The Girl From Venice Read online

  “I was a professor of entomology at the University of Bologna. My specialty was parasites.”

  “That must have kept you busy.”

  “Are you familiar with the hairworm?”

  “I can’t say that I am.”

  “Well, it’s a very thin worm, obviously. Also called a grasshopper worm, although it’s neither an insect nor a worm. It’s a real psychological study.”

  “A psychological worm?”

  “The hairworm larva lives in a body of water that a grasshopper happens to drink from and thus is swallowed. Then the worm grows until it fills the grasshopper’s body cavity. Here the psychosis takes over. The mature worm controls the brain of the grasshopper and sends it on a suicidal search for water. As soon as the grasshopper finds it, it jumps in and drowns, allowing the worm to squirm out and complete the cycle. Now, you have to ask yourself: What was going on in the grasshopper’s brain? What compelled it to take its own life? Was it fever or was it bliss?” He picked a sketch of Giulia from the top of the bureau. “What is it about this girl, Giulia, that has infected your brain? I ask because you’ve gone to such great lengths to find her.”

  “It seems to me as if people are going to great lengths to kill her.”

  “It depends on your point of view. Thanks to your brother, you seem to be mixing with the social elite of Salò. The former Argentinian consul general, filmmakers, General Kassel himself. Not to mention the social parasites Otto Klein and Vera Giardini. No? Too bad. There are also thousands of Fascists who have been purified by the fire of war, true patriots willing to sacrifice their all and who trust in the Fascist credo: ‘Believe! Obey! Fight!’”

  “I’m afraid you have the wrong man.”

  “Or a man desperate enough to put a gun to his brother’s head. Someone who has been cuckolded and betrayed. I’d say you were a perfect fit.”

  “I won’t help you.”

  “Too bad. I’m certainly prepared to help make a hero out of you.” Orsini stood to go. “Well, I tried,” he said. His foot shot out and squashed a cockroach that ventured from under the bed. “Filthy bug.”

  27

  As soon as Orsini left, Cenzo dropped into bed, too tired to remove his clothes. He closed his eyes but something nagged at him, perhaps a hairworm, perhaps a pig. He remembered how many times his friend Eusebio Russo had smuggled items on the black market, in particular hams from pigs that his mother, the widow Margherita Russo, had bred and butchered. Margherita was a one-woman farm. She had a powerful personality and was “hard and broad across the beam,” as she liked to say. But she lived her own life and cursed equally any Fascists or partisans who tried to steal pigs from her farm. She hid her pigs and even trained them to come at her whistle. “Pigs are smart,” she would say. “Smarter than some people.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to sleep but he had the feeling that a hook and bait had been dragged before him. He slept fitfully for an hour, then rose from his bed like a zombie. The possibility that Russo was alive kept Cenzo’s eyes wide-open.

  He still had the key to Maria’s Alfa Romeo, a quarter tank of petrol, and an obliging moon that lit the way inland to Brescia. Cenzo passed unchallenged by muddy soldiers and German antiaircraft batteries that huddled under camouflage nets. He had only been to the Russo farm once, but he followed his low beams for half an hour before he turned onto a dirt road that wound up the mountain. He slammed on his brakes to avoid a black hog that sat in the middle of the road.

  The hog was five hundred pounds and disinclined to move. Other pigs trotted down the road along a steel fence. Cenzo thought they must have escaped and had missed a feeding—which, considering the nature of hogs, was a serious matter. Cenzo skirted the hog and drove through an open gate. Hog eyes followed him in.

  “Never sleep on the ground,” Signora Russo used to tell Cenzo when he visited with Eusebio. She advised him never to treat a pig like a pet unless he intended it to become a member of the family. Otherwise, to slaughter one would be like murder, with all its screaming and disbelief. Many farmers couldn’t kill their own pigs. That is, if they were dealing with a friendly pig. “Otherwise, they were up against a quarter ton of angry, half-wild animal.”

