Alibi: A Novel Read online

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  I reached for the coffeepot, something to do while I took this in.

  “But Gianni,” I said, “he wasn’t—what was it? Order of Rome?”

  “No. I only knew about the brother. That’s why I’m here. To talk to you about this one.”

  “Well, he wasn’t that. Like Paolo, I mean. Not a playboy. Not stupid, either. I can’t imagine him joining anything. He likes to keep his hands clean.”

  “Not too clean. Isn’t that why you came to us?”

  “That was something else. Not the Order of Rome. In his own way, he—” I looked up from my cup. “He told me he did it to save someone else. Who was in the hospital at the same time. A partisan.”

  She lifted her head in surprise, then tipped it to one side, thinking. “A partisan,” she said quietly, turning it over another minute. She pushed at her sleeve, an absentminded gesture, moving the heavy cloth back until a splotch of white appeared, new skin, without color. I watched, fascinated, as she rubbed her finger over it, idly scratching. Another souvenir of the Germans? There was more of it, running up under her sleeve. How large had the burn been, the old skin blistering, coming off in peels? “Then he’s lying,” she said finally, startling me. I looked up from her arm. Her eyes were certain, not even a hint of doubt, so that suddenly I had to look away, ashamed somehow of feeling relieved, oddly elated.

  “Are you sure?”

  “The partisans in the Veneto were Communists. Does he seem to you a man who would help the Communists?”

  “But not all—”

  “Americans. Why is this so hard for you? Yes, Communists. Or people fighting with Communists. It comes to the same. Who else was fighting the Fascists? Not just at the end. And when the Nazis ran, who else was there to chase them? Hunt them down.”

  “Were you there?” I said, trying to imagine it.

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  “A Communist?”

  “My parents were. I was named for Rosa Luxemburg—my mother was her friend, in Berlin. So she had to leave, after they killed her, and my father was then in Milano—” She stopped. “Well, my parents, that’s for another day.”

  “But not you.”

  “Not when I work for the Americans.” She poured another cup of tea, then looked up. “This matters to you?”

  “Just curious. So you were a partisan.”

  “Yes, like everyone now. Then, not so many. Why do you think I do this work? I don’t forget what it was like, what the others did. The Magliones.”

  “Both of them?”

  “It’s the logic. Follow the dates,” she said, patting the folder again. “Paolo we know. A bastard. But his brother, no record. Paolo is killed by partisans. And now the brother appears on the guest list.”

  “And not before?”

  “No, I checked. After Paolo’s death. So now there’s another Maglione at Villa Raspelli. Why? The logic is, they appealed to him. ‘Help us avenge your brother.’ Does he say no? Then why go back? Not one visit, several.”

  “And you don’t think he was treating anyone.”

  “No, but at first I thought it could be. I only knew about the brother. Not this one, what he does, how he feels. That we have to guess. And then you tell us he’s reporting Jews to the SS. A doctor reporting Jews. You know this for a fact?”

  “The daughter survived. She saw him do it.”

  “Good. She would be willing to testify to this?”

  “Yes,” I said, hesitant, wondering where she was going. “But—”

  “So we have a link now. He helps the SS with the roundups. What else does he help them with? He’s not at Villa Raspelli to give aspirin, I think. It’s the logic.”

  “But not the proof,” I said.

  “No, not yet. But I’ll get it,” she said, scratching her arm again, excited.

  “Proof of what?”

  “After Paolo’s death, of course there were reprisals. This man was nothing to them, not really, but now he’s an excuse. Make an example for the partisans. Show them what happens when they—well, you can imagine. It’s the end, they’re desperate, and they were always butchers, so now they’re like crazy men. Torture. Terrible things. And it works. They begin to get the partisans, pick them off. Always it’s Communist uprisings they’re putting down, not the resistance. And once it’s very lucky—this time, a whole group. A house. And they burn it, with people inside. An atrocity. And the question is, who betrayed them?”

  “But how could Gianni—?”

  “No one betrayed them. Not that way. Someone led them to that house. It’s possible not even deliberately, not even knowing. I looked at everyone in that house, I made their files. Who would do it? No one.”

