Страница 62 из 109
Suspicious, the old woman looks Santino up and down. “Sicilian?”
Santino hands her his papers. “Calabrian, Signora.”
“No better!” she snaps.
“He’s a nice boy,” Messner assures her, “with a job, and a housing voucher from Fichtner at Lorentz.”
Trying to look harmless, Santino waits politely while Messner takes the lady aside for a murmured conversation. Something Messner says makes Signora Usodimare laugh girlishly as she trades a key for a pack of cigarettes.
Messner jerks his head, and Santino follows him down a hall that changes elevations three times for no apparent reason, and then up three flights of stairs. At the end of a corridor Messner unlocks a tiny room, taller than it is wide and stiflingly hot. He pushes the window shutters open to let in some air and sends his hat twirling onto a peg by the door. “Give me ten minutes. I need to thaw out,” he says, sitting in the room’s only chair and massaging his knees after the climb. “Belandi, how I hate the mountains!”
Santino sits on the edge of the bed. “You were going to tell me about staffette.”
Messner pulls a silver cigarette case from the inside pocket of his suit coat and offers it. “You don’t smoke?” he asks when Santino refuses. “Good! Filthy habit.” Messner shakes the flame from a match and coughs on the first puff. “Staffette… Where to begin?” he asks. Rhetorically. “Apart from ordinary gangsters, there are about a hundred bands of anti-Fascist partisans in northwestern Italy. Gruppi di Azione Patriottica in the cities, Squadri di Azione Patriottica in the countryside. Liberals, Christian Democrats, Socialists, Communists. Garibaldi Brigades, Catholic Action Brigades. Bread and Justice Brigades. Liberty and Justice Brigades. Most of them couldn’t organize a bun fight in a bakery.” Messner shifts in the chair and gazes absently out the window. “They all use girls like the one you met on the train as messengers because women travel more freely.”
Thinking of Claudia, Santino says, “Dangerous.”
“You have no idea. When staffete are caught…” Messner lifts his chin, sending a plume of smoke upward. “The Great War killed courage with machine guns, Cicala. This one’s murdering chivalry.”
Santino joins Messner at the window. The boardinghouse sits on high ground, and Sant’Andrea is laid out like a map. At least a third of the buildings are damaged, the streets holed with craters bridged by planks for foot traffic, or boarded over with salvaged doors. Piles of rubble block the ground-floor windows of the buildings still standing. Broken glass glitters in the sunlight. A barber cuts hair in the midst of the wreckage. A ski
“Are you from Sant’Andrea?” Santino asks.
“Ugo Messner is from Bolzano.”
“Even for a stranger, it’s a pity to see it like this,” Santino says, playing along.
“The city was never picturesque,” Messner admits quietly. “It’s been an industrial port for five hundred years. Ta
“What was it?”
“The Ospedale Incurabili.”
The smoking ruins of the hospital are nearly lost in the haze over the Mediterranean. “Maybe the pilots thought it was a factory.”
Silent, Messner takes a drag, filling his lungs with as much smoke as they can hold before flicking the butt out the window. Taking his hat off the peg, he stands still, as though weighing some decision. “There’s a company of bersaglieri guarding the construction site for the seawall,” he says. “The bersaglieri are—”
“Repubblicani.” Santino nods knowingly. “Old fascisti, with a new name. And corrupt, like mafiosi.”
“Is that what Don Leto says?” Messner asks, his voice light with sudden anger. “Allow me to explain something about city life, my son. We’ve got two armies confiscating trainloads of food from us. Civilian rations are down to one hundred grams of bread a day, two hundred grams of cheese a month! People are starving, and unlike the Red Priest, bersaglieri have families to feed. I know one of them is selling supplies from the seawall project. Cigarettes, food, medicines. And he’s got access to explosives, small arms, and ammunition. So he may be corrupt, but Don Leto’s friends can use what I can buy from him. Do I make myself clear?”
Santino’s eyes remain level.
“You don’t have to approach the man, Cicala. Just find out who he is.”
The wind shifts south, bringing with it the musical tinkling of bricks being tossed into piles.
“You don’t trust me,” Messner replies to Santino’s silence. “I consort with Germans. I could be an informer. Maybe I’m using you to find the black marketeer, so I can denounce him for money. Fair enough. Would you like a hostage?” Messner spreads his hands and presents himself. “Like the inestimable Claudia, I am a Jew. I can drop my pants to prove it, but if you insist.”
Santino crosses his arms. “What’s in the little boxes? The black ones that look like little houses?”
A slow smile of appreciation spreads across Messner’s face. Closing his eyes, he speaks as though reading from a book in his mind. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Teach these words to your children. Speak them when you sit in your home, when you walk, when you lie down and rise up…” One eye opens. “Belandi. What comes next? Bind them for a sign upon your hand… and for frontlets between your eyes, whatever the hell frontlets are.” The other eye opens. “Et cetera. Close enough?”
“I’ll watch for the man who’s selling things.”
“Bravo.” Messner takes a last look out the window. “The Allies are bombing us, the Axis is starving us, and the Communists will grab whatever’s left at the end. Mondo boia! Executioners rule!” he swears softly, shaking his head at the destruction. “I need a bottle, and a whore whose politics can be trusted. Care to join me?”
Santino shifts uneasily. “There are bad diseases. I don’t want to bring anything home. When I’m married.”
Caught between amusement and envy, Messner smiles. “I’ll check back at the end of the week. If you need help before then, go to the basilica. Find a priest named Osvaldo Tomitz. Tell him you heard from a shithead that Don Osvaldo was a decent man. He’ll know what that means.”
“Don Osvaldo,” Santino repeats. “A decent man.”
“Don’t forget the part about the shithead!” Messner calls, disappearing into the hallway.
Santino sits on the bed and bounces a bit. The mattress is better than any he’s slept on. He’s never had a room to himself before. Suddenly lonely, he returns to the window. I’ll save every lira, he thinks. No drinking, no cards. I’ll get work on the side. The moment there’s enough money, we can get married.
Something white catches his eye: snapshots fluttering through the piazza in front of the boardinghouse. A lady wearing mismatched shoes scurries to collect them. German soldiers stand on the corner. Civilians hurry past, impatient, nervous. One photograph keeps tumbling just beyond the lady’s reach. The soldiers laugh. Santino tenses to run outside and help, but before he can put motion to the thought, a gust of wind blows the photograph decisively away.
WAREHOUSE DISTRICT
PORTO SANT’ANDREA
Glissando, a harbor siren hits high A before its brief solo is lost in a chorus of inland Valkyries. German anti-aircraft fire provides percussion. Ears straining to pick out the sound of the approaching aircraft, Iacopo Soncini watches the warehouse rats. They are smart, and their hearing is more acute than his own.