  The Russo farm was composed of a house, barn, wet and dry wallows, troughs with dividers to keep arguments to a minimum, a yard and pen with enough space for hogs not to crush piglets, plus processing rooms and a compost pit. The pigs spent all their lives within the bounds of a farm where they became giants and were ultimately transformed into prosciutto, salami, sausage, salt bacon, lard, and chops. Signora Russo owned a truck and trailer and a Citroën 2CV automobile that looked like pleated paper. For protection, she had a pair of Alsatian guard dogs. Usually the dogs came racing up, barking and snarling as if they were going to tear apart the sky. Now they lay still on the ground.

  The door to the house was open. Inside, Margherita had chosen mahogany furniture so dark it was nearly invisible. The walls were decorated with photographs of prize pigs wearing smiles of simpering goodwill. The air, however, was tainted with the smell of blood. Cenzo didn’t see any yet, but he started inhaling in shallow breaths.

  Eusebio Russo lay dead on the kitchen floor, one hole in his head and two in his chest. His ginger hair fanned out and his blue eyes held a glassy stare. A gun lay by his side. He was lukewarm, probably dead for hours.

  Signora Margherita Russo had been shot in her bedroom. A white nightgown with lace tatting was laid out on her bed. Someone with a steady hand had shot her between the eyes. What was the sequence there? Cenzo wondered. Had Eusebio come to the house and found his mother already dead, or had Margherita heard the shot from the living room as she was preparing for bed?

  In the living room a gramophone had gone silent with a needle in the groove. The only illumination was a lantern’s guttering flame.

  Pigs followed Cenzo and the lantern into the barn. They vied for position over sacks of corn, grunting and snorting and pushing each other out of the way. Two pigs collided and toppled bales of hay, revealing loose boards. A massive boar spread out over the boards and seemed determined not to move. When Cenzo fired his pistol for attention, the hog stood and grudgingly backed away. Straw swirled in the light of the lantern. He moved the floorboards aside, Guilia looked up out of the dark, and he lifted her up.

  “Why did you take so long? Why did you take so long? Why did you yake so long??” she whispered into his ear.

  “He’s dead. And his mother.”

  “Did you see him?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “DaCosta. He’s here.”

  “Whoever was here, he’s gone.” Cenzo carried her out of the barn.

  Cenzo dug shallow graves for Eusebio and Margherita, shooing the pigs away with his shovel. With their round backs, the pigs made a natural cortege.

  28

  By the time they returned to Salò, night had become a gray morning streaked with rain. Cenzo knew he couldn’t go back to the Hotel Golfo or anywhere near Orsini’s grasp. Vera had decamped to join Claretta and Mussolini and, in despair, had left her house open. Cenzo carried Giulia in.

  She was still shaking. Without a word, Cenzo showered and washed her until the last grain of dirt was off her body and then toweled her off until she was smooth as marble.

  What was he after? the fisherman was asked. Diamonds? Pearls? A crown of gold? Better yet, was there one dazzling insight that a man could steer his boat by? Yes. “There’s plenty of fish in the sea.” That was it, the wisdom of the ages. If a man could be satisfied with that grain of knowledge, he could be satisfied for life.

  “Plenty of fish?” Yet only one woman would do. And not just any one, but the most obstinate, impossible woman he had ever met.

  • • •

  He wrapped her in his arms until her shaking died and then he brought her back to life with a kiss.

  •
• •

  They slept into the afternoon. When Giulia awoke she found Cenzo lying on his side and looking at her. She pulled up the sheet.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “Colors.”

  “What is there to see?”

  “Don’t tease.”

  “I’m not teasing. You’ve been hidden too long. You don’t see the way your black hair fans across your snow-white cheek.” He ran his finger over her lips. “And how red and plush your lips are. In short, you have no idea how beautiful you are.”

  He was aware that his words were insufficient. Byron might have dashed off some poetic descriptions as if they were child’s play and with a sketch pad a master like Titian would have done her justice. In bed, close enough to feel the heat of her, Cenzo was overwhelmed.

  “Not thin?” she asked.

