The_Gallery THE GALLERY THE HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND EVANSTON HARPER COLOPHON BOOKS Hov £GALLERY by JOHN HORNE BURNS How are ye bl ind, ye treaders-down of cities] -The Trojan Women �D EVANSTON Ps THE C,ALLERY • Copyright 1947 by John Home Burns. Printed in the UnitedStates of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used orreproduce� in any 1r:anner wha�soe,!er w_i�hout w.ritten permi�sion except in thecase of brie] quotations embodied In critical articles and reoieios. For informa­tion address Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, NewYork 16, N. Y. First HARPER COLOPHON Edition published 1963 by Harper & Row, Publishers,Incorporated, New York and Evanston. in memory of ROBERT B. MAC LENNAN Germany, 7 April 1945 and for HOLGER & BEULAH HAGEN n/ed ill/he Cnileo R mo; be �ed or lion except In Inl 'So for in/orma' J)rd Street, New All characters whose portraits hang in this gallery are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons Jiving or dead is pure coincidence. Only the descriptions of Casablanca, Algiers, and Naples are based on fact. FO !EVI !ElEIGEIG NIN� thi gallery Floorp/an of THE GALLERY Entra�ce FIRST PORTRAIT: The T'renchjoot of Michael Patrick 3 FIRST PROMENADE: (Casablanca) 18 SECOND PORTRAIT: Louella 25 SECOND PROMENADE: (Fedhala) 45 THIRD PORTRAIT: Hal 54 THIRD PROMENADE: (Casablanca-Algiers) go FOURTH PORTRAIT: Father Donovan and Chaplain Bascom g8 FOURTH PROMENADE: (Algiers) 117 FIFTH PORTRAIT: Momma 125 FIFTH PROMENADE: (Algiers) 153 SIXTH PORTRAIT: The Leaf 160 SIXTH PROMENADE: (Naples) 206 SEVENTH PORTRAIT: Giulia 215 SEVENTH PROMENADE: (Naples) 259 EIGHTH PORTRAIT: Queen Penicillin 269 EIGHTH PROMENADE: (Naples) 2g8 NINTH PORTRAIT: Moe 312 Exit 342 vii Entrance THERE'S AN ARCADE IN NAPLES THAT THEY CALL THE GALLERIA Umberto Primo. It's a cross between a railroad station and a church. You think you're in a museum till you see the bars and the shops. Once this Galleria had a dome of glass, but the bombings of Naples shattered this skylight, and tinkling glass fell like cruel snow to the pavement. But life went on in the Galleria. In August, 1944, it was the unofficial heart of Naples. It was a living and sub­ dividing cell of vermouth, Allied soldiery, and the Italian people. Everybody in Naples came to the Galleria Umberto. At night the flags, the columns, the archangels blowing their trumpets on the cornices, the metal grids that held the glass before the bombs broke it heard more than they saw in the daytime. There was t.he pad of American combat boots on the prowl, the slide of Neapolitan sandals, the click of British hobnails out of rhythm from vermouth. There were screams and coos and slaps and stumbles. There were the hasty press of kisses and sibilance of urine on the pavement. By moonlight, shadows singly and in pairs chased from corner to corner. In the Galleria Umberto you could walk from portrait to portrait, thinking to yourself during your promenade.... FIRST PORTRAIT The Trenchfoot of Michael Patrick HE LIMPED HURRIEDLY ALONG VIA ROMA, BUMPING INTO THE swarms coming the other way. He kept saying scusate be­ cause he wanted to make amends for the way the other doughfeet yelled at the Neapolitans and called them paesan. Meanwhile his chin kept peeling back over his shoulder, for he had the feeling that two MP's were stalking him. In his pocket there was a hospital pass to which he'd forged a name. He had butter­ flies in his stomach from last night's Italian gin, and the sun and his sweat weren't helping things much. The speed with which he Was moving hurt the feet inside his boots: it was all too clear why the medics wouldn't have given him a Naples pass until it was time to send him back to the line. This was why, limping more than a little he'd taken off to Naples every night this week. The nurses couldn't figure out why his feet healed so slowly. Naples. The name spelled a certain freedom and relief to him, in opposition to that other idea of being flown up to south of Florence.... He saw two little concrete posts that made a stile into a covered arcade. Inside there was a crowd loitering, almost as big as that pushing along Via Roma. He sighed to be out of the relentless moving on the sidewalk. It seemed cooler in this arcade. He couldn't see an MP, and there were a lot of bars. He preferred not to sit at one of the tables on the pavement. What he was looking for was some bar as small and tight as a telephone booth. There he could wedge his chest and swallow one vermouth after another. The butterflies would go away, and he could dwell lovingly on what he would do after the sun went down. 3 4 THE GALLERY To do? the important thing was to forget that tomorrow or the next day his feet would be well, and he'd be waiting for that plane at Capodichino. After that the truck ride toward Florence, with the sound of the guns getting stronger.... Perhaps his trenchfoot was something sent him by Saint Rita of Cascia, to whom his mother used to have special devotion. Saint Rita had been pierced with thorns during her ecstasies. And he, after standing in his wet foxhole for weeks and listening to the artillery go screaming toward Florence, had been pierced with trenchfoot. Perhaps it was some subconscious cowardice that had broken out in his feet. He'd thought for a long time anyhow that he was going to crack, and trenchfoot was a more honorable way of doing it than becoming a psycho. So he smiled down on the Cl? patch on his left shoulder and thanked Saint Rita that he'd been able to take the cure in Naples. First he wanted some vermouth. Then some music. At the GI Red Cross he'd picked up two tickets to the San Carlo while work.. ing a little sympathy out of Betty, rapid and abstracted behind the information desk. She was thinking about her date with a colonel tonight. She didn't have much time for him except her hospitality song and dance. But she'd introduced him to music in Oran. So tonight he would hear La Boheme. And after the opera he hoped for that last release. He'd never been a lover in his life, but tonight he'd like to have somebody kiss him, to feel somebody's disinterested hands going all over his body. He didn't much care whom the hands belonged to, but he cringed at the idea of paying on Via Roma for such a rite. In the middle of the arcade he came upon a bar that was nearly empty. On the marble .counter were two shining boilers of the coffee machines. He ripped out of his chest pocket a beatup hundred-lira note and bought some chits. His hands were quivering under their Ayrab and Italian silver rings. The fat Neapolitan behind the cashbox didn't miss this jittering of his fingers. A double vermouth was set at his elbow by a girl wearing a fur­ piece. She was proud of this and kept emphasizing it by stroking it in the August afternoon. She missed being pretty because she was so mouselike. As she served him, she looked at him, but then her eyes darted away. Then he decided he wouldn't take off his cap, for he was getting bald at twenty-seven. -My red face, he said, isn't from drinking, but from those C-rations they feed us. The look she threw at the fat Neapolitan made it evident that THE TRENCHFOOT OF MICHAEL PATRICK she was as strictly brought up as Neapolitans could be in wartime. Then her eyes went down to the two wrist watches strapped side by side on his left wrist, like twins in bed. -Tedeschi watches, he said, unstrapping one for her. I figured they couldn't use them. Stiffs can't tell time.... Her father slithered around from behind the cash register, came over, and held out his plump hairy hand for the watch. He weighed it, smelled it, tapped it, and listened to its pulse with a flicker of love in his eyes. The deal was on. -You speak, Joe. Quanto? -0 my back! Sure you don't want to buy my cigarettes too? But I smoke two packs a day. So I can't help your black market, except to get rid of a Tedeschi watch or two. The signorina's eyes began to sparkle in a pleased way, as though her father had telegraphed her to play up to him. He began to wonder if perhaps she might come to the opera with him and how it would feel to touch her hair. Her breasts pressed the counter as she leaned over to look at the watch her father was appraising. He thought that no GI had touched her-yet. -Quattro mila lire, the fat Neapolitan said. Forty dollar, Joe. -0 my aching back. And for a Tedeschi watch too. His elbow gave a jerk and the glass of vermouth splintered on the floor. Its smell arose in the hot air-sweet, dry, and wistful. The signorina looked disdainful but served another glass. From his cash drawer her father counted out four thousand-lira notes in Allied military currency. That left only one Tedeschi watch to be sold. He toyed again with the idea of taking the signorina to the opera, of sliding the Tedeschi watch on her wrist in some darkened box. She had slim hands with nails a little gray under their chipped vermilion paint. He leaned on both his elbows, thrusting his face a little closer to her furpiece. And the second glass of vermouth hit the floor. -My mother said I was very high-strung. The Neapolitan flounced out with a broom and swept up the splinters. The signorina drew another double vermouth setting it quite a length from his elbow. He watched the cold superiority creep over her face as pettishly she stroked her furpiece. She looked at him the way a nun regards the convent cat who has just made a mess in the parlor. He laughed to cover his chagrin, but he didn't care much for the sound of his laugh. It trailed into a cough, and he started thinking up some more ways to get in touch ut from thOlt evident thaI 5 6 TH E GALLERY with the signorina. She was only a foot away from him, but she seemed to be receding into an icy planet. He had the impression that she'd contine to sell him double vermouths till closing time, but that she considered him just some maggot in boots and suntans that had wriggled out of the cracks in the arcade. And with this thought his elbow flinched into a spasm that sent the third glass jingling to the floor. -1 guess the point is to drink it, he said, laughing again. Out came the broom; a fourth vermouth was poured. Panicky, he lifted it to his lips, noticing that his whole arm vibrated like a drunkard's who laces a towel round his neck to guide a pick-me-up to his mouth in the morning. He closed his eyes and swallowed _ three doubles in a row. He waited, leaning his red face in his hands, till he could feel the stuff flickering in his gut wi th an uneasy flame. The tremors in his muscles gave one final flip and ironed _ out into a kind of feverish peace. He lifted his glance to look at -the signorina, but she'd moved off to wait on some New Zealand soldier at the far end of the bar. Where she'd been standing, he now saw his own face in the mirror behind the tiers of wine bottles . . -Michael Patrick, he said, how even your own mother could have loved you? . . . � - � HAL 75 though they'd already entered into conversation. The elbow touch­ ing his own on the bar was eloquent though motionless. At last Hal couldn't stand the atmosphere any longer. He narrowed his eyes and slowly turned his head to look out over the club terrace. At his left was a parachute captain who seemed to be looking through him. Apparently he too had been waiting till the psychic charges he'd been hurling at Hal would energize him into turning, as the sun eggs on a sunflower. The captain was shorter than Hal and slighter. He had a tension as exquisite as the fake repose of Greek athletes in marble. His jet hair was so tightly curled that it had an energy all its own. He was dressed in combat fashion. His sleeves were halfway up his elbows. He wore no tie. The hair grew up his throat and on his neat tight arms. His eyes were set at a slant, and his teeth were white and daggerlike. He seemed a mon .. arch of some race of cats. -Look at them, will you? he said to Hal, as though they were resuming. a conversation. -Whom? The parachute captain put one of his boots on the brass rail and kicked it. Then with a lazy tension he made a gesture including all the other people leaning on the bar: -This race of straphangers and human adding machines. . .. Look at the faces of those nurses. Sleek inanity sleepwalking in a beauty parlor. Look at the paunches on those majors.... His vituperation came out slowly, with the detailed passion of an expert at murder. -You don't like Americans? Hal said. He was fascinated by the green eyes and by the parachute insignia, wings suspended like a bat's at dusk. -Who does, except themselves? Automatons from the world's greatest factory.... They have no souls, you see ... only the ability to add up to one million. Did you ever hear them try to carryon a sensible conversation? . . . Oh, they've got quite an ingenious system of government, I grain you. But none of them gives a damn about it except when it gets them into a war.... They've got less maturity or individuality than any other people in the world. Poetry and music to them-why they're deaf to anything that isn't sold by an advertising agency.... They don't know how to treat other human beings. With all their screaming about democracy, none of them has the remotest conception of human dignity ..•• Listen to the sounds that Negro band is making. That's their American music. Sexual moans and thumps.•.. Thev don't know 76 THE GALLERY how to make love to a woman, and all their hatreds are between football teams or states of the same Union or for people they don't understand. Victims of the mob spirit and regimentation. . .. They've never really suffered. But when they get the first twinge of toothache of the soul, they start feeling sorry for themselves instead of learning any wisdom from pain. -You're talking treason, Hal said. It was almost his old manner of listening and advising in the bars of New York. -Truth is always treasonous, the captain said, clicking his glass with a soft ferocity on the bar. And now these poor dears are in­ volved in a war. This war is simply the largest mass murder in history. Theirs is the only country that has enough food and gasoline and raw materials. So they're expending these like mad to wipe out the others in the world who'd like a cut of their riches. In order to preserve their standard of living for a few more years, they've dreamed up ideologies. Or their big business has. So they're at war with nearly everybody else in the world. The rest of the world hates Americans because they're so crude and stupid and unimaginative.... They will win this war. They'll reduce Europe to a state of fifteen hundred years ago. Then their businessmen and their alphabetical bureaucracies will go into the shambles of Milan, Berlin, and Tokyo and open up new plants. . .. Inter­ national carpetbaggers.... Millions of human beings will be dead, and most of the human feelings will be dead forever.... Hurray for our side.... We're destroying all the new ideas and all the little men of the world to make way for our mass production and our mass thinking and our mass entertainment. Then we can go back to our United States, that green little island in the midst of a smoking world. Then we can kill all the Negroes and the Jews. Then we'll start on Russia. -Not pessimistic, are you? Hal asked feebly, watching the glowing green eyes. -Me? the captain said. I'm the most optimistic man in the world. I see what is happening to the human race. It gets worse all the time.... What an obscene comedy. The parachute captain had an almost .effet� way. of speaking, like poets in the Village. This contrasted WIth hIS agile body and the violence of his passion. -When shall I see you again? Hal said, disengaging himself softly. ." . . -I am buried near 'Taormina on the Island of Sicily. I WIsh I � in a \VOl'! rna ni� be! out fati. H he anc neVi !ecr, brllFren �he'� the�e ban1 !POK� every nera te!!e" -( Hal He mnrl! COuch hi!iI( time!: t ��\.\.H\ HAL " IIed� ateb�n --"------------------------- . 'Q�\e tb�1� had a few flowers on my grave. • • • When I was alive, I loved ,mentatiQQ flowers. m\t �i· �V�; Afterwards Hal often thought of the parachute captain. His life � in Oran became a round in which he did his work, enclosed in himself. He made no further a ttempt to enter into the lives of '\amll: others. Nor did he visit any army psychiatrists. He knew he'd arrived already at a point where no one schooled in Freud or Jung • :� I could help him, any more than a bespectacled young psychiatrist ..."'"J, ".}.� froin CCNY could have helped Jesus Christ in the Garden by ':. psychoanalyzing the bloody sweat. �" Nevertheless Hal went at the problem with a simplicity finer �.':: than any with which he'd ever attacked the enigma of his life here­ ,�.�"o •• ,.""".',,. tofore. He went on the wagon from January to July of 1944. Stop. . ping his drinking had no particular effect on him for better or for .' worse. He smoked a little less, and the evenings dragged more. x: That heightened awareness of his was still with him. After a deep ;. night's sleep, sweltering under his mosquito netting, he could never '. be sure whether he'd really slept at all. He seemed merely to blank .. - ....�· .. ,.o .... _" out for eight hours. Awaking, he was neither better rested nor less fatigued than when he went to bed. He knew no French, for some block arose in his mind whenever he tried to learn a Romance language. Yet he made the acquaint- _ ........... '-0,. ance of an Oranaise who worked in the officers' PX. This girl never forced an issue. She was as cool as a mannequin. From some secret source of supply she had a jeep-she'd been loved by a brigadier general in the ATC, by an American ensign, and by a ,I French colonel from Sidi-Bel-Abbes. When Hal's work was finished, she'd meet him with her jeep and relinquish the wheel to him. On 0- these outings she wore polaroid glasses, wedgies, and a blue silk bandanna about her hair. Unlike IIY'st French girls she seldom � spoke; and when she used her French on him, she pantomimed everything without a trace of nervousness. Evenings, he'd stay at her apartment and sit drinking fruit juice while she played "Tris­ ... tesse" on her piano. -C'est ton destin, she said once, d'aller au bout de toi-meme, !(i Hal understood what she meant . . : � He often slept on the couch in her apartment. Sometimes at sunrise she'd come to his side in her blue kimono. She'd sit on his �J3iogt couch and watch while he passed without a jar from the depths of his sleep into full wakefulness. Then she'd take his hand. Some­ times she kissed his wrists or the lobes of his ears. 78 THE GALLERY -Je t'aime pour ton angoisse indefinie. He understood what she meant by that too. In a sense he was happier with Jeanne than he'd ever been. She had all his sensibilities plus a fortitude he didn't own. She was the first with whom he had the certainty that anything he needed would be found in her, and with an abundance that would stop flowing only with her death. Jeanne was like a tube reaching into eternity that sucked up a grace of oxygen to one asphyxiating. She never seemed much moved by anything except when he took her hand or when she read aloud to him from the Jour de Colere of Pierre Emanuel. Hal caught very little of this poem. But often he thought that his only salvation would be to marry Jeanne. For she had that awareness and resignation of spirit that has sipped everything lovely in life, letting such values be her guide through some mortal experience that has purged her. The focus of her compassion was in her breasts, geometric as cones. Her nipples seemed to see. In June, 1944, when Jeanne had brought him to a tranquillitylike a magnetic field pointing all one way, she left him to visit her mother in Casablanca for a month. When he drove her to the station in Oran, he knew and she knew that they'd never see each other again. It was terminating in the silvery casualness with which it had begun. As she mounted the battered wagon-lit, she turned back and kissed him on the forehead, saying: -Et je dis, en quittant tes charmes, Sans larmes: Adieu! ... The cadence of her voice told him what they were both thinking. for three days her spirit remained with him intact. He continued to sleep at her empty apartment, to which she'd left him the key. But on the fourth day his old sickness seized him with redoubled violence, as though Jeanne's nursing had only caused its virus to become dormant. Hal now couldn't bear the company of other Americans at all, particularly of his brother officers. It was difficult for him to sit still in one place without chain-smoking to distract himself from a compulsion to keep in constant motion. He couldn't look anybody in the face. While giving orders to his GI's, he'd walk up and down his office wringing his hands and feigning to concentrate. Sometimes it took every gram of control to keep from telling his first sergeant to please go away and let him alone. And he decided he'd have to fall off the wagon because at least having COy, Th� had hit spr of � aD] I!I at had on t plar �tat� �o mess( more boo� street On mess, wine, the� him, , HAL a glass of something numbing in his hand gave him an excuse for remaining stationary in one spot. When these fits were at their height, Hal had a feeling as though he'd like to dash the whole twenty-five thousand miles encircling the world. Then he'd come back to his point of departure and find himself standing there leering and saying, Welcome home, old goon.... He meditated putting in for a transfer to Casablanca to be near Jeanne. But he knew and she knew that she'd done everything in her power for him, that her therapy was only a breathing spell in the denouement. Even now at the Hotel Anfa or at Villa Moss she'd be allowing someone else to possess her cool body, the while she covered her eyes and thought of Hal and shook her head sadly. There'd been nothing cloying in her pity for him. But what Jeanne had given him was a sip of life, for which he had no thirst. He'd read enough romances to know that he'd already entered, through no fault or desire of his own, into league with those who are on the other side of the looking glass. He got a five days' leave forced on him, for his CO had noticed " his removed emotional state and had chalked it up to overseas blues. He booked passage on a plane to Cairo and stopped off in Algiers, both to see the city and to renew the acquaintance of some of his friends from OCS. He left the plane at Maison Blanche and hitchhiked into Algiers. It lay before him in the July afternoon, sprawled on its hillside like the segment of an amphitheater. Dozens of barrage balloons floated above the harbor like silver sausages on a blue plate. In the offices of AFHQ Hal sat on his friends' desks and cocked a critical eye to see whether possibly some new insight or mercy had been born in them as a result of being overseas and brooding . on the war. They cursed the Ayrabs and said that the French were playing us for all they could get. All their meannesses, latent in the States, had only been crystallized by a year in Africa. So Hal declined their offers to dinner at a dozen sumptuous messes and went out to walk along the Rue d'Isly. There were . more British than Americans in evidence, clumping along in their boots and gaiters and shorts. And at 1800 these British all left the streets for a few minutes to put on their long trousers. On a ramp near the Hotel Aletti Hal found a transient officers' mess. The mea] was good. Discovering that he could buy a bottle of wine, he fell off the wagon. Along with the brown pork chops and the greenery on his plate the strong white wine began to work upon him. He knew what was coming-the old desolating anxiety and 79 80 THE GALLERY -, heartache stirred in his bowels. He knew he oughtn't to finish the whole bottle, but he did and lit a cigarette. The P/W lieutenant in charge of the mess had been leaning against a column and looking at Hal with a luminous interest. This Italian resembled a little the parachute captain, but there was also in his brown triangular face a print of the wildness of Reggio Calabria. He treated his waiters with a gentleness, unlike the domineering of the Italian officers over their soldati in the P/Wenclosures around Oran. This Italian lieutenant knew some secret of relaxation, for he nestled his thick hair indolently against the column and crossed his bare legs. He was wearing his old Italian khaki shorts, but his shirt was American suntan P/W issue, with stars attached to the tabs of his open collar. Finally Hal lit another cigarette and held one out to the P/Wlieutenant. The Italian bounded toward him as though he'd been preparing this movement for the past five minutes. The flare from Hal's cigarette lighter threw into relief the brown eyes and thesleek head. The Italian took a puff and came to attention. -Grazie tanto.... Lei mi sembra COS! gentile.