Текст книги "Alibi"

Автор книги: Joseph Kanon

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“But I’ll find out.”

“More fairy tales,” he said, looking at Claudia. “Why do you stay in Venice? With your bad memories. Or you,” he said to me. “Go home. You are making trouble here for no reason. Go live your own life. Leave us in peace.”

“You sent me away once,” Claudia said. “Do you think you can do that again?”

“Me? I don’t send anyone.”

“But you could arrange it. Like that,” Claudia said, snapping her fingers.

“Yes, like that,” Gianni said, nodding, a kind of threat. “Easy.”

“Not so easy this time. This time we don’t go like sheep. We know.”

“More melodrama. Why do you listen to her? Such a scene.”

“Is that what you came out here for? To tell us to leave town?”

He looked at me steadily, then sighed. “No, for your mother. To make peace.”

“Peace.”

“I’m a patient man, but not a saint. She wants that, but you—what do you want? I wish I knew. Not peace. To make trouble maybe between us. So I will tell you something. You will not stop this marriage. You will make your mother unhappy, but you will not stop it. Do you think I would let these stories get in the way of that? She will leave Venice,” he said, indicating Claudia. “So will you. And your mother and I will live here. If you have sense, you will go back and sit and talk to her. Apologize for making a scene.” He looked at Claudia. “You, I don’t care what happens to you. I’m sorry for your trouble, but now it’s enough craziness. Leave me alone. Go away.”

“Where would I go? To Fossoli again? You didn’t think anyone would come back. But one did.”

He looked at her, cool, absolutely calm, then turned to me. “Don’t do this again. It upsets your mother.”

“Tell her about Villa Raspelli. Then see how she feels.”

“And what would I tell her? I was a doctor doing his duty.” He narrowed his eyes in the same menacing stare I’d seen in the restaurant. “You think you know. You don’t. But you will not stop this marriage.”

He brought his hands up to straighten his tie, and I watched, fixated, as he tightened the silk. Large, square hands, a sharp pull on the fabric. For an instant, oddly, I saw my mother’s soft throat in the Monaco lounge, imagined him putting his hands around it. Not in violence, not some improbable tabloid crime, but strangling the life out of her, choking her spirit bit by bit until only a gasp was left. He looked at me, with his hard eyes, and I realized he was capable of this too, a different killing. With no one around to interfere.

He glanced back through the glass of the door. “Your mother is waiting.”

“What will you tell her?”

“That you are embarrassed and she is mad,” he said, glancing toward Claudia. “The truth.”

“The truth,” Claudia said. “The truth is that you sent me to die. Sent me to be a whore.”

He patted his tie, then looked at her, weary. “No. That’s something you did yourself.”

CHAPTER SIX

Bertie refused to help at the Accademia.

“You overestimate my influence. I couldn’t. Not now. Anyway, I wouldn’t. She may be the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, but she’s been terrible for you. Just look at this mess, Grace all weepy and Gianni snorting around like a wounded bull. And for what? Some whim of yours.”

“She’s telling the truth.”

“I don’t know that. And neither do you. You’re just thinking with your pants. It’s one thing in the army, that’s all anyone thinks about, but you’re not in barracks anymore. So much for a civilizing influence.” He waved his hand toward the city outside his long windows. “And if you ask me, the sooner you get yourself out of her clutches, the better.”

“Her clutches.”

“Her charm, then. I must say, she’s the most unlikely siren,” he said, pronouncing it “sireen” for effect. “Still.”

“He put her in a camp, Bertie. Her father died.”

“He did. Himself.”

“Don’t split hairs.”

“Rather important hairs, don’t you think?”

“Not if he’d done it to you.”

“Oh, Adam, first he’s after Grace’s money, now he’s working with the SS. Does he look like SS to you? This is all mischief.”

“Why does everyone want to protect him?”

Bertie peered at me over his glasses. “Nobody’s protecting anybody. Nobody’s proven anything, either.”

“I will.”

“How, may I ask?”

“I still have friends in the army.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they like to know who kept company with the Germans. They keep lists. Testimony.”

