We walked down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. The carpet on
the stairs was worn. I had paid for the dinner when it came up and the
waiter, who had brought it, was sitting on a chair near the door. He
jumped up and bowed and I went with him into the side room and paid the
bill for the room. The manager had remembered me as a friend and refused
payment in advance but when he retired he had remembered to have the
waiter stationed at the door so that I should not get out without
paying. I suppose that had happened; even with his friends. One had so
many friends in a war.
I asked the waiter to get us a carriage and he took Catherine’s package
that I was carrying and went out with an umbrella. Outside through the
window we saw him crossing the street in the rain. We stood in the side
room and looked out the window.
“How do you feel, Cat?”
“Sleepy.”
“I feel hollow and hungry.”
“Have you anything to eat?”
“Yes, in my musette.”
I saw the carriage coming. It stopped, the horse’s head hanging in the
rain, and the waiter stepped out, opened his umbrella, and came toward
the hotel. We met him at the door and walked out under the umbrella down
the wet walk to the carriage at the curb. Water was running in the
gutter.
“There is your package on the seat,” the waiter said. He stood with the
umbrella until we were in and I had tipped him.
“Many thanks. Pleasant journey,” he said. The coachman lifted the reins
and the horse started. The waiter turned away under the umbrella and
went toward the hotel. We drove down the street and turned to the left,
then came around to the right in front of the station. There were two
carabinieri standing under the light just out of the rain. The light
shone on their hats. The rain was clear and transparent against the
light from the station. A porter came out from under the shelter of the
station, his shoulders up against the rain.
“No,” I said. “Thanks. I don’t need thee.”
He went back under the shelter of the archway. I turned to Catherine.
Her face was in the shadow from the hood of the carriage.
“We might as well say good-by.”
“I can’t go in?”
“No.”
“Good-by, Cat.”
“Will you tell him the hospital?”
“Yes.”
I told the driver the address to drive to. He nodded.
“Good-by,” I said. “Take good care of yourself and young Catherine.”
“Good-by, darling.”
“Good-by,” I said. I stepped out into the rain and the carriage started.
Catherine leaned out and I saw her face in the light. She smiled and
waved. The carriage went up the street, Catherine pointed in toward the
archway. I looked, there were only the two carabinieri and the archway.
I realized she meant for me to get in out of the rain. I went in and
stood and watched the carriage turn the corner. Then I started through
the station and down the runway to the train.
The porter was on the platform looking for me. I followed him into the
train, crowding past people and along the aisle and in through a door to
where the machine-gunner sat in the corner of a full compartment. My
rucksack and musettes were above his head on the luggage rack. There
were many men standing in the corridor and the men in the compartment
all looked at us when we came in. There were not enough places in the
train and every one was hostile. The machine-gunner stood up for me to
sit down. Some one tapped me on the shoulder. I looked around. It was a
very tall gaunt captain of artillery with a red scar along his jaw. He
had looked through the glass on the corridor and then come in.
“What do you say?” I asked. I had turned and faced him. He was taller
than I and his face was very thin under the shadow of his cap-visor and
the scar was new and shiny. Every one in the compartment was looking at
me.
“You can’t do that,” he said. “You can’t have a soldier save you a
place.”
“I have done it.”
He swallowed and I saw his Adam’s apple go up and then down. The
machine-gunner stood in front of the place. Other men looked in through
the glass. No one in the compartment said anything.
“You have no right to do that. I was here two hours before you came.”
“What do you want?”
“The seat.”
“So do I.”
I watched his face and could feel the whole compartment against me. I
did not blame them. He was in the right. But I wanted the seat. Still no
one said anything.
Oh, hell, I thought.
“Sit down, Signor Capitano,” I said. The machine-gunner moved out of the
way and the tall captain sat down. He looked at me. His face seemed
hurt. But he had the seat. “Get my things,” I said to the
machine-gunner. We went out in the corridor. The train was full and I
knew there was no chance of a place. I gave the porter and the
machine-gunner ten lire apiece. They went down the corridor and outside
on the platform looking in the windows but there were no places.
“Maybe some will get off at Brescia,” the porter said.
“More will get on at Brescia,” said the machine-gunner. I said good-by
to them and we shook hands and they left. They both felt badly. Inside
the train we were all standing in the corridor when the train started. I
watched the lights of the station and the yards as we went out. It was
still raining and soon the windows were wet and you could not see out.
Later I slept on the floor of the corridor; first putting my pocket-book
with my money and papers in it inside my shirt and trousers so that it
was inside the leg of my breeches. I slept all night, waking at Brescia
and Verona when more men got on the train, but going back to sleep at
once. I had my head on one of the musettes and my arms around the other
and I could feel the pack and they could all walk over me if they
wouldn’t step on me. Men were sleeping on the floor all down the
corridor. Others stood holding on to the window rods or leaning against
the doors. That train was always crowded.
BOOK III
CHAPTER XXV
Now in the fall the trees were all bare and the roads were muddy. I rode
to Gorizia from Udine on a camion. We passed other camions on the road
and I looked at the country. The mulberry trees were bare and the fields
were brown. There were wet dead leaves on the road from the rows of bare
trees and men were working on the road, tamping stone in the ruts from
piles of crushed stone along the side of the road between the trees. We
saw the town with a mist over it that cut off the mountains. We crossed
the river and I saw that it was running high. It had been raining in the
mountains. We came into the town past the factories and then the houses
and villas and I saw that many more houses had been hit. On a narrow
street we passed a British Red Cross ambulance. The driver wore a cap
and his face was thin and very tanned. I did not know him. I got down
from the camion in the big square in front of the Town Major’s house,
the driver handed down my rucksack and I put it on and swung on the two
musettes and walked to our villa. It did not feel like a homecoming.
I walked down the damp gravel driveway looking at the villa through the
trees. The windows were all shut but the door was open. I went in and
found the major sitting at a table in the bare room with maps and typed
sheets of paper on the wall.
“Hello,” he said. “How are you?” He looked older and drier.
“I’m good,” I said. “How is everything?”
“It’s all over,” he said. “Take off your kit and sit down.” I put my
pack and the two musettes on the floor and my cap on the pack. I brought
the other chair over from the wall and sat down by the desk.
“It’s been a bad summer,” the major said. “Are you strong now?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever get the decorations?”
“Yes. I got them fine. Thank you very much.”
“Let’s see them.”
I opened my cape so he could see the two ribbons.
“Did you get the boxes with the medals?”
“No. Just the papers.”
“The boxes will come later. That takes more time.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“The cars are all away. There are six up north at Caporetto. You know
Caporetto?”
“Yes,” I said. I remembered it as a little white town with a campanile
in a valley. It was a clean little town and there was a fine fountain in
the square.
“They are working from there. There are many sick now. The fighting is
over.”
“Where are the others?”
“There are two up in the mountains and four still on the Bainsizza. The
other two ambulance sections are in the Carso with the third army.”
“What do you wish me to do?”
“You can go and take over the four cars on the Bainsizza if you like.
Gino has been up there a long time. You haven’t seen it up there, have
you?”
“No.”
“It was very bad. We lost three cars.”
“I heard about it.”
“Yes, Rinaldi wrote you.”
“Where is Rinaldi?”
“He is here at the hospital. He has had a summer and fall of it.”
“I believe it.”
“It has been bad,” the major said. “You couldn’t believe how bad it’s
been. I’ve often thought you were lucky to be hit when you were.”
“I know I was.”
“Next year will be worse,” the major said. “Perhaps they will attack
now. They say they are to attack but I can’t believe it. It is too late.
You saw the river?”
“Yes. It’s high already.”
“I don’t believe they will attack now that the rains have started. We
will have the snow soon. What about your countrymen? Will there be other
Americans besides yourself?”
“They are training an army of ten million.”
“I hope we get some of them. But the French will hog them all. We’ll
never get any down here. All right. You stay here to-night and go out
to-morrow with the little car and send Gino back. I’ll send somebody
with you that knows the road. Gino will tell you everything. They are
shelling quite a little still but it is all over. You will want to see
the Bainsizza.”
“I’m glad to see it. I am glad to be back with you again, Signor
Maggiore.”
He smiled. “You are very good to say so. I am very tired of this war. If
I was away I do not believe I would come back.”
“Is it so bad?”
“Yes. It is so bad and worse. Go get cleaned up and find your friend
Rinaldi.”
I went out and carried my bags up the stairs. Rinaldi was not in the
room but his things were there and I sat down on the bed and unwrapped
my puttees and took the shoe off my right foot. Then I lay back on the
bed. I was tired and my right foot hurt. It seemed silly to lie on the
bed with one shoe off, so I sat up and unlaced the other shoe and
dropped it on the floor, then lay back on the blanket again. The room
was stuffy with the window closed but I was too tired to get up and open
it. I saw my things were all in one corner of the room. Outside it was
getting dark. I lay on the bed and thought about Catherine and waited
for Rinaldi. I was going to try not to think about Catherine except at
night before I went to sleep. But now I was tired and there was nothing
to do, so I lay and thought about her. I was thinking about her when
Rinaldi came in. He looked just the same. Perhaps he was a little
thinner.
“Well, baby,” he said. I sat up on the bed. He came over, sat down and
put his arm around me. “Good old baby.” He whacked me on the back and I
held both his arms.
“Old baby,” he said. “Let me see your knee.”
“I’ll have to take off my pants.”
“Take off your pants, baby. We’re all friends here. I want to see what
kind of a job they did.” I stood up, took off the breeches and pulled
off the knee-brace. Rinaldi sat on the floor and bent the knee gently
back and forth. He ran his finger along the scar; put his thumbs
together over the kneecap and rocked the knee gently with his fingers.
“Is that all the articulation you have?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a crime to send you back. They ought to get complete
articulation.”
“It’s a lot better than it was. It was stiff as a board.”
Rinaldi bent it more. I watched his hands. He had fine surgeon’s hands.
I looked at the top of his head, his hair shiny and parted smoothly. He
bent the knee too far.
“Ouch!” I said.
“You ought to have more treatment on it with the machines,” Rinaldi
said.
“It’s better than it was.”
“I see that, baby. This is something I know more about than you.” He
stood up and sat down on the bed. “The knee itself is a good job.” He
was through with the knee. “Tell me all about everything.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said. “I’ve led a quiet life.”
“You act like a married man,” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” I said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“This war is killing me,” Rinaldi said, “I am very depressed by it.” He
folded his hands over his knee.
“Oh,” I said.
“What’s the matter? Can’t I even have human impulses?”
“No. I can see you’ve been having a fine time. Tell me.”
“All summer and all fall I’ve operated. I work all the time. I do
everybody’s work. All the hard ones they leave to me. By God, baby, I am
becoming a lovely surgeon.”
“That sounds better.”
“I never think. No, by God, I don’t think; I operate.”
“That’s right.”
“But now, baby, it’s all over. I don’t operate now and I feel like hell.
This is a terrible war, baby. You believe me when I say it. Now you
cheer me up. Did you bring the phonograph records?”
“Yes.”
They were wrapped in paper in a cardboard box in my rucksack. I was too
tired to get them out.
“Don’t you feel good yourself, baby?”
“I feel like hell.”
“This war is terrible,” Rinaldi said. “Come on. We’ll both get drunk and
be cheerful. Then we’ll go get the ashes dragged. Then we’ll feel fine.”
“I’ve had the jaundice,” I said, “and I can’t get drunk.”
“Oh, baby, how you’ve come back to me. You come back serious and with a
liver. I tell you this war is a bad thing. Why did we make it anyway?”
“We’ll have a drink. I don’t want to get drunk but we’ll have a drink.”
Rinaldi went across the room to the washstand and brought back two
glasses and a bottle of cognac.
“It’s Austrian cognac,” he said. “Seven stars. It’s all they captured on
San Gabriele.”
“Were you up there?”
“No. I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve been here all the time operating.
Look, baby, this is your old toothbrushing glass. I kept it all the time
to remind me of you.”
“To remind you to brush your teeth.”
“No. I have my own too. I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush
away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating
aspirin and cursing harlots. Every time I see that glass I think of you
trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush.” He came over to the
bed. “Kiss me once and tell me you’re not serious.”
“I never kiss you. You’re an ape.”
“I know, you are the fine good Anglo-Saxon boy. I know. You are the
remorse boy, I know. I will wait till I see the Anglo-Saxon brushing
away harlotry with a toothbrush.”
“Put some cognac in the glass.”
We touched glasses and drank. Rinaldi laughed at me.
“I will get you drunk and take out your liver and put you in a good
Italian liver and make you a man again.”
I held the glass for some more cognac. It was dark outside now. Holding
the glass of cognac, I went over and opened the window. The rain had
stopped falling. It was colder outside and there was a mist in the
trees.
“Don’t throw the cognac out the window,” Rinaldi said. “If you can’t
drink it give it to me.”
“Go something yourself,” I said. I was glad to see Rinaldi again. He had
spent two years teasing me and I had always liked it. We understood each
other very well.
“Are you married?” he asked from the bed. I was standing against the
wall by the window.
“Not yet.”
“Are you in love?”
“Yes.”
“With that English girl?”
“Yes.”
“Poor baby. Is she good to you?”
“Of course.”
“I mean is she good to you practically speaking?”
“Shut up.”
“I will. You will see I am a man of extreme delicacy. Does she——?”
“Rinin,” I said. “Please shut up. If you want to be my friend, shut up.”
“I don’t _want_ to be your friend, baby. I _am_ your friend.”
“Then shut up.”
“All right.”
I went over to the bed and sat down beside Rinaldi. He was holding his
glass and looking at the floor.
“You see how it is, Rinin?”
“Oh, yes. All my life I encounter sacred subjects. But very few with
you. I suppose you must have them too.” He looked at the floor.
“You haven’t any?”
“No.”
“Not any?”
“No.”
“I can say this about your mother and that about your sister?”
“And that about _your sister_,” Rinaldi said swiftly. We both laughed.
“The old superman,” I said.
“I am jealous maybe,” Rinaldi said.
“No, you’re not.”
“I don’t mean like that. I mean something else. Have you any married
friends?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I haven’t,” Rinaldi said. “Not if they love each other.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t like me.”
“Why not?”