•.. Se tutti fossero come Lei. -But I don't know a word of Italian, Hal said. The Italian kept at rigid attention by Hal's table. Now it was hard enough for Hal to keep up any intercourse with people whose language he could understand. Therefore a huge tension reared inside him when he knew he couldn't get a word across to the P/Wlieutenant. Hal wasn't one of those extroverts who could shout in English at someone ignorant of the language, and use violent gestures, hoping thereby to force some semantic rapport. Neverthe­ less he motioned the Italian to sit down opposite him. The lieuten­ ant in his turn motioned one of the waiters to bring another dish of ice cream. Hal had to eat it. The ice cream didn't belong to the Italian, but there was a miraculous graciousness in his bounty as he smiled his melting smile and talked a soft stream of complimentsof which Hal didn't understand a word. Yet it wasn't so difficult as he'd feared. He didn't have to cope with the Italian. When an American started to talk, Hal always felt like asking him to pleaseshut Hp. But there was nothing offensive about this elegant little man. Perhaps he was lonely after thirteen months of imprisonment.Perhaps Italians, being gregarious and rhetorical, became even more melancholy than British and Americans. -Mi permetta, signor tenente. Mi chiarno Scipione. E Lei non puo immaginare quanto mi piacerebbe avere un arnico sincero. Beh ... aerre a �ea d'AI� -� H� Ha oners nato -1 Nor thq Ri ing I bro,� On since mark A�ao dined said t olal! own s verted Britis �ratit Leh T with begi Clu� went he d imro old t HAL -If I were going to be in Algiers long, Hal said, I could distract myself by teaching you English. I'd like to do something for someone. -Quindi, the P/W lieutenant said. He spread his hands in a deprecating shrug as though to say that their friendship was already a sealed testament. Ho una bellissima stanza qui in un albergo d'Algeri.... Sono tanto, tanto bravi con me gli americani. -All you need is a girl now, Hal said. -Sono quattordici mesi che non tocco una donna, Scipione said. Ho quasi perso il ricordo. Ma ... cosa vuole? E il nostro destino. Hal was aware of the officia! stand on fraternization with pris­ oners of war. But he waved for another bottle of wine. -Caro tenente, mi dispiace. Ma la lunga prigionia mi ha rovi­ nato 10 stomaco. 11 vino non 10 posso pili bere. -In short, Hal said, you won't drink with me. Lucky people. No rough edges in your relations with others to be lubricated with '" the grape. I envy you. Rising abruptly from the table, he shook hands with the gleam­ ing little officer. A look of sodden dismay and regret flooded the brown graceful face. -0 Dio mio, L'ho ofIeso? ... Mi dica, La prego, che fastidio Le ho dato? -It's nothing, nothing, said Hal. Though something told him not to act this way, he turned away with a surgical smile and went out into the city of Algiers. It was 1.1, beginning to grow dark. He went and drank at the Center District Club, where Italian P/W dispensed a potent rum. At midnight he went walking along the Mediterranean and picked up a girl. But he discovered that the rum or his own mind had finally made him impotent. He lay beside her weeping and thinking through the old tale of Narcissus. On July 26, 1944, Hal left Africa. He carried with him its silt, since no one can be on that continent long without forever being marked with something shadowy, brooding, and evanescent as the Ayrabs. He sailed on a British steamer onto which had been sar­ dined the last remnants of Allied Force Headquarters. Everyone said that as soon as the ship sailed the French would clip the hair of all Algerian grisettes and machine-gun the Ayrabs to boost their own sagging prestige. They sailed on an old cruise steamer con­ verted into a troopship. There were sumptuous meals, and the British were most obsequious, as though from some policy of gratitude for lend-lease. The passengers were a garish lot. They'd 81 82 THE GALLERY fi�ul ove tho thel wor !we achi wor been swept out by the last broom to clean AFHQ: French captains involved in some misty liaison, American signal corps officers still carrying telephone wire and switchboards, and unidentified Desert Rats who'd been waiting transportation to the Italian front since the fall of Tunisia. Every night the ship blacked out, for who knew but what Jerry might fly down from southern France and bomb the daylights out of them? Reconnaissance planes had been over Algiers every night in July, 1944. If he bombed this troopship, some of the stoutest old lumber of the Allied armies would go to the bottom. After Hal had swung his bedding roll into the hold, where he bunked in the five-high arrangement, he stood on deck and watched the lights of Algiers shimmer away from him. The barrage balloons still swung aloft in the moonlight. He was leaving Africa forever. There he'd spent almost a year of his life. Some of the aridity ofthe desert had been blown into him. There his personality hadlearned of limitless horizons and the sickening mirage of eternity.There he'd been sliced by the French perfection of detail, but soundlessly, as glass under water can be sheared by a scissors. He tried to sleep a lot on the trip to Italy, but the hold was an inferno in the daytime. And at night the ventilators sounded as though his head were being held under water. So he spent thehours of light hiding under funnels on the deck. To read there were only improving books put in the ship's library by British pietistic societies seeking to turn the traveler's mind to his salvation. Most often Hal read the Gospel of Saint John. He knew he was going to Italy, though security forbade his know­ ing where. The dopesters we�e all certain they'd land in Naples.And Hal, just after a rich English breakfast, when with coffee and a cigarette his spirits would rise to what would be normal in most men-numbness and resignation-used to wonder what he'd find in Italy. Perhaps his African sojourn had been a time of testing, a dark night of the soul. Perhaps in Italy he'd finally blossom out. But in his midnights he knew that Italy would be just one more new place to adjust himself to. And his powers of elasticity were now about as good as a rubber band's that has lain in a sunny attic. In those midnights when he couldn't smoke on deck because of the blackout, Hal used to lean over the rail and glare at the phos­ phorescence of the Mediterranean. He'd seen it from Oran and Algiers. Now he was on it. The Romans rode on it, Shelley wasdrowned in it, Mussolini thought it was his sea. By sunlight it was an aching blue. At midnight it was just another body of water onwhich a ship could float. Sometimes, in the dark, anonymous !unl esca ni� abr� toJ oc in I !rl lot B B It H into oft spr ilie neve flow att Vem were dau�) DU�� snip, �criD ; .. ": ', --�, -- - --. - ., // I' � HAL 83 figures in shorts came and stood beside him and shared his glances over the black water glowing in the wake of the ship. But even though they stood at his elbow, Hal made no attempt to enter their worlds, as he might once have tried to. Once, accosted by a word of greeting, he left the rail and descended swiftly into the sweltering hold. Anything was better than to be talked to. It was his achievement that in crossing the Mediterranean he never said a word to anyone except the gentle Cockney table waiters. He saw the Cape of Bizerte shrouded in its ghostly triangle of sunset. He saw the island of Sicily jutting like a palace. Over those escarpments the spirit of the parachute captain flew. Perhaps at night his spry hairy figure sucked the blood of Sicilian children abroad late in the streets of Palermo. With the dawn of the third morning he arose heavy and sweaty to find birds flapping alongside the ship and a hammerlike mass of ocher rock lifting out of the sea. He saw the eyeless sockets of caves in its sides and many pretty villas perched over crevasses. -That's Capri, someone said to someone else, accenting the last syllable. We'll go and see the grottoes. The airplane drivers do a lot of their shacking there. By noon they were sliding into the harbor of a city. -That's Naples, said the voice that accompanies all travelers. I'd know it from the postcards and the pitchers in the barbershops. Look, that's Vesuvius.... Yessir, the old anthill's smokin. Ain't got over the shock of Anzio yet. ... And see that big thing that looks like a country club at the top of the city? That's Castel Sant'Elmo . . . . I been readin my guidebooks. Hal thought, See Naples and die, wondering if he really might. It had the same open-fan formation, spread on the hills and sliding into the harbor, as Algiers. But it was vaster, Naples. Hal thought of the million lives squirming in that crowded dihedral; of the spray of dialect, of the typhus and DDT, of the flash of colors in the streets where boys slept on their bellies. An odor such as he'd never whiffed before was in the air, a stink and a perfume of dead flowers and human matter and the voice of Saint Thomas Aquinas at the University of Naples and Enrico Caruso dying at Somma Vesuviana and all the spaghetti in the universe. Already the tugs were slithering them into their berth like patient worried little daughters leading a blind old mother. And tiny fishing skiffs water­ bugged it over the bay and careened alongside the British troop­ ship. The fishermen showed their teeth and called out in an inde­ scribable dialect. '- llr ij / � - --- - - ��________._/ i' •• , � • 1', l .. �' r, �... • ,,:J W ;; THE GALLERY84 HAl.....--J Uke HI an a�ro -Ere ther are The with a heard e he'd hal were lei would R He o� two-and Neapoli em�tr 0 fmlon hornet� �tole a Hn �heltm He lum �ee Nap' pm�ing In th, to the Nearly all the berths in Naples harbor were twisted like the machinery in a petroleum yard after an explosion. Blasted and bombed cranes clawed wildly at the sky. A few ships still lay on their rusty sides. They looked like fat women who'd committed suicide in water too shallow to drown them. The acres of devasta­ tion along the water front were something Hal had never imagined, except in the rubbled castles of his own brain. For a mile along the port area the houses lay in their gray dust. Here and there a room stuck out of a second story where a bomb had split a house in half. Some were like doll houses, in which a side can be hinged away for a cross section of all the rooms. Here was half a staircase leading nowhere, a flapping shred of blue wallpaper. In one blasted room the pictures still hung askew on the wall, waiting for some house­ wife to come and straighten them. The dock area and beyond it were mostly blocks of rubble and segments of balcony and girders thrusting out in pointless punctuation marks. In these ex-houses people had been born and loved and begotten and died. Eggs dropped from the sky had blown them apart. Hal leaned his head against the railing. Now he understood the difference between being and not-being, there in the silence and the heat and the mess of Naples at high noon. The lovely, the cruel, and the opportunist were all entombed here in this shambles around the Bay of Naples. Himself, trembling and weary and reduced to a zero before the horror of it, saw the aftermath. He saw clearly what he'd been feeling dimly for twenty-nine years­ that to human life and striving there's no point whatever. That we are all of us bugs writhing under the eye of God, begging to be squashed. That as evidence of our mortality all we leave behind us is the green whey of a fly that is swatted to death. There was a dispute over the order of debarkation. Finally the British infantry were marched off first. They were going straight to the front, so there was no need of their idling on deck. They dunked down the gangplank with their rifles. -Ees doon bloody well ere. Blimey, whot eel do to oos or oos to im! Some of the Americans got bored watching the stream of Limeys debarking, so without authority they scaled the rope ladders, grab­ bing their barracks bags and bedding rolls and tearing across the hinged bridge to land. They pre-empted little Neapolitans to totetheir luggage. �hese �ere dir�ier and more vociferous than anythingHal had seen III Africa. He d expected a Neapolitan would look need in tinr DO arcade a It was Iiithe dom -Thi! Naples ( Hal 10 like all roofed 0 Galleria sweeping tattered as thoug -The,1 HAL 85 like a chef in a Second Avenue restaurant, standing on the pier in an apron and mixing a dish of spaghetti and garlic. -Eyeties, said the voice of the Eternal Tourist. Ginsoes. There they are. The Ayrabs of Europe. The barracks bags and the bedding rolls were put into piles with armed guards. Nobody trusted the little Neapolitans. Hal heard explanations' that one would be three miles away by the time he'd hoisted your baggage to his shoulder. He heard that if a jeep were left unattended in the streets of Naples, the Neapolitans would pick it clean to the chassis. He obeyed -all the landing instructions and found himself in a two-and-a-half-ton truck with all his baggage inviolate. The small Neapolitans swarmed all over the truck, not at all fazed by having empty or loaded carbines pointed at their heads. Over all the con­ fusion at the port their dialect twittered and buzzed like a hive of hornets. Hal sensed that for all their dirt and thievery they also stole a zest and a passion for life. He was driven through the port area, past tetrahedron air-raid shelters, past files of crumbled buildings, to his billet on Via Diaz. He lumped all his junk in the center of the floor and went out to see Naples. It was 1600 hours; the sun was like a white-hot thumb pressing on Castel Sant'Elmo. In the first words he'd spoken in four days he inquired the way to the main drag. On Via Roma he found moving in both directions on both sidewalks of the narrow street a crowd thicker than any­ thing in Times Square. The Allied soldiery all had a sour look. The I talians were selling cameos. They catered also to every bodily need in shrill idiomatic English. Pimping was the province of very tiny boys. Hal walked for five minutes and came at last to a spacious arcade opening off Via Roma. The crowd just pushed him there. It was like walking into a city within a city. There was no glass in the domed skylight. He asked an idling GI for information. -This is the Galleria Umberto, lootenant, sir. Everybody in Naples comes here. Hal looked around the Galleria as he walked through it. It was like all outdoors going on inside. He liked the feeling of being roofed over without any coffin sensation of claustrophobia. The Galleria was jammed with Allied soldiers and sailors, women sweeping, bars, art shops, small booths selling jewelry, columns, tattered flags and standards, lights suspended from the vaulted roof as though this were some vast basketball court. -The.�e people, he said to himself, are all in search of love. The THE GALLERY86 HAl �IYou th thin� awar Ii Tha but he -Lo -TH love of God, of death, or of another human being. They're all lost. That's why they walk so aimlessly. They all feel here that the world isn't big enough to hold them. And look at the design of this place. Like a huge cross laid on the ground, after the corpus is taken off the nails. Hal walked around the Galleria. He stuck his hands into his pockets, swaggered a little, and tried to smile at everyone. Often his smiles were returned. But he didn't follow them up. His was the disinterested smile of God the Father surveying the world after the sixth day. And Hal had never seen so many soldiers whose free time hung like a weight on their backs, as their packs had hung in combat. They sat at the outside tables of the bars and drank vera mouth. They wore shoulder patches of three divisions. Their faces were seamy or gentle or questioning or settled or blank. No other people in the Galleria Umberto had so many nuances on their lips as the Americans Hal saw there. After looking in all the shop windows and all the posters and traversing both sides of the X-shaped pavement that bisected the Galleria, Hal sat down at one of the tables. He knew that he was in the tiniest yet the greatest city of the world. But it hadn't the fixed pattern of a small town. It was a commune of August, 1944, and its population changed every day. These people who came to the Galleria to stand and drink and shop and look and question were set apart from the rest of the modern world. They were out­ side the formula of mothers and wives and creeds. The Galleria Umberto was like that city in the middle of the sea that rises every hundred years to dry itself in the sun. An old Neapolitan in a greasy apron was standing beside his table. Hal ordered a drink, giving the old man two cigarettes and the fee for a double vermouth, which tasted like fruity alum. And then, looking again through the Galleria, which had enraptured him as a circus does a child, Hal saw a figure bearing down on him. And he knew that he had been waiting, had been summoned to the Galleria for this. The figure came through the mob with the surety of a small boat picking its way through shoals. The parachute captain took one of the wicker chairs and sat down beside him without saying a word. Hal felt the bright bitter eyes going over his face. The Neapolitan brought another vera mouth. Then Hal spoke with the studied casualness of one who seeks to show that his thoughts are elsewhere: -How's your grave? -Blow all that, the parachute captain said. You've always stalled who do !hr an which ther !t Except ". If it ente and cr tions d wartim� ���it 01 Its ]ll!t except a -Am of his 01 Whatar in Vnio: thing. The el ing high had the! HAL 87 1J.1\\��'te a�' tte\'" h', with me. That's caused your ruin. You're a dishonest man, chum. ,natt � � • f . A d i() t fu' ' You think of yourself as the center 0 the umverse. . .. n any- (orno, ��. thing that doesn't fit into your scheme of things gets rationalizedpus 1) taKt: away like a piece of rock found on the wrong geologic stratum. ; �' That vague sword was already beginning to pierce Hal's heart, I ,an m:: but he paid no attention and said:e t�ont\ -Look at these people around us ... the same as you and I. . u� � -The same? The captain threw back his head and laughed. • e�o1l1 Your pity goes too far, boy. Or not far enough. You've never , ��k learned the difference between seeing humanity and getting h'�L smothered by it. The more you feel you must love humanity, the anuQ;( more you indicate a certain deficiency in yourself.... Jesus Christ '.Tt� must have been a misanthrope deep down inside, who tried to .clJ. offset his truer characteristics. Love is the most natural thing in c' this world, you see. A lover never feels he must love, because he does. Only the half-arsed poets invented love as a force that has nothing to do with anything, because they had to cook up some- � , thing to write about, as propagandists cook up causes to die for . . . . I'm talking of the sorrow of those who think, rather than those who do.... In wartime the greatest heroes are the sensitive and shy and gentle. They're great because they have to live in a world which is dedicated in wartime to an annihilation of everything they stand for. They're the unsung. No one will ever sing to them. Except us, the dead. Their theme's too secret, like masturba tion. - . . . If a man all his life has oxidized his every mood the moment ... : it entered his glands, if he insulted and slugged his way along, it's not a much greater effort for him to go into battle. The gentle die in battle. Your crude extrovert comes out of his ordeal more brutal and crass and cocky than when he went in. That's the way civiliza­ . tions die, gradually. A premium is put on physical courage in wartime which kills off the gentle, because they're too noble to . admit of cowardice. So they die.... Death to them is terrible. And it's just another of those things to people who aren't aware of life, except as a current of vitality that carries them along. -And yet, Hal said, leaning forward and hearing the thumping of his own heart, you fought and died in Sicily a few months ago. What are you so bitter about? Your ghost should mount a soapbox in Union Square. Perhaps you could finally teach the world some­ thing. The elegant and mocking figure looked at him and laid its shin­ ing high boots across an adjoining chair. This parachute captain had the scorn of a demon, who knows that he can very well afford 88 THE GALLERY to thumb his nose at God because he will burn through all eternity no matter what he does. -My death in Sicily, the captain said, sending a graceful hairy claw through the air, was merely a compensation for my life. My life was a mess. I was a Broadway chorus boy. Do you think 1 liked swishing my way through the American theater? Do you think I enjoyed the fascism of great stars and booking agents and elegants who thought they were writers? Jesus, no! But in my jump training I was able to exorcise all this nonsense. In the crazy camaraderie of silk and geronimo I achieved reality to my life.... Oh, there was nothing solemn or dignified in the way I took my exit. It was a bullet in my face, just after I'd landed, and was looking around for my men, to urge them on in the way that cameramen like. My death was the expiation of that ridiculous society for which I danced, painted and epicene behind a proscenium arch. I was a very jerky marionette on the stage and a very still one as a corpse . . . . But let me tell you one thing, Joe: the ecstasy of death is a greater one than I found in love or the dance with a capital D .... I pity you for all your struggling and whining to yourself. For I'm free, free! ... Out forever from under all this pitiful shit of human life! -How you hate, Hal said, covering his face with his vermouth glass. -Your imaginary troubles, the captain said, crooking a finger and smiling almost tenderly, are far more serious than mine ever were. At least I was able to lump all mine in one ball. Hal looked away into the sunny Galleria. The captain's words clattered in on him. And there was that old sinking sensation of having a world on his shoulders without asking for it. -The wisdom of death, he said, trying to strike a tone of banter. But his teeth showed like a skull's. -The French, the captain said, striking a tone of preciosity, speak of the experience mortelle. We've both had it . . . but it seems to have paralyzed you, boy. You must either live or die. You're trying to do both.... I died.... But my spirit is congealed into one knot of fury. I left this life angry, but not hurt; whole, even though mangled. . . . I see through you. You're trying to conceal that your soul is a perfumed jellyfish. You've tried to wrestle with the larger issues when you're not sure whether you can read and write.... Wise up to yourself, buddy. It's not too late. Hal arose and knocked over the wicker table. -I don't care to drink with you any more. And please, please ____, don't viievil in t somethin world we -Ah, riling. T liKe the Certainly arrl)'ing Goa airee !mall piee time, )'OU -Let's Imnan,t -Prart He was t For the in�, For fir a continual it!eemed t of the �rea !!retch out anaeveryt to heIr. , , TUen the Hosrital, \I' aelulions 0 Russian'Je -Gee, s' reork,. , ne'sJems newGs", , :rci�it" , ", �ud , 'ne 01 WI , , j. (on�e4it; bUr!: IfDOk I e tI)jn� tv 'ed 1OII'151i1 au can w� I too late, I please, ple�f HAL 89 don't visit me again. Let me alone. You're the essence of all that's evil in the world. You're the evilest person I've ever known. There's something about your mouth, the way it works, as though this world were just your orange, to be sucked dry.... -Ah, mysticism and metaphor, the captain said softly, aiso rising. There's no place for that crap any more, chuck. It's outworn, like the Middle Ages trying to smoke out syphilis with incense. Certainly there are faith and spirituality, but this time there's no applying the old creeds and schemes. You have no right to seek God directly. You must do it through other people. They're all small pieces of Him. If you know and love all the people of your time, you know God. -Let's go down on our knees together, Hal said-and pray because we're both so proud and cold and heartless. -Less proud and cold and heartless than most. ... I prayed as I was dying. And I died at twenty-two But my death was part of the scheme and the deception, that's all You don't want to learn anything, do you kid? -Pray to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Hal said. He was terrified at the rabid insistence in his voice. For the next five days he lay in his billet and looked at the ceil­ ing. For five nights he couldn't close his eyes. In his head he heard a continual crashing, as of buildings falling down irreparably. Often it seemed to him that he was capable of everything, but especially of the great and the good things of life. It seemed he had only to stretch out his hand and the sorrowing world would be remade and every tear dried in every eye. He wanted so to help, to help, to help .. ' .. Then they took him in an ambulance to the Forty-fifth General Hospital, where he was given a knockout drug for paranoia and delusions of persecution. A nurse there was a first lieutenant, a Russian "J ewess named Luba. She said to the psychiatrist, a major: -Gee, sir, nuts are all so individual. They're not ordinary people.... Now you take that tall good-looking one who thinks he's Jesus Christ. ... Why, damn it, if he grew a beard, I'd believe he was.