Read Online A Dark Song of Blood by Ben Pastor - Free Book Online Page A

slowly, but was less sure of herself.
    “I followed you,” he lied. “What will it be?”
    Her lips were pale with cold, chapped. She turned away from the wind, wary or discouraged or just unhappy. Not helpless, but unhappy. “All right,” she said, making Guidi wait for the next words. “I’ll quit seeing him at night.”
    Guidi could have left now. Instead, he continued to walk at her side to the tramway stop. There, because she was trembling,he undid his overcoat and put it on her shoulders. Francesca did not react; looking away from him, she seemed already a resentful prisoner, whose friendship might now be impossible for him to gain.
    Later that day, at the office, Danza made little of things. “There’s a mess of people holed up all over the place, Inspector. Anybody could be meeting anybody. Folks came out of the woodwork in the past months, and went back into it twice in number. Jews, monarchists, dissenters, you name it. Deserters by the score, writers, officers from the Royal Carabineers – all watching out for you, me, the Germans, the Fascists. What can we do about it? Either we play political police or we ignore the whole. She sees her boyfriend at night? If that’s what she does, good for her. If that’s not it, then...”
    “No,” Guidi said. “I think that’s it.” And it weighed on him that he might be twisting the law for a woman, as he had risked doing up north only a month ago.
    Danza offered cautious support. “So, ignore it. Since the Americans landed a week ago, we’ve had assassination attempts, slashed tires, gas depots blown up, and the Germans are taking things in their own hands. With all due respect, I couldn’t care less about a girl that cats around.”
    At his return home, the last person Guidi wanted to meet in the stairwell was Pompilia Marasca. He tried to avoid her, but she managed to keep him there by blocking the stairs.
    “A nice fright, you men gave me,” she said. “After I came to the other night I was ill for hours and hours, just thinking there might be fighting in the streets.”
    Guidi shrugged. “Who knows. There may not be.”
    “Women like myself have to be very careful, you see. I’m all nerves. Since my husband passed away, all nerves – nothing else. What you see is nothing but nerves.”
    Her nerves were well hidden under the padding of breast and hips, Guidi thought. He faced her, with an ear to the other noises in the house – voices, steps, the halting whimperof the child upstairs. Francesca was just then coming in from the street. She walked by, indifferent to both, bound for the Maiulis’ door. Pompilia’s cherry lips tightened. “She should be with her nose up in the air, the shameless hussy. Who does she think she is? She’s even showing !”
    It was the first comment that interested Guidi. “Showing what?” he said stolidly.
    “Haven’t you noticed? My God, you men never notice anything. Even the Maiulis, who are the least informed in the world, wonder whether there’s anything amiss with the young lady. Amiss, indeed! I should say there is. Things one wouldn’t believe! Pay attention, next time – it’s still early, but it’s showing all right. Since she came, she hasn’t spoken ten words to me, and I’ve been in this house going on three years now. Well, what can you expect from the likes of her?”
    Guidi drove his hands into his coat pockets. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Her mother’s a Jewish you-know-what, and as for her father – he’s a bishop or something. That’s how she got to go to school and all that. People heard her brag about it.”
    With his fingertips, Guidi savored the fleece-lined space of his pockets, where Francesca’s chafed hands had burrowed as they waited for the tramway. “Sorry you got a scare,” he said. “Let’s hope nothing happens around here.”
    “Nothing? Why, just before you came home there was a big blast at Piazza Verdi.”
    Guidi didn’t bother to say he’d been