“I am the snake. I am the snake of reason.”
“You’re getting it mixed. The apple was reason.”
“No, it was the snake.” He was more cheerful.
“You are better when you don’t think so deeply,” I said.
“I love you, baby,” he said. “You puncture me when I become a great
Italian thinker. But I know many things I can’t say. I know more than
you.”
“Yes. You do.”
“But you will have a better time. Even with remorse you will have a
better time.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, yes. That is true. Already I am only happy when I am working.” He
looked at the floor again.
“You’ll get over that.”
“No. I only like two other things; one is bad for my work and the other
is over in half an hour or fifteen minutes. Sometimes less.”
“Sometimes a good deal less.”
“Perhaps I have improved, baby. You do not know. But there are only the
two things and my work.”
“You’ll get other things.”
“No. We never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never
learn. We never get anything new. We all start complete. You should be
glad not to be a Latin.”
“There’s no such thing as a Latin. That is ‘Latin’ thinking. You are so
proud of your defects.” Rinaldi looked up and laughed.
“We’ll stop, baby. I am tired from thinking so much.” He had looked
tired when he came in. “It’s nearly time to eat. I’m glad you’re back.
You are my best friend and my war brother.”
“When do the war brothers eat?” I asked.
“Right away. We’ll drink once more for your liver’s sake.”
“Like Saint Paul.”
“You are inaccurate. That was wine and the stomach. Take a little wine
for your stomach’s sake.”
“Whatever you have in the bottle,” I said. “For any sake you mention.”
“To your girl,” Rinaldi said. He held out his glass.
“All right.”
“I’ll never say a dirty thing about her.”
“Don’t strain yourself.”
He drank off the cognac. “I am pure,” he said. “I am like you, baby. I
will get an English girl too. As a matter of fact I knew your girl first
but she was a little tall for me. A tall girl for a sister,” he quoted.
“You have a lovely pure mind,” I said.
“Haven’t I? That’s why they call me Rinaldo Purissimo.”
“Rinaldo Sporchissimo.”
“Come on, baby, we’ll go down to eat while my mind is still pure.”
I washed, combed my hair and we went down the stairs. Rinaldi was a
little drunk. In the room where we ate, the meal was not quite ready.
“I’ll go get the bottle,” Rinaldi said. He went off up the stairs. I sat
at the table and he came back with the bottle and poured us each a half
tumbler of cognac.
“Too much,” I said and held up the glass and sighted at the lamp on the
table.
“Not for an empty stomach. It is a wonderful thing. It burns out the
stomach completely. Nothing is worse for you.”
“All right.”
“Self-destruction day by day,” Rinaldi said. “It ruins the stomach and
makes the hand shake. Just the thing for a surgeon.”
“You recommend it?”
“Heartily. I use no other. Drink it down, baby, and look forward to
being sick.”
I drank half the glass. In the hall I could hear the orderly calling.
“Soup! Soup is ready!”
The major came in, nodded to us and sat down. He seemed very small at
table.
“Is this all we are?” he asked. The orderly put the soup bowl down and
he ladled out a plate full.
“We are all,” Rinaldi said. “Unless the priest comes. If he knew
Federico was here he would be here.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He’s at 307,” the major said. He was busy with his soup. He wiped his
mouth, wiping his upturned gray mustache carefully. “He will come I
think. I called them and left word to tell him you were here.”
“I miss the noise of the mess,” I said.
“Yes, it’s quiet,” the major said.
“I will be noisy,” said Rinaldi.
“Drink some wine, Enrico,” said the major. He filled my glass. The
spaghetti came in and we were all busy. We were finishing the spaghetti
when the priest came in. He was the same as ever, small and brown and
compact looking. I stood up and we shook hands. He put his hand on my
shoulder.
“I came as soon as I heard,” he said.
“Sit down,” the major said. “You’re late.”
“Good-evening, priest,” Rinaldi said, using the English word. They had
taken that up from the priest-baiting captain, who spoke a little
English. “Good-evening, Rinaldo,” the priest said. The orderly brought
him soup but he said he would start with the spaghetti.
“How are you?” he asked me.
“Fine,” I said. “How have things been?”
“Drink some wine, priest,” Rinaldi said. “Take a little wine for your
stomach’s sake. That’s Saint Paul, you know.”
“Yes I know,” said the priest politely. Rinaldi filled his glass.
“That Saint Paul,” said Rinaldi. “He’s the one who makes all the
trouble.” The priest looked at me and smiled. I could see that the
baiting did not touch him now.
“That Saint Paul,” Rinaldi said. “He was a rounder and a chaser and then
when he was no longer hot he said it was no good. When he was finished
he made the rules for us who are still hot. Isn’t it true, Federico?”
The major smiled. We were eating meat stew now.
“I never discuss a Saint after dark,” I said. The priest looked up from
the stew and smiled at me.
“There he is, gone over with the priest,” Rinaldi said. “Where are all
the good old priest-baiters? Where is Cavalcanti? Where is Brundi? Where
is Cesare? Do I have to bait this priest alone without support?”
“He is a good priest,” said the major.
“He is a good priest,” said Rinaldi. “But still a priest. I try to make
the mess like the old days. I want to make Federico happy. To hell with
you, priest!”
I saw the major look at him and notice that he was drunk. His thin face
was white. The line of his hair was very black against the white of his
forehead.
“It’s all right, Rinaldo,” said the priest. “It’s all right.”
“To hell with you,” said Rinaldi. “To hell with the whole damn
business.” He sat back in his chair.
“He’s been under a strain and he’s tired,” the major said to me. He
finished his meat and wiped up the gravy with a piece of bread.
“I don’t give a damn,” Rinaldi said to the table. “To hell with the
whole business.” He looked defiantly around the table, his eyes flat,
his face pale.
“All right,” I said. “To hell with the whole damn business.”
“No, no,” said Rinaldi. “You can’t do it. You can’t do it. I say you
can’t do it. You’re dry and you’re empty and there’s nothing else.
There’s nothing else I tell you. Not a damned thing. I know, when I stop
working.”
The priest shook his head. The orderly took away the stew dish.
“What are you eating meat for?” Rinaldi turned to the priest. “Don’ you
know it’s Friday?”
“It’s Thursday,” the priest said.
“It’s a lie. It’s Friday. You’re eating the body of our Lord. It’s
God-meat. I know. It’s dead Austrian. That’s what you’re eating.”
“The white meat is from officers,” I said, completing the old joke.
Rinaldi laughed. He filled his glass.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m just a little crazy.”
“You ought to have a leave,” the priest said.
The major shook his head at him. Rinaldi looked at the priest.
“You think I ought to have a leave?”
The major shook his head at the priest. Rinaldi was looking at the
priest.
“Just as you like,” the priest said. “Not if you don’t want.”
“To hell with you,” Rinaldi said. “They try to get rid of me. Every
night they try to get rid of me. I fight them off. What if I have it.
Everybody has it. The whole world’s got it. First,” he went on, assuming
the manner of a lecturer, “it’s a little pimple. Then we notice a rash
between the shoulders. Then we notice nothing at all. We put our faith
in mercury.”
“Or salvarsan,” the major interrupted quietly.
“A mercurial product,” Rinaldi said. He acted very elated now. “I know
something worth two of that. Good old priest,” he said. “You’ll never
get it. Baby will get it. It’s an industrial accident. It’s a simple
industrial accident.”
The orderly brought in the sweet and coffee. The dessert was a sort of
black bread pudding with hard sauce. The lamp was smoking; the black
smoke going close up inside the chimney.
“Bring two candles and take away the lamp,” the major said. The orderly
brought two lighted candles each in a saucer, and took out the lamp
blowing it out. Rinaldi was quiet now. He seemed all right. We talked
and after the coffee we all went out into the hall.
“You want to talk to the priest. I have to go in the town,” Rinaldi
said. “Good-night, priest.”
“Good-night, Rinaldo,” the priest said.
“I’ll see you Fredi,” Rinaldi said.
“Yes,” I said. “Come in early.” He made a face and went out the door.
The major was standing with us. “He’s very tired and overworked,” he
said. “He thinks too he has syphilis. I don’t believe it but he may
have. He is treating himself for it. Good-night. You will leave before
daylight, Enrico?”
“Yes.”
“Good-by then,” he said. “Good luck. Peduzzi will wake you and go with
you.”
“Good-by, Signor Maggiore.”
“Good-by. They talk about an Austrian offensive but I don’t believe it.
I hope not. But anyway it won’t be here. Gino will tell you everything.
The telephone works well now.”
“I’ll call regularly.”
“Please do. Good-night. Don’t let Rinaldi drink so much brandy.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Good-night, priest.”
“Good-night, Signor Maggiore.”
He went off into his office.
CHAPTER XXVI
I went to the door and looked out. It had stopped raining but there was
a mist.
“Should we go upstairs?” I asked the priest.
“I can only stay a little while.”
“Come on up.”
We climbed the stairs and went into my room. I lay down on Rinaldi’s
bed. The priest sat on my cot that the orderly had set up. It was dark
in the room.
“Well,” he said, “how are you really?”
“I’m all right. I’m tired to-night.”
“I’m tired too, but from no cause.”
“What about the war?”
“I think it will be over soon. I don’t know why, but I feel it.”
“How do you feel it?”
“You know how your major is? Gentle? Many people are like that now.”
“I feel that way myself,” I said.
“It has been a terrible summer,” said the priest. He was surer of
himself now than when I had gone away. “You cannot believe how it has
been. Except that you have been there and you know how it can be. Many
people have realized the war this summer. Officers whom I thought could
never realize it realize it now.”
“What will happen?” I stroked the blanket with my hand.
“I do not know but I do not think it can go on much longer.”
“What will happen?”
“They will stop fighting.”
“Who?”
“Both sides.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“You don’t believe it?”
“I don’t believe both sides will stop fighting at once.”
“I suppose not. It is too much to expect. But when I see the changes in
men I do not think it can go on.”
“Who won the fighting this summer?”
“No one.”
“The Austrians won,” I said. “They kept them from taking San Gabriele.
They’ve won. They won’t stop fighting.”
“If they feel as we feel they may stop. They have gone through the same
thing.”
“No one ever stopped when they were winning.”
“You discourage me.”
“I can only say what I think.”
“Then you think it will go on and on? Nothing will ever happen?”
“I don’t know. I only think the Austrians will not stop when they have
won a victory. It is in defeat that we become Christian.”
“The Austrians are Christians—except for the Bosnians.”
“I don’t mean technically Christian. I mean like Our Lord.”
He said nothing.
“We are all gentler now because we are beaten. How would Our Lord have
been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?”
“He would have been just the same.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“You discourage me,” he said. “I believe and I pray that something will
happen. I have felt it very close.”
“Something may happen,” I said. “But it will happen only to us. If they
felt the way we do, it would be all right. But they have beaten us. They
feel another way.”
“Many of the soldiers have always felt this way. It is not because they
were beaten.”
“They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them
from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has
wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see
how wise he is.”
He did not say anything. He was thinking.
“Now I am depressed myself,” I said. “That’s why I never think about
these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the
things I have found out in my mind without thinking.”
“I had hoped for something.”
“Defeat?”
“No. Something more.”
“There isn’t anything more. Except victory. It may be worse.”
“I hoped for a long time for victory.”
“Me too.”
“Now I don’t know.”
“It has to be one or the other.”
“I don’t believe in victory any more.”
“I don’t. But I don’t believe in defeat. Though it may be better.”
“What do you believe in?”
“In sleep,” I said. He stood up.
“I am very sorry to have stayed so long. But I like so to talk with
you.”
“It is very nice to talk again. I said that about sleeping, meaning
nothing.”
We stood up and shook hands in the dark.
“I sleep at 307 now,” he said.
“I go out on post early to-morrow.”
“I’ll see you when you come back.”
“We’ll have a walk and talk together.” I walked with him to the door.
“Don’t go down,” he said. “It is very nice that you are back. Though not
so nice for you.” He put his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right for me,” I said. “Good-night.”
“Good-night. Ciaou!”
“Ciaou!” I said. I was deadly sleepy.
CHAPTER XXVII
I woke when Rinaldi came in but he did not talk and I went back to sleep
again. In the morning I was dressed and gone before it was light.
Rinaldi did not wake when I left.
I had not seen the Bainsizza before and it was strange to go up the
slope where the Austrians had been, beyond the place on the river where
I had been wounded. There was a steep new road and many trucks. Beyond,
the road flattened out and I saw woods and steep hills in the mist.
There were woods that had been taken quickly and not smashed. Then
beyond where the road was not protected by the hills it was screened by
matting on the sides and over the top. The road ended in a wrecked
village. The lines were up beyond. There was much artillery around. The
houses were badly smashed but things were very well organized and there
were signboards everywhere. We found Gino and he got us some coffee and
later I went with him and met various people and saw the posts. Gino
said the British cars were working further down the Bainsizza at Ravne.
He had great admiration for the British. There was still a certain
amount of shelling, he said, but not many wounded. There would be many
sick now the rains had started. The Austrians were supposed to attack
but he did not believe it. We were supposed to attack too, but they had
not brought up any new troops so he thought that was off too. Food was
scarce and he would be glad to get a full meal in Gorizia. What kind of
supper had I had? I told him and he said that would be wonderful. He was
especially impressed by the _dolce_. I did not describe it in detail,
only said it was a _dolce_, and I think he believed it was something
more elaborate than bread pudding.
Did I know where he was going to go? I said I didn’t but that some of
the other cars were at Caporetto. He hoped he would go up that way. It
was a nice little place and he liked the high mountain hauling up
beyond. He was a nice boy and every one seemed to like him. He said
where it really had been hell was at San Gabriele and the attack beyond
Lom that had gone bad. He said the Austrians had a great amount of
artillery in the woods along Ternova ridge beyond and above us, and
shelled the roads badly at night. There was a battery of naval guns that
had gotten on his nerves. I would recognize them because of their flat
trajectory. You heard the report and then the shriek commenced almost
instantly. They usually fired two guns at once, one right after the
other, and the fragments from the burst were enormous. He showed me one,
a smoothly jagged piece of metal over a foot long. It looked like
babbiting metal.