•.• , Ii / ' ..---- " �� 'I' .!. . ' )0 .. ,.. ....:"... • � -� • THIRD PROMENADE (Casablanca-Algiers) I REMEMBER THE SIXTH GENERAL HOSPITAL IN CASABLANCA. IT was stuck, as they seem to stick all hospitals, in a school with large windows and many floors. Its doctors and its nurses were mostly from New England, so that the place had an air of efficiency and cold kindness that struck me strange in Casa. The nurses lived in a high apartment like a silo. The GI's had a tent area near Pare Lyautey. On one side was a clearing of French tanks drawn up in rows, the way military force is deceptive and orderly-on review. Between the tanks and the tents there was a cement road where the French used to walk arm in arm in the evenings. Ward boys and dental technicians leaned over their barbed-wire enclosure on nights when they weren't on duty. They called out to all and sundry, as though they felt it necessary to reaffirm their being in a strange land. Their tents were pyramidal. In the daytime the flaps were tucked up, and I could see the mosquito netting looped up over the frames of the cots in a tight ball. I remember that the nurses at the Sixth General Hospital were plumper and saltier than most ANC's. They talked wistfully of Boston and Taunton and Waltham and Cambridge and Worcester, Army general hospitals are incestuous. They're like a little town in which everyone spies on everyone else, and everyone dates everyone else. The surgical captain has his favorite nurse, while the anesthe­ tist looks on and gnashes his teeth. The patients are well cared for, but they're outside the charmed circle; they're like guests at a summer hotel in the Adirondacks. They never get to see the inside. They lie in their beds and watch the life of the general hospit.al. They're not a part of it at all, unless some nurse takes a fancy to them on her ward, or some doctor bucking for his majority takes a special interest in their rare disease. 90 (CA � The world, T the beds have laid mr bed iJ mrmess time sche mr bellr' me in an Dea, cure live, Two �iae to sid (Qmin� 0 Geor�ia w nums, th neCKed jar naatoma I rem em �ne was fr When she wiae breas wa! minist on the sta' ,ner himsel thirtrrears sleer that �tate!, We now had so Dea bet tha were ash a �he'a been thewmber a �ood war Casablanca iliree beds laKe out a ana drink lalt of the I reme "", :". '.' � . , .. , "I,' . , --. - - ., / �III i � , (C A SA B l AN C A-A l G I ER S) 91 The main ward at the Sixth General was the biggest in the whole world. They'd taken over a lumber shed and a printing plant, and the beds just went on and on. In those acres of beds they could have laid all the sick and wounded of the war. I remember lying in my bed in this ward. I had the GI's because I'd neglected to scald my mess gear with one soapy and two clear. My illness gave me a time schedule all my own. I'd feel the dry spasms of peristalsis in my belly and I'd go tearing to the latrine. Everything came out of me in an agony over which I had no control. Then I'd go back to bed, cured of everything, including my energy and the will to live. Two hours later it would happen all over again. I turned from side to side under my mosquito netting and watched the goings and comings on the big ward, the visits, the flirtations. I envied the Georgia ward boys for the easy way they had with the doctors and nurses, the kidding, the rushes with the bedpan, and the goose­ necked jars of amber. And because I was an ambulatory patient, I had to make my own bed every morning. I remember best one of the nurses. She told us to call her Butch. She was from Dorchester and she was the biggest gal I'd ever seen. When she bent over to take my temperature, I thought from her wide breasts and bulging belly that a witty and motherly cow was ministering to me. We loved the lieutenant for her laugh that was cynical and rich. She specialized in making the appendix patients laugh until they all but burst their stitches. There was a smell of cologne and soap about her. One night she had a baby on the stairs of the nurses' quarters. The colonel had to deliver >-- her himself; it was the first time he'd practiced obstetrics in thirty years. He was so mad at her for waking him out of a sound sleep that he shipped her and her baby back from Casa to the States. We smiled in our beds, for after she'd cared for us all, she now had something all her own to love. A parachutist in a near-by bed bet that an Ayrab was the father, but none of us laughed. We were ashamed of the parachutist and devoted to the lieutenant. She'd been the nurse of the Sixth General who'd mitigated for us the somber impersonal excellence of army medical care. She'd had a good word for each of us. Often when we. couldn't sleep in the Casablanca nights, she'd given us that pink pill. A truck driver three beds over said that if he ever got back to Boston alive, he'd take out our lieutenant and her baby and set them up to supper and drinks. He added that women like the lieutenant are the salt of the earth. I remember also the nut ward of the Sixth General in Casa. Not 92 THE GALLERY that I was ever in there, except for a visit. It was called the Parker House after the nice old psychiatrist in charge of it. Lieutenant Colonel Parker never knew why so many people smiled at him on the streets of Casablanca. He kept the nuts in a separate building, locked and grated and barred and remote from the other buildings of the Sixth General. Beaucoup GI's and officers ended up in the Parker House. From there they usually went home on a boat, under guard. The officers and GI's were together on one ward. I guessed that when you went off your trolley, you didn't care much whether your insignia was a bar or a stripe. I remember going to the Parker House to visit a buddy who blew up after a week's sitting and staring at the wall of his tent. He took his tommy gun and fired it at the canvas. Then he lay, after he'd fired his bursts, in a slit trench of his own making until our major came: -What you tryin to do, Perkins, k-k-k-kill us all? And Perkins was taken to the Parker House. It was his theory that his heart was going to stop in the very next minute. Old Colonel Parker told him there was nothing the matter with his heart. Still he moaned and stared at the wall for hours on end. He wasn't the same, I remember, when I went to see him the last night before they shipped him back to the States. He sat on a bench with his head in his hands. He was wearing GI pajamas and a red bath­ robe with 6TH GEN Hasp stenciled on the back. They'd taken away the belt of his bathrobe so he couldn't strangle himself. But when he saw me outside the grating, all his apathy dropped, and he came over and hung on the bars, smiling and cavorting, like a monkey praying to be ted. -They're ZI-ing me. It's one way to get out of all this crap. He told me about the new truth drug they gave him, and he wondered what he'd talked about under its influence. -Just like you do when you get crocked, I said reassuringly. -Well, anyway, I'm getting out of all this crap, he said over and over. After a while the MP told me I must go. The MP's at the Parker House were a strange gang, gentle and gangling and tender. They used to kid the nuts, and they told me on my way out that many people outside in the army were crazier than some locked up in here. I remember that outside on the streets of Casa I wondered which of us would go next to the Parker House. I got lower and lower because I knew Perkins wasn't just pretending. So finally I went (CA ____, into the and blu and the the pigs Itill I'd biliat even all aliver When t ilirough t a�imta It wa� the to and 100 mr back i removing to laugh i will cut 0 although Irilking a -Jeche And kno mr force� Inadowl. I remember -I want -Oh h You're still 1remem We sat by swatting Hi counting n canteem. -This is -Ah, bl (C A SA B LA N C A-A L G IE RS) 93 into the Select Bar and started throwing them down. I got bluer and bluer in spite of the phonograph playing "L'ombre s' enfuit" and the luscious Casablancaise hanging over her cash register and the pigs sitting buxomly on the green leather chairs and waiting till I'd buy them a drink. It was a new sort of drunkenness I hit that evening. I seemed to be a ghost in a roomful of yelling people, all aliver than I. When they threw me out of the Select at closing time, I lurched through the streets of Casa and got lost. 1'd go a few blocks, lean against a doorway, black out, come to, and then blunder on again. It was the only time I'd ever wanted to meet an MP. Once I came to and looked up to see the stars of Casa flickering. I was lying on my back in the rue, and an Ayrab was bending over me. He was removing my cigarettes and franc notes from my pockets. I began to laugh in my stupor as I thought of the GI legend that the Ayrabs will cut off your balls and sew them in your mouth. I laughed although the cognac had paralyzed me. The Ayrab stopped his frisking and kissed me on the forehead: -Je cherche ce soir un copain du genre feminine And knowing I was about to black out again, I gathered up all my forces and yelled. The Ayrab fled laughing into the blue shadows. I remember being trussed into the MP wagon. And I remember waking in an immaculate bed at the Sixth General. -I want Lieutenant Duffy to give me a pink pill. -Oh hush your mouth, the nurse said, reversing my ice pack. You're still as drunk as a skunk. I remember when it came our turn to go in the forty-by-eights. We sat by the long stubby train in the freight yards of Casa, swatting flies. The officer in charge of the movement bustled about counting noses. We lay on our barracks bags swigging from our canteens. -This is it. We're going to Italy to fight. -Ah, blow it.... I figure we're going to Oran or Algiers for more of this base section life. I remember that our officers had two cars of their own up front. We were put with all our equipment into the open latticed horse­ cars. Guard details were posted in each car. Through the slats the Ayrabs could stick their fingers and remove anything, for we heard that the train went through Morocco at a speed less than a man could run. We made our beds on the floor, where there were still leavings of hay. 'q / A _--- 0 0 ��� OJ • 1 Jr.! .. ' "'.:" ". • ;..: tt .. 1" ..._' )' r:' ,.. " 10 � .. " 94 THE GALLERY I remember how strange and autonomous it was to scud slowly through Morocco in a boxcar. At one end we had a pile of C-rations and a gasoline can of water. On the floor were our packs and blankets. We slept like a litter of kittens. The brown cleft hills swam slowly past; I sat on a ledge with my legs swinging. The crap games started up. The train would stop in the middle of desert spaces where there was nothing to halt for. And Ayrab kids would come out of the nowhere as though they'd inched up from the sand. With them, since we'd been red-lined for months, we did a thriving trade in mattress covers, shirts, and trousers. They brought us vin rouge in leather bottles. At night, lying on the floor, it was hard to sleep. In the moonlight the sandy hummocks drifted past as though I watched them from a magic carpet. Or sometimes I remember that the duty officer would come to our car when the train was taking on water. He wore fatigues and carried his carbine slung on his shoulder. After six months in Casa he figured that these were genuine combat conditions. Who knew but what the Ayrabs would ambush us all by the full of the moon when we were stalled out in the middle of nowhere? -Remember it's a court-martial offense to sell anything to the Ayrabs, men. - Yessir, we said in chorus. In his barracks bag the mess sergeant had beau coup vin that he'd laid in before we left Casa. He had also a small spirit lamp, a present from his last shackjob. He was a Polack hunky and knew all the angles. He knew how to lick around officers with a bold obsequiousness that made them think he was treating them as a rough and ready equal. With us he was like an SS man in the movies. When drunk, which was always, he'd knock our heads together and let loose on us a stream of obscenities. He said that these phrases excited a shackjob more than loving words. Then when we were black and blue, he'd fall into a sort of motherliness toward us and make coffee. He was in his element in that forty-by­ eight. Made us bring him his breakfast box of K-ration as he lay yawning in his sack. His buddy the second cook J acobowski was growing a mustache on the trip. I remember the sorrows of our officers in their two wagons-lit up front. The French locomotive sooted all over the cars so that they had to sit all day with their windows closed while they read their cases or did crosswoi d puzzles. Our officers fell into types. The Sporting Set had their musette bags full of rum and didn't come out of their haze till we hit Algiers. The Girls had pneumatic (CA ____., mattres� �econd I put thei ing like Dut Mar Outsid !iaing ne were all I la!cilt but lortr-broei officer that -Frater �one. Wh DOr! in A -Ther He wal -Isar, He alwa -You f -�ure, Duaar jac a�in. Wha in the E,et -Polack, Iremem tne MP gu Citrwith t !rite that anrthing 0 kom Camp -Christ! Tnetre ge -The G -Tho!e liKe pi� in �OQaam w We walk f I�O wago� he (aT) 50 tn�i �jle the}' m� fell into t)'��' I m and diMI fJd pneurnati( (CASA B LAN CA-AlG IE R 5) 95 mattresses which they inflated every evening at sundown. On the second day out of Casa the officers ordered the French engineer to put their cars at the end of the train. Said they were tired of look­ ing like niggers. But French engineers take orders from no one but Marechal Petain, Outside of Oran at Mostaganem I remember we stopped on a siding near Prisoner of War Enclosure 131. Shipping to Algiers were all Italian officer PjW who'd decided that they were no longer fascist but wanted to collaborate with us Allies. We got out of our forty-by-eights and stretched our legs. We were warned by the duty officer that we mustn't fraternize with the PjW. -Fraternize, my arse, the mess sergeant said after the officer had gone. Who wants to fraternize with an Eyetie? They fired on our boys in Africa, didn't they? And they're doin it now in Italy. -They did it because they were told to, the pfc said. He was a liberal and wore horn-rimmed spectacles. -I say, put the bastards against a wall, the mess sergeant said. He always shouted his opinions. -You forget the Geneva Convention, the pfc said gently. -Sure, we treat em white! the mess sergeant said, looking at his buddy J acobowski. So in twenty years they can declare war on us again. What have they got to lose? They'll live better'n they did in the Eyetalian Army.... Friggin wops ... Dagos.... -Polack, the pfc said, almost inaudibly. I remember how the Italian officers approached their cars with the MP guards. I thought of the Guineas of Brooklyn and Joisey City with their pimpled faces and their oiled hair and the aggressive spite that made them boxers and corner toughs. For I'd never seen anything of the Italian Army except the explosive tiny Sicilians from Camp 101 who used to wait in the officers' messes of Casa. -Christl screamed the mess sergeant, waving his lumpy fists. They're gettin parlor cars! -The Geneva Convention, the pfe prompted under his breath. -Those Ginso bastards are gettin parlor cars while we sleep like pigs in a forty-by-eight! Will someone please tell me what this goddam war is about? We walked a little closer to have a look at the Italian officers, waiting to mount the train with their gear. -Gosh, they are good-looking men, the company clerk said. He read the pomes in Stars and Stripes. I remember that the Italians struck me with marveling. They looked neither like movie gangsters nor like the sad barbers of Brooklyn. These carried themselves with a certain soft proudness, ingexci though I remember arrogant ones among them. A few were blond. Mo�t ha But nearly :111 "lore a delicacy of feature and a dignity I'd never over the seen before. Their noses and their mouths had a different look than -Addl Americans'. The Bersaglieri officers had sugarloaf caps with feathers The m, in them. The Alpini officers wore shorts that showed their fine the cars 0 long legs, like the limbs on wrestlers in old statues. And all had -If ya sewed, below the left shoulder, a metal boot. ragodda -Well, Musso did all right in his men, the company clerk said. -They -Wait till we see the wimmin, the mess sergeant promised. (anuded t I'm keepin my C-ration till we get to Italy. Those Ginso signorinas I remem will do anything for food. fi�ht, I mu -Damn good-looking guys, a corporal said. But I s'pose they'd ltwer �plot put a knife in your back as quick as they'd look at you. ronvinced I remember that one of our officers talked Italian. His old man mUlt bno had left Naples and had made a mint in the meat-packing business tntr'd dec!in Chicago. This was the moment Lieutenant Figarotta'd been roungmensweating out for years, a chance to crap all over the folks from the �onlp)old country. He stepped forward and offered a cigarette to an otnind the officer of the Alpini. When the officer reached out with a smile and otcided to I a bow, Lieutenant Figarotta tittered and twitched the cigarette out tningabroaof reach. The Italian officer flushed and stood at rigid attention. Buless This scene angered some of us. -If you ask me, the pfc with glasses said, they make some of our officers look sick. But no one had asked him. -Pretty boys, ain't they? the mess sergeant ranted to his follow­ ing, but not too loudly. How'd ya like to have ya sisters goin out on dates with them? Because that's exactly what them PjW are doin back in the States. And our wimmin are fassenated with that Dago stuff. And I remember that, as he was getting into his car, a captain of the Bersaglieri dropped his portfolio at my feet. I hesitated an instant, then I bent and picked it up and handed it to him. -Grazie infinite, he said. There was something old and warm in his voice such as I'd never heard before. I felt that beyond all pretense he liked me, that he was lonely and lost. On his lips was a neat mustache. He had clear gray eyes behind lashes longer than any I'd ever seen, except those that girls buy in the five and ten. His breath was sweet. He wavered an instant before me then vaulted into his car. The Italian officers hung out of the windows of their cars, talk- 96 THE GALLERY (CA ____, .... : ... _ ... ,_.", .. '. '��f�·--. - .. / fill I � : (CA SA B LAN CA-ALG IE RS) ing excitedly to one another like vacationists on an excursion train. Most had blue-gray caps like Mussolini's, with the earflaps tied up over their heads. Some waved cordially to the MP's. -Addio al reticolato, a quel benedetto recinto! one called. The mess sergeant was beside himself with fury. He raved at all the cars of I talian officers: -If ya hadn't declared war on us, I wouldn't be here lookin at ya goddam sissy faces. -They had no more to do with the war than you did, the pfc confided to his spectacles. I remember that as I lay down again in my sack in the forty-by­ eight, I mused on the faces of those Italians. They had fewer lines, fewer splotches than the young men of America. I wasn't quite convinced that their sorrow came because they were defeated. It must be some agony that we as yet knew nothing of.... But then they'd declared war on us. They were our enemies. Yet in those young men of Italy I'd seen something centuries old. An American is only as old as his years. A long line of something was hidden behind the bright eyes of those Italians. And then and there I decided to learn something of the modern world. There was some­ thing abroad which we Americans couldn't or wouldn't understand. But unless we made some attempt to realize that everyone in the world isn't American, and that not everything American is good, we'd all perish together, and in this twentieth century.... My mind kept reverting to the captain of the Bersaglieri. And under different circumstances he'd have ordered me to my death. . .. Something stirred in me that touched me more profoundly than ever before, even in love. And I fell asleep. . . . leir cars, tal�' 97 - ·1, II / • - --- '. �"'_�..._-___... ", ' ,\. " -, I •••• • � ",,_. / _ .. _ • FOURTH PORTRAIT Father Donovan and Chaplain Bascom IN AUGUST, 1944, THE GALLERIA UMBERTO ECHOED LIKE A BOWLING alley to the noise of the truck convoys going north to the front. Father Donovan and Chaplain Bascom used to stroll afternoons through the din and the heat. Sometimes while window-shopping they'd take off their khaki caps and mop their brows. Chaplain Bascom wore a gold oak leaf, but Father Donovan was still that same first lieutenant who'd left a South Philadelphia parish with the blessing of his bishop and the Military Ordinariate. Chaplain Bascom was commenting on the heat. He was a stout man, used to the sun over his turnip patch in Spartanburg, South Carolina. -Hope we never git closer to hell than this, padre. -Beware of sins against the Holy Ghost, chaplain, said Father Donovan. For two years now he'd been indoctrinating his friend with Catholicism. He did it gently, for he was a mild sort of priest who replied you're welcome when a telephone operator thanked him for his nurnber. The two chaplains often walked arm in arm. They were the only officers in the .)4th Division who did so, sober. They were reason­ ably fond of each other. And their friendship was high propaganda for the chief of chaplains, showing how all faiths worked together in the army. Chaplain Bascom withdrew his arm to light a briar pipe, his only vice. -These Neapolitans, he boomed jovially, could do with a shoutin baptism by immersion. 