The bicyclist lobbed the bag up through the canvas cover and into the back of the lorry before streaking away.
Mr. Beltramini had seen the toss, too. He was standing right there, not six meters away, his hands starting to rise a split second before the vehicle exploded in a pluming ball of fire.
The force of the blast punched Pino and Carletto from a block away. Pino dove to the ground, protecting his head from debris and shrapnel.
“Papa!” Carletto screamed.
Cut up and ignoring the blast material raining down on Piazzale Loreto, Carletto sprinted toward the fire, toward the incinerated skeleton of the troop transport, and toward his father, sprawled across the sidewalk beneath the tatters of the fruit stand’s awning.
Carletto got to his father before Wehrmacht soldiers from other lorries fanned out to control the area. Two of them blocked Pino’s way until he pulled out the red armband and put it on, showing them the swastika.
“I am General Leyers’s aide,” he said in halting German. “I must get through.”
They let him pass. Pino ran from the heat of the still-burning lorry, aware of people screaming and moaning, but caring only about Carletto, who knelt on the sidewalk with his father’s scorched and bloody head in his lap. Mr. Beltramini’s smock was blackened from the blast and lathered with more blood, but he was alive. His eyes were open, and he was breathing with great difficulty.
Choking back tears, Carletto looked up, saw Pino, and said, “Get an ambulance.”
Pino heard sirens wailing in all directions, closing on Piazzale Loreto.
“They’re coming,” he said, and squatted down. Mr. Beltramini was taking big ragged breaths and twitching.
“Don’t move, Papa,” Carletto said.
“Your mother,” Mr. Beltramini said, his eyes lazing. “You’ve got to care for . . .”
“Quiet, Papa,” his son said, weeping and stroking his father’s singed hair.
Mr. Beltramini coughed and hacked, and had to have been in such hideous pain that Pino tried to distract him with some pleasant memory.
“Mr. Beltramini, do you remember that night on the hill when my father played violin and you sang to your wife?” Pino asked.
“Nessun Dorma,” he said in a whisper, went far away in his thoughts, and smiled.
“You sang con smania and never sounded better,” Pino said.
For a moment or two, the three of them were a universe unto themselves, outside all the pain and horror, back on a rural hillside, sharing a more innocent time. Then Pino heard the clanging of the ambulances much closer. He thought to get up to find a medic. But when he tried to stand, Mr. Beltramini clutched at his sleeve.
Carletto’s father was staring in bewilderment at the lurid armband Pino wore.
“A Nazi?” he choked.
“No, Mr. Beltramini—”
“Traitor?” the fruitmonger said, overwhelmed. “Pino?”
“No, Mr.—”
Mr. Beltramini coughed again and hacked, and this time brought up dark blood that spilled over his chin as he lolled his head back toward Carletto, gazing at his son and wordlessly moving his lips. And then he just eased away, as if his spirit had accepted death, yet lingered, not struggling, but in no hurry to be gone.
Carletto broke down sobbing. Pino did, too.
His friend rocked his father and began to keen with grief. The agony of his loss built and swelled with every breath until it seemed to contort every muscle and bone in Carletto’s body.
“I’m sorry,” Pino cried. “Oh, Carletto, I’m so damned sorry. I loved him, too.”
Carletto stopped rocking his father, looked up at Pino, blind with hatred. “Don’t say that!” he shouted. “Don’t ever say that! You Nazi! You traitor!”
Pino’s jaw felt like it had been broken in twenty places.
“No,” he said. “It’s not what it looks—”
“Get away from me!” Carletto screamed. “My father saw it. He knew what you are. He showed it to me!”
“Carletto, it’s just an armband.”
“Leave me alone! I never want to see you again! Ever!”
Carletto dropped his chin and broke down over his father’s dead body, his shoulders trembling and tortured sounds hacking up from his chest. Pino was so overwhelmed that he couldn’t say a thing. He stood up finally and stepped back.
“Move on,” a German officer said. “Clear the sidewalk for the ambulances.”
Pino took one last look at the Beltraminis before walking south toward the telephone exchange, feeling like the blast had cut out part of his heart.
That sense of loss still tortured Pino seven hours later when he parked the Daimler in front of Dolly Stottlemeyer’s apartment building. General Leyers got out, handed Pino his briefcase, and said, “You’ve had quite the first day.”
“Oui, mon général.”
“You’re sure you saw a red scarf around the bomber’s neck?”
“He had it tucked beneath his shirt, but yes.”
The general hardened and entered the building with Pino lugging the valise, which had only gotten heavier since morning. The old crone was right where they’d left her, sitting on her stool and blinking at them from behind those thick glasses. Leyers never gave her a glance, just charged up the stairs to Dolly’s apartment and knocked.
Anna opened the door, and at the sight of her, Pino’s heart mended a little.
“Dolly’s held dinner for you, General,” Anna said as he moved past her.
Despite everything that had happened to Pino that day, seeing Anna again was as dazzling an experience as it had been the first two times. The pain of seeing Mr. Beltramini die and losing his friend endured, but he had faith that if he could tell Anna about it all, somehow she’d make it make sense.
“Are you coming in, Vorarbeiter?” Anna asked impatiently. “Or are you just going to stand there staring at me?”
Pino startled, moved past her, and said, “I wasn’t staring.”
“Of course you were.”
“No, I was somewhere else. In my mind.”
She said nothing and closed the door.
Dolly came into view at the other end of the hall. The general’s mistress wore black stiletto heels, black silk hosiery, and a tight black skirt below a pearl-colored short-sleeve blouse. Her hair looked freshly coiffed.
“The general says you saw the bombing?” Dolly said, lighting a cigarette.
He nodded and put the valise on the bench, feeling Anna’s attention on him, too.
“How many dead?” Dolly asked, and took a puff.
“Many Germans, and . . . and several Milanese,” he said.
“Must have been horrid,” Dolly said.
General Leyers appeared again. His tie was gone. He said something in German to Dolly, who nodded and looked to Anna. “The general would like to eat.”
“Of course, Dolly,” Anna said, glanced at Pino again, hurried down the hallway, and disappeared.
Leyers walked toward Pino, studying him, before picking up the valise. “Return at oh seven hundred sharp.”
“Oui, mon général,” he said, and stood there.
“You are dismissed, Vorarbeiter.”