  Her voice had gotten stronger, rising toward the end, so that one of the waiters looked over, thinking we were having an argument.

  “You were in the house?” I said.

  “Yes. Not everyone died. I was burned, but I lived. It’s strange, you know, because now I’m always cold. You would think—” She put both hands on the table, anchoring herself. “So I know who was there. But who did they follow? Who did they know to follow? Someone here,” she said, nodding at the folder. “And now you tell me something very interesting. You pray for them to make a slip. I think maybe he made the slip to you. But I need your help.”

  “How?”

  “The date. I need the date when he gave them the Jew, when the SS were there. In the autumn, yes, but when? Exactly. Do you know?”

  “She would, I guess.”

  “Good. When I get the hospital records, I can match the dates to the names.”

  I looked at her, puzzled. “Why? What slip?”

  She smiled slightly. “A man whose brother is Order of Rome, who visits SS, who reports Jews, this same man tells you he does this to save a partisan. How would he know? How would he know a man was a partisan?”

  I said nothing. Not just the lie, the kind of lie.

  “The man told him,” I said weakly, taking his side to see how it would fit.

  “Who would tell him? Do you know how we lived? Other people’s names, identities—everything was secret. We trusted no one. And then you tell a man like that? With his sympathies?”

  “But how would they know his sympathies?”

  “Then you would not trust him. Unless you knew. Not with a life. You would not tell him.”

  “But somebody must have.”

  “Yes,” she said, lowering her head, “someone must. It’s possible, the SS. If they already knew. ‘Help us make the trap. Watch him. Tell us when to follow.’ Of course, it’s possible it was someone else. And he tells the SS, his new friends. But in the end they know. Who helps them?”

  “If the partisan was there at all. Maybe he just made it up—something to tell me.”

  “Such a story to make up,” she said. “A man who wasn’t there. It’s more usual, yes, to take the truth and bend it a little. Easier to answer questions, if you have to. Anyway, no matter. We’ll see if he was there. There were two people in that house from Venice.” She looked up. “And one of them had been wounded. I didn’t know he had been in the hospital, he wouldn’t have said. To protect whoever helped him. But I know when he came to us, so we match the dates. I know what name he used. What name did Maglione tell you?”

  “He didn’t remember.”

  “Ah,” she said, “a patient without a name. Then I find out, who did Maglione see at Villa Raspelli? I look at them, their files. And somewhere there’s a connection. If we’re lucky, someone alive. A witness. The Germans talk now—they like to tell us what their friends here did. You see? Not just us. It was the war. The Italians were no better.” She nodded. “We’re very close now.” She sat back, pouring more tea. “And for that I have you to thank. It never occurred to me to track the brother, and then one day Joe tells me he was reporting Jews. It’s like a chain, one thing to another, but you were the start.”

  I looked out the rainy window, uncomfo
rtable.

  “You’ll give testimony, yes? And the daughter?”

  “You intend to put him on trial?”

  “Intend? Hope. It depends what we can prove.”

  “You can prove he gave up Abramo Grassini.”

  She shook her head. “Well, you know that was the law, to turn over the Jews. And the proof—whose word? I’m sorry. I don’t say it’s right, I say what is. But the one thing leads to the other, so it’s a help. With you, of course, it’s different. A credibility. For you to testify against him, what he told you—”

  “But it’s hearsay. He’ll deny it.”

  She leaned forward. “Let me tell you how they work, these trials. The victims are dead. So what do we have? Records, of course.” She held one up, a court exhibit. “Circumstances. Sometimes a witness. It’s difficult. We have to show the chain. The daughter knows something. You know something. A German knows something. Another. We make a chain of circumstance.” She put down the folder. “Sometimes a chain of lies. He lies to the daughter. He lies to you. Why? And then you see the chain and you pull it.” She moved her hands in a tugging gesture. “And you have him.”

  “But technically—”

  “These are special trials. The technicalities are different. It’s not the cinema, a murder trial.”

  “It’s about murder.”