98 tfle !emina Fatner D at tne lord �racio witfi tfie H -H'm'm, Cfiarlain unaemtim nea !een w �ition Rom netKercnief looked like' �en!o mu a/in� unde mlaier. And Fat tnoughts, ( tnought OI nnd this I voice, ho� instead 01 Father D "." : .. " . . . ...• ,., ... ' -. - -. / �ill 1 � , I briar pijX>w � d do witn I FATHER DONOVAN AND CHAPLAIN BASCOM 99 -But they've already been baptized once, said Father Donovan. Though not in the Baptist Church, chaplain. -Well, I've written to Charleston, Chaplain Bascom went on doggedly. I told them that Naples is an unplowed field for Baptist missionaries with a will to work.... Bibles instead of cameos on Via Roma. Prohibition to cut out all this devil's drink of vino. And good friendly Barathea Clubs on Wednesday evenings to keep these signorinas off the streets. This was the focus of their differences. The division chaplain had introduced them in the staging area, and they'd been friends ever since. To Missus Bascom and Lavinia, Chaplain Bascom reiterated by V-mail that Padre Donovan was almost a white man. And Father Donovan had offered up many a Mass and rosary for the conversion of Chaplain Bascom and his South Carolina flock. Both were popular chaplains in the 34th. Men who had knocked up a signorina came to Father Donovan for confession. Those desiring advice on their life insurance came to Chaplain Bascom. They complemented one another. Chaplain Bascom at the end of a meetin yelled for every man to get away from the sides of the tent and come up and be saved. Father Donovan was still as shy and efficient and button-eyed as when he played quarterback at the seminary. Father Donovan looked up at the glassless dome of the Galleria, at the lordly angels sounding their trumpets from the cornices. -Spacious as the Vatican, he mused. I'll get you to an audience with the Holy Father next time we're in Rome. -Hlm'm, padre. A body has to draw the line at some things. Chaplain Bascom stumped along, huffing on his briar pipe. He'd underestimated the papist till the division went on the line. Then he'd seen why even Protestant colonels of regiments tried to requi­ sition Romish chaplains. For along with his combat boots and neckerchief, Father Donovan wore a Purple Heart. He might have looked like a mouse, but the Italian-born mice at Cassino hadn't been so much in evidence as Father Donovan ministering to the dying under a helmet that made him look like a child playing soldier. And Father Donovan also whisked along thinking his own thoughts. Often he looked slyly at Chaplain Bascom. How much he thought on Chaplain Bascom while reading his breviary! "What a find this man would be for Holy Mother Church! That swollen voice, how eloquent it could be pouring out in praise of Mary, instead of inveighing against dancing and cardplaying and likker! Father Donovan would have given his Purple Heart for the con- 100 THE GALLERY version of Chaplain Bascom. For this grace he importuned every saint in heaven, including his dead mother, who'd scrubbed floors all her life. Father Donovan bent down and fastened a buckle on his combat boot. He paused to mop his thin pale face. He spied some GI's sitting at tables on the terrace of an outside bar. -In the mood for a cool drink, chaplain? -None of this vino for me, padre. You should take the pledge yourself. -And what would I do at morning Mass? Father Donovan laughed plaintively. They sat at one of the wicker tables under the dome of the Galleria Umberto. All about him Father Donovan spotted GI's of the 34th who waved to him and went back to their sprawling. He ordered a glass of vermouth for himself and a tumbler of flavored gaseous water for Chaplain Bascom. -Our boys mustn't think I'm guzzling, Chaptain Bascom said, holding up his orangeade to show everyone in the Galleria that he was taking the Neapolitan equivalent of an ice-cream soda. -It would only increase their esteem for you, Father Donovan said primly. Now Father Donovan didn't smoke. He always said that the fumes of Chaplain Bascom's pipe were enough for two. In spite of his wispy body he was in fine condition, and combat had made him like a grasshopper. Chaplain Bascom's steaky belly had gone down during these two years of Africa and Sicily and Italy when he wasn't getting Missus Bascom's corn bread for supper. Father Donovan used to spend Sunday afternoons in South Philadelphia playing touch football with the kids of his choir-after he'd peeled off his Roman collar and rolled up his cassock till it was a black towel around his waist. Father Donovan loved baseball, candy, and the movies-after he'd assured himself that they'd been certified by the Legion of Decency. -There's one favor you could do me, chaplain, said Father Donovan, leaning softly over his vermouth. N ever in his life had he raised his voice except to call for the murder of the umpire. -Anything, anything, the chaplain said, clearing his throat of orangeade with a lordly gargle. -Why won't you call me Father? I'm a priest. Padre sounds like Teddy Roosevelt.... Oh I know it's regular army and all that ... -Army Regulations, said Chaplain Bascom, assuming the rapt rose � chaplan lain, , -But father, 1 01 the p -Alw �thering itone, -Just which he Chapla' �rdne e GI to go �alina ra who Kne,� ilie other all ilie pr to De first (olonel, at with com nilmelf tn ieerwuls Qrin�, an laithorst rOlarrOr n� car an in h� ex �e rrOmot Qe�rved it And en corner of creer dow who held world die -Look An oily la!!ock a a water lor alms, of the G !'-_:"--'-- "� "., '/�� /... (1 his throat �I dre ounGJ lUI d all that,,, ing the ra�t FAT HER DON OVA NAN 0 C H A PLA I N SA SC OM 101 pose with which he ended his prayer meetings, provide that all chaplains, regardless of denomination, shall be addressed as chap­ lain ... -But they also state that there's no objection to calling a priest Father. Don't tell me that at this stage of the game you're jealous of the prestige and affection in the word Father? -Always a slight chip on your shoulder, Chaplain Bascom said, gathering his weight up behind his orangeade. He smelled brim.. stone. -Just thought I'd ask, Father Donovan said in his meekest tone which he always lapsed into when piqued, Chaplain Bascom glowered around the Galleria. His veinous porcine eyes stared, as though he were looking for some shrinking GI to go to work on with the magic words: All here from South Calina raise their hands.... He relit his pipe. Father Donovan, who knew all his moods, waited but said nothing. He looked at the other chaplain's cap with its gold oak leaf and wondered why all the priests in the army except the chief in Washington seemed to be first lieutenants. Soon Chaplain Bascom would be a lieutenant colonel, at which point he'd begin to consider himself a staff officer, with command functions. In vain did Father Donovan keep telling himself that he was a priest, commissioned in the army only to keep souls in the way they should go, to give the last rites to the dying, and to return the living to their dioceses without loss of faith or stain of mortal sin. For sometimes when he was saying his rosary or reading his holy office, he'd find his fingers straying to his cap and feeling that lone silver bar. It was a sin of vanity. But in his examinations of conscience he admitted to himself that to be promoted to captain would delight and appease him.... He deserved it. He'd done just as much work as Chaplain Bascom...• And Chaplain Bascom, watching his mild friend out of one corner of an eye throbbing with rage, thought: They're all alike deep down inside. The same who started the Inquisition, the same who held back all scientific progress, the same who still wield a world dictatorship. -Look there now, said Chaplain Bascom. Most interesting.... An oily Italian priest came cruising into the Galleria in black cassock and brushed round hat. He zoomed among the GI's like a water bug, wheedling, panhandling, trembling with holy zeal for alms. He had a card in English which he thrust under the faces of the GI's. 102 THE GAllERY -Almost a different church here, Father Donovan said under his breath. The Italian priest arrived over an isolated GI who'd passed out in his chair. He looked quickly around the Galleria, then bent over the hunched form. -Most interesting, Chaplain Bascom said gleefully. As Father Donovan watched, saying a Hail Mary under his breath, the greasy Italian friar began to pry at a wad of lire and a pack of Luckies protruding from the unbuttoned breast pocket of the GI. Father Donovan leaped from his chair, crossed the Gal­ leria, and barged up to the thieving brother. He didn't know any Italian, but he used the Latin that came into his mind: -Hoc est enim corpus meum. Then as a sort of exorcism he shook the silver cross of his collar insignia. The hustling friar, unshaven and smelling of his last meal, whirled about in his cape, gathered it about him with grimy fingers, and went streaking away into the crowds of the Galleria Umberto. Father Donovan woke the sleeping GI gently and returned across the arcade, wondering what in this world or the next he could find to say to Chaplain Bascom in excuse for this most unpleasant incident. Through his mind flashed all the dialectical training of the seminary, long since all but forgotten now that his sermons had become a matter of the monthly collection and choir rehearsal. Father Donovan prayed madly for the gift of tongues, for Jesuitical casuistry to fence off the questions his Baptist friend was preparing for him. Though he seldom did it, except when pounding the chest of a section sergeant who'd forgotten to make his Easter duty, Father Donovan rallied all his shyness and determined to take the aggressive. After alJ J the Church was facing a greater opponent than she'd had at Anzio. -Shocking, said Father Donovan, seating himself. Probably not even a priest. Naples is full of them. Impostors ... -Oh, I don't know, Chaplain Bascom said silkily. Looks kinda like the Good Samaritan rolling the man who lay by the side of the road, don't it? Or Christ asking Mary Magdalene for a hand­ out.... You have a very rich church, padre. Money rolls into Rome from all over the world.... I think I begin to understand the capitalism of the Roman Church. I'm only a Hard-Shelled Baptist, but I guess I realize that a big political machine don't pay its expenses on hay.... No sireee. Father Donovan felt a white flame of rage rising in him. Then he saw something and said in a choked voice: lillie wor -But naluralti �nurch'! mel!ed M aamit tha lime reli �vin� (he len�e, Go fooaat �narlain I rea; thi 1xamine t �nurch 0 Wednesda lwar fro �a!Com t �arolina'iChurch � I. IhJ i im� bi the liot � ne for a aan�' 0115 into RonJi unc�lrslana tnf ..belled Bartiit, don't par i� in him. Taln FATHER DONOVAN AND CHAPLAIN BASCOM 103 -Look.... Two nuns were entering the Galleria in that way they have of seeming not to walk. No GI yelled at them. Each nun had by the hand two little girls in the chaste black dresses of Neapolitan orphans. The children laughed to one another and to the GI's. They had the glowing faces of southern Italian babies. The nuns beamed down on them, keeping a firm grip on their small hands. Then Father Donovan thanked Our Lady for answering his prayer. - You must consider I this side of the question too, he said, relieved. -Ah yes, said Chaplain Bascom airily, mother love.... How nice to find it even in Naples. It's the one great constant of our mean little world. -But you miss the point, chaplain.... Those nuns have no natural tie to those orphans. They function in accordance with the Church's exalted idea of parenthood, which goes back to Our Blessed Mother.... And you Protestants seem almost ashamed to admit that Christ had a mother. You make fun of our devotion to her, as though you were uneasy at the function of the love between man and God ... -It's a scorcher today, padre, Chaplain Bascom said. He finished his orangeade, fanned himself, and loosened the shirt about his thick neck. Chaplain Bascom brooded sulkily to himself. It was quite clear to him why the Roman Church had failed in the modern world. In a time when men wanted something positive to cling to, she offered them only the lacy traceries of an old theology. The twentieth century was too rapid for arguments on the navel of Adam. Especially Americans ... they wanted that good solid old­ time religion, which was precisely what the Baptist Church was giving them. Plenty of tangible things for Americans with common sense. Good shoutin of hymns, fear of hell, and tables heavy with food at church suppers-that was religion. Deep down inside Chaplain Bascom suspected that Christ was more than a little of a red; this was why He'd been done to death. No American need examine too deeply the nature of Christ. This was what the Baptist Church offered them: a renewal of the spirit on Sundays and Wednesdays, excellent business contacts, and keeping the young away from sinful habits. It was all so down to earth. Chaplain Bascom thought of Thomas Aquinas visiting Spartanburg, South Carolina, and had t.o slap his chunky thigh.... No, the Roman Church was Europe and the past and a dirty slice of history to 104 THE GALLERY T stood -, Cha of RasJ 'dt,anl to glgg -w -1' raare, women -Yo �he s TOe wa �a�(om hi! left. -It �a!(om, -It 1 Father -Are -As �ascom, boot. He'd seen enough to know how uneasily Romanism sat on Americans. Whereas your good southern Baptist was his religion walking and in act. So was his good comfortable wife, who cooked for church socials and taught Sunday school. So was his immaculate prim daughter. Practical Christianity. . .. Over the kettledrumming of the truck convoys moving to the front, the crowds in the Galleria U mberto were like all the crowds of the 'world, drifting and inert except under stimulus. But this crowd had an uncrowdlike tendency to break up into its individual components. Their only common bond as a crowd was that they were all in Naples in August, 1944. Their focus shifted. Since most of these people came to the Galleria to lose themselves and therefore to find themselves, their flavor was more strongly marked than that of a crowd assembled for a specific purpose. The chaplains noticed isolated elements more easily than they might have at a race track or on a city street. And both chaplains thought to them selves that this crowd, perhaps more than any other on earth, showed the agony of the individual and of society, that some peculiar problem of the age was here mirrored. Presently, in the crushing brilliance of the August sun and the buzzing of the convoys the chaplains found themselves dozing. A burr of laughter brought them sharply to in their chairs. For the laughter that they heard was intended to pierce even an uncon­ scious man. Two Italian girls skipped arm in arm through the Galleria. There was an intimacy in their leaning on one another more flagrant and saucy than the friendship between school chums. The girls spied the two chaplains, but they danced easily through the Galleria, in iO hurry, exclaiming over the shop prices, casting swimming eyes over the lounging GI's. And they sang. Both chaplains knew that they were singing not out of high spirits but as a call to all interested to come and buy, as a fruit vendor hawks melons in the street. They sang in English. It was an American song learned by rote from many darkened rooms with rumpled beds and empty vino bottles: -You'll nevair know just ow motch I mees you, You'll nevair know just ow motch I caaaare ... -Those girls are wearing crosses on their necks, said Chaplain Bascom, clucking with his tongue. -Aren't they entitled to pray? Father Donovan asked, setting down his vermouth. Y1TInout !nereac aelcende �eaded -You -But lire Ira to a bla (,' , said Cnapldi� Jiked, 5etti�� FATHER DONOVAN AND CHAPLAIN BASCOM 105 The Neapolitan girls paused by the two chaplains' table and stood there swaying enticingly, arms around each other's waists. -Why, allo, major! Buy me a drink? Chaplain Bascom for the first time in his army career, instead of flashing the gold oak leaf on his right collar, took hold of his left and wriggled his silver cross at them. Father Donovan began to gigg1e. -What would you have done if you'd been a rabbi? -I'm thinking of my wife, roared Chaplain Bascom. Believe me, padre, I've reached such a maturity of married love that those two women seem to me vile Jezebels. -You are a cute one, lieutenant, the other girl said. She sat genially down in the chair at Father Donovan's right. The waiter brought two vermouths without being asked. Chaplain Bascom reddened as the other girl sank into the wicker chair at his left. -I think we should leave at once, with dignity, said Chaplain Bascom. -It would be the first issue I ever knew you to avoid. Father Donovan said to the girl on his right: -Are you hungry? -As hungry as the devil for Christian souls, cried Chaplain Bascom. Padre, let's end this comedy and get out of here. You can't touch pitch and not be defiled.... I think my wife's ears are burning back in Spartanburg, South Carolina ... Padre, think of what you represent. -That's exactly what I'm doing, Father Donovan said. You and I were in tighter spots than this at Cassino, chaplain. He looked at the girl, who was now nervously stroking her vermouth glass and shivering a little, though it was August. Then she reached out to lay her hand on his arm. But before her fingers descended, she seemed to reconsider and dropped her hand to the beaded bag that lay in her lap. -You don't like me? she said, making a face. Whassamatta, Joe? -But I do like you, Father Donovan said, taking a thousand lire from his Ayrab wallet. Now listen to me. You take this and go to a black market restaurant and buy all you want to eat. Then go to confession, hear? Then go home and get a good sleep. You look very tired.... Promise me? ... Sacerdos sum.... Both girls went quickly away, covering with one hand the jeweled crosses on their necks. They went out of the Galleria into Via Roma. 106 THE GALLERY -They should be horsewhipped by their families, Chaplain Bascom said testily, mopping his beety brow. -No, Father Donovan said, replacing his wallet. 'Their sin is partly the world's. -The world, Chaplain Bascom said, blowing his nose with an olive-drab handkerchief. Women go on the streets because they're just plain ornery and refuse to settle down ... and I talian women are much more immoral than our own. One minute they're cross- )0 far a ing themselves in church, and the next they're on Via Roma. The 111rhaps only way the world is concerned in this filthy business is that public '" Chd opinion doesn't have the power in Naples that it has in our own in the country. Here nobody cares what those women do, because all the �nmenti Italians are that way. fathe Father Donovan thoughtfully spread his ringless hands and -You ordered another vermouth. He didn't try to answer Chaplain -Not Bascom directly. He spoke more shyly than usual: Anna -We must be cautious in judging impurity because it's such a failierD natural sin. Not everyone murders. Not everyone robs. But impurity witllll'hi springs from the natural impulses of our own bodies. A deed which niwim� under one set of circumstances brings a child into the world we war] becomes under others a mortal sin. Impuri ty comes from an dlan�en impulse that we all possess. -J wa -Then we must wrestle with that impulse, Chaplain Bascom -Whi cried in triumph, slapping the table so that the glasses jumped to -Chri attention. We must marry if we don't want to burn, as the Apostle Then) Paul says.... I don't mind telling you, padre, that as a young IOcKafte�preacher I wrestled mightily with the lusts of the flesh. mffiouthl-Then you should be more charitable towards those who are �artiHalstill wrestling, said Father Donovan gently. aOOi\\,hlChaplain Bascom always got riled up in his arguments with -Tha Father Donovan. Secretly he feared that the priests of popery got �lacKmail a more subtle and cunning training in propaganda than they gave )o�r�out you at the Baptist seminary. He saw why people feared the Roman Charlai Church. You could easily dismiss the run-of-the-mill Catholic as a lace liKe ( superstitious fool living in the past, but Father Donovan not only -'I'hy had faith but could explain why he had it.. Chaplain Bascom ex- lau�hing,' plained it to himself this way: Catholicism was a secret society -The whose aim was just barely eluding him. He was sure it was up to �a�com s; no good. This aim was known only to the pope and to a few of the -I'm 1 inner circle. Even the average priest didn't know it. «hand a Chaplain Bascom was also honest with himself. He knew he !twas wasn't Christlike. Yet that name was always in his mouth because The arc, FATHER DONOVAN AND CHAPLAIN BASCOM 107 �rr),' r.a� jt\�\f r d L1e RomJ� I Catholic l!J O\an nOlonl1 in Balcom 11' SfcrftlOCi1tl e ir lIas ur W (0 a few of t�1 it was the open-sesame of his profession. It was a name which had a strange hold over people, possibly because they thought it should. The name Jesus Christ could open more hearts than a skeleton key. Nor was Chaplain Bascom quite at ease with the personality of Jesus Christ. His mind was teased by the concept of a carpenter who allowed Himself to be crucified and was remembered and invoked for the next two thousand years. Chaplain Bascom sometimes went so far as to ask himself whether he'd honestly have liked Christ. Perhaps He was just a little ... effeminate. All this talk about love . . . . Chaplain Bascom acknowledged no other love than one took in the arms of a good woman. Any other love seemed to savor of unmentionable vice.... Father Donovan broke the silence: -You're thinking hard, chaplain. Isn't it a painful sensation? -Not at all, not at all, my boy.... And at this moment Chaplain Bascom realized that for two years Father Donovan had been playing with him, in that savage affection with which a cat tortures a mouse. He felt the blood rising under his crimson skin. And he knew at last that there are other forces in the world than the fists of a red-blooded American man. So he changed the subject. - I was thinking of the future of the church. -Which church? Father Donovan asked coyly. -Christianity, of course, Chaplain Bascom growled. Then something inside his burly soul swung outward like a rusty lock after it's oiled. He called to the waiter to bring them each a vermouth. Father Donovan looked at the vermouth in front of the Baptist and began to laugh in the high-pitched relieved manner of a boy who has passed an examination he expected to flunk. -Thank God I've lived to see this, chaplain! Vermouth! The blackmail I could collect from you if I had a camera! What would your South Carolina congregation say? Chaplain Bascom took a huge swig of the vermouth. He made a face like a maddened bull and called for another. -Why, I like you so much this way, Father Donovan said still laughing. And there've been times when you depressed me no end. -The fruit of the vine isn't altogether strange to me, Chaplain Bascom said in a mellow voice. In my youth ... -I'm not hearing your confession, Father Donovan said, raising a hand and smiling. It was getting on to the time of sunset in the Galleria Umberto. The arcade was swelling up with people.He knelV nf ouch becau� 108 THE GALLERY -I'm worried, said Chaplain Bascom resuming, for the future of the church. You and I both know, padre, that there are atheists in foxholes. And many of these fellows will go back to the States and attempt to sweep away the heritage of the ages. They'll call all faith simply dead lumber which has survived because people were stupid and afraid. -And I'm of the opinion, said Father Donovan, that good things, like the poor, will always be with us. It's an article of faith with me that my own church will last till the end of time. As for the others, unless they have something to offer the returning veteran that is free of bigotry and sectionalism, those other churches will go down in defeat. -Just what do you mean by that? cried Chaplain Bascom. -Just this. When an American has