“I don’t suppose they are so effective,” Gino said. “But they scare me.
They all sound as though they came directly for you. There is the boom,
then instantly the shriek and burst. What’s the use of not being wounded
if they scare you to death?”
He said there were Croats in the lines opposite us now and some Magyars.
Our troops were still in the attacking positions. There was no wire to
speak of and no place to fall back to if there should be an Austrian
attack. There were fine positions for defense along the low mountains
that came up out of the plateau but nothing had been done about
organizing them for defense. What did I think about the Bainsizza
anyway?
I had expected it to be flatter, more like a plateau. I had not realized
it was so broken up.
“Alto piano,” Gino said, “but no piano.”
We went back to the cellar of the house where he lived. I said I thought
a ridge that flattened out on top and had a little depth would be easier
and more practical to hold than a succession of small mountains. It was
no harder to attack up a mountain than on the level, I argued. “That
depends on the mountains,” he said. “Look at San Gabriele.”
“Yes,” I said, “but where they had trouble was at the top where it was
flat. They got up to the top easy enough.”
“Not so easy,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “but that was a special case because it was a fortress
rather than a mountain, anyway. The Austrians had been fortifying it for
years.” I meant tactically speaking in a war where there was some
movement a succession of mountains were nothing to hold as a line
because it was too easy to turn them. You should have possible mobility
and a mountain is not very mobile. Also, people always over-shoot down
hill. If the flank were turned, the best men would be left on the
highest mountains. I did not believe in a war in mountains. I had
thought about it a lot, I said. You pinched off one mountain and they
pinched off another but when something really started every one had to
get down off the mountains.
What were you going to do if you had a mountain frontier? he asked.
I had not worked that out yet, I said, and we both laughed. “But,” I
said, “in the old days the Austrians were always whipped in the
quadrilateral around Verona. They let them come down onto the plain and
whipped them there.”
“Yes,” said Gino. “But those were Frenchmen and you can work out
military problems clearly when you are fighting in somebody else’s
country.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “when it is your own country you cannot use it so
scientifically.”
“The Russians did, to trap Napoleon.”
“Yes, but they had plenty of country. If you tried to retreat to trap
Napoleon in Italy you would find yourself in Brindisi.”
“A terrible place,” said Gino. “Have you ever been there?”
“Not to stay.”
“I am a patriot,” Gino said. “But I cannot love Brindisi or Taranto.”
“Do you love the Bainsizza?” I asked.
“The soil is sacred,” he said. “But I wish it grew more potatoes. You
know when we came here we found fields of potatoes the Austrians had
planted.”
“Has the food really been short?”
“I myself have never had enough to eat but I am a big eater and I have
not starved. The mess is average. The regiments in the line get pretty
good food but those in support don’t get so much. Something is wrong
somewhere. There should be plenty of food.”
“The dogfish are selling it somewhere else.”
“Yes, they give the battalions in the front line as much as they can but
the ones in back are very short. They have eaten all the Austrians’
potatoes and chestnuts from the woods. They ought to feed them better.
We are big eaters. I am sure there is plenty of food. It is very bad for
the soldiers to be short of food. Have you ever noticed the difference
it makes in the way you think?”
“Yes,” I said. “It can’t win a war but it can lose one.”
“We won’t talk about losing. There is enough talk about losing. What has
been done this summer cannot have been done in vain.”
I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred,
glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them,
sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the
shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that
were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long
time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious
had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if
nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words
that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places
had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and
these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them
mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow
were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of
roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. Gino
was a patriot, so he said things that separated us sometimes, but he was
also a fine boy and I understood his being a patriot. He was born one.
He left with Peduzzi in the car to go back to Gorizia.
It stormed all that day. The wind drove down the rain and everywhere
there was standing water and mud. The plaster of the broken houses was
gray and wet. Late in the afternoon the rain stopped and from out number
two post I saw the bare wet autumn country with clouds over the tops of
the hills and the straw screening over the roads wet and dripping. The
sun came out once before it went down and shone on the bare woods beyond
the ridge. There were many Austrian guns in the woods on that ridge but
only a few fired. I watched the sudden round puffs of shrapnel smoke in
the sky above a broken farmhouse near where the line was; soft puffs
with a yellow white flash in the centre. You saw the flash, then heard
the crack, then saw the smoke ball distort and thin in the wind. There
were many iron shrapnel balls in the rubble of the houses and on the
road beside the broken house where the post was, but they did not shell
near the post that afternoon. We loaded two cars and drove down the road
that was screened with wet mats and the last of the sun came through in
the breaks between the strips of mattings. Before we were out on the
clear road behind the hill the sun was down. We went on down the clear
road and as it turned a corner into the open and went into the square
arched tunnel of matting the rain started again.
The wind rose in the night and at three o’clock in the morning with the
rain coming in sheets there was a bombardment and the Croatians came
over across the mountain meadows and through patches of woods and into
the front line. They fought in the dark in the rain and a counter-attack
of scared men from the second line drove them back. There was much
shelling and many rockets in the rain and machine-gun and rifle fire all
along the line. They did not come again and it was quieter and between
the gusts of wind and rain we could hear the sound of a great
bombardment far to the north.
The wounded were coming into the post, some were carried on stretchers,
some walking and some were brought on the backs of men that came across
the field. They were wet to the skin and all were scared. We filled two
cars with stretcher cases as they came up from the cellar of the post
and as I shut the door of the second car and fastened it I felt the rain
on my face turn to snow. The flakes were coming heavy and fast in the
rain.
When daylight came the storm was still blowing but the snow had stopped.
It had melted as it fell on the wet ground and now it was raining again.
There was another attack just after daylight but it was unsuccessful. We
expected an attack all day but it did not come until the sun was going
down. The bombardment started to the south below the long wooded ridge
where the Austrian guns were concentrated. We expected a bombardment but
it did not come. It was getting dark. Guns were firing from the field
behind the village and the shells, going away, had a comfortable sound.
We heard that the attack to the south had been unsuccessful. They did
not attack that night but we heard that they had broken through to the
north. In the night word came that we were to prepare to retreat. The
captain at the post told me this. He had it from the Brigade. A little
while later he came from the telephone and said it was a lie. The
Brigade had received orders that the line of the Bainsizza should be
held no matter what happened. I asked about the break through and he
said that he had heard at the Brigade that the Austrians had broken
through the twenty-seventh army corps up toward Caporetto. There had
been a great battle in the north all day.
“If those bastards let them through we are cooked,” he said.
“It’s Germans that are attacking,” one of the medical officers said. The
word Germans was something to be frightened of. We did not want to have
anything to do with the Germans.
“There are fifteen divisions of Germans,” the medical officer said.
“They have broken through and we will be cut off.”
“At the Brigade, they say this line is to be held. They say they have
not broken through badly and that we will hold a line across the
mountains from Monte Maggiore.”
“Where do they hear this?”
“From the Division.”
“The word that we were to retreat came from the Division.”
“We work under the Army Corps,” I said. “But here I work under you.
Naturally when you tell me to go I will go. But get the orders
straight.”
“The orders are that we stay here. You clear the wounded from here to
the clearing station.”
“Sometimes we clear from the clearing station to the field hospitals
too,” I said. “Tell me, I have never seen a retreat—if there is a
retreat how are all the wounded evacuated?”
“They are not. They take as many as they can and leave the rest.”
“What will I take in the cars?”
“Hospital equipment.”
“All right,” I said.
The next night the retreat started. We heard that Germans and Austrians
had broken through in the north and were coming down the mountain
valleys toward Cividale and Udine. The retreat was orderly, wet and
sullen. In the night, going slowly along the crowded roads we passed
troops marching under the rain, guns, horses pulling wagons, mules,
motor trucks, all moving away from the front. There was no more disorder
than in an advance.
That night we helped empty the field hospitals that had been set up in
the least ruined villages of the plateau, taking the wounded down to
Plava on the river-bed: and the next day hauled all day in the rain to
evacuate the hospitals and clearing station at Plava. It rained steadily
and the army of the Bainsizza moved down off the plateau in the October
rain and across the river where the great victories had commenced in the
spring of that year. We came into Gorizia in the middle of the next day.
The rain had stopped and the town was nearly empty. As we came up the
street they were loading the girls from the soldiers’ whorehouse into a
truck. There were seven girls and they had on their hats and coats and
carried small suitcases. Two of them were crying. Of the others one
smiled at us and put out her tongue and fluttered it up and down. She
had thick full lips and black eyes.
I stopped the car and went over and spoke to the matron. The girls from
the officers’ house had left early that morning, she said. Where were
they going? To Conegliano, she said. The truck started. The girl with
thick lips put out her tongue again at us. The matron waved. The two
girls kept on crying. The others looked interestedly out at the town. I
got back in the car.
“We ought to go with them,” Bonello said. “That would be a good trip.”
“We’ll have a good trip,” I said.
“We’ll have a hell of a trip.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. We came up the drive to the villa.
“I’d like to be there when some of those tough babies climb in and try
and hop them.”
“You think they will?”
“Sure. Everybody in the Second Army knows that matron.”
We were outside the villa.
“They call her the Mother Superior,” Bonello said. “The girls are new
but everybody knows her. They must have brought them up just before the
retreat.”
“They’ll have a time.”
“I’ll say they’ll have a time. I’d like to have a crack at them for
nothing. They charge too much at that house anyway. The government gyps
us.”
“Take the car out and have the mechanics go over it,” I said. “Change
the oil and check the differential. Fill it up and then get some sleep.”
“Yes, Signor Tenente.”
The villa was empty. Rinaldi was gone with the hospital. The major was
gone taking hospital personnel in the staff car. There was a note on the
window for me to fill the cars with the material piled in the hall and
to proceed to Pordenone. The mechanics were gone already. I went out
back to the garage. The other two cars came in while I was there and
their drivers got down. It was starting to rain again.
“I’m so —— sleepy I went to sleep three times coming here from Plava,”
Piani said. “What are we going to do, Tenente?”
“We’ll change the oil, grease them, fill them up, then take them around
in front and load up the junk they’ve left.”
“Then do we start?”
“No, we’ll sleep for three hours.”
“Christ I’m glad to sleep,” Bonello said. “I couldn’t keep awake
driving.”
“How’s your car, Aymo?” I asked.
“It’s all right.”
“Get me a monkey suit and I’ll help you with the oil.”
“Don’t you do that, Tenente,” Aymo said. “It’s nothing to do. You go and
pack your things.”
“My things are all packed,” I said. “I’ll go and carry out the stuff
that they left for us. Bring the cars around as soon as they’re ready.”
They brought the cars around to the front of the villa and we loaded
them with the hospital equipment which was piled in the hallway. When it
was all in, the three cars stood in line down the driveway under the
trees in the rain. We went inside.
“Make a fire in the kitchen and dry your things,” I said.
“I don’t care about dry clothes,” Piani said. “I want to sleep.”
“I’m going to sleep on the major’s bed,” Bonello said. “I’m going to
sleep where the old man corks off.”
“I don’t care where I sleep,” Piani said.
“There are two beds in here.” I opened the door.
“I never knew what was in that room,” Bonello said.
“That was old fish-face’s room,” Piani said.
“You two sleep in there,” I said. “I’ll wake you.”
“The Austrians will wake us if you sleep too long, Tenente,” Bonello
said.
“I won’t oversleep,” I said. “Where’s Aymo?”
“He went out in the kitchen.”
“Get to sleep,” I said.
“I’ll sleep,” Piani said. “I’ve been asleep sitting up all day. The
whole top of my head kept coming down over my eyes.”
“Take your boots off,” Bonello said. “That’s old fish-face’s bed.”
“Fish-face is nothing to me.” Piani lay on the bed, his muddy boots
straight out, his head on his arm. I went out to the kitchen. Aymo had a
fire in the stove and a kettle of water on.
“I thought I’d start some _pasta asciutta_,” he said. “We’ll be hungry
when we wake up.”
“Aren’t you sleepy, Bartolomeo?”
“Not so sleepy. When the water boils I’ll leave it. The fire will go
down.”
“You’d better get some sleep,” I said. “We can eat cheese and monkey
meat.”
“This is better,” he said. “Something hot will be good for those two
anarchists. You go to sleep, Tenente.”
“There’s a bed in the major’s room.”
“You sleep there.”
“No, I’m going up to my old room. Do you want a drink, Bartolomeo?”
“When we go, Tenente. Now it wouldn’t do me any good.”
“If you wake in three hours and I haven’t called you, wake me, will
you?”
“I haven’t any watch, Tenente.”
“There’s a clock on the wall in the major’s room.”
“All right.”
I went out then through the dining-room and the hall and up the marble
stairs to the room where I had lived with Rinaldi. It was raining
outside. I went to the window and looked out. It was getting dark and I
saw the three cars standing in line under the trees. The trees were
dripping in the rain. It was cold and the drops hung to the branches. I
went back to Rinaldi’s bed and lay down and let sleep take me.
We ate in the kitchen before we started. Aymo had a basin of spaghetti
with onions and tinned meat chopped up in it. We sat around the table
and drank two bottles of the wine that had been left in the cellar of
the villa. It was dark outside and still raining. Piani sat at the table
very sleepy.
“I like a retreat better than an advance,” Bonello said. “On a retreat
we drink barbera.”
“We drink it now. To-morrow maybe we drink rain-water,” Aymo said.
“To-morrow we’ll be in Udine. We’ll drink champagne. That’s where the
slackers live. Wake up, Piani! We’ll drink champagne to-morrow in
Udine!”
“I’m awake,” Piani said. He filled his plate with the spaghetti and
meat. “Couldn’t you find tomato sauce, Barto?”
“There wasn’t any,” Aymo said.
“We’ll drink champagne in Udine,” Bonello said. He filled his glass with
the clear red barbera.
“We may drink —— before Udine,” Piani said.
“Have you eaten enough, Tenente?” Aymo asked.
“I’ve got plenty. Give me the bottle, Bartolomeo.”
“I have a bottle apiece to take in the cars,” Aymo said.
“Did you sleep at all?”
“I don’t need much sleep. I slept a little.”
“To-morrow we’ll sleep in the king’s bed,” Bonello said. He was feeling
very good.