  “No. Reputation. Maybe even social justice. There’s always that hope. But not murder.”

  “Then they’ll get away with it.”

  “They did get away with it,” she said quietly, so that the words hung over the table. “There’s no retribution after you’re dead. But people don’t know. And that they won’t get away with.” She sipped more tea, watching me over the cup. “You’re worried?”

  “No,” I lied, suddenly seeing the tribunal table, my mother in the makeshift courtroom, Gianni glaring at me from the stand. “But I don’t like throwing mud in public either. If it’s just mud. I saw it in Germany. Nobody comes out looking good—you get just as dirty.”

  She put down her cup. “Yes,” she said, a quick nod of agreement, “but I’ll still need you there.” She looked over at me. “It won’t be just mud.”

  “And if you can’t prove it?”

  “Well, I think I will. And it’s important, to have these trials. Otherwise—”

  “Otherwise what?”

  “The partisans find their own proof.”

  Afterward I crossed back to the Dorsoduro side, uneasy, feeling things spinning out of control. All I’d wanted was to get my mother out of a mistake. Now it was something else. How could I testify against him? It would be terrible for everyone and justice for whom? Rosa was right about that, anyway. He had already gotten away with it.

  A little past San Ivo a canal was being dredged, a dirty job saved for winter, when no visitors were here to see. Wooden planks dammed each end so big rubber hoses could pump out the water, leaving a floor of mud, just a few feet down, where workmen in boots were shoveling muck and debris into carts. The mud covered everything, spattering the workers’ blue coveralls, hanging in clots on the canal walls, just below the line of moss. Gianni’s great fear: mud would stick if someone dredged it up. I thought of him on the terrace at Lake Garda, having drinks with the men who’d ordered the trains. I’d met them in Germany, men still unsure why they were being accused. But those were the ones in cells, worn and frightened, out of their protective uniforms, awaiting judgment. The others, in the street, just went about their business, so ordinary there was no way to know, no haunted looks, no furtive tremor from unwanted memories. The crime hadn’t stuck to them. They had gotten away with it, free to walk around, even marry a rich woman. They smiled over the dinner table. Nobody knew. And that they won’t get away with, Rosa had said, asking for help.

  But a trial. I imagined the courtroom, me on the stand, Claudia on the stand, and I knew my mother would—what, break? No, she was more resilient than that. But a body blow leaves a bruise. You survive, but not quite the same. She had survived my father’s death, with a stray look of sadness that never quite left her now. Those first years, bright for my sake, she worked hard at making us happy, putting part of herself aside, as if it were something she could stow away in a closet for later. But of course it was gone, spent on me. And now there’d be another blow, leaving her bruised and reeling again, harder this time to come back, already weakened, never expecting it to come from me. She’d get over Gianni, but not that, not a trial.

  But then he’d get away with it again. I watched the workmen sliding in the wet muck. In a few days they’d be finished, the garbage and the smell gone, and the water would flood back, the surface a mirror again, dazzling, so that when you came to it, around the corner, you felt you were stepping into a painting. I stared down at the mud, unable to move, as if my feet had actually sunk into it, still trying to find a way out.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mimi was lucky in everything but the weather. Il Gazzettino was already calling the ball the first important social event since the war, the one that would restore Venice “to her place in international society.” People were coming from London. There had been a gratifying squabble over invitations—our marchesa upstairs, not one of the lucky ones, went to visit her sister in Vicenza. Peggy Guggenheim said she was coming from New York and then didn’t, which allowed Mimi to use her name in the columns without having to put up with her. A generator was found to keep the palazzo blazing with light if there was a power failure. The food arrived on time. And then it rained.

  She had planned on a spring evening, one of those first mild days softer in Venice than anywhere else, but the air stayed cold and it rained off and on all day. The special torches at the water entrance on the Grand Canal had to be covered, an awning set up. Footmen with umbrellas would help guests from their boats to the door, but inevitably clothes would get wet. The photographers had to be moved indoors, away from the entrance shots with San Marco in the background. All this my mother learned in a series of phone calls that got more frantic as the afternoon wore on. Finally Mimi insisted that my mother go there to dress.