Bertie looked at me for another minute, his face slack with surprise. He got up and walked over to the window. “Well, isn’t that lovely? What do you intend to do, put him on trial?”

“He didn’t do anything, according to you.”

“Never mind according to me. Keep me out of it. I can tell you now that nothing’s going to come of it but tears and more tears. Adam, for heaven’s sake, let them be. They’re going to marry, whether you like it or not, so let them get on with it.”

“You don’t think I’d let him marry her.”

“Well, as you keep failing to grasp, he didn’t ask you and you haven’t accepted. The invitations are out, you know.”

“Help me, Bertie. She’s your friend.”

He sighed and opened the window to his balcony. Outside, the winter sun was bright on the Grand Canal, noisy with boats.

“What does she say about all this?”

“Nothing. She refuses to talk about it. She spends all day getting her dress fitted.”

“So I heard.”

“What?”

“Mimi. She’s in a perfect snit about it. The dressmaker. None of her friends can get a look-in, and there’s the ball coming up.” He turned and smiled at me. “I know, all very silly. And here you are, still fighting the good fight.” He opened the window wider. “Oh, how I wish you’d go.”

“That’s what Gianni said. He can’t wait to get me out either.”

“Not just you. All of you. Even Grace. She’s a darling, but look at her now. Everything all fraught. You make everything so messy, all of you. I hate it.”

“No, you don’t. You love it.”

“Oh, for five minutes’ gossip? You think so? I don’t, really. I’m selfish. I suppose it’s wrong, but I can’t help it now. Look at that,” he said, waving at the view down the canal. “Did you ever see anything so beautiful? The first time I came here, I knew it was all I wanted in my life. To see this every day, just be part of it. And then you all come charging in, making messes right and left. In a way I think I preferred it during the war. Nobody came.”

“Except the Germans.”

“Well, yes. All right. The Germans,” he said, the phrase taking in more. “And now you want to bring it all back. God knows why.”

“Things happened here, Bertie. You can’t make them go away just because they spoil the view.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. They will go away. Nobody wants to live with them, over and over. Why do you? They did this and they did that—you don’t even know who they are, you just know who you want it to be. I don’t like this, Adam, any of it. I don’t like what you’re doing. Neither will you, in the end. Ach.” He stopped, out of steam, and closed the window, his eyes glancing over to see how I was reacting.

“Will you talk to her?” I said calmly.

“Oh, and say what? ‘You might reconsider, darling. Your son thinks he’s Himmler.’ ”

“She’ll listen to you.”

“You keep saying. I don’t want to be listened to. I want to be left alone.”

“With your view.”

“Yes, with my view.” He came over to the coffee table and lit a cigarette. “All right. All right. Getting married. You’d think once would be enough for anybody.”

“They’ll find it, Bertie. Evidence. It’s there somewhere.”

He looked at me. “Let’s hope not.”

The next day Claudia’s landlady asked her to leave. An official from the housing authority had come to inspect. There had been reports of immoral behavior.

“That’s you,” Claudia said with a wry, fatalistic smile. “You’re the immoral behavior.”

“He can’t do this.”

She shrugged. “Venice is famous for denunciations. You can still see some of the boxes where they put the notes. For the doges.”

“Five hundred years ago.”

“Well, for me, this week.”

“She can’t just put you out.”

“She was frightened—an official coming here. So I have till the end of the week. At least it’s better than the Accademia, not the same day. He asked if she’d seen my residency permit. So they’re going to make trouble about that.”

“Don’t you have one?”

“Everything was taken at Fossoli.”

“So get another. You were born here. They’ll have records.”

“Yes. In the end, I’ll get it. But meanwhile—” She opened her hand to show the weeks drifting by.

“He’s not going to get away with this. Stay here. I’ll be back.”

She touched my arm. “I’ll go with you.”

“Not this time. My mother wants us to talk, so we’ll talk.”