“To-morrow maybe we’ll sleep in ——,” Piani said.
“I’ll sleep with the queen,” Bonello said. He looked to see how I took
the joke.
“You’ll sleep with ——,” Piani said sleepily.
“That’s treason, Tenente,” Bonello said. “Isn’t that treason?”
“Shut up,” I said. “You get too funny with a little wine.” Outside it
was raining hard. I looked at my watch. It was half-past nine.
“It’s time to roll,” I said and stood up.
“Who are you going to ride with, Tenente?” Bonello asked.
“With Aymo. Then you come. Then Piani. We’ll start out on the road for
Cormons.”
“I’m afraid I’ll go to sleep,” Piani said.
“All right. I’ll ride with you. Then Bonello. Then Aymo.”
“That’s the best way,” Piani said. “Because I’m so sleepy.”
“I’ll drive and you sleep awhile.”
“No. I can drive just so long as I know somebody will wake me up if I go
to sleep.”
“I’ll wake you up. Put out the lights, Barto.”
“You might as well leave them,” Bonello said. “We’ve got no more use for
this place.”
“I have a small locker trunk in my room,” I said. “Will you help take it
down, Piani?”
“We’ll take it,” Piani said. “Come on, Aldo.” He went off into the hall
with Bonello. I heard them going upstairs.
“This was a fine place,” Bartolomeo Aymo said. He put two bottles of
wine and half a cheese into his haversack. “There won’t be a place like
this again. Where will they retreat to, Tenente?”
“Beyond the Tagliamento, they say. The hospital and the sector are to be
at Pordenone.”
“This is a better town than Pordenone.”
“I don’t know Pordenone,” I said. “I’ve just been through there.”
“It’s not much of a place,” Aymo said.
CHAPTER XXVIII
As we moved out through the town it was empty in the rain and the dark
except for columns of troops and guns that were going through the main
street. There were many trucks too and some carts going through on other
streets and converging on the main road. When we were out past the
tanneries onto the main road the troops, the motor trucks, the
horse-drawn carts and the guns were in one wide slow-moving column. We
moved slowly but steadily in the rain, the radiator cap of our car
almost against the tailboard of a truck that was loaded high, the load
covered with wet canvas. Then the truck stopped. The whole column was
stopped. It started again and we went a little farther, then stopped. I
got out and walked ahead, going between the trucks and carts and under
the wet necks of the horses. The block was farther ahead. I left the
road, crossed the ditch on a footboard and walked along the field beyond
the ditch. I could see the stalled column between the trees in the rain
as I went forward across from it in the field. I went about a mile. The
column did not move, although, on the other side beyond the stalled
vehicles I could see the troops moving. I went back to the cars. This
block might extend as far as Udine. Piani was asleep over the wheel. I
climbed up beside him and went to sleep too. Several hours later I heard
the truck ahead of us grinding into gear. I woke Piani and we started,
moving a few yards, then stopping, then going on again. It was still
raining.
The column stalled again in the night and did not start. I got down and
went back to see Aymo and Bonello. Bonello had two sergeants of
engineers on the seat of his car with him. They stiffened when I came
up.
“They were left to do something to a bridge,” Bonello said. “They can’t
find their unit so I gave them a ride.”
“With the Sir Lieutenant’s permission.”
“With permission,” I said.
“The lieutenant is an American,” Bonello said. “He’ll give anybody a
ride.”
One of the sergeants smiled. The other asked Bonello if I was an Italian
from North or South America.
“He’s not an Italian. He’s North American English.”
The sergeants were polite but did not believe it. I left them and went
back to Aymo. He had two girls on the seat with him and was sitting back
in the corner and smoking.
“Barto, Barto,” I said. He laughed.
“Talk to them, Tenente,” he said. “I can’t understand them. Hey!” he put
his hand on the girl’s thigh and squeezed it in a friendly way. The girl
drew her shawl tight around her and pushed his hand away. “Hey!” he
said. “Tell the Tenente your name and what you’re doing here.”
The girl looked at me fiercely. The other girl kept her eyes down. The
girl who looked at me said something in a dialect I could not understand
a word of. She was plump and dark and looked about sixteen.
“Sorella?” I asked and pointed at the other girl.
She nodded her head and smiled.
“All right,” I said and patted her knee. I felt her stiffen away when I
touched her. The sister never looked up. She looked perhaps a year
younger. Aymo put his hand on the elder girl’s thigh and she pushed it
away. He laughed at her.
“Good man,” he pointed at himself. “Good man,” he pointed at me. “Don’t
you worry.” The girl looked at him fiercely. The pair of them were like
two wild birds.
“What does she ride with me for if she doesn’t like me?” Aymo asked.
“They got right up in the car the minute I motioned to them.” He turned
to the girl. “Don’t worry,” he said. “No danger of ——,” using the
vulgar word. “No place for ——.” I could see she understood the word
and that was all. Her eyes looked at him very scared. She pulled the
shawl tight. “Car all full,” Aymo said. “No danger of ——. No place for
——.” Every time he said the word the girl stiffened a little. Then
sitting stiffly and looking at him she began to cry. I saw her lips
working and then tears came down her plump cheeks. Her sister, not
looking up, took her hand and they sat there together. The older one,
who had been so fierce, began to sob.
“I guess I scared her,” Aymo said. “I didn’t mean to scare her.”
Bartolomeo brought out his knapsack and cut off two pieces of cheese.
“Here,” he said. “Stop crying.”
The older girl shook her head and still cried, but the younger girl took
the cheese and commenced to eat. After a while the younger girl gave her
sister the second piece of cheese and they both ate. The older sister
still sobbed a little.
“She’ll be all right after a while,” Aymo said.
An idea came to him. “Virgin?” he asked the girl next to him. She nodded
her head vigorously. “Virgin too?” he pointed to the sister. Both the
girls nodded their heads and the elder said something in dialect.
“That’s all right,” Bartolomeo said. “That’s all right.”
Both the girls seemed cheered.
I left them sitting together with Aymo sitting back in the corner and
went back to Piani’s car. The column of vehicles did not move but the
troops kept passing alongside. It was still raining hard and I thought
some of the stops in the movement of the column might be from cars with
wet wiring. More likely they were from horses or men going to sleep.
Still, traffic could tie up in cities when every one was awake. It was
the combination of horse and motor vehicles. They did not help each
other any. The peasants’ carts did not help much either. Those were a
couple of fine girls with Barto. A retreat was no place for two virgins.
Real virgins. Probably very religious. If there were no war we would
probably all be in bed. In bed I lay me down my head. Bed and board.
Stiff as a board in bed. Catherine was in bed now between two sheets,
over her and under her. Which side did she sleep on? Maybe she wasn’t
asleep. Maybe she was lying thinking about me. Blow, blow, ye western
wind. Well, it blew and it wasn’t the small rain but the big rain down
that rained. It rained all night. You knew it rained down that rained.
Look at it. Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again.
That my love Catherine. That my sweet love Catherine down might rain.
Blow her again to me. Well, we were in it. Every one was caught in it
and the small rain would not quiet it. “Good-night, Catherine,” I said
out loud. “I hope you sleep well. If it’s too uncomfortable, darling,
lie on the other side,” I said. “I’ll get you some cold water. In a
little while it will be morning and then it won’t be so bad. I’m sorry
he makes you so uncomfortable. Try and go to sleep, sweet.”
I was asleep all the time, she said. You’ve been talking in your sleep.
Are you all right?
Are you really there?
Of course I’m here. I wouldn’t go way. This doesn’t make any difference
between us.
You’re so lovely and sweet. You wouldn’t go away in the night, would
you?
Of course I wouldn’t go away. I’m always here. I come whenever you want
me.
“——,” Piani said. “They’ve started again.”
“I was dopey,” I said. I looked at my watch. It was three o’clock in the
morning. I reached back behind the seat for a bottle of the barbera.
“You talked out loud,” Piani said.
“I was having a dream in English,” I said.
The rain was slacking and we were moving along. Before daylight we were
stalled again and when it was light we were at a little rise in the
ground and I saw the road of the retreat stretched out far ahead,
everything stationary except for the infantry filtering through. We
started to move again but seeing the rate of progress in the daylight, I
knew we were going to have to get off that main road some way and go
across country if we ever hoped to reach Udine.
In the night many peasants had joined the column from the roads of the
country and in the column there were carts loaded with household goods;
there were mirrors projecting up between mattresses, and chickens and
ducks tied to carts. There was a sewing-machine on the cart ahead of us
in the rain. They had saved the most valuable things. On some carts the
women sat huddled from the rain and others walked beside the carts
keeping as close to them as they could. There were dogs now in the
column, keeping under the wagons as they moved along. The road was
muddy, the ditches at the side were high with water and beyond the trees
that lined the road the fields looked too wet and too soggy to try to
cross. I got down from the car and worked up the road a way, looking for
a place where I could see ahead to find a side-road we could take across
country. I knew there were many side-roads but did not want one that
would lead to nothing. I could not remember them because we had always
passed them bowling along in the car on the main road and they all
looked much alike. Now I knew we must find one if we hoped to get
through. No one knew where the Austrians were nor how things were going
but I was certain that if the rain should stop and planes come over and
get to work on that column that it would be all over. All that was
needed was for a few men to leave their trucks or a few horses be killed
to tie up completely the movement on the road.
The rain was not falling so heavily now and I thought it might clear. I
went ahead along the edge of the road and when there was a small road
that led off to the north between two fields with a hedge of trees on
both sides, I thought that we had better take it and hurried back to the
cars. I told Piani to turn off and went back to tell Bonello and Aymo.
“If it leads nowhere we can turn around and cut back in,” I said.
“What about these?” Bonello asked. His two sergeants were beside him on
the seat. They were unshaven but still military looking in the early
morning.
“They’ll be good to push,” I said. I went back to Aymo and told him we
were going to try it across country.
“What about my virgin family?” Aymo asked. The two girls were asleep.
“They won’t be very useful,” I said. “You ought to have some one that
could push.”
“They could go back in the car,” Aymo said. “There’s room in the car.”
“All right if you want them,” I said. “Pick up somebody with a wide back
to push.”
“Bersaglieri,” Aymo smiled. “They have the widest backs. They measure
them. How do you feel, Tenente?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Fine. But very hungry.”
“There ought to be something up that road and we will stop and eat.”
“How’s your leg, Tenente?”
“Fine,” I said. Standing on the step and looking up ahead I could see
Piani’s car pulling out onto the little side-road and starting up it,
his car showing through the hedge of bare branches. Bonello turned off
and followed him and then Piani worked his way out and we followed the
two ambulances ahead along the narrow road between hedges. It led to a
farmhouse. We found Piani and Bonello stopped in the farmyard. The house
was low and long with a trellis with a grape-vine over the door. There
was a well in the yard and Piani was getting up water to fill his
radiator. So much going in low gear had boiled it out. The farmhouse was
deserted. I looked back down the road, the farmhouse was on a slight
elevation above the plain, and we could see over the country, and saw
the road, the hedges, the fields and the line of trees along the main
road where the retreat was passing. The two sergeants were looking
through the house. The girls were awake and looking at the courtyard,
the well and the two big ambulances in front of the farmhouse, with
three drivers at the well. One of the sergeants came out with a clock in
his hand.
“Put it back,” I said. He looked at me, went in the house and came back
without the clock.
“Where’s your partner?” I asked.
“He’s gone to the latrine.” He got up on the seat of the ambulance. He
was afraid we would leave him.
“What about breakfast, Tenente?” Bonello asked. “We could eat something.
It wouldn’t take very long.”
“Do you think this road going down on the other side will lead to
anything?”
“Sure.”
“All right. Let’s eat.” Piani and Bonello went in the house.
“Come on,” Aymo said to the girls. He held his hand to help them down.
The older sister shook her head. They were not going into any deserted
house. They looked after us.
“They are difficult,” Aymo said. We went into the farmhouse together. It
was large and dark, an abandoned feeling. Bonello and Piani were in the
kitchen.
“There’s not much to eat,” Piani said. “They’ve cleaned it out.”
Bonello sliced a big white cheese on the heavy kitchen table.
“Where was the cheese?”
“In the cellar. Piani found wine too and apples.”
“That’s a good breakfast.”
Piani was taking the wooden cork out of a big wicker-covered wine jug.
He tipped it and poured a copper pan full.
“It smells all right,” he said. “Find some beakers, Barto.”
The two sergeants came in.
“Have some cheese, sergeants,” Bonello said.
“We should go,” one of the sergeants said, eating his cheese and
drinking a cup of wine.
“We’ll go. Don’t worry,” Bonello said.
“An army travels on its stomach,” I said.
“What?” asked the sergeant.
“It’s better to eat.”
“Yes. But time is precious.”
“I believe the bastards have eaten already,” Piani said. The sergeants
looked at him. They hated the lot of us.
“You know the road?” one of them asked me.
“No,” I said. They looked at each other.
“We would do best to start,” the first one said.
“We are starting,” I said. I drank another cup of the red wine. It
tasted very good after the cheese and apple.
“Bring the cheese,” I said and went out. Bonello came out carrying the
great jug of wine.
“That’s too big,” I said. He looked at it regretfully.
“I guess it is,” he said. “Give me the canteens to fill.” He filled the
canteens and some of the wine ran out on the stone paving of the
courtyard. Then he picked up the wine jug and put it just inside the
door.
“The Austrians can find it without breaking the door down,” he said.
“We’ll roll,” I said. “Piani and I will go ahead.” The two engineers
were already on the seat beside Bonello. The girls were eating cheese
and apples. Aymo was smoking. We started off down the narrow road. I
looked back at the two cars coming and the farmhouse. It was a fine,
low, solid stone house and the ironwork of the well was very good. Ahead
of us the road was narrow and muddy and there was a high hedge on either
side. Behind, the cars were following closely.
CHAPTER XXIX
At noon we were stuck in a muddy road about, as nearly as we could
figure, ten kilometres from Udine. The rain had stopped during the
forenoon and three times we had heard planes coming, seen them pass
overhead, watched them go far to the left and heard them bombing on the
main highroad. We had worked through a network of secondary roads and
had taken many roads that were blind, but had always, by backing up and
finding another road, gotten closer to Udine. Now, Aymo’s car, in
backing so that we might get out of a blind road, had gotten into the
soft earth at the side and the wheels, spinning, had dug deeper and
deeper until the car rested on its differential. The thing to do now was
to dig out in front of the wheels, put in brush so that the chains could
grip, and then push until the car was on the road. We were all down on
the road around the car. The two sergeants looked at the car and
examined the wheels. Then they started off down the road without a word.