  “Like bridesmaids,” my mother said. “She says my hair will be a mess otherwise. Can you imagine? A little rain.” But she was helping Angelina with the garment bag, carefully smoothing out any folds in the long skirt.

  “She’s nervous,” I said. “She wants company.”

  “Mimi doesn’t have nerves. She just can’t stand anyone making an entrance. Easier to have them already there. Well, I don’t mind. To tell you the truth, it does frizz up when it’s like this,” she said, touching her hair. “Anyway, I’d rather see everything. Gianni’s always late, and you can’t say a word because it’s always medical. At least this way I won’t miss anything. Darling, would you call the hospital and tell him to meet me there, at Mimi’s? I couldn’t get through before. He’ll probably be pleased—now he can be as late as he likes without someone harping at him. But not too late. I can’t dance by myself. Would you?”

  “All right,” I said. We were still living in the temporary peace of pretending nothing had happened.

  “I’m taking Angelina, but you can fend for yourself, can’t you?” Mimi had already borrowed the rest of the staff for the day.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m going out.”

  “I wish you’d change your mind. Everyone in Venice is dying to be there and you go to the movies.”

  “We’re not going to the movies.”

  “Well, wherever you’re going. I can’t imagine wanting to miss this. You know Mimi, if there’s one thing she—” She stopped midstream, asked Angelina to take the garment bag away, then turned to me. “It’s that girl, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t want me to bring her to Mimi’s, do you?”

  “Well, not if—but I thought all that business was over and done with. Gianni said it was. He said you’d talked.”

  I looked away. “She doesn’t have a dress.”

  “Well, you can borrow a dress. That’s no
t a problem.”

  “Some other time.”

  “What other time? A thing like this? She’d probably enjoy it, you know. Anybody would.”

  “I don’t think Gianni would.”

  “Ask him. If he doesn’t mind, then—” She looked up at me. “I’m so glad things are better. I knew if you would just—Well, I’m off. She’ll be calling again. Funny how her lines never go down. Don’t forget the hospital. And I’d ask him about the girl. He might surprise you.”

  “All right.”

  “Oh, look, it’s starting up again. Poor Mimi.” She giggled. “Well, it is unfair. You know, we used to come to Venice for the beach. You never saw a drop one week to the next. And now look.”

  An hour later the phones were clear and I reached Gianni in his office, but I didn’t ask him about Claudia and I didn’t tell him to go to Mimi’s. Instead I said my mother wanted him to come for her earlier than they’d planned. And where was she now? At the hairdresser’s. Of course. Easy lies. After another twenty minutes of busy signals and scratchy connections I got the hotel where I’d moved Claudia and left a message that I’d be a little late. Then there was nothing to do but wait, the house growing quiet around me, not even the faint sound of maids’ slippers in the back rooms.

  The rain stopped, then started again, a light drizzle that covered the Giudecca across the channel like a scrim. I stood at the window looking at the Redentore and thinking what to say. I wanted it clear in my mind so that it would come out as easily as a white lie about the hairdresser. One chance to make him believe me, finally put an end to it. Be careful about everything, even eye contact. Still, what choice would he have?

  It was a while before I realized the room was getting darker. No more umbrellas on the Zattere, just people hurrying home with packages. A few calles away, Mimi and my mother would be looking into mirrors, finishing their makeup while the maids stood by with their pressed gowns. Mimi’s palazzo was just up from the Dario, so the vaporettos stopping at Salute would see the lights coming on, the chandeliers in the great front rooms reflecting out on the canal. You could walk there from anywhere in Dorsoduro in minutes, but everyone would want to go by water and be seen. It occurred to me that Gianni would probably have a boat too, and I went downstairs to open the water gate and turn on the lights in the murky entrance where Claudia and I had kissed that night. Same gondola up on its storage rack, the pile of paving stones under a tarp, the utility boat bobbing outside near the mossy steps. If we’d followed the kiss, just left the house instead of climbing the stairs—but we hadn’t.