seen Naples and death and the wretchedness of the whole world, he may try to forget it when he goes back to the farm in Illinois. But he won't forget it com­ pletely. Malaria and sorrow temper the blood. And do you think that such a man will be satisfied again with a religion which says he may not smoke or drink, which offers strife for peace, which bases its commandments on little stupidities he has outgrown? ... After this war we're going to see either an age of complete barbar­ ism or a gradual return to the simplicities and felicities of Our Lord's life, adapted of course to the time in which we live.... And I, chaplain, have faith in human nature, which isn't intrinsically evil. There are many things in human life that you and I have almost forgotten since we put on these uniforms. It's natural to lose sight of these things in a war so vast and horrible as this one. And there are reckonings to come for all this slaughter. ... But as surely as I know there's sin in the world, I know also that there's that in us which makes us desire to bring up our children in love and peace, which makes us shield our wives and daughters, and which occasionally makes us capable of the noblest sacrifice.... You can't tell me tha t these virtues will ever u tterl y disappear. . . . You remember how far the striking of a match carried in those black nights on the line? So tiny but so bright? Well, just like that match, whatever is good will survive till the end of the world. Otherwise human life becomes the cruelest joke and the figure of Christ on the cross the hollowest gesture that anyone ever made. -Let's have chow, Chaplain Bascom said, wiping his eye. They arose together and replaced their chairs as though they'd been at a formal dinner. Chaplain Bascom took Father Donovan's arm. Together they walked through the Galleria Umberto. Father Donovan took pride in his uniform as he had pride in his Mass IwaKe oorna K11rin� ili1!e p innocen tlrtile!, -Ne �rin� s -Th Thes in �out I wish FATHER DONOVAN AND CHAPLAIN BASCOM 109 vestments, so he looked down to see if his trousers were neatly belled out over his combat boots. In this same spirit he called Chaplain Bascom's attention to his protruding shirttail. The Galleria was filtered with air currents. At the transept cross­ ing from the San Carlo Theater to Via Santa Brigida a column of cool air swam on the heat. -Say, I feel that vermouth, Chaplain Bascom said heavily. -There are worse things to feel, Father Donovan said brightly. He loved the Galleria because it was always full of Neapolitan children-children begging, children selling, children looking, children shuffling barefoot. What caught at him most were the little children pimping. They'd learned a perfect and Saxon English for the pleasures they offered for sale, and their obscene phrases smote Father Donovan more brutally than the worst sins he'd heard in the confessional, where at least he could be impersonal. But when a Neapolitan child played the bawd, the ugly sentences shrieked out as though a parrot spoke them, and they seemed all the fouler because the child understood their import. Father Donovan won­ dered about Americans who were capable of teaching such things to little Neapolitans of seven and eight. Sometimes when he lay awake at night, he thought of the tragedy of the children of Europe, born and passing their formative years under a rain of bombs, keeping alive by catering to the desires of soldiers. What would these poor children be like in maturity, who had never known the innocence of childhood? If these children grew into cold bitter reptiles, then the world would really have lost the war.... -Next week, said Chaplain Bascom, if we're still here, I mean to bring some soap and wash these children's mouths out. -There are better uses for soap in Naples than that. These children, Father Donovan thought, are the same as those in South Philadelphia. They're the same as kids all over the world. I wish I had them all to teach them baseball and buy them pop­ corn. -Italian children, he said aloud, are the saddest spectacle of the war. -But we have slums in the States too. -Oh I know that, I know that. But these children have no escape at all ... not even a settlement house. The chaplains went down the steps of the Galleria that lead to Via Verdi. -What a place that arcade is, said Chaplain Bascom. A great novel could be made of it. I suppose the market place in Jerusalem was like this arcade. Except that Christ isn't here. Ba com. and death an� (or()et It wntn fOJ'1Iel It com· do \Ou thin! 'on ,;'hich �:I r peace, wnirn outtrrown1 .. , mplete oar��, elicitie" 01 o� e lile.... ,1n� 110 THE GALLERY -Oh, I disagree with you, Father Donovan said. I think He is .. · very much so. They waited for a truck convoy to pass them with a roaring and a streaking. Across Via Verdi was a transient mess for American officers. In August, 1944, it was busier than a Childs. In shifts officers ate a soup, a plate of warmed-up C-ration, and a saucer of canned pears. It seemed as though every officer (except airplane drivers) out of combat took his meals there. It had a screen door that swung and clattered. On this door always hung one of two signs-OPEN or CLOSED. When this mess ran out of C-ration, the CLOSED sign went up like a storm flag. Winding out of the entrance was a queue of officers, a depressed little concentration of nurses clutching their shoulder bags, and civilian secretaries of the State Department and the War Shipping Administration. Officers paid ten lire a meal, civilians thirty-five. Ducking the bobbing screen door was a hag in a torn black dress who sold Stars and Stripes, Yank, and Time. She saluted all officers who bought a paper and beamed on them with jagged gums. One rumor had it that she was born during the Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D., another that she was the sybil come in from Cumae because business was better in Naples, another that she was Eleanor Roosevelt in disguise, gather­ ing material for her column. Father Donovan and Chaplain Bascom went to the tail of the line and mopped their faces and their necks in the Neapolitan after­ noon. As four people came out of the mess, the line would inch up four places. The tables in the mess were like those beds where people sleep in shifts. An old Neapolitan was wiping the untidy table top, stacking plates, and talking threateningly to himself. Chaplain Bascom seated himself and beat on the table jovially so that all the glassware vaulted. -Mangiare, Joe. And be presto about it too. The old Neapolitan retreated and was seen no more. Father Donovan turned his quick timid smile on a young Neapolitan in a drenched white coat who brought them two plates of soup. -Ruona sera, Joe. Come state? -Ehhhh! the young Neapolitan said, relaxing and smiling. Non c'e male. Ma c'e troppo lavoro.... -Dago-Iover, said Chaplain Bascom. These people are good fOJ nothing but to sing operas and work in barbershops. Father Donovan didn't answer. He was making the sign of the cross prefatory to saying grace before meals. con wa! �ota -J -I -y �a!co -0 �odda n a roaring anij lor Amerlcaij hi\d�, In Ini!� and a saum�1 \cxcept alr�hijr (\ a men QOC! U\\cr one 01 t�u o C·ralion,ili! of tDe entfd�(: :ratiun 01 nu�� 'es 01 Ine �U:' . Officetl rr� bobDin� Icrti: rs and �Irir.: ..t a pa�r�: ittnallneli Inallne!. I Ie are good fu '�e sign of WI FATHER DONOVAN AND CHAPLAIN BASCOM 111 -You know that embarrasses me in public, Chaplain Bascom continued. -I thank God even for C-ration, Father Donovan said when he'd finished his brief prayer. Chaplain Bascom plowed into his soup. He continued to watch suspiciously the slight brown hands making their second sign of the cross in front of the Purple Heart ribbon on the priest's left breast. Father Donovan then applied himself to his soup. He ate demurely, never looking at what he was eating. -In the seminary, he said, they used to read aloud from pious writings while we were at our meals. So naturally I expect nothing but edifying thoughts from you until dessert. The chaplains looked distrustfully at the second course, which was what they knew it would be: diced pork with beans, dehydrated potatoes, spinach, and a leaf of lettuce. -I keep thinking of Missus Bascom's fried chicken. -But just taste this iced tea, Father Donovan cried gaily. You're having qualms because you drank three glasses of vermouth. Don't. Saint Thomas says we may drink till we feel hilarious. They both arose as two nurses prepared to sit at their table. -Ya don't mind, boys? -Not at all, not at all, girls. With women Chaplain Bascom was almost feudal. In the slight glow of the vermouth he was still enraged that he hadn't scored one this afternoon on Father Donovan. -Oh, padres, one nurse giggled. We could use a little salvation, Tessie. The nurses were older than most ANC's. They had an air of edgy misanthropy of women overseas too long. They had also a certain pride in their captaincies, since every nurse above the rank of second lieutenant considers that she has jumped the Rubicon. -And where are you girls from? Chaplain Bascom purred. It was a theory of his that people could be put at their ease by any of a dozen key phrases. -Oh lands, said the nurse named Elsie, let's not go into that. The only thing we're sure of is that this is Naples, Italy, and that we wanna go home and can't. -You girls have the most Christian mission in this war, Chaplain Bascom said. -Oh we know that, Tessie said. But since Salerno it's been goddam ... beg your pardon ... wearing. They smoked while eating, holding their cigarettes in painted 112 THE GALLERY (nee kw 1 fli�h in� � I ftallr �ana wou� i!in B we d weill -E �ur in -N Aw tviaen �earol (On�u -No in� ou r!�e, -Go Wile tomak, ri!ne nextta -Ita -At worialr, -We �lwro IlllP I�rcon -Wil �nK. -I he �trt to I�ilin f mwe'li -We' �n hi� a in the �� "'Ro� fingernails which nevertheless betrayed how often those hands had been in hot water. -There's nothing pleasant about overseas assignments, Father Donovan said, slicing his preserved pear. -You can say that again, Father! As soon as I looked at you, I knew you was a priest. ... Remember me in your prayers so I can stay outa the booby hatch. -I promise, Father Donovan said. The chaplains finished their meal and said good night to the nurses. -If they didn't smoke like stoves, Chaplain Bascom said on the way out of the mess, they wouldn't be so nervous. -Well, I expect they're lonely and very very tired. On the sidewalk outside the transient officers' mess they put on their caps and peered at one another in the sunset that streamed down through the dome of the Galleria. Father Donovan yawned in the hot light. -Shall we go back to our tent in the Dust Bowl? -Look, said Chaplain Bascom. What's that? Between the two stairways of the Galleria that cascaded into Via Verdi there was an entrance they'd not noticed before. Over the doorway hung a sign in yellow and red: ARIZONA For Allied Officers Now Father Donovan couldn't imagine what Arizona was doing in Naples. But since he was fond of western movies, he thought this might be worth looking into. Chaplain Bascom said: -Since you put me on the path to perdition with vermouth, we might as well look in. Maybe they have cactus plants and saddle horses. The corridor of the Arizona was leaden with smoke. A girl sat in a checkroom the size of a telephone booth. She reached out as they passed and flipped their caps out of their belts. -But we won't be staying long, girlie, Chaplain Bascom said, reaching for his cap. -Hundred lireee, pleeese, she shrieked and put their caps on an inaccessible hook. -Must be a clip joint, Father Donovan said out of his movie vocabulary. Inside there was nothing but a small room swimming in smoke. Tables were crammed about a cleared square no bigger than a coked at IOU) I pta)e� so l� lain ]llsrOro�1 I iheirca�ool lUI of hil romil ming in smoK1, blgger than 4 FATHER DONOVAN AND CHAPLAIN BASCOM 113 checkerboard. Officers hunched over these tables, a few French, a few British. But most were American airplane drivers with their high soft boots ensconced also on the tables. Everybody was drink­ ing steadily. But somehow the chaplains sensed that nothing had really begun yet. On a dais smothered in greenery a small Italian band was playing dance music. They did it self-consciously, as though they were imitating phonograph records. Steered by Chap. lain Bascom, Father Donovan sat down at a table on the edge of the cleared space. Trying to feel at ease, he tapped his boot to the music. -Everybody's looking at us queerly, Chaplain Bascom whispered. Our insignia must stick out like a neon sign. -No one's looking at us. A waiter shambled up and regarded them with menacing timidity. Evidently something went on at the Arizona which made the Neapolitan personnel regard the Allies as an honest-to-goodness conquering army. -Now this will be on me, Father Donovan said grandly, bring­ ing out his Ayrab wallet. Will you bring us a bottle of ... cham­ pagne, please? -Good Lord, Chaplain Bascom said. When the wine came Father Donovan blanched at the price, but to make good his gesture he paid up without a murmur. An air­ plane driver with swollen eyes leaned over chummily from the next table: -It ain't the champagne ya payin for here, kids. -Atmosphere, I presume? Father Donovan said, feeling quite worldly. He'd learned much from the movies. -Well, ya can call it that, the airplane driver said. He was on the wrong side of the chaplains to see the crosses on their collars. I keep comin here night after night. I call myself a beast, but I keep comin. . .. Roger. -What's he talking about? Chaplain Bascom whispered. He's drunk. No wonder they have so many casualties in the air force. -I heard that, the airplane driver cried. Lissen, Jack, I come here to fergit my troubles, not for fights with doughfeet. But if ya spoil in for a bruise, wait till my buddy gets back from the bobo, an we'll mop up the floor with the botha yez.... Roger. -We're not in the infantry, Father Donovan said, laying a hand on his arm. We've just worked with it a little. And since we're both in the same army, there's not much sense in a fight, is there? -Roger, the airplane driver said. 114 THE GALLERY � II I' He settled back mollified and beamed on Father Donovan's Purple Heart. He pointed to his own, to his wings, and to the Twelfth Air Force patch on his left shoulder. It had been crocheted in rhinestones by some Neapolitan. He winked at Father Donovan and reached over to put an arm about his shoulders. -Yare all right, lootenant. But who's that ole beagle with ya? Shoulda left him home. With a warm swell of good feeling Father Donovan set the two glasses precisely in the middle of the table and poured out the champagne. It bubbled so cool and golden that even Chaplain Bascom assumed his Something Special air. They clinked glasses. Father Donovan was a host for the first time in his life. Being curate under a bitter brooding pastor in South Philadelphia had some­ what pinched his naturally hospitable nature. All he'd ever been able to do for anyone was to teach kids baseball. Only in saying Mass had he ever been in a position to do something grand for other people. -Delicious, said Chaplain Bascom, smacking his lips. I see the point of Solomon's warning against wine. Look how it giveth its color in the cup. -That guy talks like a chaplain, the airplane driver muttered, emerging from a funk in which he'd laid his head on his chest. -I am a chaplain, Chaplain Bascom said loftily. -Then what are ya doin in this place, Father? - I am not a priest. -Well, ya should be. Father Donovan blushed. There was a cyst of delicacy in him that made him itch and sweat when things didn't run smoothly. -Some of our champagne? he said to the airplane driver. The flier had been regarding them with a confused affection and hostility, like a dog making up its mind. He tottered to their table and seated himself with the help of Father Donovan. -Thank ya. My buddy musta died in the bobo. Since last month at Cerignola, all ya have to do is yell flak, an we all start shittin ... Chaplain Bascom twitched. An now my missions is all done, Roger. I'm goin back to the States. -Well, I advise you to watch your language when you get there, said Chaplain Bascom. There are ladies in America. -If you wasn't a major, I might be tempted to tellya to blow it. In fact, I think I will anyway. -I'd hate to pull my rank on you, Chaplain Bascom said. fa� tram A tne me In� &ive fa tnou�� --Lo A� Inala �lace!,' !11med �ncan --T !neaan --It Inat L� O\an set tnf tl� poured out lli l mn Cnarir " clinked �iQit lile. Bein�(un: lphia had Wlli An he'd ever k' I. Onlv inlllil thin� wana'r: nee lalt m��l: all tart Initti�" I uoin bacK to�c hen �'ou get tn� ca. , 'Iellya to blowl: 'com said. FATHER DONOVAN AND CHAPLAIN BASCOM 115 -That's all you Protestant chaplains is good for is to pull rank. Ya get GI after leavin a little piddlin church in Georgia that pays ya five bucks a Sunday ... -We're all friends here, boy, Father Donovan said. The flier gave a windy sigh, said Roger, and went to sleep on Father Donovan's shoulder. He removed the dead weight softly from himself and settled the head on another table. At this moment some glasses and bottles went whizzing through the air and crackled against the orchestra stand. A fight began in the farthest corner between three airplane drivers and two combat engineers. The noise rose in level as though an invisible hand had turned up the volume control on a radio. What was going on the chaplains couldn't see clearly for the billowing smoke and the crowds pushing in from their tables. The disturbers of the peace were lured ou t the door by the Italian manager into the arms of waiting MP's. -Nice place, said Chaplain Bascom, sipping his champagne. Then girls appeared and sat down invited or not at various tables. The din rose. This was what everyone had been waiting for. -Why, Chaplain Bascom said, this place is a taxi dance hall. The airplane driver came to and straightened up. He identified the girls for Father Donovan: -That's Lola with the green handkerchief.... That's Gina with the earrins.... That one there signalin the waiter is Bruna.... That number in red is Bianca Stella.... Most of em is married to officers in the Italian Army that are prisoners of war. All these cheesecakes have bambini. But a gal has to make a livin.... Mamma mia, what a covey of quail. ... They all got a union rate of two thousand lire a night an don't tell me that us airplane drivers have inflated the prices But 0 Roger, Roger.... Father Donovan and Chaplain Bascom turned on one another as though they'd just met and were sizing one another up. -Look, Chaplain Bascom moaned hoarsely. A girl had come out in front of the orchestra. She got an ovation. In a low rasp she sang ''I'll Be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places." A carnation was stuck in her hair. She wore a dress that seemed to have been sewn from pieces of lace and silk rooted out of ashcans. -That's Lydia, the airplane driver said, his eyes bloodshot. An she don't gimme the time of day. -It seems, whispered Father Donovan, rising from the table, that Lydia is about to take off her clothes. 116 THE GALLERY The two chaplains retreated through the maze of tables where the officers leaned forward toward Lydia through the iron-gray smoke. Some had girls on their knees who incited them to drink deeply, to forget everything but This Moment Now. Through the fumes eyes looked out at Lydia with weariness and desire and fever. There was an air of daze and bestial futility cut by the mechanical-saw voice of Lydia. The chaplains got their caps. The MP at the door leered at their insignia. Outside it was dark. Evening had come to Naples, but the heat stayed on as loving and deadly as a pillow over a sleeper's face. Down the steps of the Galleria U mberto came buzzing evidence of trafficking going on up there in the blackout. Chaplain Bascom was sweating and panting as he put his cap on his head and set it determinedly at a forty-five-degree angle. Father Donovan said nothing but bent down and tucked his trousers over his combat boots. Then he noticed a little girl sitting on the curb. She had blond hair, so rare in Neapolitan babies. She seemed so tiny and alone. She was peeling a stick of American chewing gum, her mouth already open in anticipation. And her eyes glowed like a kitten's at dusk. Father Donovan walked over to talk to her. He had another stick of gum in his pocket to give her. But she, fearful of her treasure, darted out into the street. He laughed and ran after her. Around the corner from the San Carlo an English lorry turned in. It slid like a huge coffin behind the blackout lenses on its head­ lights. These cast a sick pencil of glow on the little girl's bobbing hair, on the pursuing legs of Father Donovan. Chaplain Bascom saw what was happening. He shouted and leaped into the street after them. The lorry bore down. His ears exploded with the scream of brakes and the crunch of bodies, as collies are mashed under heavy turning wheels. On the opposite curb the tiny Neapolitan girl watched the truck back off. The two bodies lay there quietly, one with a bit of purple silk ribbon over his heart. She put her gum into her mouth. Americani. For it wasn't the first time she'd seen the dead lying in the streets of Naples. t tables wn1� the iron'�41 them to Uri� ,'. Throu�n� and de\ir� � i\it� cut or � their ca�!.l� FOURTH PROMENADE (Algiers) ,Bhlomtllff. on 'i�oo: I irl'! oo��� .. ·nlain B�[� into ili� Illti �Ul(fft !1Jjn�� ll�l: I REMEMBER LEARNING ALL OVER AGAIN HOW TO WALK. My gait was something between a sailor's and a mountaineer's. For Rue Michelet winds and grinds to the top of the city. Walking in Algiers means going either uphill or down. Consequently I was forever leaning forward or backward. I got to be uneasy on a level stretch, the way a drunk's nerves twitch till the bars open. I remember that Algiers was more European than Casa. In the summer of 1944 there was a quality of reaching out. It was the old Paris trying to find itself. Most of the people in Algiers were refugees from Paris and were waiting to get back there. They rejoiced over the Normandy invasion because it was the beginning of an attrition they'd thirsted for since June, 1940. Sometimes I thought it was we Americans who were getting Paris back for them, but I didn't say so. I remember that in Algiers many French soldiers wore our uni­ form. It was easy to tell that they weren't Americans-something narrower about their eyes, something contracted and concentrated in everything they did. Nevertheless they wore our uniforms, and the Mediterranean Base Section decided that a discrimination must be made-possibly to keep us out of the Kasbah and out of certain bars and areas smelling of bed sheets and st.range foods. So we had to affix to our caps the little brass circlet US. Then it was clear to us and to the MP's who was a French GI and who an American. It was the first time I saw British soldiers. Till July of 1944 Allied Force Headquarters was at Algiers. In the AFHQ offices there was an Englishman to counterbalance every American. Thus the streets of Algiers clomped with British hobnails. The British wore shorts till 1800 hours. Through the leafy heat their legs bobbed like brown pistons. They wore canvas gaiters and short sleeves and berets 117 118 THE GALLERY (A ....