I went after them.
“Come on,” I said. “Cut some brush.”
“We have to go,” one said.
“Get busy,” I said, “and cut brush.”
“We have to go,” one said. The other said nothing. They were in a hurry
to start. They would not look at me.
“I order you to come back to the car and cut brush,” I said. The one
sergeant turned. “We have to go on. In a little while you will be cut
off. You can’t order us. You’re not our officer.”
“I order you to cut brush,” I said. They turned and started down the
road.
“Halt,” I said. They kept on down the muddy road, the hedge on either
side. “I order you to halt,” I called. They went a little faster. I
opened up my holster, took the pistol, aimed at the one who had talked
the most, and fired. I missed and they both started to run. I shot three
times and dropped one. The other went through the hedge and was out of
sight. I fired at him through the hedge as he ran across the field. The
pistol clicked empty and I put in another clip. I saw it was too far to
shoot at the second sergeant. He was far across the field, running, his
head held low. I commenced to reload the empty clip. Bonello came up.
“Let me go finish him,” he said. I handed him the pistol and he walked
down to where the sergeant of engineers lay face down across the road.
Bonello leaned over, put the pistol against the man’s head and pulled
the trigger. The pistol did not fire.
“You have to cock it,” I said. He cocked it and fired twice. He took
hold of the sergeant’s legs and pulled him to the side of the road so he
lay beside the hedge. He came back and handed me the pistol.
“The son of a bitch,” he said. He looked toward the sergeant. “You see
me shoot him, Tenente?”
“We’ve got to get the brush quickly,” I said. “Did I hit the other one
at all?”
“I don’t think so,” Aymo said. “He was too far away to hit with a
pistol.”
“The dirty scum,” Piani said. We were all cutting twigs and branches.
Everything had been taken out of the car. Bonello was digging out in
front of the wheels. When we were ready Aymo started the car and put it
into gear. The wheels spun round throwing brush and mud. Bonello and I
pushed until we could feel our joints crack. The car would not move.
“Rock her back and forth, Barto,” I said.
He drove the engine in reverse, then forward. The wheels only dug in
deeper. Then the car was resting on the differential again, and the
wheels spun freely in the holes they had dug. I straightened up.
“We’ll try her with a rope,” I said.
“I don’t think it’s any use, Tenente. You can’t get a straight pull.”
“We have to try it,” I said. “She won’t come out any other way.”
Piani’s and Bonello’s cars could only move straight ahead down the
narrow road. We roped both cars together and pulled. The wheels only
pulled sideways against the ruts.
“It’s no good,” I shouted. “Stop it.”
Piani and Bonello got down from their cars and came back. Aymo got down.
The girls were up the road about forty yards sitting on a stone wall.
“What do you say, Tenente?” Bonello asked.
“We’ll dig out and try once more with the brush,” I said. I looked down
the road. It was my fault. I had led them up here. The sun was almost
out from behind the clouds and the body of the sergeant lay beside the
hedge.
“We’ll put his coat and cape under,” I said. Bonello went to get them. I
cut brush and Aymo and Piani dug out in front and between the wheels. I
cut the cape, then ripped it in two, and laid it under the wheel in the
mud, then piled brush for the wheels to catch. We were ready to start
and Aymo got up on the seat and started the car. The wheels spun and we
pushed and pushed. But it wasn’t any use.
“It’s ——ed,” I said. “Is there anything you want in the car, Barto?”
Aymo climbed up with Bonello, carrying the cheese and two bottles of
wine and his cape. Bonello, sitting behind the wheel, was looking
through the pockets of the sergeant’s coat.
“Better throw the coat away,” I said. “What about Barto’s virgins?”
“They can get in the back,” Piani said. “I don’t think we are going
far.”
I opened the back door of the ambulance.
“Come on,” I said. “Get in.” The two girls climbed in and sat in the
corner. They seemed to have taken no notice of the shooting. I looked
back up the road. The sergeant lay in his dirty long-sleeved underwear.
I got up with Piani and we started. We were going to try to cross the
field. When the road entered the field I got down and walked ahead. If
we could get across, there was a road on the other side. We could not
get across. It was too soft and muddy for the cars. When they were
finally and completely stalled, the wheels dug in to the hubs, we left
them in the field and started on foot for Udine.
When we came to the road which led back toward the main highway I
pointed down it to the two girls.
“Go down there,” I said. “You’ll meet people.” They looked at me. I took
out my pocket-book and gave them each a ten-lira note. “Go down there,”
I said, pointing. “Friends! Family!”
They did not understand but they held the money tightly and started down
the road. They looked back as though they were afraid I might take the
money back. I watched them go down the road, their shawls close around
them, looking back apprehensively at us. The three drivers were
laughing.
“How much will you give me to go in that direction, Tenente?” Bonello
asked.
“They’re better off in a bunch of people than alone if they catch them,”
I said.
“Give me two hundred lire and I’ll walk straight back toward Austria,”
Bonello said.
“They’d take it away from you,” Piani said.
“Maybe the war will be over,” Aymo said. We were going up the road as
fast as we could. The sun was trying to come through. Beside the road
were mulberry trees. Through the trees I could see our two big
moving-vans of cars stuck in the field. Piani looked back too.
“They’ll have to build a road to get them out,” he said.
“I wish to Christ we had bicycles,” Bonello said.
“Do they ride bicycles in America?” Aymo asked.
“They used to.”
“Here it is a great thing,” Aymo said. “A bicycle is a splendid thing.”
“I wish to Christ we had bicycles,” Bonello said. “I’m no walker.”
“Is that firing?” I asked. I thought I could hear firing a long way
away.
“I don’t know,” Aymo said. He listened.
“I think so,” I said.
“The first thing we will see will be the cavalry,” Piani said.
“I don’t think they’ve got any cavalry.”
“I hope to Christ not,” Bonello said. “I don’t want to be stuck on a
lance by any —— cavalry.”
“You certainly shot that sergeant, Tenente,” Piani said. We were walking
fast.
“I killed him,” Bonello said. “I never killed anybody in this war, and
all my life I’ve wanted to kill a sergeant.”
“You killed him on the sit all right,” Piani said. “He wasn’t flying
very fast when you killed him.”
“Never mind. That’s one thing I can always remember. I killed that ——
of a sergeant.”
“What will you say in confession?” Aymo asked.
“I’ll say, ‘Bless me, father, I killed a sergeant.’” They all laughed.
“He’s an anarchist,” Piani said. “He doesn’t go to church.”
“Piani’s an anarchist too,” Bonello said.
“Are you really anarchists?” I asked.
“No, Tenente. We’re socialists. We come from Imola.”
“Haven’t you ever been there?”
“No.”
“By Christ it’s a fine place, Tenente. You come there after the war and
we’ll show you something.”
“Are you all socialists?”
“Everybody.”
“Is it a fine town?”
“Wonderful. You never saw a town like that.”
“How did you get to be socialists?”
“We’re all socialists. Everybody is a socialist. We’ve always been
socialists.”
“You come, Tenente. We’ll make you a socialist too.”
Ahead the road turned off to the left and there was a little hill and,
beyond a stone wall, an apple orchard. As the road went uphill they
ceased talking. We walked along together all going fast against time.
CHAPTER XXX
Later we were on a road that led to a river. There was a long line of
abandoned trucks and carts on the road leading up to the bridge. No one
was in sight. The river was high and the bridge had been blown up in the
centre; the stone arch was fallen into the river and the brown water was
going over it. We went on up the bank looking for a place to cross. Up
ahead I knew there was a railway bridge and I thought we might be able
to get across there. The path was wet and muddy. We did not see any
troops; only abandoned trucks and stores. Along the river bank there was
nothing and no one but the wet brush and muddy ground. We went up to the
bank and finally we saw the railway bridge.
“What a beautiful bridge,” Aymo said. It was a long plain iron bridge
across what was usually a dry river-bed.
“We better hurry and get across before they blow it up,” I said.
“There’s nobody to blow it up,” Piani said. “They’re all gone.”
“It’s probably mined,” Bonello said. “You cross first, Tenente.”
“Listen to the anarchist,” Aymo said. “Make him go first.”
“I’ll go,” I said. “It won’t be mined to blow up with one man.”
“You see,” Piani said. “That is brains. Why haven’t you brains,
anarchist?”
“If I had brains I wouldn’t be here,” Bonello said.
“That’s pretty good, Tenente,” Aymo said.
“That’s pretty good,” I said. We were close to the bridge now. The sky
had clouded over again and it was raining a little. The bridge looked
long and solid. We climbed up the embankment.
“Come one at a time,” I said and started across the bridge. I watched
the ties and the rails for any tripwires or signs of explosive but I saw
nothing. Down below the gaps in the ties the river ran muddy and fast.
Ahead across the wet countryside I could see Udine in the rain. Across
the bridge I looked back. Just up the river was another bridge. As I
watched, a yellow mud-colored motor car crossed it. The sides of the
bridge were high and the body of the car, once on, was out of sight. But
I saw the heads of the driver, the man on the seat with him, and the two
men on the rear seat. They all wore German helmets. Then the car was
over the bridge and out of sight behind the trees and the abandoned
vehicles on the road. I waved to Aymo who was crossing and to the others
to come on. I climbed down and crouched beside the railway embankment.
Aymo came down with me.
“Did you see the car?” I asked.
“No. We were watching you.”
“A German staff car crossed on the upper bridge.”
“A staff car?”
“Yes.”
“Holy Mary.”
The others came and we all crouched in the mud behind the embankment,
looking across the rails at the bridge, the line of trees, the ditch and
the road.
“Do you think we’re cut off then, Tenente?”
“I don’t know. All I know is a German staff car went along that road.”
“You don’t feel funny, Tenente? You haven’t got strange feelings in the
head?”
“Don’t be funny, Bonello.”
“What about a drink?” Piani asked. “If we’re cut off we might as well
have a drink.” He unhooked his canteen and uncorked it.
“Look! Look!” Aymo said and pointed toward the road. Along the top of
the stone bridge we could see German helmets moving. They were bent
forward and moved smoothly, almost supernaturally, along. As they came
off the bridge we saw them. They were bicycle troops. I saw the faces of
the first two. They were ruddy and healthy-looking. Their helmets came
low down over their foreheads and the side of their faces. Their
carbines were clipped to the frame of the bicycles. Stick bombs hung
handle down from their belts. Their helmets and their gray uniforms were
wet and they rode easily, looking ahead and to both sides. There were
two—then four in line, then two, then almost a dozen; then another
dozen—then one alone. They did not talk but we could not have heard
them because of the noise from the river. They were gone out of sight up
the road.
“Holy Mary,” Aymo said.
“They were Germans,” Piani said. “Those weren’t Austrians.”
“Why isn’t there somebody here to stop them?” I said. “Why haven’t they
blown the bridge up? Why aren’t there machine-guns along this
embankment?”
“You tell us, Tenente,” Bonello said.
I was very angry.
“The whole bloody thing is crazy. Down below they blow up a little
bridge. Here they leave a bridge on the main road. Where is everybody?
Don’t they try and stop them at all?”
“You tell us, Tenente,” Bonello said. I shut up. It was none of my
business; all I had to do was to get to Pordenone with three ambulances.
I had failed at that. All I had to do now was get to Pordenone. I
probably could not even get to Udine. The hell I couldn’t. The thing to
do was to be calm and not get shot or captured.
“Didn’t you have a canteen open?” I asked Piani. He handed it to me. I
took a long drink. “We might as well start,” I said. “There’s no hurry
though. Do you want to eat something?”
“This is no place to stay,” Bonello said.
“All right. We’ll start.”
“Should we keep on this side—out of sight?”
“We’ll be better off on top. They may come along this bridge too. We
don’t want them on top of us before we see them.”
We walked along the railroad track. On both sides of us stretched the
wet plain. Ahead across the plain was the hill of Udine. The roofs fell
away from the castle on the hill. We could see the campanile and the
clock-tower. There were many mulberry trees in the fields. Ahead I saw a
place where the rails were torn up. The ties had been dug out too and
thrown down the embankment.
“Down! down!” Aymo said. We dropped down beside the embankment. There
was another group of bicyclists passing along the road. I looked over
the edge and saw them go on.
“They saw us but they went on,” Aymo said.
“We’ll get killed up there, Tenente,” Bonello said.
“They don’t want us,” I said. “They’re after something else. We’re in
more danger if they should come on us suddenly.”
“I’d rather walk here out of sight,” Bonello said.
“All right. We’ll walk along the tracks.”
“Do you think we can get through?” Aymo asked.
“Sure. There aren’t very many of them yet. We’ll go through in the
dark.”
“What was that staff car doing?”
“Christ knows,” I said. We kept on up the tracks. Bonello tired of
walking in the mud of the embankment and came up with the rest of us.
The railway moved south away from the highway now and we could not see
what passed along the road. A short bridge over a canal was blown up but
we climbed across on what was left of the span. We heard firing ahead of
us.
We came up on the railway beyond the canal. It went on straight toward
the town across the low fields. We could see the line of the other
railway ahead of us. To the north was the main road where we had seen
the cyclists; to the south there was a small branch-road across the
fields with thick trees on each side. I thought we had better cut to the
south and work around the town that way and across country toward
Campoformio and the main road to the Tagliamento. We could avoid the
main line of the retreat by keeping to the secondary roads beyond Udine.
I knew there were plenty of side-roads across the plain. I started down
the embankment.
“Come on,” I said. We would make for the side-road and work to the south
of the town. We all started down the embankment. A shot was fired at us
from the side-road. The bullet went into the mud of the embankment.
