be. You think no one’s watching? We are. We’re watching. Or we have to pretend someone is. Otherwise, you’re right, there’s no difference. Fossoli, out here, it’s all the same then. Is that what you want?”
“And what if it is all the same? Then what?”