--. designed after the queen's own tam. On Rue Michelet and Rue I r , J:aerd'Isly I remember the signs in the windows: wo's & SGT S CLUBS. UJIl The OR's had theirs too. But the British said that we Yanks were move better off than they. They'd been a long time away from Blighty, Inea as long ago as Tobruk, and they resented our rations and our lerraei cigarettes and our' theaters. ENSA was never like this, they said. �orle They scratched their bare legs, bitten by the anopheles mosquito. �ilno I remember my first pass in Algiers. I knew just where I wanted ��llr to go. I walked out into the twilight where the barrage balloons me A] shimmered over Algiers Harbor like silver kidneys. The port was mnh teeming with hospital ships, the air buzzed with planes fiying into lime! Maison Blanche. I walked down Rue Michelet, leaning backward. wnom Along my way were green public gardens, but their iron gates were loeB locked at sundown. nema -Why, myte? Because you bloody Yanks used to myke a sham- Ire bles of them after nightfall. �ulaoo Through the heat of Algiers I looked inside the scrolled gratings. loo�eaI could see the fountains playing and the statues with inscriptions I��orin French. What, no walks there after dark? At noon French girls ili�i�, walked there on their lunch hour from the office. They were crisper ror�! 0and cooler than the Casablancaises. OOUf! -Closer to French love all the time. The wimmin in Casablanca ��Ierve have seen too many Ayrabs. moven I remember how few Ayrabs there were in the city itself, as Inewin though the French had put guards at the entrances. I saw Ayrabs �rrto only when I was out in trucks, along the roads to Maison Carree or Maison Blanche or spying on the Tamaris Hotel at Ain-Taya. That too made Algiers seem less an African city. It was also the French everywhere spoken. I stopped many times as I strolled along, trying not to seem a country cousin just in from Casa: -00 sir troove I'Hotel Aletti? -II n'est pas trop loin, monsieur. The Hotel Aletti. Only colonels and generals and foreign corre­ spondents lived in it. But everybody flocked to its gardens and terrace, and not to look at the colonels and the generals and the war correspondents. Nearly every GI in the city of Algiers converged afternoons on the Hotel Aletti, like the rays of the sun in heraldic designs. I'd go to the Place d'Isly and turn right toward the harbor. I'd passthe street of the peppermint columns of the Bar Pigalle, where people in white linen drank vermouth and talked of Paris. Then I'd turn left on a ramp and go downhill again, leaning backwards. -That there's the Aletti, kids. The Passion Pit of Algiers..•• afternOOm�ll Idic designl, ]'� harbor, l'd r�� I pirraJie, wnm ( Paris, Then N �ackwards, of Algiers, , ,I (ALGIERS) 119 I remember that in front of the hotel there was a terrace of different levels with metal tables and umbrellas. There was constant movement here of people with glasses in their hands, swarming on the different planes like drunks at a garden party. It was almost a terrace restaurant where people idle and look for and at other people. In the Aletti garden there was an excitement seemingly withou t reason. Occasionally a brigadier general would issue mar­ tially from inside the hotel, picking his way among the tables and the Ayrab shoeshine boys. GI's would lower their eyes to their drinks. But the ladies would appraise the general's mistress. Some­ times it was a Red Cross girl. But oftener it was an Algerienne whom he kept in lipstick and an apartment near the Saint Georges. The BG's lady sometimes flew to Italy with him in his plane when he made inspections. . I remember that persons with a purpose never stayed long in the outdoor garden of the Aletti. They'd go into the lobby, which looked as though it should be cool. But it never was. It was like the lobby of aNew York flop joint, with hundreds of rotting leather chairs. On these GI's lolled. Past their relaxed bodies flitted the corps of mademoiselles, about fifty in number. They had union hours and union prices. The rules of courtship weren't strictly observed. The GI's just lay in their chairs drinking, while the girls moved from one cluster to the next, making their sales talk. They knew instinctively where to do their promoting, working from the bar to the farthest recesses of the lounge. They spoke to as many as two hundred GI's in the two hours that the bar stayed open. I remember their French social sense. Even if I wasn't interested, they'd make a social call on me lasting five minutes in return for a drink, a cigarette, and a stick of gum. For ten francs the bar offered white wine with a block of ice in it. It was a strong and melancholy drink. I remember the Duchess, who always sat alone in a pink straw hat, drinking and smoking and thinking. She never made the ad­ vances, having high ideals of her profession. She knew French poetry, the opera, and the gossip of the haut monde. If I bought her a drink, she accepted it so that I understood the great favor she was doing me. Nor did she ever entertain a proposal till closing time, since goodly fellowship was more important to her than her career. She viewed her lovers with a mellow cynicism. I knew she was out of her century. But I didn't tell her, for the Duchess knew it herself. -Helas, she said, picking up her gloves at closing time, qu'ai-je fait de rna jeunesse? 120 THE GALLERY I remember the most sought-after, Emilie the tigress. She was an exhausting girl. She'd fling herself on me in a rage of delight, chewing her gum madly, her eyes spewing forth little sparks of coldest fire. She nudged me, prodded me, kicked me, pulled my hair, nipped at my ears. She'd get hold of my waist and squeeze and tickle and maul: -Ah, cheri, que tu es timideI Crache-moi dans la bouche et dis­ moi que tu m'aimes! Then she'd get bored with me and egg the other girls on to fights. I remember discovering that this was an epileptic fit that she sus­ tained for two hours because she was, as it were, on the stage in the Aletti. I remember that the prettiest of them all was Claudette, who'd come in with her suitcase from Tunis for the pickings. Because she was as fresh and straightforward as an American girl, she was the most popular. Claudette talked a rolling salty English. She made it quite clear that with her stipends from the Allied troops in Algiers she could retire a rich woman in another year. -And I won't be a beatup old bag, either! Claudette said. She never allowed herself to be sampled in public, which was part of the selling propaganda of the other girls. At the bar of the Aletti stood a circle of misanthropes, officers, and people who wanted to look at the circus without standing in the ring. They drank their white wine and listened and gazed at the ground. What conversation they made to one another or to me heightened my sense of the mania and irrelevance of the war. Nothing they said registered with me at all. It was as though a comedian were to describe death to an audience in a burlesque theater. They all simply lectured when they talked. In the things they said there wasn't an attempt to establish contact with another human being. They raved like people coming out of anesthetic. They'd built their walls around them for the duration. I remember that the only person who dared intrude on these solitary drinkers was some girl who wasn't doing too well for her­ self in the Aletti lobby. But she too soon saw how these anonymities had been frightened, how they came to the Aletti bar merely in order not to lose their hold on humanity. It was that vague escape from misanthropy in which one frequents crowds in order to assure oneself one hasn't lost the way. I remember that sometimes I'd grow weary of drinking and of being pushed around by the Aletti Victory Girls. So I too would stand at the bar with the zombies. I'd take a token white wine and wedge myself in with the rest of the dying pack. When the wine time� numa �ia t �iae �ut 01 lr Hotel �on� �rpe !war I Wal pI to lace mr!elf �int � l�r a p lre &inK e I waten oltnd Wllnten wanner. �m the alan in One e oommun waited � l�eAlett :oleel h� mlO the (ALGIERS) 121 lion, intrude on W6 tOO II'elllarla :ill e anon)1Di�c i bar merd)'� iP.a! \ague eiQ� in order to �ll�i I drinKing ana � I toO wo�l� � lI'hite wine ��� l\1Jen the wi�1 nibbled at me, I sometimes caught psychic currents I couldn't explain. I'd look up with a sudden uneasiness and see someone at the other end of the bar communicating with me by signals that seemed to have been already agreed on between us. And then I sensed that I could talk out of this world, as one sometimes does with total strangers on railway trains and in confessionals. Some­ times I was close to believing that old crud about the wigwags human beings send out to others when they're lonely, as insects are said to talk with the scraping of their wings. And I too began to slide around in the dihedrals of time and space, slipping in and out of being like a ball bearing in a maze. 1 remember that sometimes my life in that sweating bar of the Hotel Aletti looked like a separate and removed bubble inching along a thread. Then my mind would start gyrating like a corn popper and I'd have to quiet myself by reasoning that I'd been away from the States a long time, that I was drunk, and my mind was playing me dirty tricks. It was trying to be God and come face to face with itself. But why? why? why? At these moments I'd see myself rocketing out into space, seeing this world from the view­ point of eternity. How tiny we all were, how like fleas dolled up for a pageant. I remember that a second lieutenant of the engineers used to drink every afternoon at the bar of the Hotel Aletti. For a week I watched him. He fled the girls and leaned in the farthest corner of the bar, holding onto his drink as gods clutch at their membra in orgies. I wondered why he never had a buddy. He had hair as white as the snow that Algiers never sees, and a thin sunburned face. He looked like the social young men in Life magazine's dances, but he didn't act like them. If anyone spoke to him, he'd reply in just as many words as they'd used on him, smile as though to tell them they didn't see the farce of it all, and return to his wine. If after this an attempt was still made to continue the conversation, he'd smile again and softly change his place at the bar. His en­ counters with Emilie and Lucie and Bettine used to make me wonder. I think they were afraid of him. He'd disengage himself from their arms and their nipping teeth with the slippery coolness of an invisible fish. One evening, I remember, when the white wine had taken a communicative turn in me, I slipped into the place next him and waited shyly, tingling a little. I ordered another white wine with the Aletti ice cube bobbing in it and looked at my boots. It was odd to feel him close by me. It seemed as though all air had been sucked into the place where he stood so aloof and silent. He smelled of ll' I" 122 THE GALLERY (Al .......-. Lifebuoy soap and shaving lotion, as though he strove to be im­ personal. I know my army officers pretty well, having observed them for years from the perspective of a pebble looking up and squinting at the white bellies of the fish nosing above it. Americans usually go mad when by direction of the president of the United States they put a piece of metal on their collars. They don't know whether they're the Lone Ranger, Jesus Christ, or Ivanhoe. Few Americans I ever knew could sustain the masquerade of an officer. Their grease paint kept peeling in unexpected places. I heard that in combat the good officers simply knew their men well and did them one better in daring. But to be a good officer out of combat demands a sort of shadowboxing between truth and posing. Europeans know the secret. But few Americans can play the nobleman without con­ descension or chicken. American officers fall into three easy slots of the doughnut ma­ chine. The feminine ones, I mean those who register life and are acted upon by it, become motherly, fussy, and on the receiving end from the GI's under them. If they rule at all, it's by power of their gentleness, which can fasten a GI in tight bonds once his will consents and admires. Second, there are the violent and the aggres­ sive, who as commissioned officers -assume a male and fatherly part ranging from drunken pas who whale their sons on Saturday nights to the male and nursing tenderness of an athletic coach. Yet these most masculine men aren't always the best officers in a crisis or showdown. Third, there are those commissioned nonentities who as civilians were male stenographers, file clerks, and X-ray tech­ nicians. They are neither masculine nor feminine. They move through the army in polyp groups of their own sort. They're never alone. I can be in the same room with such officers without feeling the presence of anything or anyone. Touching their personalities is like poking at a dish of lemon jello. They smile and assume another shape. I remember standing beside the white-haired second lieutenant of the engineers. I thought that if he didn't speak soon, I'd scream, as the saying goes. I didn't know into which of my three slots he fell. He seemed a coin with the milling rubbed off. -Don't be so goddam condescending, corporal. -Pardon, sir? I said. I jumped at the sound of his voice. I realized that his mind had been tracking mine for the past five minutes. This lieutenant had a voice that began at his navel and got muted in his sinuses. As he leaned toward me, his breath was mixed with wine and peppermint. -Yo -A -AH Wdl, N�iersr !iiver -On, fiim one -You retreati an rur� mmr1e inwmba lju!tlie wmale !taname in� too �rtimi!ti -The �Iutin� n �ral,an I�a the tl IfiinK,tha ID1 when II'! lawni� mme here I�1ver wan �l U!, �halll �me time, "Urou Well,!'ll g ..Well,: .. Except l�u've aeer ��re [rom ,1ri�ht to I II�r listen "'You'V( ...Moth( removed a �verseas I' (J �llH� ----.:.. \.IO'e to b� tt (ALGIERS) 123 Yet\ed th�m, 'd?d squlntln!: I \Cans ulu�l\ I tntted �Utel'� , I tnow wntlli oe. Few Arnerl� J,Thelr� t in (omo�t: one�tle, eman� a lor. -You've been watching me for the past week, corporal, he said. -A GI looks up to his officers, sir. Or wants to.... -Ah ... you hoped to prove to yourself that I'm a sad sack. Well, I am. Completely lost.... How do you know you're in Algiers? Or for that matter what proof can you give me that you're alive? -One at a time, sir, I said, gulping my wine so that I could buy him one and establish some ground between him and myself. -Your curiosity will be the death of you, corporal. Play safe and retreat into some sort of role.... It's wonderful how in a war you can purge yourself and become nothing or everything. . . . I for example have lost my touch with life. I'm like those basket cases in combat. A man still alive but limbless and deaf, dumb, and blind. I just lie in a great white bed, my brain still functioning, but able to make no impression on the world outside me.... Do you under­ stand me? You have the face of a ferret or a weasel. ... But know­ ing too much will sicken you. Just go back to being convenient and optimistic and slick and conventional. -The lieutenant speaks a fine English, I said, gulping. -Don't address me in the third person. You're like the Ayrabs saluting me when they want a bonbon. You're an American cor­ poral, and you have confused ideas of democracy and independence and the four freedoms. You loathe saluting me on the street. You think, that sonofabitch shavetail. ... So don't think you're kidding me when you address me in the third person. It's not respectful. It's fawning.... So for God's sake just cut out that crap.... You came here to talk, and I'm giving you what you asked for. You'll never want to talk to me again, which will be healthier for both of us. -Shall I go away now, sir? I said, bridling and trembling at the same time. -If you like. But you won't.... I'm your experience for today. Well, I'll give you a dose of me. -Well, I try to give everybody an even break, I stuttered. -Except me, corporal, except me. For one solid week now you've been staring at me when you weren't allowing yourself a free grope from these putains.... Did it ever occur to you that I have a right to privacy? Is your own life so small that you must enlarge it by listening in on my party lines? -You've got me all wrong, sir ... -Mother of shit, the lieutenant said, his voice as cool and removed as ever, how I envy you mediocre people! Since I came overseas I've been in a position where nothing has squared with 124 THE GALLERY the education I got. I have a good mind. And it's disciplined. I know Shakespeare and Mozart and calculus and how to hold my moxie. But nothing I learned at Yale has given me any preparation for the mad world in which I find myself.... Do you all think you're playing a game with high stakes? Are you happy to be a Joiner? Are you happy moving in herds and thinking as the news. papers and the radio commercials tell you to? What sweet con­ solation to be able to say to yourself: I'm an American, therefore better than anyone else in the world! . . . You see, corporal, the human race is getting worse all the time. Each year we know less than we did in the preceding. We're more no-account now than we were five hundred years ago. Five hundred years from now I doubt that there'll be any of us left on earth. Just thousands of wrecked planes and burned-out tanks from the South Pole to the steppes of Russia.... We get smugger all the time. We call forces of destruction and speed, the March of Progress.... -Born in the States, sir? I said feebly after a pause. -Born there, corporal, but probably sha'n't die there. I had ideas of aristocracy without class, of brotherhood without famil­ iarity and sentimentality. And I studied and I read and I admired nature and art. And I said what a piece of work is man, and I believed it. But it looks as though individuality is going out for­ ever. Yet the propaganda assures me that a new age is at hand. -It's the turning point in history, sir, for the little man.... I murmured this, for it was something I'd read that morning in Stars and Stripes, Mediterranean. -The fallacy of the machine and the mob, corporal. If the murder gets over, everything will then be geared to the lowest common denominator, as it is in the American public schools. The queer, the beautiful, the gentle, and the wondering will all go down before a race of healthy baboons with football letters on their sweaters.... I was a letter man at Yale.... And the end of the world will come as a tittering anticlimax, because we're going to shut ourselves out from the stream of truth, and drown in pettiness and small talk. -You fear the little man, sir? -The term little man is a phrase of self-pity. Faugh, corporal .... I remember that I excused myself from the second lieutenant of the engineers and went out of the Aletti into the streets of Algiers. I looked back at him as I turned out the door, bumping into a colonel. I remember thinking with an ache of pity and laughter that this was the last time the young lieutenant would speak. For no one man can put his hands up to stop a locomotive.... M mink H neroe Tha ered 0 !Ieeo IV I (Quid a �ne ate ana pati (Quldn't �ut !he' iliemer �! l17iti a�nna, A! th �ea, �he America iliedeal, oladars �ut now (lUCKed �eapolit �a!ped oitterness love in n Beneat two tape �ne tha ---.. � Ui�ciplineQ �ow to holQ rr anr preparatw a )'ou all t� ham to � ing as the n� �\iflat �weet m erican, thm!� see, corpor�, � tar we know � ((aunt now � ears [rom n�w u·t thoulanru � uth Pole Wt .Wecalllol( FIFTH PORTRAIT Momma coTjX)raJ. II � to ilie jo�! � ic iChOOjl, n • �j�j�o�o' 'etm on � ilieenaolm . lIe're �oin!: TO�] in �ttino MOMMA ALWAYS LAY A WHILE IN HER BED WHEN SHE AWOKE. Poppa was up four hours earlier and went out into the streets of Naples for a walk, to buy Risorgimento and to drink his caffe espresso. He said it made him nervous to lie beside her because she cooed to herself as she slept. That love which Poppa no longer desired of her Momma show­ ered on the clientele of her bar. One reason she cooed in her sleep was that she was one of the richest women in Naples. She could afford to buy black market food at two thousand lire a day. She ate better than the Americans. She had furs and lovely dresses and patent leather pumps which even the countesses in the Vomero couldn't afford. Momma had come from a poor family in Milan, but she'd made herself into one of the great ladies of Naples. And the merchants of Naples, when they sent her monthly bills, instead of writing signora before her name, wrote N.D., standing for nobil donna. As the churches of Naples struck noon, Momma got out of her bed. She was wearing a lace nightie brought her from Cairo by an American flier. Momma knew that the flier had made money on the deal, but no other woman in Naples had one like it. In the old days she'd have driven Poppa mad with this lace nightie. But now he simply crawled in beside her, felt the sheer stuff, and ducked his tongue in disapproval. Poppa was first and last a Neapolitan. Even in the early days of their marriage he'd never grasped the fineness of Momma's grain. But she was beyond such bitterness now. She loved the world, and the world returned her love in her bar in the Galleria U mberto. Beneath a colored picture of the Madonna of Pompei, flanked by two tapers and a pot of pinks, Momma said her morning prayers. She thanked the Virgin for saving her during the bombard- 125rire.... III, 126 TH E GALLERY 1,1 ments of Naples. But the Virgin hadn't spared that lovely apparta­ mento in Piazza Garibaldi. And Momma prayed for all the sweet boys who came to her bar, that they might soon be returned to their families-but not too soon, for Momma loved their com.. pany. And she prayed also for the future of poor Italy, that the line up by Florence might soon be smashed by the American Fifth Army. And she prayed that II Duce and his mistress Claretta Petacci might see the error of their ways. Finally Momma prayed that all the world might be as prosperous and happy as she her.. self was. With the bombing of her apartment in Piazza Garibaldi in March, 1943, Momma'd been able to salvage only her frigidaire. Everything else had been destroyed-the lovely linens she'd brought Pappa with her dowry from Milan, her fragile plate, her genteel furniture. Only the frigidaire was to be found among the rubble, pert and smiling as a bomb shelter. Momma'd wept the whole day; then she and Pappa had moved into a dreary set of rooms on the :bird floor of the Galleria Umberto. Momma'd got the rooms .leaned, set the frigidaire in the kitchen, and bought secondhand furniture by cautious shopping in Piazza Dante. But her heart as a homemaker had died in the ruins of that appartamento to which Poppa had brought her as a bride. She lived now only for her bar and for the Allied soldiers who came there every night except Sunday. In fact Momma was only treading water all day long until 1630 hours, at which time the provost marshal of Naples allowed her to open her bar. At 1930 MP's came to make sure it was closed. Three hours. Yet in those three hours Momma lived more than most folks do in twenty-four. She'd opened her bar the night after Naples fell to the Allies, in October, 1943. Some American of the 34th Division had chris­ tened her Momma, and the name stuck. And because Momma had an instinctive knack for entertaining people, her bar was the most celebrated in Naples. Indeed a Kiwi had once told her that it was famous all over the world, that everyone in the Allied armies told everyone else about it. Momma rejoiced. Her only selfish desire was to be renowned as a great hostess. She was happy that she made money in her bar, but that wasn't her be-and-end-all. She knew that she was going down in history with Lili Marlene and the Mademoiselle of Armcnticres=-though for a different reason. title, nind !ne'd !ta�e, roomi inne andtlor L� rattn -� wap �oppa m, �o on A and ne liilier. �he nat on nerdra one ha ItocKin� lillala crom h tnelue frllents final! walNa around fri�iaair !fle invi for this I�ne WI 1lllrtr 01 was airec loitered Momma brushed her teeth with American dentrifice while the water ran into her tub. She studied her hair in the mirror. For k twentd�, oilie:� \ ' n �aa� 'Sf MOIDJl)J� �al ilie[� ro'd her tnatitl, � lied anni� t� orJ\ selDIn ac I I� ( . happr wIt, be-and-ena·all.; Lill )Iarlenlt a diHerent re�: I nlrifice whilet '2 the mirror,f MOMMA 127 ten years she'd been hennaing it. But she was too honest to go on kidding the world. She