“Go on back,” I shouted. I started up the embankment, slipping in the
mud. The drivers were ahead of me. I went up the embankment as fast as I
could go. Two more shots came from the thick brush and Aymo, as he was
crossing the tracks, lurched, tripped and fell face down. We pulled him
down on the other side and turned him over. “His head ought to be
uphill,” I said. Piani moved him around. He lay in the mud on the side
of the embankment, his feet pointing downhill, breathing blood
irregularly. The three of us squatted over him in the rain. He was hit
low in the back of the neck and the bullet had ranged upward and come
out under the right eye. He died while I was stopping up the two holes.
Piani laid his head down, wiped at his face, with a piece of the
emergency dressing, then let it alone.
“The ——,” he said.
“They weren’t Germans,” I said. “There can’t be any Germans over there.”
“Italians,” Piani said, using the word as an epithet, “Italiani!”
Bonello said nothing. He was sitting beside Aymo, not looking at him.
Piani picked up Aymo’s cap where it had rolled down the embankment and
put it over his face. He took out his canteen.
“Do you want a drink?” Piani handed Bonello the canteen.
“No,” Bonello said. He turned to me. “That might have happened to us any
time on the railway tracks.”
“No,” I said. “It was because we started across the field.”
Bonello shook his head. “Aymo’s dead,” he said. “Who’s dead next,
Tenente? Where do we go now?”
“Those were Italians that shot,” I said. “They weren’t Germans.”
“I suppose if they were Germans they’d have killed all of us,” Bonello
said.
“We are in more danger from Italians than Germans,” I said. “The rear
guard are afraid of everything. The Germans know what they’re after.”
“You reason it out, Tenente,” Bonello said.
“Where do we go now?” Piani asked.
“We better lie up some place till it’s dark. If we could get south we’d
be all right.”
“They’d have to shoot us all to prove they were right the first time,”
Bonello said. “I’m not going to try them.”
“We’ll find a place to lie up as near to Udine as we can get and then go
through when it’s dark.”
“Let’s go then,” Bonello said. We went down the north side of the
embankment. I looked back. Aymo lay in the mud with the angle of the
embankment. He was quite small and his arms were by his side, his
puttee-wrapped legs and muddy boots together, his cap over his face. He
looked very dead. It was raining. I had liked him as well as any one I
ever knew. I had his papers in my pocket and would write to his family.
Ahead across the fields was a farmhouse. There were trees around it and
the farm buildings were built against the house. There was a balcony
along the second floor held up by columns.
“We better keep a little way apart,” I said. “I’ll go ahead.” I started
toward the farmhouse. There was a path across the field.
Crossing the field, I did not know but that some one would fire on us
from the trees near the farmhouse or from the farmhouse itself. I walked
toward it, seeing it very clearly. The balcony of the second floor
merged into the barn and there was hay coming out between the columns.
The courtyard was of stone blocks and all the trees were dripping with
the rain. There was a big empty two-wheeled cart, the shafts tipped high
up in the rain. I came to the courtyard, crossed it, and stood under the
shelter of the balcony. The door of the house was open and I went in.
Bonello and Piani came in after me. It was dark inside. I went back to
the kitchen. There were ashes of a fire on the big open hearth. The pots
hung over the ashes, but they were empty. I looked around but I could
not find anything to eat.
“We ought to lie up in the barn,” I said. “Do you think you could find
anything to eat, Piani, and bring it up there?”
“I’ll look,” Piani said.
“I’ll look too,” Bonello said.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go up and look at the barn.” I found a stone
stairway that went up from the stable underneath. The stable smelt dry
and pleasant in the rain. The cattle were all gone, probably driven off
when they left. The barn was half full of hay. There were two windows in
the roof, one was blocked with boards, the other was a narrow dormer
window on the north side. There was a chute so that hay might be pitched
down to the cattle. Beams crossed the opening down into the main floor
where the hay-carts drove in when the hay was hauled in to be pitched
up. I heard the rain on the roof and smelled the hay and, when I went
down, the clean smell of dried dung in the stable. We could pry a board
loose and see out of the south window down into the courtyard. The other
window looked out on the field toward the north. We could get out of
either window onto the roof and down, or go down the hay chute if the
stairs were impractical. It was a big barn and we could hide in the hay
if we heard any one. It seemed like a good place. I was sure we could
have gotten through to the south if they had not fired on us. It was
impossible that there were Germans there. They were coming from the
north and down the road from Cividale. They could not have come through
from the south. The Italians were even more dangerous. They were
frightened and firing on anything they saw. Last night on the retreat we
had heard that there had been many Germans in Italian uniforms mixing
with the retreat in the north. I did not believe it. That was one of
those things you always heard in the war. It was one of the things the
enemy always did to you. You did not know any one who went over in
German uniform to confuse them. Maybe they did but it sounded difficult.
I did not believe the Germans did it. I did not believe they had to.
There was no need to confuse our retreat. The size of the army and the
fewness of the roads did that. Nobody gave any orders, let alone
Germans. Still, they would shoot us for Germans. They shot Aymo. The hay
smelled good and lying in a barn in the hay took away all the years in
between. We had lain in hay and talked and shot sparrows with an
air-rifle when they perched in the triangle cut high up in the wall of
the barn. The barn was gone now and one year they had cut the hemlock
woods and there were only stumps, dried tree-tops, branches and fireweed
where the woods had been. You could not go back. If you did not go
forward what happened? You never got back to Milan. And if you got back
to Milan what happened? I listened to the firing to the north toward
Udine. I could hear machine-gun firing. There was no shelling. That was
something. They must have gotten some troops along the road. I looked
down in the half-light of the hay-barn and saw Piani standing on the
hauling floor. He had a long sausage, a jar of something and two bottles
of wine under his arm.
“Come up,” I said. “There is the ladder.” Then I realized that I should
help him with the things and went down. I was vague in the head from
lying in the hay. I had been nearly asleep.
“Where’s Bonello?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you,” Piani said. We went up the ladder. Up on the hay we set
the things down. Piani took out his knife with the corkscrew and drew
the cork on a wine bottle.
“They have sealing-wax on it,” he said. “It must be good.” He smiled.
“Where’s Bonello?” I asked.
Piani looked at me.
“He went away, Tenente,” he said. “He wanted to be a prisoner.”
I did not say anything.
“He was afraid we would get killed.”
I held the bottle of wine and did not say anything.
“You see we don’t believe in the war anyway, Tenente.”
“Why didn’t you go?” I asked.
“I did not want to leave you.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know, Tenente. He went away.”
“All right,” I said. “Will you cut the sausage?”
Piani looked at me in the half-light.
“I cut it while we were talking,” he said. We sat in the hay and ate the
sausage and drank the wine. It must have been wine they had saved for a
wedding. It was so old that it was losing its color.
“You look out of this window, Luigi,” I said. “I’ll go look out the
other window.”
We had each been drinking out of one of the bottles and I took my bottle
with me and went over and lay flat on the hay and looked out the narrow
window at the wet country. I do not know what I expected to see but I
did not see anything except the fields and the bare mulberry trees and
the rain falling. I drank the wine and it did not make me feel good.
They had kept it too long and it had gone to pieces and lost its quality
and color. I watched it get dark outside; the darkness came very
quickly. It would be a black night with the rain. When it was dark there
was no use watching any more, so I went over to Piani. He was lying
asleep and I did not wake him but sat down beside him for a while. He
was a big man and he slept heavily. After a while I woke him and we
started.
That was a very strange night. I do not know what I had expected, death
perhaps and shooting in the dark and running, but nothing happened. We
waited, lying flat beyond the ditch along the main road while a German
battalion passed, then when they were gone we crossed the road and went
on to the north. We were very close to Germans twice in the rain but
they did not see us. We got past the town to the north without seeing
any Italians, then after a while came on the main channels of the
retreat and walked all night toward the Tagliamento. I had not realized
how gigantic the retreat was. The whole country was moving, as well as
the army. We walked all night, making better time than the vehicles. My
leg ached and I was tired but we made good time. It seemed so silly for
Bonello to have decided to be taken prisoner. There was no danger. We
had walked through two armies without incident. If Aymo had not been
killed there would never have seemed to be any danger. No one had
bothered us when we were in plain sight along the railway. The killing
came suddenly and unreasonably. I wondered where Bonello was.
“How do you feel, Tenente?” Piani asked. We were going along the side of
a road crowded with vehicles and troops.
“Fine.”
“I’m tired of this walking.”
“Well, all we have to do is walk now. We don’t have to worry.”
“Bonello was a fool.”
“He was a fool all right.”
“What will you do about him, Tenente?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can’t you just put him down as taken prisoner?”
“I don’t know.”
“You see if the war went on they would make bad trouble for his family.”
“The war won’t go on,” a soldier said. “We’re going home. The war is
over.”
“Everybody’s going home.”
“We’re all going home.”
“Come on, Tenente,” Piani said. He wanted to get past them.
“Tenente? Who’s a Tenente? _A basso gli ufficiali!_ Down with the
officers!”
Piani took me by the arm. “I better call you by your name,” he said.
“They might try and make trouble. They’ve shot some officers.” We worked
up past them.
“I won’t make a report that will make trouble for his family.” I went on
with our conversation.
“If the war is over it makes no difference,” Piani said. “But I don’t
believe it’s over. It’s too good that it should be over.”
“We’ll know pretty soon,” I said.
“I don’t believe it’s over. They all think it’s over but I don’t believe
it.”
“_Viva la Pace!_” a soldier shouted out. “We’re going home!”
“It would be fine if we all went home,” Piani said. “Wouldn’t you like
to go home?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll never go. I don’t think it’s over.”
“_Andiamo a casa!_” a soldier shouted.
“They throw away their rifles,” Piani said. “They take them off and drop
them down while they’re marching. Then they shout.”
“They ought to keep their rifles.”
“They think if they throw away their rifles they can’t make them fight.”
In the dark and the rain, making our way along the side of the road I
could see that many of the troops still had their rifles. They stuck up
above the capes.
“What brigade are you?” an officer called out.
“_Brigata di Pace_,” some one shouted. “Peace Brigade!” The officer said
nothing.
“What does he say? What does the officer say?”
“Down with the officer. _Viva la Pace!_”
“Come on,” Piani said. We passed two British ambulances, abandoned in
the block of vehicles.
“They’re from Gorizia,” Piani said. “I know the cars.”
“They got further than we did.”
“They started earlier.”
“I wonder where the drivers are?”
“Up ahead probably.”
“The Germans have stopped outside Udine,” I said. “These people will all
get across the river.”
“Yes,” Piani said. “That’s why I think the war will go on.”
“The Germans could come on,” I said. “I wonder why they don’t come on.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this kind of war.”
“They have to wait for their transport I suppose.”
“I don’t know,” Piani said. Alone he was much gentler. When he was with
the others he was a very rough talker.
“Are you married, Luigi?”
“You know I am married.”
“Is that why you did not want to be a prisoner?”
“That is one reason. Are you married, Tenente?”
“No.”
“Neither is Bonello.”
“You can’t tell anything by a man’s being married. But I should think a
married man would want to get back to his wife,” I said. I would be glad
to talk about wives.
“Yes.”
“How are your feet?”
“They’re sore enough.”
Before daylight we reached the bank of the Tagliamento and followed down
along the flooded river to the bridge where all the traffic was
crossing.
“They ought to be able to hold at this river,” Piani said. In the dark
the flood looked high. The water swirled and it was wide. The wooden
bridge was nearly three-quarters of a mile across, and the river, that
usually ran in narrow channels in the wide stony bed far below the
bridge, was close under the wooden planking. We went along the bank and
then worked our way into the crowd that were crossing the bridge.
Crossing slowly in the rain a few feet above the flood, pressed tight in
the crowd, the box of an artillery caisson just ahead, I looked over the
side and watched the river. Now that we could not go our own pace I felt
very tired. There was no exhilaration in crossing the bridge. I wondered
what it would be like if a plane bombed it in the daytime.
“Piani,” I said.
“Here I am, Tenente.” He was a little ahead in the jam. No one was
talking. They were all trying to get across as soon as they could:
thinking only of that. We were almost across. At the far end of the
bridge there were officers and carabinieri standing on both sides
flashing lights. I saw them silhouetted against the sky-line. As we came
close to them I saw one of the officers point to a man in the column. A
carabiniere went in after him and came out holding the man by the arm.
He took him away from the road. We came almost opposite them. The
officers were scrutinizing every one in the column, sometimes speaking
to each other, going forward to flash a light in some one’s face. They
took some one else out just before we came opposite. I saw the man. He
was a lieutenant-colonel. I saw the stars in the box on his sleeve as
they flashed a light on him. His hair was gray and he was short and fat.
The carabiniere pulled him in behind the line of officers. As we came
opposite I saw one or two of them look at me. Then one pointed at me and
spoke to a carabiniere. I saw the carabiniere start for me, come through
the edge of the column toward me, then felt him take me by the collar.
“What’s the matter with you?” I said and hit him in the face. I saw his
face under the hat, upturned mustaches and blood coming down his cheek.
Another one dove in toward us.
“What’s the matter with you?” I said. He did not answer. He was watching
a chance to grab me. I put my arm behind me to loosen my pistol.
“Don’t you know you can’t touch an officer?”
The other one grabbed me from behind and pulled my arm up so that it
twisted in the socket. I turned with him and the other one grabbed me
around the neck. I kicked his shins and got my left knee into his groin.
“Shoot him if he resists,” I heard some one say.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I tried to shout but my voice was not very
loud. They had me at the side of the road now.
“Shoot him if he resists,” an officer said. “Take him over back.”
“Who are you?”
“You’ll find out.”
“Who are you?”
“Battle police,” another officer said.
“Why don’t you ask me to step over instead of having one of these
airplanes grab me?”
They did not answer. They did not have to answer. They were battle
police.
“Take him back there with the others,” the first officer said. “You see.
He speaks Italian with an accent.”
“So do you, you ——,” I said.
“Take him back with the others,” the first officer said. They took me
down behind the line of officers below the road toward a group of people
in a field by the river bank. As we walked toward them shots were fired.
I saw flashes of the rifles and heard the reports. We came up to the
group. There were four officers standing together, with a man in front
of them with a carabiniere on each side of him. A group of men were
standing guarded by carabinieri. Four other carabinieri stood near the
questioning officers, leaning on their carbines. They were wide-hatted
carabinieri. The two who had me shoved me in with the group waiting to
be questioned. I looked at the man the officers were questioning. He was
the fat gray-haired little lieutenant-colonel they had taken out of the
column. The questioners had all the efficiency, coldness and command of
themselves of Italians who are firing and are not being fired on.
