“What choice?” I said quietly. We were walking slowly now, almost in time with the waves of the canal hitting the stone walls.

“I said I would tell you something that never happened. Now, this once. And then I didn’t tell you. It never happened, we never talked of it. If you say we did, I will deny it. And by the way, everyone will believe me. You can never prove what happened. But we must make a truce, you and I. For everyone. Not a peace, you don’t want that, but a truce. Before you ruin your mother’s happiness. And your own life, with that—well, she is what she is. You think I made her that way? No. That I don’t have to live with.”

“Just her father.”

“Yes. I have to live with that. I’m not proud—this thing that never happened. Are you proud of everything you’ve done? Well, at your age it’s still possible. Not at mine. I’m a doctor, not assassino. He was dying. I knew he was dying. Nothing in the world was going to change that.”

“That doesn’t mean you had to help. You knew him.”

“Abramo? Yes. He was like her—difficult. Always looking for the slight. But no matter. He was dying. I had to make a choice, so I did. You can’t save the dead—only the living. So was I wrong? I knew what would happen to him. But I’m not ashamed, even now. It was the war. You had to choose the living.”

“Choose how? By reporting Jews?”

“They were not there for the Jews. For someone else. I don’t remember his name—maybe I never knew it. Anyway, it wouldn’t have been real. You know CLN?”

I nodded. “Partisans.”

“So someone fighting for Italy. That meant something, you know. I wanted to help. A man not sick, wounded. Bullet wounds. You couldn’t hide that. How could I lie about bullet wounds? They would have found him. They had a photograph—they knew who he was. And then what? ‘How long has he been here, dottore? You never reported this? A partisan?’ They were attacking Germans then. It wasn’t just sabotage, railroad tracks—they were actually killing them, so if you were caught, the Germans would make an example. There was no way to hide him in that hospital. I had to get him out, somewhere else. I had to make them go away, even for a little, get enough time to save him. So I gave them someone else.”

We were at the end of the fondamenta, facing into the wind coming off the lagoon. On the water, a covered funeral gondola bounced on the waves, heading toward the cypresses. Another one for San Michele.

“That’s some choice,” I said, looking out at the water.

“Yes,” he said, “a terrible choice. But not difficult. He was dying. The other man was living. How else could I save him?”

“And yourself.”

He looked at me. “Yes, myself, it’s true. It would have been bad for me if they had known I helped. But you know, at the time I wasn’t thinking about that. Of course you won’t believe that either. You want to judge—one thing or the other. But it wasn’t like that. Good and bad together, how do you judge that? You do things—well, how can you know what it was like? Villa Raspelli, you think I wanted that? How do you think it felt, putting my hands on them? Giving them medicine? Men like that. So you don’t look at the uniform, you don’t see it. Then you can do it, if it’s just a man.”

“So was Grassini.”

“A dying man. So I played God, yes. A sin. That’s what you wanted to know. Now you tell me something—what would you have done?”

I stared at the lagoon, choppy in the wind, and it seemed for an instant, as I watched it move, that everything in Venice was like its water, shifting back and forth.

“Why didn’t you tell her this?” I said finally.

“What difference would it make to her? Her father’s dead. I had a part in that, yes. Do you think she wants to know why? What reason would satisfy her? I’m not making excuses—it happened. But you, it’s different. I want you to know. What happened, happened. Or rather, it didn’t happen. Not now.”

“Why?”

“You think this is a time for explanations? Now it’s revenge, settling scores. I have a position here. These accusations—anti-Semite, collaborator. Always something sticks, however it was. Do you think people want explanations? No, they’re like you, they want black and white.”

“But if you helped a partisan—”

“Not everyone would love me for that, even now. Collaborator. Communist. It’s dangerous to take sides here. This one, that one, and someone is against you no matter what you do. So I do nothing. Nothing happened. I go on with my life. I don’t want the war again.” He looked at me for a minute, then turned toward the fondamenta. “I must go back. Anyway, now it’s said. Maybe it makes a difference to you, maybe not, I don’t know. I thought, a soldier, you’d know how these things were. What happened then, it’s hard to judge now. Do I still live with it? Yes, but shall I tell you something? A little less each day. Maybe that’s how the war ends. A little less each day until it’s over.”

“Not for everybody.”

“No, not everybody,” he said. “It never ends for them.”

“You talk as if it’s her fault.”

“No, but not mine either. I didn’t make the war.”

He said nothing for a few minutes, looking toward the houses across the canal, the same patchy plaster and shutters we’d seen that day going to lunch, before anything had happened.

“You know what ended it for me?” he said suddenly. “When your mother came back. I heard her laugh, and it was a laugh from before the war. And I thought, yes, it’s possible to have that life again. And we do. I won’t let anyone take that away now. Not that girl. Does she think she can bring the father back? I did what I did. There was a reason—at least for me it was a reason. Now you know it. Maybe it’s still not enough for you. But maybe it’s enough for a truce. That’s why I told you. If it’s enough to make a truce.”

“What do you mean by truce?”

“An end. Talk like this, it can make trouble for me. I want her to stop.” He looked directly at me. “I want you to stop.”

“You mean you want me to leave.”

He held my eyes for a second, then nodded. “After the wedding.”

Rosa Soriano was blond and stocky, the weight, I assumed, a matter of inheritance, because she took nothing with her morning tea, not even glancing at the rolls and jam the Bauer had laid out for breakfast. She had a heavy person’s surprising grace, her thick fingers barely touching the cup, lifting it in a delicate arc. Only her walk was clumsy, an awkward shuffle, still new to her, her body pitching forward but held back by the stiff leg she dragged along. “From the war,” she said when she saw me looking at it. “A German souvenir.” When she sat down she breathed out, a barely audible sigh of relief, and brought the leg under the table. The dining room was warm, despite the rain spattering on the terrace, but she had wrapped a shawl over a heavy jacket, a huddled, almost peasant look in a room walled with damask. Joe had said she’d wanted the trip, so I apologized for the rain, but she looked at me blankly, as if she hadn’t noticed it. She had come ready for business—a folder with papers and a notebook were at the side of the table.

“My mother was German,” she said, when I asked how she knew the language.

“So that explains the hair.”

She shrugged. “Italians are blond too. But not many speak German. So it was useful. My mother said it would be. Maybe not this way, working for the Americans.”

“Joe said you recognized his name.”

“The name, yes. Not his. His brother’s.”

“His brother? Paolo?”

“Yes,” she said, patting the folder. “Him I know well. But the other—” She shook her head, then gently put down the cup. “Then Joe asked me and ha, I thought, another Maglione, maybe that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“The brother, Paolo, was often at Villa Raspelli. They kept a record of the visitors every day, so we only have to look at the sheet to see who was there. And then, I couldn’t understand it, his name was there after he died. How? I thought maybe the records made a mistake, but how do you make that mistake? A ghost signs in? So I look, and the writing is different, only the name is the same. G. Maglione.”