I zigzagged my way past the Arsenale and through the back-streets of Castello toward the hospital. Over the bridge at San Lorenzo to the Questura side, where a few policemen were loitering in the sun with cigarettes, not yet ready for their desks inside. Did it only take one call here too? Maybe the policeman we’d met at Harry’s, ready to do a favor. San Zanipolo and its dull red brick, then the vaulted reception room of the hospital, following the guard’s directions down the stone corridor to the doctors’ offices. Not running, but walking so fast that people noticed, thought maybe I was hurrying to a deathbed. I brushed past the nurse in the outer office and opened the door without knocking. Gianni was sitting behind the desk in a white coat, his pen stopping halfway across a form when he saw me.

“I want you to leave her alone,” I said.

The nurse rushed up behind, flustered. “Dottore—” she started, but Gianni waved her away, gesturing for me to sit.

“What have I done now?” he said.

“Scaring the landlady. Is that your idea of a joke? Charging Claudia with immoral behavior.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “A woman like that doesn’t change. I made inquiries about her, after the party. When she made such a spectacle of herself. I thought maybe she was deranged.”

“She’s not deranged.”

“No, a whore. Do you know what she was at Fossoli?”

“Where you sent her.”

“Do you know what she was? Did she tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, the camp mistress. This is the woman you bring to your mother’s house.”

“She was forced.”

“No one forces a woman to be a whore. A man like that, at the camp, do you think he would have kept her if she didn’t please him? No one had to force her.”

“You really are a sonofabitch, aren’t you?” I said quietly.

“Oh, now names. I try to help you, show you what she is, and you call me names.”

“Just call off the dogs, Gianni. The police or the housing authority or whoever the hell you called this time.”

“For your information, I didn’t call anyone. Another of her fantasies.”

“Who else would have done it, Gianni? Who else?”

“A landlord finds a new tenant, he gets rid of the old one. It happens all the time.”

“Leave her alone.”

“I see. She scratches my face in public. Waits outside the hospital, like a beggar. Makes scenes in restaurants. But I am bothering her.”

“Just call them off. She’s not leaving Venice.”

“She has no permit.”

I smiled grimly at the slip. “Something you just happened to know?”

He glanced away. “I told you, I made inquiries. It’s not for me to decide. It’s a legal matter.”

“Not if I marry her,” I said, not even thinking, just returning the ball.

He looked up at me, genuinely shocked. “You can’t marry her.”

“Why not? My mother’s marrying you.”

“A woman like that? It would be a disgrace. Think of your mother. It’s impossible.”

“What a piece of work you are,” I said slowly. “You send her father to die. She ends up in the camp, raped, and now she’s a disgrace, not fit to enter your house. You did it and she pays? Not anymore. I don’t know how you live with yourself.”

He stared down at the papers, not saying anything.

“Always her father with you. Over and over. You think you know,” he finally said.

“What don’t I know?”

He pursed his lips, then turned and stopped, turning back, a kind of physical indecision.

“You still see his room on your rounds?”

“Lower your voice,” he said, darting his eyes toward the anteroom.

“I don’t care who hears. You got away with it, you can live with it.”

He put his hands on the desk, as if he were stopping his body from moving, coming to an end.

“Yes, I live with it. You want to know? That day?”

“I thought it never happened.”

“Come.”

He took his coat from the rack and started out, not bothering to see whether I was following. There was some quick Italian to the nurse, who nodded uneasily at me, and we were in the hall.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Out of here. I will tell you something that never happened.”

Outside, he turned right on the Fondamenta dei Mendicanti and began walking along the canal, then stopped, as if he had changed his mind.

“An ambulance. Wait.”

Orderlies were carrying a stretcher off the boat, stepping carefully from the deck to the receiving room door. Gianni went over and asked them something, presumably whether he was needed. I stood looking at the boat, waiting. Everything by water, even the sick. Claudia’s father must have come this way, on a boat from the Lido. She would have stood here, watching as they carried him in.

“Another one for San Michele,” Gianni said.

“Dead?”

“Almost. Some morphine, that’s all you can do now. Pray, if you believe that. Then San Michele.” He started walking again, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. “Do you know how many dead I’ve seen? When I was young, I thought I would be helping people, making them better. You know, the nice doctor with the cough medicine, the way a child sees it. That’s what I thought it would be, medicine, but no. Death. Seeing it happen, waiting for it. I’ve spent my whole life in this building,” he said, motioning with his head toward the long brick wall. “I know when someone is going to die. What are we supposed to do? We help even when we know it won’t help. We don’t kill them. We don’t make that decision. God does, if you believe that. Maybe it’s just the cells, giving up. But not you, not if you’re a doctor. I never wanted to kill people, I wanted to save them. And then sometimes you have to make a choice.”