was forty-six. In the face of that sacred title, Momma, it seemed to her sacrilegious to sit every night be­ hind her cash register with crimson hair glowing in the lights. So she'd stopped using the rinse. Now her hair was in that transitional stage, with gray and white and henna streaked through it. But the momentary ugliness of her hair was worth her title. At. closing time in her bar, some of her boys, a bit brilli, would cry on her shoulder and tell her that she looked just like some elderly lady in Arkansas or Lyon or North Wales or the Transvaal or Sydney. Then she'd pat their hands and say: -Ah, mio carol Se fosse qui la Sua mammal ... She'd never been able to learn English, though she understood nearly everything that was said to her in it. Momma climbed into the tub after she'd sprinkled in some salts a merchant seaman had brought her from New York. Her body was getting a little chunky, but she tried her best to keep it trim, the way a Momma's should be. At first she'd worn a pince-nez until Poppa had told her she looked like a Sicilian carthorse with blind­ ers. So she had reverted to her gold-rimmed spectacles. She doted on American black market steaks, her pasta asciutta, her risotti, and her peperoni. She knew that a Momma mustn't be skinny either. She dressed herself in black silk and laid out a quaint straw hat on which a stuffed bird sprawled eating cherries. She opened her drawerful of silk stockings. You could count on the fingers of one hand the women in Naples of August, 1944, who owned silk stockings-were they prostitutes on the Toledo or marchese in villas at Bagnoli. But Momma had em; she averaged a pair a week from her American admirers. Momma considered herself one of the luckiest ladies in the world. She knew that no woman gets presents for nothing. Finally dressed and fragrant and cool in spite of the furnace that was Naples in August, 1944, Momma took up her purse and looked around the apartment before locking it. She checked the ice in the frigidaire. Sometimes, after she was compelled to close her bar, she invited her favorite boys up for extra drinks. She didn't charge for this hospitality. She walked through the Galleria Umberto. At this hour it was empty of Neapolitans because of the heat. But the Allied soldiery was already out in full force. The bars weren't open, so they just loitered against the walls reading their Stars and Stripes or 128 THE GALLERY Ii 1 whistling at the signorine. A few waved to Momma, and she bowed to them. Then she went onto the Toledo, which II Duce had vulgarized into Via Roma. Here she clutched her bag more tightly. Like anybody else born in Milan, she had no use for Neapolitans or Sicilians. They thought the world owed them a living, so they preyed on one another with a malicious vitality, like monkeys re­ moving one another's fleas. And now that the Allies were in Naples, the Neapolitans were united in milking them. Momma knew' that the Neapolitans hated her because she was rich and because she refused to speak their dialect. She walked through them all with her head in the air, clutching her purse. Some who knew her called out vulgar names in dialect and cracks about Napoli Milionaria, but she paid them no attention. She and Poppa usually lunched together at a black market restaurant on Via Chiaia, patronized by Americans and those few Italians who could afford the price of a meal there. Today Poppa was out campaigning for public office at the Municipio, so Momma ate alone at her special table. Sometimes she suspected that Poppa had a mistress. But then he wouldn't stand a chance at snapping up anything really good, what with all the Allies in Naples. The treatment Momma got at this restaurant was in a class by itself. Naturally the Americans got fawned on, but then they didn't know what the waiters said about them in the kitchen. Whereas Momma, as an Italian who'd made a success in the hardiest times Naples had ever known, always got a welcome as though she were Queen Margherita. There were flowers on her table and special wines rustled up from the cellar, although the Allies got watered vino ordinario. And when Momma entered, the orchestra stopped playing American jazz, picked up their violins, and did her favor­ ite tune, "Mazzolin di Fiori." Momma tapped her chin with her white glove and hummed appreciatively. While she picked at her whitefish and sipped her white wine and peeped around the restaurant from under the shadow of the red bird that forever ate cherries on her hat, Momma observed an American sergeant wrestling with an American black market steak. He was quite drunk, and to Momma, who knew all the symptoms so well, he seemed ready to cry. She debated inviting him to her table and treating him to his lunch. But he gave her the I-hate­ Italians scowl, so she thought better of it. He wasn't the sort who came to her bar anyhow. Momma was basically shy, except with people she thought needed affection. Then she'd open up like all the great hostesses of the world. However, she did take out of her (dved wrette never rolitic· lincet tne Ga �he walKed Qumpr oira chi !ne'd b ouilt UR Geoated !ne'd!ee into N Ro�m ilimw Ileryaf Killing t �inema �ne fo rut on made in u!eatot ding. T nerfeet ner girdl �a((r out li�nt� ca �ople c Momma' �Ut to I , ��I.lm � anu �he bow� :h 1\ Duce k. )alJ more ti�nt\ [or �eapoli� � li\'in�J 10 ili1 . e monkey!)! : Allies we;e; them,11offill e \Ias ti�� , , .. ; ed tluo�: p !)t. �me,� cra(� lk MOMMA purse a little pasteboard card advertising her bar. She sent it by a waiter over to the sergeant, plus a bottle of Chianti. He scowled at her again, and Momma decided basta, she'd gone more than halfway. Then he tore up her card and began to guzzle her wine. She finished her lunch and smoked a cigarette. There seemed to be a rope about her neck pulled taut by all the evil fingers of the world. She wanted to go somewhere and have a good cry. She needed a friend. Poppa had never been close to her since, in the first year of their marriage, he discovered that she wasn't going to be fertile, like all the other women of Italy. Momma had con­ ceived just once. In her Fallopian tubes. After the medico had curetted her out and she'd all but died, he'd told her she could never have a child of her own. And Poppa in disgust had taken to politics and reading the papers. Momma'd only begun to love again since the night in October, 1943, when she'd opened her bar in the Galleria Umberto.... She arose from table and drew on her white gloves. As she walked to the door, she saw herself pass by in the gilded mirror, a dumpy figure holding in its chin, a scudding straw hat under a bird chewing cherries. She knew that if she didn't get outside soon, she'd bawl right there in front of the waiters, and the drama she'd built up of a great lady would collapse forever. On Via Chiaia she debated what movie she'd go to. Since she went every afternoon, she'd seen them all. A few American films were beginning to dribble into Naples, and Momrna'd enjoyed Greer Garson or Ginger Rogers with an Italian sound track. Yet movies bored her unless there was lots of music and color. The truth was that she went every afternoon because she'd nothing else to do; she was just killing time till the hour to open her bar. She decided on the Cinema Regina Elena off Via Santa Brigida. She found a seat three-quarters of the way back from the screen, put on her glasses, and watched the show. It was an Italian film made in Rome on a budget of a few thousand lire. Momma was used to the ternpo of American movies, so she found herself nod­ ding. There wasn't even anything worth crying over. She eased her feet out of their patent leather pumps, cursed the pinching of her girdle, and settled down. Sometimes she drew a peppermint patty out of her bag and sucked it thoughtfully. Every half-hour the lights came up for an intervallo; the windows were opened, and people came in or out or changed their seats for various reasons. Momma'd have liked an Allied soldier to be sitting beside her. But to these the cinemas of Naples were off limits because of the 129 130 THE GALLERY " danger of typhus and because of certain nuisances they'd committed in the dark just after the city fell. During the intervalli Momma stayed in her seat and smoked a cigarette. She wasn't going to force her feet back into her pumps. The Italian film went on and on; Momma fell asleep and dreamed in the moldy dark. Her dreams were always the same, of the boys who came to her bar. There was a heterogeneous quality about them. They had an air of being tremendously wise, older than the human race. They understood one another, as though from France and New Zealand and America they all had membership cards in some occult freemasonry. And they had a refinement of manner, an intuitive appreciation of her as a woman. Their conversation was flashing, bitter, and lucid. More than other men they laughed much together, laughing at life itself perhaps. Momma'd never seen anything like her boys. Some were extraordinarily handsome, but not as other men were handsome. They had an acuteness in their eyes and a predatory richness of the mouth as though they'd bitten into a pomegranate. Momma dreamed that she was queen of some gay exclusive club. She awoke and glanced at her watch. It was time to go. She'd seen almost nothing of the film. But she didn't care. She felt more rested than she did by Poppa's side. A silver hammer in her heart kept tapping out that in fifteen minutes more her life for the day would begin. She had the yearning hectic panic of a child going to a show. She shot her feet into her pumps. As the lights came up for the secondo tempo Momma left the theater. She looked a little disdainfully at the audience, contrasting it. with what she'd shortly be seeing. Peaked Neapolitan girls on the afternoon of their giorno di festa, holding tightly to the arms of their fidanzati wearing GI undershirts; sailors of the Regia Marina and the Squadra N avale in their patched blue and whites; housewives from the vichi and the off-limits areas who'd come in with a houseful of children to peer at the screen and lose themselves in its shadowy life. Her patent leather pumps hurt Momma's feet, but she sprinted up Santa Brigida. She turned left at Via Giuseppe Verdi. Once in the Galleria Momma all but flew. She wondered if she looked spruce, if her hat was chic. The Galleria was milling and humming, for all the bars opened within a few seconds of one another: just as clocks stagger their striking the hour throughout a great city. Momma had a presentiment that today was going to be especially glamorous. The 1630 shift of troie were coming into the arcade with the was IUOU Irot! nim nerie �Ias! �ne �B� ! �ne anna retur could� lorml a pric orand were veilen A! tnemi �at. M, aa�e!S nil ere� Momml fri�dai tnough lewmo necalle "'Att "'Per Nettle I�and : G�llER� � �' U committ� ler'ialll MOmml �'t going to !Otu �eep and dremJ� lame, o! the oou ,'5 qu�itr aOO;1 �l older ilian lli' ahfromrmQ btT)hir carilii� ent 01 manne MOMMA promptness of factory girls. From now until curfew time the Gal­ leria would be a concentrated fever of bargaining and merchandis­ ing peculiar to Naples in August, 1944. The rolling steel shutters of Momma's bar were already up. Gaetano was polishing the mirrors. He greeted Momma and went back to thinking a bou t his wife and thirteen children and how it wasn't fair that a man who'd never signed the Fascist tessera should live like a dog under the Allies. Vincenzo was wearing a spotted apron, so Momma lashed him with her tongue and forced him into the gabinetto to put on a fresh one. She stitched them up herself out of American potato bags. Momma also inspected the glassware, the taps on the wine casks, the alignment of the bottles. She was kilometers ahead of the sanitation standards set by the PBS surgeon and the provost marshal. She seated herself behind the cassa, unlocked the cash drawer, and counted her soldi. At this moment the old feeling of ecstasy returned. For Momma loved her bar: the mirrors in which everyone could watch everyone else, the shining Carrara marble, the urns for making caffe espresso. Behind her on the mirror she'd fastened a price list. She offered excellent white wine, vermouth, and cherry brandy. She hoped soon to be licensed to sell gin and cognac, which were what the Allies really wanted. When stronger liquors were available, the tone of her place would go sky-high, along with the moods of her clientele. No one had yet turned up. Momma knew with racecourse cer­ tainty the exact order in which her habitues came. Her patrons were of three types: some came only to look, some with a thinly veiled purpose of meeting someone else, some just happened in. A shadow cut the fierce light of the Galleria bouncing around the mirrors. It was Poppa treading warily and carrying his straw hat. Momma flinched. She had no desire to see Poppa now. If he addressed her in dialect, she'd refuse to answer. He had rings under his eyes, and through his brown teeth came the perfume of onions. Momma told him that there was half a chicken waiting in the frigidaire. But he seemed to want to talk. Momma got as peeved as though someone tried to explain a movie to her. So Poppa, after a few more attempts to talk, put on his straw hat and went out. But he called back to her from the entrance: -Attenzione, cara. . . . =-Perche? Momma cried, but he was gone. Nettled and distracted, she settled herself behind the cash regis­ ter and folded her hands. Where were they? All behind schedule to.. 131 132 THE GALLERY M -. M night. She began to wonder if some of the other bar owners had sabotaged her by passing around the rumor that she was selling methyl alcohol such as would cause blindness. The husky figure of a major entered the bar. Momma smelled a rat because this major was wearing the crossed pistols of an MP officer. On his left shoulder he wore the inverted chamber pot with the inset blue star, symbolizing the Peninsular Base Section. The major set his jaw like one asking for trouble. He ran his hands through some of the wineglasses and blew on the wine spigots for dust. -Ees dean the glass, the wine, everything! Momma cried cheer­ ily. Bar molto buono, molto pulito.... The major advanced upon her. She was beginning to tremble behind her desk. He walked with the burly tread of one accustomed to cuff and kick. Momma remembered that some of the Germans, when they'd been in Naples, had walked like that. -Lissen to me, signorina, the major said, dropping a porky hand on her desk. -Signora, scusi, said Momma with dignity. -I don't give a damn one way or the other, the major said. But don't try an play dumb with me, see, paesan? -Ees molto buono my bar, Momma twittered, offering the major a cigarette. Vincenzo and Gaetano were watching the proceedings like cats. -Molto buono, my eye. You're gettin away with murder in this joint.... Now you can just take your choice. Either you get rid of most of the people who come here, or we'll put you off limits. And you know we damn well can, don't you? Momma quailed as she lit the major's cigarette. The words "off limits" were understood by any Neapolitan who wanted to keep his shop open. Nothing could withstand the MP's closing a place, unless you were friendly with some colonel of PBS. -You know as well as I do, said the major. An old doll like your­ self ain't as dumb as she looks. We don't want any more Eyeties comin in here to mix with the soldiers. Do I make myself clear? And you gotta refuse to serve some of the other characters.... Don't come whinin around that you ain't been warned. Momma motioned to Vincenzo and Gaetano to bring out a glass of that fine cognac from which she gave her favorites shots after closing time. It was set at the major's elbow. He drank it off, glar­ ing at her the while, set down the glass with a click, and left. -Capeesh? he cried as he belched like a balloon out into the sunlight of the Galleria. men, illo�e illata In I aham ana b taKe H wrne in� !r oerenl (ilt hi� wnere, fliffiW The !nort·!1 01 hi! LOuin 1 milih'1 �iten, Momm rromth oorwo ltlaxati Mom De!ert ' went !o mont�, -Ee� -Oh It was �w him inilierr '"He w� USU; MOMMA 133 Momma couldn't decide what grudge the MP's had against her. There had been occasional fights in her bar, yet the other bars of Naples had even more of them. Her soldiers were gentle. All she was trying to do was run a clean bar where people could gather with other congenial people. Her crowd had something that other groups hadn't. Momma's boys had an awareness of having been born alone and sequestered by some deep difference from other men. For this she loved them. And Momma knew something ot those four freedoms the Allies were forever preaching. She believed that a minority should be let alone.... In came the Desert Rat. He took off his black beret and pushed a hand through his rich inky hair. He said good evening to Momma and bought his quota of six chits for double white wines. It would take him three hours to drink these. He was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. He never spoke to a soul. He was the handsomest and silentest boy Momma'd ever seen. Why did he come at all? His manners were so perfect and soft that at a greet.. ing from another, he'd reply and recede into himself. Momma won­ dered if at Tobruk or El Alamein someone in the desert night had cut his soul to pieces. He'd loved once-perfectly-someone, some­ where. Momma would cheerfully have slain whoever had hurt him so. The face of the Desert Rat was an oval of light brown. His short-sleeved shirt showed the cleft in his neck just above the hair of his chest. He wore the tightest and shortest pair of shorts he could get into, and he leaned lost and dreaming against the bar with his ankles scraping one another in their low socks and canvas gaiters. Those legs were part of the poetry of the Desert Rat for Momma-the long firm legs of Germans, but tanned and covered from thigh to calf with thick soft hair. For three hours this English boy would stand in Momma's bar, doped and dozing in maddening relaxation and grace from the white wine. Momma tore six chits out of the cash register and gave the Desert Rat four lire back out of his one hundred. Tonight she went so far as to pat his wrist, a thing she'd been longing to do for months. -Ees warm tonight, no? -Oh very, madam, the Desert Rat said. It was the first time she'd seen his smile. And Momma suddenly saw him in someone's arms by moonlight in the Egyptian desert, in the midst of that love which had sliced the boy's heart in two . . . . He left her and went to the bar. In the next three hours it was usually at him that Momma'd look when she wasn't making 134 THE GALLERY tnalca olfficult wl!hea �ut !ta ,I \ change. She saw him from all perspectives in the mirrors, all the loveliness of his majestic body. Next to arrive was a Negro second lieutenant of the American quartermaster corps. Momma smiled to herself as the Negro made an entrance. He seemed to have the idea he was stepping onto some lighted stage. He moved his hips ever so slightly and car­ ried his pink-insided hands tightly against his thighs. For some dramatic reason he wore combat boots, though Momma knew he'd never been farther north than the docks of Naples. -Hulllllo, darling, he said to Momma, kissing her fingers. He had a suave overeducated voice. You look simpppply wonderful tonight. Who does your hats? Queen Mary? ... Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.... Then he stationed himself at the bar quite close to the Desert Rat. They looked at each other for a swift appraising instant. Then the Negro lieutenant began to talk a blue streak at the Desert Rat. -It's going to be brilliant here tonight, absolutely brrrrilliant. I feel it way down inside.... My aunt, you know, is a social worker in Richmond, Virginia. But do you think I'm ever going back there? No, indeed, baby. I found a home in Italy, where the human plant can't help but thrive. I like the Italians, you know. They're like me, refined animals, which of course doesn't bar the utmost in subtlety and human development.... They talk about French love. . .. Well, the Italians know all the French do, and have a tenderness besides.... My God, why doesn't everybody just live for love? That's all there is, baby. And out of bed you have to be simply brillllllliant. . . . Momma sometimes pondered to herself the reason for the wild rhetoric talk by some of the people who came to her bar. It wasn't like Italian rhetoric, which makes good Italian conversation a sort of shimmering badminton. At Momma's most of her customers talked like literate salesmen who cunningly invited you out to dinner-all the time you knew that they were selling something, but their propaganda was sparkling and insidious. At Momma's there were people who talked constantly for the whole three hours. There were others who simply listened to the talkers, smiling and accepting, as though they'd tacitly agreed to play audience. And Momma could tell the precise time in her bar by the level of the noise, by the speed with which the words shot through the air like molten needles, by the ever mounting bubbles of laughter and derision. Under this conversation Momma sensed a vacuum of ��ant! inilie -E!t not �ett mn, �h Ana t -WeI A! we've 11I!, !1m mnint r1ril,Ma 4n� orea �ut il 00 it'! in )'0 to it liKe IThr Kio ",We nate ours At II ili1WAC ��, No 0 It the fa IDaoe it Worried a (l�!e! an MOMMA pain, as though her guests jabbered at one another to get their minds off themselves, to convince themselves of the reality of some­ thing or other. There now arrived the only two Momma didn't rejoice to see, two British sergeants wearing shorts draped like an old maid's flannels. They were almost twins, had peaked noses and spectacles that caused them to peer at everyone as though they were having difficulty in threading a needle from their rocking chairs. Momma wished they wouldn't stand so close to her desk, blocking her view. But stand there they did until the bar closed. Their conversation was a series of laments and groans and criticisms of everyone else present. They called this dishing the joint. Momma thought that they came to her bar because they couldn't stay away. They were disdainful and envious and balefully curious all at the same time. They reminded her of old women who take out their false teeth and contemplate their photograph of forty years ago. These ser­ geants bought some chits, took off their berets, and primped a little in the mirror behind Momma. -Esther, my coiffure! Used to be so thick and lustrous.... We're not getting any younger, are we? We'll have to start paying for it soon. Shall we live together and take in tatting? And the other sergeant said, giving himself a finger- wave: -Well, I've read that the end of all this is exhaustion and ennui. As we've agreed steen times before, Magda, the problem is bottom­ less, simply bottomless. No one but ourselves understands it, or is even interested. You put your hand into a cleft tree to your own peril, Magda. When you take out the wedge, the tree snaps together and breaks your hand And you cry your eyes out at night, but it doesn't do any good It keeps coming back on you because it's in you. Even though you don't get any satisfaction, you go back to it like a dog to his vomit.... That's what it is, Magda, vomit. Why kid ourselves and talk of love? Love is a constructive force. . . . We only want to destroy ourselves in others because we hate ourselves.... At 1700 hours Rhoda appeared after she'd had evening chow at the WAC-ery. Rhoda was the only woman who came to Momma's bar. No one ever spoke to Rhoda, who did her drinking standing at the far end of the counter, reading a thick book. She always made it a point to show Momma what she was reading. Rhoda worried about the state of the world. She studied theories of leisure classes and patterns behind governments. 