  He pulled the sheet back. “Not a bit. I would say you are richly assembled.”

  “There ought to be a prize for that.”

  “I think there is.”

  She sucked in her breath as he unfolded her. She seemed poised, absolutely still like a small bird ready to fly. Then she guided him in and the taste of her skin was salt.

  • • •

  Distant gunshots finally roused them out of bed. They were ravenous and Cenzo found stale bread, hard parmesan, and unopened bottles of cheap wine for their breakfast.

  “Are we safe?” Giulia asked.

  “Relatively. This isn’t like Naples or Rome. Once the Germans leave, Salò will be empty.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “This won’t be a fight between Italians and Germans—it will be between Italian partisans and Italian Fascists.”

  “Wasn’t Eusebio a partisan?”

  “Eusebio was independent. He sometimes squirmed out of tight spaces by seeming to cooperate with the Germans, sometimes with the partisans, but never with the Black Brigade. He had his standards.”

  “He saved my life. Twice.”

  “Tell me what happened from the time you left with Russo. Start with the second oarsman. It’s a long crossing between Pellestrina and Venice, so I understand why Eusebio wanted another oar in the water. But I was surprised to see another man in his boat.”

  “It was so strange. I couldn’t see his face. Our faces were covered with black scarves and it was night. It was like a funeral.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No. But there was a moment in the middle of the lagoon when he stopped rowing. It was odd, us in our black boat and black scarves as if we didn’t exist. Then three rays appeared underneath the boat. They were luminous. You know how rays fly underwater?”

  “I know.”

  “They stayed with us for almost a minute. Eusebio prayed the whole time. Was he religious?” she asked Cenzo.

  “No, but he was profoundly superstitious.”

  “Then Eusebio said, ‘The deal is off.’ They were the only words he said. It’s funny: up to that point, I had been afraid. From then on, I wasn’t.”

  “The other man, he made you nervous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he could have been DaCosta?” Cenzo asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. He hardly said a word, but I didn’t know DaCosta so much by his voice as by his presence. I didn’t see him but I felt him. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Complete sense. Where did you dock in Venice?”

  “The gondola yard at San Trovaso. Then we split up,” Giulia said. “Eusebio and I went in one direction and the second man in another. The man was upset, I could tell that much.”

  “You must have seen him. He must have taken off his scarf.”

  “No. He rushed off and didn’t even say good-bye. I asked Eusebio where we were headed and he said that, in the old days, it would have been the Bridge of Sighs, because that’s where they used to bring bodies to be identified. You know Eusebio’s sense of humor. He paced for a while, then took me to the train station.”

  “To meet someone?”

  “No. He didn’t meet anybody.”

  Perhaps Eusebio’s connection at the station was late, Cenzo thought, or perhaps Russo had not expected Giulia to make it to Venice at all. He could have regarded the spectral appearance of the rays as a form of divine intervention. “Then we boarded a local train and hid out at the pig farm with his mother. I think she hoped that Eusebio and I were eloping. I stayed with them and helped out on the farm.”

  “I wish I’d seen that.”

  “He disappeared for a while on business, or so he said. She rattled on about what a fine prospect he was and how she would pray for us. Us and the pigs. We ate nothing but truffles and ham. ‘Like millionaires,’ the old lady said. She looked ferocious but she was actually nice, and if anyone asked, I was Giulia Vianello from the fishing village of Pellestrina. If they doubted me I could mend a net to prove it. Then Eusebio returned. He was going to take me back to Salò Cathedral for a blessing of the bicycles. I would slip into the cathedral. We would be hiding under their nose. Clever?”

  Complicated, Cenzo thought. It wasn’t just a matter of hiding a Jewish girl, it was a case of protecting her from an enemy who had betrayed her father.

  “But an air raid siren went off and everyone ran. I saw Eusebio being stuffed into the backseat of a black Fiat. He gave me a look through the rear window and I rode away on the bike as fast as I could.”

  “Who was arresting him?”