“Your brigade?”
He told them.
“Regiment?”
He told them.
“Why are you not with your regiment?”
He told them.
“Do you not know that an officer should be with his troops?”
He did.
That was all. Another officer spoke.
“It is you and such as you that have let the barbarians onto the sacred
soil of the fatherland.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the lieutenant-colonel.
“It is because of treachery such as yours that we have lost the fruits
of victory.”
“Have you ever been in a retreat?” the lieutenant-colonel asked.
“Italy should never retreat.”
We stood there in the rain and listened to this. We were facing the
officers and the prisoner stood in front and a little to one side of us.
“If you are going to shoot me,” the lieutenant-colonel said, “please
shoot me at once without further questioning. The questioning is
stupid.” He made the sign of the cross. The officers spoke together. One
wrote something on a pad of paper.
“Abandoned his troops, ordered to be shot,” he said.
Two carabinieri took the lieutenant-colonel to the river bank. He walked
in the rain, an old man with his hat off, a carabiniere on either side.
I did not watch them shoot him but I heard the shots. They were
questioning some one else. This officer too was separated from his
troops. He was not allowed to make an explanation. He cried when they
read the sentence from the pad of paper, and they were questioning
another when they shot him. They made a point of being intent on
questioning the next man while the man who had been questioned before
was being shot. In this way there was obviously nothing they could do
about it. I did not know whether I should wait to be questioned or make
a break now. I was obviously a German in Italian uniform. I saw how
their minds worked; if they had minds and if they worked. They were all
young men and they were saving their country. The second army was being
re-formed beyond the Tagliamento. They were executing officers of the
rank of major and above who were separated from their troops. They were
also dealing summarily with German agitators in Italian uniform. They
wore steel helmets. Only two of us had steel helmets. Some of the
carabinieri had them. The other carabinieri wore the wide hat. Airplanes
we called them. We stood in the rain and were taken out one at a time to
be questioned and shot. So far they had shot every one they had
questioned. The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion
to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of
it. They were questioning a full colonel of a line regiment. Three more
officers had just been put in with us.
“Where was his regiment?”
I looked at the carabinieri. They were looking at the newcomers. The
others were looking at the colonel. I ducked down, pushed between two
men, and ran for the river, my head down. I tripped at the edge and went
in with a splash. The water was very cold and I stayed under as long as
I could. I could feel the current swirl me and I stayed under until I
thought I could never come up. The minute I came up I took a breath and
went down again. It was easy to stay under with so much clothing and my
boots. When I came up the second time I saw a piece of timber ahead of
me and reached it and held on with one hand. I kept my head behind it
and did not even look over it. I did not want to see the bank. There
were shots when I ran and shots when I came up the first time. I heard
them when I was almost above water. There were no shots now. The piece
of timber swung in the current and I held it with one hand. I looked at
the bank. It seemed to be going by very fast. There was much wood in the
stream. The water was very cold. We passed the brush of an island above
the water. I held onto the timber with both hands and let it take me
along. The shore was out of sight now.
CHAPTER XXXI
You do not know how long you are in a river when the current moves
swiftly. It seems a long time and it may be very short. The water was
cold and in flood and many things passed that had been floated off the
banks when the river rose. I was lucky to have a heavy timber to hold on
to, and I lay in the icy water with my chin on the wood, holding as
easily as I could with both hands. I was afraid of cramps and I hoped we
would move toward the shore. We went down the river in a long curve. It
was beginning to be light enough so I could see the bushes along the
shore-line. There was a brush island ahead and the current moved toward
the shore. I wondered if I should take off my boots and clothes and try
to swim ashore, but decided not to. I had never thought of anything but
that I would reach the shore some way, and I would be in a bad position
if I landed barefoot. I had to get to Mestre some way.
I watched the shore come close, then swing away, then come closer again.
We were floating more slowly. The shore was very close now. I could see
twigs on the willow bush. The timber swung slowly so that the bank was
behind me and I knew we were in an eddy. We went slowly around. As I saw
the bank again, very close now, I tried holding with one arm and kicking
and swimming the timber toward the bank with the other, but I did not
bring it any closer. I was afraid we would move out of the eddy and,
holding with one hand, I drew up my feet so they were against the side
of the timber and shoved hard toward the bank. I could see the brush,
but even with my momentum and swimming as hard as I could, the current
was taking me away. I thought then I would drown because of my boots,
but I thrashed and fought through the water, and when I looked up the
bank was coming toward me, and I kept thrashing and swimming in a
heavy-footed panic until I reached it. I hung to the willow branch and
did not have strength to pull myself up but I knew I would not drown
now. It had never occurred to me on the timber that I might drown. I
felt hollow and sick in my stomach and chest from the effort, and I held
to the branches and waited. When the sick feeling was gone I pulled into
the willow bushes and rested again, my arms around some brush, holding
tight with my hands to the branches. Then I crawled out, pushed on
through the willows and onto the bank. It was half-daylight and I saw no
one. I lay flat on the bank and heard the river and the rain.
After a while I got up and started along the bank. I knew there was no
bridge across the river until Latisana. I thought I might be opposite
San Vito. I began to think out what I should do. Ahead there was a ditch
running into the river. I went toward it. So far I had seen no one and I
sat down by some bushes along the bank of the ditch and took off my
shoes and emptied them of water. I took off my coat, took my wallet with
my papers and my money all wet in it out of the inside pocket and then
wrung the coat out. I took off my trousers and wrung them too, then my
shirt and underclothing. I slapped and rubbed myself and then dressed
again. I had lost my cap.
Before I put on my coat I cut the cloth stars off my sleeves and put
them in the inside pocket with my money. My money was wet but was all
right. I counted it. There were three thousand and some lire. My clothes
felt wet and clammy and I slapped my arms to keep the circulation going.
I had woven underwear and I did not think I would catch cold if I kept
moving. They had taken my pistol at the road and I put the holster under
my coat. I had no cape and it was cold in the rain. I started up the
bank of the canal. It was daylight and the country was wet, low and
dismal looking. The fields were bare and wet; a long way away I could
see a campanile rising out of the plain. I came up onto a road. Ahead I
saw some troops coming down the road. I limped along the side of the
road and they passed me and paid no attention to me. They were a
machine-gun detachment going up toward the river. I went on down the
road.
That day I crossed the Venetian plain. It is a low level country and
under the rain it is even flatter. Toward the sea there are salt marshes
and very few roads. The roads all go along the river mouths to the sea
and to cross the country you must go along the paths beside the canals.
I was working across the country from the north to the south and had
crossed two railway lines and many roads and finally I came out at the
end of a path onto a railway line where it ran beside a marsh. It was
the main line from Venice to Trieste, with a high solid embankment, a
solid roadbed and double track. Down the tracks a way was a flag-station
and I could see soldiers on guard. Up the line there was a bridge over a
stream that flowed into the marsh. I could see a guard too at the
bridge. Crossing the fields to the north I had seen a train pass on this
railroad, visible a long way across the flat plain, and I thought a
train might come from Portogruaro. I watched the guards and lay down on
the embankment so that I could see both ways along the track. The guard
at the bridge walked a way up the line toward where I lay, then turned
and went back toward the bridge. I lay, and was hungry, and waited for
the train. The one I had seen was so long that the engine moved it very
slowly and I was sure I could get aboard it. After I had almost given up
hoping for one I saw a train coming. The engine, coming straight on,
grew larger slowly. I looked at the guard at the bridge. He was walking
on the near side of the bridge but on the other side of the tracks. That
would put him out of sight when the train passed. I watched the engine
come nearer. It was working hard. I could see there were many cars. I
knew there would be guards on the train, and I tried to see where they
were, but, keeping out of sight, I could not. The engine was almost to
where I was lying. When it came opposite, working and puffing even on
the level, and I saw the engineer pass, I stood up and stepped up close
to the passing cars. If the guards were watching I was a less suspicious
object standing beside the track. Several closed freight-cars passed.
Then I saw a low open car of the sort they call gondolas coming, covered
with canvas. I stood until it had almost passed, then jumped and caught
the rear hand-rods and pulled up. I crawled down between the gondola and
the shelter of the high freight-car behind. I did not think any one had
seen me. I was holding to the hand-rods and crouching low, my feet on
the coupling. We were almost opposite the bridge. I remembered the
guard. As we passed him he looked at me. He was a boy and his helmet was
too big for him. I stared at him contemptuously and he looked away. He
thought I had something to do with the train.
We were past. I saw him still looking uncomfortable, watching the other
cars pass and I stooped to see how the canvas was fastened. It had
grummets and was laced down at the edge with cord. I took out my knife,
cut the cord and put my arm under. There were hard bulges under the
canvas that tightened in the rain. I looked up and ahead. There was a
guard on the freight-car ahead but he was looking forward. I let go of
the hand-rails and ducked under the canvas. My forehead hit something
that gave me a violent bump and I felt blood on my face but I crawled on
in and lay flat. Then I turned around and fastened down the canvas.
I was in under the canvas with guns. They smelled cleanly of oil and
grease. I lay and listened to the rain on the canvas and the clicking of
the car over the rails. There was a little light came through and I lay
and looked at the guns. They had their canvas jackets on. I thought they
must have been sent ahead from the third army. The bump on my forehead
was swollen and I stopped the bleeding by lying still and letting it
coagulate, then picked away the dried blood except over the cut. It was
nothing. I had no handkerchief, but feeling with my fingers I washed
away where the dried blood had been, with rain-water that dripped from
the canvas, and wiped it clean with the sleeve of my coat. I did not
want to look conspicuous. I knew I would have to get out before they got
to Mestre because they would be taking care of these guns. They had no
guns to lose or forget about. I was terrifically hungry.
CHAPTER XXXII
Lying on the floor of the flat-car with the guns beside me under the
canvas I was wet, cold and very hungry. Finally I rolled over and lay
flat on my stomach with my head on my arms. My knee was stiff, but it
had been very satisfactory. Valentini had done a fine job. I had done
half the retreat on foot and swum part of the Tagliamento with his knee.
It was his knee all right. The other knee was mine. Doctors did things
to you and then it was not your body any more. The head was mine, and
the inside of the belly. It was very hungry in there. I could feel it
turn over on itself. The head was mine, but not to use, not to think
with; only to remember and not too much remember.
I could remember Catherine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought
about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, so I would not think
about her, only about her a little, only about her with the car going
slowly and clickingly, and some light through the canvas and my lying
with Catherine on the floor of the car. Hard as the floor of the car to
lie not thinking only feeling, having been away too long, the clothes
wet and the floor moving only a little each time and lonesome inside and
alone with wet clothing and hard floor for a wife.
You did not love the floor of a flat-car nor guns with canvas jackets
and the smell of vaselined metal or a canvas that rain leaked through,
although it is very fine under a canvas and pleasant with guns; but you
loved some one else whom now you knew was not even to be pretended
there; you seeing now very clearly and coldly—not so coldly as clearly
and emptily. You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present
when one army moved back and another came forward. You had lost your
cars and your men as a floorwalker loses the stock of his department in
a fire. There was, however, no insurance. You were out of it now. You
had no more obligation. If they shot floorwalkers after a fire in the
department store because they spoke with an accent they had always had,
then certainly the floorwalkers would not be expected to return when the
store opened again for business. They might seek other employment; if
there was any other employment and the police did not get them.
Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation. Although
that ceased when the carabiniere put his hands on my collar. I would
like to have had the uniform off although I did not care much about the
outward forms. I had taken off the stars, but that was for convenience.
It was no point of honor. I was not against them. I was through. I
wished them all the luck. There were the good ones, and the brave ones,
and the calm ones and the sensible ones, and they deserved it. But it
was not my show any more and I wished this bloody train would get to
Mestre and I would eat and stop thinking. I would have to stop.
Piani would tell them they had shot me. They went through the pockets
and took the papers of the people they shot. They would not have my
papers. They might call me drowned. I wondered what they would hear in
the States. Dead from wounds and other causes. Good Christ I was hungry.
I wondered what had become of the priest at the mess. And Rinaldi. He
was probably at Pordenone. If they had not gone further back. Well, I
would never see him now. I would never see any of them now. That life
was over. I did not think he had syphilis. It was not a serious disease
anyway if you took it in time, they said. But he would worry. I would
worry too if I had it. Any one would worry.
I was not made to think. I was made to eat. My God, yes. Eat and drink
and sleep with Catherine. To-night maybe. No that was impossible. But
to-morrow night, and a good meal and sheets and never going away again
except together. Probably have to go damned quickly. She would go. I
knew she would go. When would we go? That was something to think about.
It was getting dark. I lay and thought where we would go. There were
many places.
BOOK IV
CHAPTER XXXIII
I dropped off the train in Milan as it slowed to come into the station
early in the morning before it was light. I crossed the track and came
out between some buildings and down onto the street. A wine shop was
open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of
swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by
wine-glasses. The proprietor was behind the bar. Two soldiers sat at a
table. I stood at the bar and drank a glass of coffee and ate a piece of
bread. The coffee was gray with milk, and I skimmed the milk scum off
the top with a piece of bread. The proprietor looked at me.
“You want a glass of grappa?”
“No thanks.”
“On me,” he said and poured a small glass and pushed it toward me.
“What’s happening at the front?”
“I would not know.”
“They are drunk,” he said, moving his hand toward the two soldiers. I
could believe him. They looked drunk.
“Tell me,” he said, “what is happening at the front?”
“I would not know about the front.”
“I saw you come down the wall. You came off the train.”
“There is a big retreat.”
“I read the papers. What happens? Is it over?”
“I don’t think so.”
He filled the glass with grappa from a short bottle. “If you are in
trouble,” he said, “I can keep you.”
“I am not in trouble.”
“If you are in trouble stay here with me.”
“Where does one stay?”
“In the building. Many stay here. Any who are in trouble stay here.”
“Are many in trouble?”
“It depends on the trouble. You are a South American?”
“No.”
“Speak Spanish?”
“A little.”
He wiped off the bar.
