Free Persona Non Grata by Timothy Williams Page B

There was a black market—and Saltieri tried to stamp it out. With any sense, he would have collaborated.”
    The Baronessa said, “He was not a southerner. He was from Ancona.”
    “He arrested half a dozen of the black marketeers.”
    “When?”
    “It must have been as early as 1942 that there was the first trial. In Chiavari. I wasn’t here at the time—but I know a lot of people resented Saltieri. At least two villagers went to jail.”
    “You met Saltieri?”
    “Once or twice.” The priest set down his cup and now stretched back in his chair. The Baronessa watched him with a look of friendly disapproval. “By the time I came to Santa Maria there was more for him to worry about than a black market in meat. The whole zone from here to the Po going north and over to Genoa going south—the whole area was like the Wild West. A long, guerrilla war; and nobody knowing who was fighting who, and who was in charge. I was living here”—he tapped the well-worn wood of his chair to indicate the presbytery—“taking mass every day in church. But a lot of people knew that I was chaplain to the partisans.”
    “Saltieri knew?”
    “I could trust him. There was nothing dishonest about him.”
    “Saltieri was honest, Gianni.”
    “But unimaginative, Baronessa. He had that slow, unimaginative dullness that you find in some southerners. One day I met him in the street and he asked me if I was a partisan. I told him I was and he just nodded slowly.”
    “Well?” the Baronessa said sharply.
    They were like an old couple, Trotti thought. Fond of each other, yet continually bickering.
    “Devoid of guile.” Fra Gianni shrugged. “And I realized that sooner or later they were going to kill him.”

17: Pauli
    “Y OU BELIEVE MY brother was murdered?”
    The street was empty and Trotti was reminded of the days of curfew. Deserted and silent, except for the creaking of the street lamps hanging above the road; shadows that danced jerkily.
    They reached the edge of Santa Maria. The cafe by the bridge was still open and a solitary old man sat outside, caught in the yellow light of the doorway, like a gnarled tree that had taken root.
    Overhead, the sky was without a cloud and the stars had formed a dome of twinkling lights. There was no moon yet. Beyond the river, Trotti sensed the hills looming on the far side of the village. For a brief instant, nostalgia pinched at his heart. Nostalgia for Santa Maria as it used to be, nostalgia for the young man he had once been.
    Trotti accompanied the Baronessa across the bridge. A wind was coming down from the hills, a sharp wind that announced the approach of autumn. It ruffled Trotti’s hair.
    “The last months of the war I spent in Germany.” The Baronessa was out of breath from the exertion of walking.
    “But your husband was here. He told you what happened.”
    “You mean the bullion?”
    “Was there a connection between the gold and my brother’s death?” Trotti took her by the arm and helped her down from the pavement. She had difficulty in walking. She took small, careful steps. Together they crossed the road.
    (Trotti remembered the road. It had once been made up of cobbles worn to a roundness in the river bed. Then the Americans had come with their tanks and all the stones had been cracked or destroyed. Now the road was surfaced with tarmac.)
    “The war was almost over and the partisans were getting bolder. It was very difficult for Pauli. Everybody knows that my husband was a good man—everybody. But for them I was a traitor—even though Pauli and I were married at a time when Italo-German relations were still good.” She stopped and it was almost bodily that Trotti lifted her and placed her on the far pavement.
    The sound of the river joined that of the wind. The cold smell of the hills.
    “You are very kind, Commissario Trotti.”
    He gave her his arm.
    She patted his hand. “I like to tease Gianni—you do understand?”
    “Of course.”
    “Gianni is a fine