  “The Black Brigade. I followed the car at a distance until they took him to the brigade’s headquarters. I waited outside all day until they let him go and then, once he had walked far enough away, I joined him.”

  “Then Eusebio took you back to his mother’s farm?”

  “Yes. This time he made sure there was a hiding place for me. When he heard DaCosta’s car approaching, he hid me in the barn—in a hole under loose boards. Once he stacked hay bales on it, I was hidden but I was also trapped. Later, I heard gunshots, then the door to the barn was opened and DaCosta let the pigs out. He called my name just like at the hospital.”

  “Are you sure it was just DaCosta?”

  She nodded.

  “How many shots did you hear?”

  “Four or five.”

  Cenzo was surprised. Eusebio would not have hesitated to use a gun, and his mother was no shrinking violet when it came to self-defense, yet they had been outgunned.

  “How long were you in the hole?”

  “Hours. I closed my eyes and hypnotized myself. You know what I thought about? Fish.”

  “You were on the Fatima too long.”

  “I could have stayed longer.”

  Why the period on the Fatima seemed a happy time for both of them was a mystery to Cenzo. As he remembered, all he and Giulia had done was argue.

  “Tell me more about DaCosta,” Cenzo said. “Did he say anything else?”

  “No.”

  It occurred to Cenzo that he had never seen DaCosta, and searching for him was like fishing for octopus. You couldn’t see it until it blinked. What would make a creature like DaCosta blink?

  29

  Cenzo sat in a chair with a gun in his lap while Giulia slept in Vera’s bed. Her capacity for sleep was astonishing; she curled up like a cocoon while he waited for jackboots to pound up the stairs.

  On the radio, between endless Beethoven and Wagner, the voice of Giorgio Vianello announced to the public, “Stay inside. Report looting. Avoid panic.” Good advice, although Cenzo had to laugh at the idea of Giorgio Vianello as the voice of reason.

  He heard the slap of a tailgate and moved to a window, where in the dark and the rain he witnessed a betrayal like the kiss of Judas. German SS officers lined up their Italian counterparts, took their handguns and rifles, and dragged the men to trucks. Officers of the Italian SS were outraged and co
nfused, demanding that phone calls be placed to Hitler himself. The German SS had been their erstwhile colleagues and teachers. This was a mistake. There had to be a mistake. The fact was that the Germans were disarming them and sending them to work camps. The Italians had thrown their lot in with the wrong master and an interesting future lay ahead for them. Trained in the techniques of crowd control and interrogation, they knew all too well what to expect.

  Cenzo shook Giulia awake. “We have to leave. The Germans are rounding up the Italian SS.”

  “That’s not us.”

  “Not yet. But you don’t have papers. I think we have to go.”

  “Where?”

  “I have a friend at the Argentine consulate.”

  “How would a fisherman from the Lido know people at the Argentine consulate?” Giulia asked.

  “My brother introduced me.”

  “That’s a recommendation?”

  “It’s a last resort.”

  • • •

  As soon as they were dressed, they emerged from Vera’s bungalow and walked stiffly behind trucks idling in blue smoke. The street was wet and glistening from the night’s rain.

  “You!” a German SS sergeant prodded Cenzo with a pistol and pushed him toward a truck. “Get in!”

  “What’s the matter?” Giulia asked.

  “Nothing, I’ll take care of it,” Cenzo said. “Sergeant, I am not with the SS. I am the actor Vianello.”

  “Into the truck.”

  “I broadcast for Radio Salò.”

  “I don’t listen to that shit.”

  “I’m in films.”

  “I don’t watch that shit. Get into the truck or I’ll shoot your fucking foot off and we’ll see how you work hopping on one foot.”

  Cenzo reassessed the situation. The sergeant was plainly a man with a short fuse. On the other hand, once Cenzo was in the truck, he might as well be locked in a safe for all the good he could do Giulia. Only he couldn’t claim now to be a fisherman and offer the roughness of his hands as evidence. Damn.

  “Excuse me. I beg your pardon. One phone call will straighten this out,” Cenzo said.