Chapter 21
RENATA BASTIANI felt compelled to wear black. She had worn black since the hateful day in 1943 when the Nazis killed her husband in front of the frightened family trying to escape by train at the Stazione Centrale. She hated all Germans, and she would wear black until the day she died and could finally be at rest. Her memories of the final years of the war still made her shudder.
The looks, the whispered conversations. Those wartime neighbors had long since gone, leaving new occupants to witness ... what? An elderly, unhappy woman living with one son called Bruno; while the other boy had gone off goodness knows where, and not been back here for years to see his old mother.
The same neighbors told her that Bruno, the elder of the two who was over sixty now, was always charming the women. But the relationships never lasted, and as frequently as two or even three times a year Bruno would be back seeking consolation. Renata knew the neighbors branded him the heart-breaker of the piazza, with a specialty for bored housewives, but they were unable to grasp that it was Bruno's heart that was broken by the failed romances.
He worked as a press photographer, a man capable of serious investigative journalism. Unfortunately he only seemed to be famous for his regular photographs of high profile figures leaving nightclubs considerably the worse for drink, or in the company of women who were not their wives. She had heard from Riccardo Fermi that this led to jokes at work about Bruno putting so much effort into uncovering other people's sex lives that he had neglected to work hard enough at nurturing his own.
He was home again now, the ageing Romeo's affairs getting shorter as the years went by. Why hadn't her son settled down years ago with a nice ordinary girl and got married? Renata knew that life could never be that simple, although all her neighbors' children had done very well for themselves. Bruno was still a boy, and her boy deserved a nice girl.
The other son had caused nothing but pain. He was a curse, a reminder of all that had been terrible about the war. But it need not have been that way. If Enzo had grown up differently, and if Bruno had been able to accept him better, she would have tried -- please God she would have tried -- to put the whole damn war behind her. All she had ever wanted was a home for the boys: a home where they would bring their girls, and later their bambini.
She knew that Bruno hated Enzo. It had never been any different since the day the baby was born. It was as though the little boy had known the reason for her pregnancy.
She loved Enzo and yet at the same time rejected him. Enzo had come to look more and more like his German father as the years went on. She had loathed that evil Nazi officer. She wished she could have been there to kill him in the building in the Via Tasso, with the long knife. More than once she had shared this dreadful wish with Bruno.
BRUNO LAY ON his bed in the darkness. The presence of his half-brother in the apartment was making him sweat. Enzo frightened him. Enzo was calculating. Why else was he now calling himself Manfred Kessel, the name of his rapist father? Enzo was also cruel. Bruno recalled the time when Enzo had caught a fly in a wine glass and carefully pulled the wings from its back, before releasing it into the large web in the corner of the back yard. Enzo laughed to see the hungry predator slip from its place of hiding to catch the helpless insect, before wrapping it in silken strands for a later feast.
Such acts of cruelty were second nature to his blond brother, but it was to be a portent of his coming death. One day Enzo, like the fly in the yard, would have his wings removed one after the other. Otto Bayer and Karl Bretz were the wings. Both would be plucked off. Then the spider would move in for the kill.
He'd always despised his brother, and could never separate him from the overpowering memories of the big Nazi forcing himself on his Mamma long ago. The German officer walking those dark corridors and marble stairways; kissing his Mamma on the high steel bed; putting his hands, and then his body, all over her bare skin as she tried not to cry out.
Enzo had not only come to Rome with the skinhead from Düsseldorf in tow, he had now collected Helmut Bayer's son in Köln. The three Germans had been in and out of that hotel off the Via Nazionale throughout the day, and they certainly weren't staying there for a holiday. Perhaps Otto Bayer knew where to find the relic, in spite of his denials at the photographic studio in Köln. The sooner the three Germans were dealt with the safer everyone would be. Riccardo Fermi was right: there was only one way to deal with Nazis, old and new. It was not just his brother down there in the room talking to his mother. Part of the man was the German SS officer. His half-brother looked exactly like the Nazi monster, evil and infectious. For the good of mankind, drastic surgery was essential.
Bruno went quietly down the short flight of stairs into the hall. Seen now through the half open door, the tall fair-haired Enzo could be the bullying German officer -- the man who had done wrong things with his Mamma; making her behave in a way he had not understood until much later, but which he had sensed was bad. Even here in his own home, a grown man, Bruno felt sick with fear. Powerless to intervene.
This was his hell, the hell that ruined his life. All he could ever do with girls were wrong things. While his friends found sex to be fun, he struggled with memories that returned repeatedly to spoil his ineffective efforts at love-making.
He went back up the stairs and flung himself onto his bed, appalled by his inability to step in and save his mother. So many plans, so many grand ideas, and always a lack of power. The animal had returned from the war to haunt them both. Lying face down, he relived his time in the Gestapo building. From somewhere in his subconscious came the sound of angry voices. The German officer was shouting at one of the soldiers. The little boy clung to his mother's black dress. The voice came again.
"Monte Sisto!"
He sat up in the darkened room. For a whole lifetime he had tried to forget the terrors of the big house in the Via Tasso. He listened again, realizing that the voice had not come from his memory at all. It had been real, rising from the hallway to his room. It was Enzo saying Monte Sisto.
Enzo was by the hall door. "Goodbye, Mamma, you've been a great help."
"Come and see your Mamma again soon, Enzo. Maybe you and your old Mamma can learn to be friends. You be sure you come round and see me before you go back to Germany. Give your Mamma a nice big kiss."
In the darkness at the top of the stairs Bruno closed his eyes and turned his head away. The sound of the kiss was obscene.
He waited until the door was shut, swept his fingers through his dyed black hair, and went cautiously down.
"It was nice to see my boy again," said his Mamma.
Bruno went to sit on the floor by her side, allowing her to run fingers of comfort through his thinning hair. "Enzo asked you something?"
"Just memories, Bruno. Just memories." His Mamma smiled. "Of all the things he wanted to know, that was the stupidest."
"What was, Mamma?"
"The day his father first spoke to me in the war he was shouting at a soldier. They'd been to a monastery and something had gone wrong. Something about photographs."
Gently Bruno removed the soothing fingers from his hair and stood up. From a folder on the large walnut sideboard he took several large black-and-white prints. "Photographs like these?" He stood in front of her in excitement.
She shook her head. "I didn't see them. The two men were just arguing. Come and sit by me again, Bruno. I like it when you sit by me. You used to let me rub your hair when you were little, before ... before it all happened."
"Enzo wanted to know the name of the monastery?"
"Enzo's father was shouting it."
"And you told Enzo it was Monte Sisto?"
"Of course your old Mamma told him. Enzo says he's going there tomorrow morning with his friends. I wish you had a nice girl, Bruno."
He put his arms round his mother's neck and let her run her soft fingers through his hair again. If he and Riccardo Fermi wanted retribution, there also had to be justice. Monte Sisto must be where Otto B
ayer's father had been involved in the massacre. He had photographs of the terrified Jews from Otto's film, and a mass of evidence against the neo-Fascists on his files that he had chosen to keep secret for now. Justice called for judgment on the Bayer family.
"Mamma, the Nazis still have a price to pay for all they did to you. I am not alone in this. You will have your revenge on the Nazis yet."
"Enzo's a good boy now. All I want is peace."
Bruno stood up. Now that Enzo knew the name of the monastery, he and Riccardo would have to move quickly. "Mamma, you shall have peace. Very soon now, I promise you peace."
His mother reached out and took hold of his hand with her thin fingers. "You're a good boy, Bruno. I know you're only doing what's best for your Mamma."