Liar Moon by Ben Pastor

said.
    “Well? What else should I calculate?”
    Flop, flop. Outside the door, Guidi’s mother had probably realized that he wasn’t speaking to a woman, and was returning to her room. “I can tell you’ve never been poor, Major Bora.”
    “I have never been poor.”
    “And you never had to borrow money in a pinch.”
    Bora didn’t reply to the obvious. “As for the rest, yesterday I spoke to the intern who performed the autopsy, as well as to the medics who assisted Lisi. More about it when we meet. I also found someone for Olga Masi to stay with in Verona for the time being, and caught De Rosa right in front of headquarters. I first secured a time for us to interrogate Lisi’s maid, and then gave him a dressing-down he’ll remember for the rest of his Fascist life. I know the sentinels will, and likely the tenants of the
house next door. Look, even without my watch I know it’s bloody late. I haven’t slept a wink in more than forty hours, and doing maths has never been my favourite entertainment. I’ll see you tomorrow or whenever.”
    “Sleep well, then.”
    Bora put the receiver down. Sleep well? He hadn’t slept well in over a year. There was no chance of sleeping at all tonight. Monsignor Lai, the well-educated, bright cleric who’d heard his confession every week, was under guard in the room at the end of the hallway. In the morning, Fascist guardsmen would bring a truckload of Italian Jews bound for the South Tyrol. The SS officer, who hadn’t so much as given his name, had said on his way out of the command post, “Don’t I know you from somewhere, Major?”
    Somewhere was the Russian district of Homyel.
    Bora went to wash up. He was still tempted to use both his hands for these simple tasks, and his surprise at being unable to do so angered him anew. What had been a given – loosening his collar, clasping the buttons of his braces, undoing his breeches – now required a retraining so basic that his sense of worth was bruised. Doing better at it day by day was not enough. Tonight he felt his injury more than ever, and not just because the harness holding the prosthesis chafed the skin. It was the intimacy of the loss, what it meant to his relationship with Dikta, how he would go back and face her, face his mother. Only his general-rank stepfather would understand, and that was not saying much.
    His troubled reflection stared back from the mirror. Unlike so many, he’d consciously chosen soldiering. Yet medals and ribbons gave the lie to the fact that for
five out of his seven years in the service, he’d betrayed his soldier’s oath. How well the SS knew this, and could come asking him to escort Jews to a concentration camp, and expect him to say yes.
    In his bedroom, Dikta’s photograph stood for all he might yet lose. Bora took out pen and stationery, but did nothing with them. He could not write to his wife, or to his mother, or anyone else. It repelled him to put thoughts on paper for others to see. Even today’s entry in the diary he’d kept ever since Spain, bulky and soiled, and written in minute Gothic script, required an effort. Still fully dressed, he sat on his bed. No, not his bed – but the bed he’d requisitioned as he’d requisitioned this building and so many of the objects he used now, scraps of receipts signed and distributed as if any of the debts would be honoured any time soon.
    He managed at last to pray, although those mental words, too, disgusted him, to the extent that he sat in complete stillness. Guilt made him intolerably clear-minded, as risk made him drunk. How do I, as a soldier, justify… There is no justification. I may invoke whatever authority I choose, it still doesn’t help. It doesn’t help. I can’t get out of it, and there’s no one I can talk to.
    After turning the light off, his recollection wandered. Places, people. Actions taken and not taken. Dismal seasons. Dismal days. He recalled the impalpable, breath-thin wraiths of Russian snow