“What choice?” I said quietly. We were walking slowly now, almost in time with the waves of the canal hitting the stone walls.

“I said I would tell you something that never happened. Now, this once. And then I didn’t tell you. It never happened, we never talked of it. If you say we did, I will deny it. And by the way, everyone will believe me. You can never prove what happened. But we must make a truce, you and I. For everyone. Not a peace, you don’t want that, but a truce. Before you ruin your mother’s happiness. And your own life, with that—well, she is what she is. You think I made her that way? No. That I don’t have to live with.”

“Just her father.”

“Yes. I have to live with that. I’m not proud—this thing that never happened. Are you proud of everything you’ve done? Well, at your age it’s still possible. Not at mine. I’m a doctor, not assassino. He was dying. I knew he was dying. Nothing in the world was going to change that.”

“That doesn’t mean you had to help. You knew him.”

“Abramo? Yes. He was like her—difficult. Always looking for the slight. But no matter. He was dying. I had to make a choice, so I did. You can’t save the dead—only the living. So was I wrong? I knew what would happen to him. But I’m not ashamed, even now. It was the war. You had to choose the living.”

“Choose how? By reporting Jews?”

“They were not there for the Jews. For someone else. I don’t remember his name—maybe I never knew it. Anyway, it wouldn’t have been real. You know CLN?”

I nodded. “Partisans.”

“So someone fighting for Italy. That meant something, you know. I wanted to help. A man not sick, wounded. Bullet wounds. You couldn’t hide that. How could I lie about bullet wounds? They would have found him. They had a photograph—they knew who he was. And then what? ‘How long has he been here, dottore? You never reported this? A partisan?’ They were attacking Germans then. It wasn’t just sabotage, railroad tracks—they were actually killing them, so if you were caught, the Germans would make an example. There was no way to hide him in that hospital. I had to get him out, somewhere else. I had to make them go away, even for a little, get enough time to save him. So I gave them someone else.”

We were at the end of the fondamenta, facing into the wind coming off the lagoon. On the water, a covered funeral gondola bounced on the waves, heading toward the cypresses. Another one for San Michele.

“That’s some choice,” I said, looking out at the water.

“Yes,” he said, “a terrible choice. But not difficult. He was dying. The other man was living. How else could I save him?”

“And yourself.”

He looked at me. “Yes, myself, it’s true. It would have been bad for me if they had known I helped. But you know, at the time I wasn’t thinking about that. Of course you won’t believe that either. You want to judge—one thing or the other. But it wasn’t like that. Good and bad together, how do you judge that? You do things—well, how can you know what it was like? Villa Raspelli, you think I wanted that? How do you think it felt, putting my hands on them? Giving them medicine? Men like that. So you don’t look at the uniform, you don’t see it. Then you can do it, if it’s just a man.”

“So was Grassini.”

“A dying man. So I played God, yes. A sin. That’s what you wanted to know. Now you tell me something—what would you have done?”

I stared at the lagoon, choppy in the wind, and it seemed for an instant, as I watched it move, that everything in Venice was like its water, shifting back and forth.

“Why didn’t you tell her this?” I said finally.

“What difference would it make to her? Her father’s dead. I had a part in that, yes. Do you think she wants to know why? What reason would satisfy her? I’m not making excuses—it happened. But you, it’s different. I want you to know. What happened, happened. Or rather, it didn’t happen. Not now.”

“Why?”

“You think this is a time for explanations? Now it’s revenge, settling scores. I have a position here. These accusations—anti-Semite, collaborator. Always something sticks, however it was. Do you think people want explanations? No, they’re like you, they want black and white.”