“It is hard now to leave the country but in no way impossible.”
“I have no wish to leave.”
“You can stay here as long as you want. You will see what sort of man I
am.”
“I have to go this morning but I will remember the address to return.”
He shook his head. “You won’t come back if you talk like that. I thought
you were in real trouble.”
“I am in no trouble. But I value the address of a friend.”
I put a ten-lira note on the bar to pay for the coffee.
“Have a grappa with me,” I said.
“It is not necessary.”
“Have one.”
He poured the two glasses.
“Remember,” he said. “Come here. Do not let other people take you in.
Here you are all right.”
“I am sure.”
“You are sure?”
“Yes.”
He was serious. “Then let me tell you one thing. Do not go about with
that coat.”
“Why?”
“On the sleeves it shows very plainly where the stars have been cut
away. The cloth is a different color.”
I did not say anything.
“If you have no papers I can give you papers.”
“What papers?”
“Leave-papers.”
“I have no need for papers. I have papers.”
“All right,” he said. “But if you need papers I can get what you wish.”
“How much are such papers?”
“It depends on what they are. The price is reasonable.”
“I don’t need any now.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m all right,” I said.
When I went out he said, “Don’t forget that I am your friend.”
“No.”
“I will see you again,” he said.
“Good,” I said.
Outside I kept away from the station, where there were military police,
and picked up a cab at the edge of the little park. I gave the driver
the address of the hospital. At the hospital I went to the porter’s
lodge. His wife embraced me. He shook my hand.
“You are back. You are safe.”
“Yes.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“Yes.”
“How are you, Tenente? How are you?” the wife asked.
“Fine.”
“Won’t you have breakfast with us?”
“No, thank you. Tell me is Miss Barkley here at the hospital now?”
“Miss Barkley?”
“The English lady nurse.”
“His girl,” the wife said. She patted my arm and smiled.
“No,” the porter said. “She is away.”
My heart went down. “You are sure? I mean the tall blonde English young
lady.”
“I am sure. She is gone to Stresa.”
“When did she go?”
“She went two days ago with the other lady English.”
“Good,” I said. “I wish you to do something for me. Do not tell any one
you have seen me. It is very important.”
“I won’t tell any one,” the porter said. I gave him a ten-lira note. He
pushed it away.
“I promise you I will tell no one,” he said. “I don’t want any money.”
“What can we do for you, Signor Tenente?” his wife asked.
“Only that,” I said.
“We are dumb,” the porter said. “You will let me know anything I can
do?”
“Yes,” I said. “Good-by. I will see you again.”
They stood in the door, looking after me.
I got into the cab and gave the driver the address of Simmons, one of
the men I knew who was studying singing.
Simmons lived a long way out in the town toward the Porta Magenta. He
was still in bed and sleepy when I went to see him.
“You get up awfully early, Henry,” he said.
“I came in on the early train.”
“What’s all this retreat? Were you at the front? Will you have a
cigarette? They’re in that box on the table.” It was a big room with a
bed beside the wall, a piano over on the far side and a dresser and
table. I sat on a chair by the bed. Simmons sat propped up by the
pillows and smoked.
“I’m in a jam, Sim,” I said.
“So am I,” he said. “I’m always in a jam. Won’t you smoke?”
“No,” I said. “What’s the procedure in going to Switzerland?”
“For you? The Italians wouldn’t let you out of the country.”
“Yes. I know that. But the Swiss. What will they do?”
“They intern you.”
“I know. But what’s the mechanics of it?”
“Nothing. It’s very simple. You can go anywhere. I think you just have
to report or something. Why? Are you fleeing the police?”
“Nothing definite yet.”
“Don’t tell me if you don’t want. But it would be interesting to hear.
Nothing happens here. I was a great flop at Piacenza.”
“I’m awfully sorry.”
“Oh yes—I went very badly. I sung well too. I’m going to try it again
at the Lyrico here.”
“I’d like to be there.”
“You’re awfully polite. You aren’t in a bad mess, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t tell me if you don’t want. How do you happen to be away from the
bloody front?”
“I think I’m through with it.”
“Good boy. I always knew you had sense. Can I help you any way?”
“You’re awfully busy.”
“Not a bit of it, my dear Henry. Not a bit of it. I’d be happy to do
anything.”
“You’re about my size. Would you go out and buy me an outfit of civilian
clothes? I’ve clothes but they’re all at Rome.”
“You did live there, didn’t you? It’s a filthy place. How did you ever
live there?”
“I wanted to be an architect.”
“That’s no place for that. Don’t buy clothes. I’ll give you all the
clothes you want. I’ll fit you out so you’ll be a great success. Go in
that dressing room. There’s a closet. Take anything you want. My dear
fellow, you don’t want to buy clothes.”
“I’d rather buy them, Sim.”
“My dear fellow, it’s easier for me to let you have them than go out and
buy them. Have you got a passport? You won’t get far without a
passport.”
“Yes. I’ve still got my passport.”
“Then get dressed, my dear fellow, and off to old Helvetia.”
“It’s not that simple. I have to go up to Stresa first.”
“Ideal, my dear fellow. You just row a boat across. If I wasn’t trying
to sing, I’d go with you. I’ll go yet.”
“You could take up yodelling.”
“My dear fellow, I’ll take up yodelling yet. I really can sing though.
That’s the strange part.”
“I’ll bet you can sing.”
He lay back in bed smoking a cigarette.
“Don’t bet too much. But I can sing though. It’s damned funny, but I
can. I like to sing. Listen.” He roared into “Africana,” his neck
swelling, the veins standing out. “I can sing,” he said. “Whether they
like it or not.” I looked out of the window. “I’ll go down and let my
cab go.”
“Come back up, my dear fellow, and we’ll have breakfast.” He stepped out
of bed, stood straight, took a deep breath and commenced doing bending
exercises. I went downstairs and paid off the cab.
CHAPTER XXXIV
In civilian clothes I felt a masquerader. I had been in uniform a long
time and I missed the feeling of being held by your clothes. The
trousers felt very floppy. I had bought a ticket at Milan for Stresa. I
had also bought a new hat. I could not wear Sim’s hat but his clothes
were fine. They smelled of tobacco and as I sat in the compartment and
looked out the window the new hat felt very new and the clothes very
old. I myself felt as sad as the wet Lombard country that was outside
through the window. There were some aviators in the compartment who did
not think much of me. They avoided looking at me and were very scornful
of a civilian my age. I did not feel insulted. In the old days I would
have insulted them and picked a fight. They got off at Gallarate and I
was glad to be alone. I had the paper but I did not read it because I
did not want to read about the war. I was going to forget the war. I had
made a separate peace. I felt damned lonely and was glad when the train
got to Stresa.
At the station I had expected to see the porters from the hotels but
there was no one. The season had been over a long time and no one met
the train. I got down from the train with my bag, it was Sim’s bag, and
very light to carry, being empty except for two shirts, and stood under
the roof of the station in the rain while the train went on. I found a
man in the station and asked him if he knew what hotels were open. The
Grand-Hôtel & des Isles Borromées was open and several small hotels that
stayed open all the year. I started in the rain for the Isles Borromées
carrying my bag. I saw a carriage coming down the street and signalled
to the driver. It was better to arrive in a carriage. We drove up to the
carriage entrance of the big hotel and the concierge came out with an
umbrella and was very polite.
I took a good room. It was very big and light and looked out on the
lake. The clouds were down over the lake but it would be beautiful with
the sunlight. I was expecting my wife, I said. There was a big double
bed, a _letto matrimoniale_ with a satin coverlet. The hotel was very
luxurious. I went down the long halls, down the wide stairs, through the
rooms to the bar. I knew the barman and sat on a high stool and ate
salted almonds and potato chips. The martini felt cool and clean.
“What are you doing here in _borghese_?” the barman asked after he had
mixed a second martini.
“I am on leave. Convalescing-leave.”
“There is no one here. I don’t know why they keep the hotel open.”
“Have you been fishing?”
“I’ve caught some beautiful pieces. Trolling this time of year you catch
some beautiful pieces.”
“Did you ever get the tobacco I sent?”
“Yes. Didn’t you get my card?”
I laughed. I had not been able to get the tobacco. It was American
pipe-tobacco that he wanted, but my relatives had stopped sending it or
it was being held up. Anyway it never came.
“I’ll get some somewhere,” I said. “Tell me have you seen two English
girls in the town? They came here day before yesterday.”
“They are not at the hotel.”
“They are nurses.”
“I have seen two nurses. Wait a minute, I will find out where they are.”
“One of them is my wife,” I said. “I have come here to meet her.”
“The other is my wife.”
“I am not joking.”
“Pardon my stupid joke,” he said. “I did not understand.” He went away
and was gone quite a little while. I ate olives, salted almonds and
potato chips and looked at myself in civilian clothes in the mirror
behind the bar. The bartender came back. “They are at the little hotel
near the station,” he said.
“How about some sandwiches?”
“I’ll ring for some. You understand there is nothing here, now there are
no people.”
“Isn’t there really any one at all?”
“Yes. There are a few people.”
The sandwiches came and I ate three and drank a couple more martinis. I
had never tasted anything so cool and clean. They made me feel
civilized. I had had too much red wine, bread, cheese, bad coffee and
grappa. I sat on the high stool before the pleasant mahogany, the brass
and the mirrors and did not think at all. The barman asked me some
question.
“Don’t talk about the war,” I said. The war was a long way away. Maybe
there wasn’t any war. There was no war here. Then I realized it was over
for me. But I did not have the feeling that it was really over. I had
the feeling of a boy who thinks of what is happening at a certain hour
at the schoolhouse from which he has played truant.
Catherine and Helen Ferguson were at supper when I came to their hotel.
Standing in the hallway I saw them at table. Catherine’s face was away
from me and I saw the line of her hair and her cheek and her lovely neck
and shoulders. Ferguson was talking. She stopped when I came in.
“My God,” she said.
“Hello,” I said.
“Why it’s you!” Catherine said. Her face lighted up. She looked too
happy to believe it. I kissed her. Catherine blushed and I sat down at
the table.
“You’re a fine mess,” Ferguson said. “What are you doing here? Have you
eaten?”
“No.” The girl who was serving the meal came in and I told her to bring
a plate for me. Catherine looked at me all the time, her eyes happy.
“What are you doing in mufti?” Ferguson asked.
“I’m in the Cabinet.”
“You’re in some mess.”
“Cheer up, Fergy. Cheer up just a little.”
“I’m not cheered by seeing you. I know the mess you’ve gotten this girl
into. You’re no cheerful sight to me.”
Catherine smiled at me and touched me with her foot under the table.
“No one got me in a mess, Fergy. I get in my own messes.”
“I can’t stand him,” Ferguson said. “He’s done nothing but ruin you with
his sneaking Italian tricks. Americans are worse than Italians.”
“The Scotch are such a moral people,” Catherine said.
“I don’t mean that. I mean his Italian sneakiness.”
“Am I sneaky, Fergy?”
“You are. You’re worse than sneaky. You’re like a snake. A snake with an
Italian uniform: with a cape around your neck.”
“I haven’t got an Italian uniform now.”
“That’s just another example of your sneakiness. You had a love affair
all summer and got this girl with child and now I suppose you’ll sneak
off.”
I smiled at Catherine and she smiled at me.
“We’ll both sneak off,” she said.
“You’re two of the same thing,” Ferguson said. “I’m ashamed of you,
Catherine Barkley. You have no shame and no honor and you’re as sneaky
as he is.”
“Don’t, Fergy,” Catherine said and patted her hand. “Don’t denounce me.
You know we like each other.”
“Take your hand away,” Ferguson said. Her face was red. “If you had any
shame it would be different. But you’re God knows how many months gone
with child and you think it’s a joke and are all smiles because your
seducer’s come back. You’ve no shame and no feelings.” She began to cry.
Catherine went over and put her arm around her. As she stood comforting
Ferguson, I could see no change in her figure.
“I don’t care,” Ferguson sobbed. “I think it’s dreadful.”
“There, there, Fergy,” Catherine comforted her. “I’ll be ashamed. Don’t
cry, Fergy. Don’t cry, old Fergy.”
“I’m not crying,” Ferguson sobbed. “I’m not crying. Except for the awful
thing you’ve gotten into.” She looked at me. “I hate you,” she said.
“She can’t make me not hate you. You dirty sneaking American Italian.”
Her eyes and nose were red with crying.
Catherine smiled at me.
“Don’t you smile at him with your arm around me.”
“You’re unreasonable, Fergy.”
“I know it,” Ferguson sobbed. “You mustn’t mind me, either of you. I’m
so upset. I’m not reasonable. I know it. I want you both to be happy.”
“We’re happy,” Catherine said. “You’re a sweet Fergy.”
Ferguson cried again. “I don’t want you happy the way you are. Why don’t
you get married? You haven’t got another wife have you?”
“No,” I said. Catherine laughed.
“It’s nothing to laugh about,” Ferguson said. “Plenty of them have other
wives.”
“We’ll be married, Fergy,” Catherine said, “if it will please you.”
“Not to please me. You should want to be married.”
“We’ve been very busy.”
“Yes. I know. Busy making babies.” I thought she was going to cry again
but she went into bitterness instead. “I suppose you’ll go off with him
now to-night?”
“Yes,” said Catherine. “If he wants me.”
“What about me?”
“Are you afraid to stay here alone?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then I’ll stay with you.”
“No, go on with him. Go with him right away. I’m sick of seeing both of
you.”
“We’d better finish dinner.”
“No. Go right away.”
“Fergy, be reasonable.”
“I say get out right away. Go away both of you.”
“Let’s go then,” I said. I was sick of Fergy.
“You do want to go. You see you want to leave me even to eat dinner
alone. I’ve always wanted to go to the Italian lakes and this is how it
is. Oh, Oh,” she sobbed, then looked at Catherine and choked.
“We’ll stay till after dinner,” Catherine said. “And I’ll not leave you
alone if you want me to stay. I won’t leave you alone, Fergy.”
“No. No. I want you to go. I want you to go.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m
so unreasonable. Please don’t mind me.”
The girl who served the meal had been upset by all the crying. Now as
she brought in the next course she seemed relieved that things were
better.