A Dark Song of Blood Read Online Free PDF

army that keeps me devout.” Candidly Bora glanced up from his drink. “Please instruct me if there are more people I ought to meet, in this room and around the Vatican. You are the Reich’s prime interpreter and man about town, while I’m new to Rome at war. And I’m not sure I know what ruffians means in the context of the Reiner case.”
    “One at least was our own. And that’s all you’ll get from this round of drinks.”
    Midway through the party General Maelzer showed up, merry with drink already and eager for conversation. Bora was introduced by Dollmann. The general went through some pat routine of questions and then said, “You’re young, Major, you’ll get in the thick of things quickly enough – I don’t mind if you screw someone, but I don’t approve of liaisons with Italian women.”
    “I’m happily married, General!”
    “If you were happily married you’d be with your wife. You’re as well married as wartime allows you.”
    With this, Maelzer moved on to another circle of guests and a new round of drinks. Bora, who’d married in a hurry on his way to war, was not nearly as secure as he showed. Asensitive and in many ways romantic man, he had for five years shown steadfast commitment in the face of rare furloughs and a superficial wife. As for other things in his life, his love for the object might be well in excess of what it deserved, from the same idealistic stance that made him obdurate in his work.
    Moments later, Dollmann rejoined him. “What did he say? There’s no getting angry at the King of Rome when he’s in his cups.” By then a cold dinner was served, which neither he nor Bora chose to eat. They sat with their drinks in hand, Bora looking at the couples growing intimate with what the colonel judged to be more than just uptightness.
    That night Guidi stayed up late to read the dossier. The only noise in the apartment was the snore rising from Signora Carmela’s crippled body. Elsewhere in the building, the neighbors were quiet. Guidi had routinely found out about them: middle-class people, employees and shop clerks, students. There was a small child on the top floor, who could be heard crying in the morning. Across the landing, a flashy, cherry-lipped woman in black received visits from noisy male relatives, and a reclusive old fellow Signora Carmela called Maestro – he played the piano, well in Guidi’s reckoning. Oddly enough, the one Guidi had been least inquisitive about was Francesca, whose small room was at the other end of the hallway. She left for work early in the morning, and was home by curfew. Whether the Maiulis knew that she was pregnant, he couldn’t say either. Her pale, drawn face came to him, the careless way she combed her hair away from it with her fingers as she read, so that it drew a brown wave behind her ear. She didn’t smile, spoke little at meals, and answered curtly to everyone.
    Magda Reiner, instead, continued to live a vicarious merry life in the snapshots of summers past, so different from the last dreadful images. Her blond, plump and smiling countenance against unknown mountains, alongside unknown friends,was forever safe from injury. In one picture, she laughingly embraced another woman.
    As for Ras Merlo, Guidi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he read about him. His given name was Radames, though he went by Rodolfo. Born 1900, bersagliere in the bicycle troops during the Abyssinian campaign. Married to Ignazia Pallone since 1930, four children: Vittorio, Adua (known as Aida), Libico (known as Lorenzo) and Cadorna (known as Carletto). Had been instrumental in the creation of the Istituto Forlanini ten years earlier, and presently headed what remained in Rome of the prestigious National Confederation of Fascist Unions. Rumor had it that he had conflated his last name and his wife’s under the pseudonym Piemme , and authored the words of the well-known North African Campaign song ‘Macallè’:
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