“But if you helped a partisan—”

“Not everyone would love me for that, even now. Collaborator. Communist. It’s dangerous to take sides here. This one, that one, and someone is against you no matter what you do. So I do nothing. Nothing happened. I go on with my life. I don’t want the war again.” He looked at me for a minute, then turned toward the fondamenta. “I must go back. Anyway, now it’s said. Maybe it makes a difference to you, maybe not, I don’t know. I thought, a soldier, you’d know how these things were. What happened then, it’s hard to judge now. Do I still live with it? Yes, but shall I tell you something? A little less each day. Maybe that’s how the war ends. A little less each day until it’s over.”

“Not for everybody.”

“No, not everybody,” he said. “It never ends for them.”

“You talk as if it’s her fault.”

“No, but not mine either. I didn’t make the war.”

He said nothing for a few minutes, looking toward the houses across the canal, the same patchy plaster and shutters we’d seen that day going to lunch, before anything had happened.

“You know what ended it for me?” he said suddenly. “When your mother came back. I heard her laugh, and it was a laugh from before the war. And I thought, yes, it’s possible to have that life again. And we do. I won’t let 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 Salò, 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—”

“Americans. Why is this so hard for you? Yes, Communists. Or people fighting with Communists. It comes to the same. Who else was fighting the Fascists? Not just at the end. And when the Nazis ran, who else was there to chase them? Hunt them down.”

“Were you there?” I said, trying to imagine it.

She nodded. “Of course.”

“A Communist?”

“My parents were. I was named for Rosa Luxemburg—my mother was her friend, in Berlin. So she had to leave, after they killed her, and my father was then in Milano—” She stopped. “Well, my parents, that’s for another day.”

“But not you.”

“Not when I work for the Americans.” She poured another cup of tea, then looked up. “This matters to you?”

“Just curious. So you were a partisan.”

“Yes, like everyone now. Then, not so many. Why do you think I do this work? I don’t forget what it was like, what the others did. The Magliones.”

“Both of them?”

“It’s the logic. Follow the dates,” she said, patting the folder again. “Paolo we know. A bastard. But his brother, no record. Paolo is killed by partisans. And now the brother appears on the guest list.”

“And not before?”

“No, I checked. After Paolo’s death. So now there’s another Maglione at Villa Raspelli. Why? The logic is, they appealed to him. ‘Help us avenge your brother.’ Does he say no? Then why go back? Not one visit, several.”

“And you don’t think he was treating anyone.”

“No, but at first I thought it could be. I only knew about the brother. Not this one, what he does, how he feels. That we have to guess. And then you tell us he’s reporting Jews to the SS. A doctor reporting Jews. You know this for a fact?”

“The daughter survived. She saw him do it.”

“Good. She would be willing to testify to this?”

“Yes,” I said, hesitant, wondering where she was going. “But—”

“So we have a link now. He helps the SS with the roundups. What else does he help them with? He’s not at Villa Raspelli to give aspirin, I think. It’s the logic.”

“But not the proof,” I said.

“No, not yet. But I’ll get it,” she said, scratching her arm again, excited.

“Proof of what?”

“After Paolo’s death, of course there were reprisals. This man was nothing to them, not really, but now he’s an excuse. Make an example for the partisans. Show them what happens when they—well, you can imagine. It’s the end, they’re desperate, and they were always butchers, so now they’re like crazy men. Torture. Terrible things. And it works. They begin to get the partisans, pick them off. Always it’s Communist uprisings they’re putting down, not the resistance. And once it’s very lucky—this time, a whole group. A house. And they burn it, with people inside. An atrocity. And the question is, who betrayed them?”

“But how could Gianni—?”

“No one betrayed them. Not that way. Someone led them to that house. It’s possible not even deliberately, not even knowing. I looked at everyone in that house, I made their files. Who would do it? No one.”

Her voice had gotten stronger, rising toward the end, so that one of the waiters looked over, thinking we were having an argument.

“You were in the house?” I said.

“Yes. Not everyone died. I was burned, but I lived. It’s strange, you know, because now I’m always cold. You would think—” She put both hands on the table, anchoring herself. “So I know who was there. But who did they follow? Who did they know to follow? Someone here,” she said, nodding at the folder. “And now you tell me something very interesting. You pray for them to make a slip. I think maybe he made the slip to you. But I need your help.”