135 II' "i ,I I 1 136 THE GALLERY p" , I I, I , I -I'm not good for much of anything, Rhoda once said, except to talk up a storm. To Momma's Italian ear Rhoda had a voice like a baritone; everything she said carried about a kilometer. -What am I? Rhoda said once. The reincarnation of L'Aiglon. It seemed to Momma that Rhoda was happy in her WAC uni­ form-the neat tie, the coat, the stripes on the sleeve, the skirt that didn't call attention to the fact tha.t it was a skirt. Under her over­ seas cap Rhoda wore an exceptional hairdo. It was something like the pageboy bob of twenty years ago cut still more boyishly. And under this cropped poll were Rhoda's stark face, thin lips, weasel eyes. Rhoda looked as though she were lying in ambush for some­ thing. She bought a slew of tickets from Momma and went to her accustomed place, reading and drinking. She turned the pages by moistening her forefinger and looking quickly at the other persons in the bar. Rhoda was the only American girl whom Momma knew well, but she was a symbol. Momma had a theory that romantic love was on the wane in America because if all the women were like Rhoda, American girls were mighty emancipated and intellectual. Since Rhoda was so cool and unfeminine, Momma foresaw a day in the United States when all the old graceful concepts of love would have perished. The women would have brought it on themselves by in­ sisting on equality with the men. To Momma, thinking of her girl­ hood in Milan, this wasn't an inviting picture.... -Why don't signorine come here? Rhoda asked authoritatively of Momma. Intellectual Italian women, I mean. I'd spread the gos­ pel to them. I'm the best little proselytizer in the world. I'd make them socially conscious. We'd read the Nation and John Dos Passos. I might even pass out copies of Consumers' Research to help Italian girls buy wisely. Momma smiled. She knew quite well that if signorine started coming to her bar, most of her patrons would go away. It was an easy matter to get a signorina anywhere else in the Galleria Urn­ berto or on the Toledo. Momma had indeed been ill at ease when Rhoda had first appeared, but the boys had accepted Rhoda while ignoring her. And so long as there was harmony, Momma didn't care who came to her bar.... --Dh this place of yours, Rhoda boomed with a thick shiver. It's positively electric here, Momma. I get so much thinking and reading done in this stimulating atmosphere.... Just like a salon. The two British sergeants eyed Rhoda. Momma'd been expect- �eant (Omplel �ood la rou an oarling, wlitaJ1 -I'm �ri�tlin ' tnatvio knitting, I !nould -Ma, mitaole -Don nei�nt 0 riece!,t in� drun omicn f -Well Momm �r ner ca� rnKin� at -« �ia triu o1art.Ifr Ot wnat �n!ation, narpr in funa!ma �Iing, r --It'! n n1r open �uean!, --Pleas In her 0 Ot three h �uie!cence MOMMA ing them to accost one another for the past week. And tonight the bubble was going to burst. -We've been asking one another why you come here, the ser­ geant called Esther said. You must have a Saint Francis of Assisi complex. Or else you're a Messalina.... If you want to give us a good laugh, why don't you bring one of your Warm Sisters with you and make a gruesome twosome? You shouldn't come here alone, darling. Momma's bar is like nature, which abhors vacuums and solitary people. -I'm not answerable to the likes of you, Rhoda roared back, bristling with delight. But I will say I've always sought out milieux that vibrate in tune with me.... So you two just get back to your knitting. Just because you two are jaded and joaded, that's no sign I should be too. -Magda, she's a tigress, the other British sergeant said, but a veritable tigress. We must have her to our next Caserta party. -Don't think I don't know those parties, Rhoda rumbled. The height of sterility. Everybody sits around tearing everybody else to pieces, thinking, My God, ain't we brilliant. Everybody gets stink­ ing drunk. Then somebody makes an entrance down the stairs in ostrich feathers and a boa.... No thank you, my pretty chicks. -Well, get you, Mabel, the first British sergeant tittered. Momma cleared her throat. She hated the turn things were taking by her cash desk. It was as though the three were armed with talons, raking at one another's faces. -We understand one another all too well, don't we? Rhoda said triumphantly. I pity you two from the bottom of my swelling heart. If you had a little more of what I have, or I had a little more of what you have, what beautiful music we could make • • . a trio.•.• -Darling, I see you in London, the second sergeant said. A sensation. But you aren't quite Bankhead, darling. But you are happy in the WAC's, aren't you, dear? Your postwar plans are to run a smart little night club ... wearing a white tuxedo ... but darling, you just haven't the figger for it. -It's no use trying to scratch my eyes out, Rhoda rumbled in her open diapason. I have a perfect armorplating against elderly queans. -Pleasa, Momma murmured, clearing her throat again, pleasa. ..• In her bar things moved by fits and starts. Incidents in the course of three hours followed some secret natural rhythm of fission and quiescence, like earthquakes and Vesuvio. Each time the climaxes 137 138 THE GALLERY rre!ent retire to There tfieAlIi mollingla[ternoo tnlD th !fiirt! of �aCK lhi !llowed I mere He field mem, H in� orera erelaart min� in mana, H 1ilOroflI " grew fuller. This first was only a ripple to what she knew would happen later. Rhoda and the two British sergeants glared at one another. She reopened her thick book and retreated into it like an elephant hulking off into the jungle. The two sergeants put arms about each other's waists and executed a little congratulatory dance. After the first incident the Desert Rat raised his fine dark head, looked into the mirror, and ordered another white wine. The Negro second lieutenant stopped his monologue and called out: -Everyone's still wearing their veil ... but wait.... An Italian contingent always came to Momma's on schedule. They entered with the furtive gaiety of those who know they aren't wanted, but have set their hearts on coming anyhow. They wore shorts and sandals and whimsical little coats which they carried like wraps around their shoulders, neglecting to put their arms into the sleeves. Momma knew that her Allied clientele didn't care for them. And besides they never drank more than two glasses apiece, if they drank that much. They just sat around and mimicked one another and sniggered and looked hard at the Allied soldiery. Each evening they had a fresh set of photos and letters to show one another. Momma thought of nothing so much as a bevy of Milan shopgirls having a reunion after the day's work. She knew them all so well. The Italians treated Momma with a skeptical deference, as though to say, Well, here we are again, dearie; your bar is in the public domain; so what are you going to do with us if we don't make a nuisance of ourselves? There was Armando, who worked in a drygoods store. He was led in by his shepherd dog on a leather thong. This dog was Armando's lure for introduction to many people. He had tight curls like a Greek statue's, a long brown face, and an air of distinction learned from the films. He wore powder-blue shorts. It was Armando who translated all his little friends' English letters for them. There was Vittorio, with the blue eyes of a doll and gorgeous clothes such as Momma'd seen on young ingegneri in the old days in Milan. Vittorio worked as a typist at Navy House on Via Carac­ ciolo. He worked so well and conscientiously that the British gave him soap and food rations. Sunday afternoons he walked by the aquarium with an English ensign who murmured in his ear. Vit­ torio had arrogance and bitterness. He was the leader of the others. All evening long at Momma's he lectured on literature and life and the sad fate of handsome young Neapolitans in Naples of August, 1944. In Momma's hearing he said that he'd continue his re!rectea, �nlr al Gi �omero, �e rre!cnt !rmon t (Ollar ana remote noi�unK a Ii �e�eetea �ilea!e, He ilie otner I� rear of tne leaneaover .. Mar I Hi! Engli �r Over nrn "�peaK \ mite, .. Do rou Tne Dese ... 1 had �nnan offi MOMMA 139 present career till he was thirty. . Then he'd marry a contessa and retire to her villa at Amalfi. There was Enzo, who'd been a carabiniere directing traffic until the Allies had liberated Naples. Now Enzo led the life of a gaga, strolling the town in a T-shirt, inviting his friends to coffee in the afternoon, and singing at dusk in dark corners. Momma thought Enzo the apogee of brutal refinement. Over his shorts he wore shirts of scented silk or pongee. Under these the muscles of his back shimmered like salmon. The nostrils in his almost black face showed like pits, flaring with his breathing. There was also a tiny sergente maggiore of the Italian Army. He held himself off from the rest, though he always came in with them. He used them as air-umbrella protection for his own debark­ ing operations. The name of this sergente maggiore was Giulio. His eyes darted warily about, and once in a while he'd call out some­ thing in a barking voice, to show that he was accustomed to com­ mand. He insisted on wearing his smart fascist peaked cap, the visor of which he would nervously tug when he got an unexpected answer. The last Italian to arrive at Momma's was the only one she respected. He was a count, but he permitted himself to be known only as Gianni. Besides his title he had a spacious apartment in the Vomero. Momma respected his rank, and she hoped some day to be presented to his mother the countess. Momma liked Gianni as a person too. He was always dressed in black, with a white stiff collar and a black knitted tie. His black eyes smoldered with a remote nostalgia. For some months now he'd come to Momma's drunk a little, and gone away. But tonight he seemed purposeful. He greeted Momma with a tender wretchedness. Momma knew his disease. He was a Neapolitan conte, dying of love. Gianni avoided the other Italians, who had perched themselves on a counter at the rear of the bar, and went straight up to the Desert Rat. Momma leaned over her cash desk and watched with popping eyes. -May I speak to you, sir? Gianni said to the Desert. Rat. His English was as slow and exquisite as that melancholy that layover him like a cloud. -Speak up, chum, the Desert Rat said in his almost inaudible voice. -Do you like me a little, sir? The Desert Rat didn't answer, but his tall body stiffened. -I had a friend once, Gianni said, almost crying. He was a German officer. He taught me German, you see. He was kind to me. 140 THE GALLERY And I think I was kind to him. I think I am a good person, sir. I am a rich count, but of course to you that does not import. ... I seek nothing from you, sir . . . like the others. . . . You look so much like the German officer. I was happy with him. He said he was happy with me.... Would you like sometimes to come to my house in the Vomero, sir? The two British sergeants set up a screaming like parrots. Gianni fled. Momma put her hand to her heart, which had given one vast jump. The Desert Rat quietly put down his wineglass. He took the two British sergeants and knocked their heads together. Then he ran out through the bar. Momma watched him stand outside, peer­ ing up and down the Galleria and shielding his eyes against the sun. After a while he returned to his place and fell into his old reverie. He seemed as stirred and angry as a true and passionate boy. The two British sergeants were shrieking and sobbing and look­ ing at their reddened faces in the mirror. Then they repaired to the gabinetto. Momma could hear them inside splashing water on their faces and gibbering like chickens being bathed by a hen. Rhoda looked over her book at the silent Desert Rat. The second incident rolled through the bar like the aftertones of a bell. Momma just held onto her cash register and prayed, for she knew that this was going to be an evening. The Negro second lieutenant began to sing something about "Strange Fruit." The Italians footnoted the incident to one another. Momma's bar wasn't nearly full yet, but it was buzzing like a bomb. Presently the two British sergeants swept out of the gabinetto, their faces swollen and their eyes flushed from weeping. They looked like hawks for someone to prey on. Enzo stepped easily up to them, placed a hand on his hip, and extended his powerful jeweled hand: -Buona sera, ragazze. -You go straight to hell! the first British sergeant screeched. Why do you come here at all, you sordid little tramps in your dirty old finery? Do you think we feel sorry for you? Go on Via Roma and peddle your stuff and stop trying to act like trade.... We see through you, two-shilling belles. All of you get out, do you hear? Nobody here wants anything you've got. The Allies are quite self­ sufficient, thank you. We did all right before Naples fell.... Why the nerve of you wop queans! Glamor!? Why you've all got as much allure as Gracie Fields in drag.... Go find some drunken Yank along the port.... But get the hell out of here! own in w�re m for the Htner' 11r nad iliing in aamired wiU r1ar, T ma�iore !11rred -Wh wnat ca ar1 hein a�air,W olaaunti -And normone nal1 tne j'll!eew ara!! an Dorout -E!ilie own time ana we d lat1 Victo anrnOIV, our routh lot1 none !oanatte �!1!, each !i(K to dea m� been �oOllitr sti ...Then �Ked wist He cast 1'111. "'Millioltantalizes � !'. . , • • . • :::------;rr----.-. - - - - -. / !II I' �' I t G�llER� � ood person, !rr, OOl import, , '" , , , You loob Il him, He lain' to came tOt MOMMA 141 The Italians replied to the sally of the British sergeants in their own indirect but effective way. Momma decided that the Italians were more deeply rooted in life, that they accepted themselves. For the Italian contingent merely sent up a merry carol of laughter. If they'd had fans, they'd have retreated behind them. This laugh­ ter hadn't a hollow ring. It was based on the assumption that any­ thing in life can be laughed out of existence. Momma had never admired the Italian element in her bar. Now she did. They shook with the silveriest laughter, lolling over one another like cats at play. Their limbs gleamed in their shorts. Even the tiny sergente maggiore joined in the badinage. And the two British sergeants stepped back by Momma's cash desk and resumed their jeremiad. -What will become of us, Esther? When we were young, we could laugh off the whole business. You and I both know that's what camping is. It's a Greek mask to hide the fact that our souls are being castrated and drawn and quartered with each fresh affair. What started as a seduction at twelve goes on till we're senile old aunties, doing it just as a reflex action . -And we're at the menopause now, Magda 0 God, if some hormone would just shrivel up in me and leave me in peace! I hate the thought of making a fool of myself when I turn forty. I'll see something gorgeous walking down Piccadilly and I'll make a pass and all England will read of my trial at the Old Bailey.... Do you think we would have been happier in Athens, Magda? -Esther, let's face facts. You can't argue yourself out of your own time and dimension. You and I don't look like the Greeks and we don't think like them. We were born in England under a late Victorian morality, and so we'll die.... The end is the same anyhow, Greek or English. Don't you see, Esther? We've spent our youth looking for something that doesn't really exist. There­ fore none of us is ever at peace with herself. All bitchery adds up to an attempt to get away from yourself by playing a variety of poses, each one more gruesome and leering than the last.... I'm sick to death of it, Esther. I can think of more reasons for not hav­ ing been born than I can for Iiving.... Is there perhaps some nobility stirring in my bones? -Then is there no solution, Magda? the second British sergeant asked wistfully. He cast his eyes about the bar like a novice about to take the veil. -Millions, Esther. But rarely in the thing itself. That's what tantalizes us all. We play with the thing till it makes of us what 142 THE GALLERY " , ;" we swear we'll never become, cold-blooded sex machines, dead to love. There are so many ways of sublimating, Esther.... But are they truly satisfying either? For some hours I've known, though they'll never come again, I'd cheerfully pass all eternity in hell. -And I too, Magda. That's the hell of it. We all have known moments, days, weeks that were perfect. -All part of the baggage of deceit, Esther. God lets us have those moments the way you'd give poisoned candy to a child. And we look back on those wonderful nights with far fiercer resentment than an old lady counting the medals of her dead son. -But we've had them, Magda; we've had them. No one can take them away from us. The two British sergeants lapsed into silence, for which Momma was grateful. Their conversation was a long swish of hissing s's and flying eyebrows. They began to scratch their chevrons in a troubled and preoccupied way, and their faces fell into the same sort of in­ trospective emptiness that Momma'd observed on old actresses sitting alone in a cafe. There was a lost air about them that made her prefer not to look at them, as though the devil had put her a riddle admitting of no solution, and a forfeit any way she answered it. Vincenz Tnen w let up rarachut -Oh TOil ricKed t ialin� an �na tend (nuti�t� lwirling ilikhned -Jew� -I hat -Coo, !er�eantl AII�ada -The �ri(i!h Ie lon� run, from a (tllted br of(neeve (0 ei�ht d !Kirrln� ti � clreu! wi fifltca loned �o amnK, He madding "()h ill !�e'll try a ..Ella's Illnt, A glazed �e Aussie collecting .... Don't!wilile buymeeks, Ie It was 1830 hours in Momma's bar, the time of the breathing spell. She was quite aware that, gathered under her roof and drinking her white wine and vermouth, there was a great deal of energy that didn't qui te know how to spend itself. And since there's some rhythm in life, in bars, and in war, everybody at once stopped talking and ordered fresh drinks. She could see them all looking at their wrist watches and telling themselves: I have another hour to go-what will it bring me? Momma's sixth sense told her there was trouble brewing. A group of soldiers and sailors entered her bar. From the way they shot around their half-closed eyes she knew that this wasn't the place for them. They had an easiness and a superiority about them as though they were looking for trouble with infinite condescension. Cigars lolled from their mouths. -Gracious, the Negro second lieutenant said, men! -Look, Esther, said the first of the British sergeants, look at .ne essence of our sorrow.... What we seek and can never have. ... And each side hates the other. The twain never meet except in case of necessity. And they part with tension on both sides. For there were two American parachutists who lounged inso­ lently, taking up more cubic space than they should have. And t GAllHr � chines, d�aQ, : ler"" Butt I � nown, tno� ; , e it), In n1[ a 1 have h� MOMMA 143 with them were two drunken American sailors, singing and hold­ ing one another up. Momma now wished that Poppa were here to order this foursome out summarily, under threat of the MP's. Vincenzo and Gaetano were no help at all in such circumstances. Then what she feared happened. Someone of her regular clientele let up a soft scream like a pigeon being strangled. At once a parachutist stiffened, flipped a wrist, and bawled: -Oh saaaay, Nellie! This was the moment the Italians had been waiting for. They picked themselves off the flat-topped counter where they'd been idling and padded toward the four newcomers. They were cajoling and tender and satiric and gay. They lit cigarettes for the para­ chutists and the sailors, and took some themselves. It became a swirling ballet of hands and light and rippling voices and the thickened accents of the sailors and the parachutists. -Jesus, baby, those bedroom eyes! someone said to Vittorio. -I hateya and I loveya, ya beast, one of the sailors said. -Coo, it teases me right out of my mind, one of the British sergeants said. So simple and complex. Masculine and feminine. All gradations and all degrees and all nuances. -The basis of life and love and cruelty and death, said the other British sergeant, looking as though he would faint. And in the long run, Magda, who is master and who mistress? From a tension that was surely building up, Momma was dis­ tracted by the appearance of an assorted horde. In the final hour of the evening her bar filled until there were forty wedged in, six to eight deep from the mirrors to the bar. Her eyes had a mad skipping time to follow all that went on. It was like trying to watch a circus with a thousand shows simultaneous in as many rings. First came an Aussie in a fedora hat, to which his invention had added flowers and feathers. Tonight he was more than usually drunk. He slunk in with the slow detachment of a mannequin modeling clothes. He waved a lace handkerchief at all: -Oh my pets, my pets! Your mother's awfully late tonight, but she'll try and make it up to you! -Ella's out of this world, some one said. She's brilliant, bril­ liant. A glazed look came over the sailors' eyes like snakes asleep. Ella the Aussie kissed their hands and bustled off while they were still collecting themselves. -Don't call me your sister! Ella shrieked, waving at his public while buying chits from Momma. He kissed Momma on both her cheeks, leaving a stench of alcohol and perfume. "I I 144 THE GALLERY There was a rich hollow thud. Momma at first feared that some­ one had planted a fist on someone else's chin. But it was only Rhoda, the WAC corporal, closing her book. That evening she read no further. It was getting too crowded in there even to turn pages. Next to appear at Momma's was a British marine, sullen in his red and black, with a hulking beret. Momma knew he was a boxer, but not the sort who made trouble. He'd a red slim face, pock. marked and dour; the muscles in his calves stood out like knots. While drinking he teetered up and down on his toes and was a master at engineering newcomers into conversation. He observed everyone with a cool devotion. Often he'd invited Momma to his bouts at the Teatro delle Palme, but she hadn't gone because she coudri't bear to see him beating and being beaten in the ring. This British marine was on the most basic and genial terms with him­ self and the world. Next came a plump South African lance corporal with red pips, and a Grenadier Guardsman, tall and reserved and mustached. The South African lance corporal was a favorite of Momma's be­ cause he made so much of her. She knew he didn't mean a word of it, but the whole ceremony was so much fun to her. -Old girl, I've finally got married, said the plump lance cor­ poral, presenting her to the Grenadier Guardsman, who looked terrified and bulwarky at the same time. This is Bert. You'll love Bert. He save my life in Tunisia. And he understands me. So he's not as stupid as he looks. And his devotion, darling! Coo! Just like a Saint Bernard Bert is. He knows how to cook, you know.... Bert's essence is in his mustaches. The traditionalism, the stolidity, and the stupidity of the British people produced those mustaches of Bert's. Momma was in such a whirl of happiness that she gave the guardsman a chit for a drink on the house. Meanwhile the South African lance corporal whirled about the bar, burbling to every­ one and formally announcing his marriage to Bert. Momma was beginning to believe that she wasn't going to have any trouble from the parachutists and the sailors. They and the Italians were lazily drinking and mooing at one another. Momma tried to spell out for herself some theory of good and evil, but the older she got and the more she saw, the less clear cut the boundaries became to her. She could only conclude that these boys who drank at her bar were exceptional human beings. The masculine and the feminine weren't nicely divided in Momma's mind as they are to Arna w� par we Bar Derta a�1maKe a lati�e� weir k Imed t Gl's we nature a TDere we war tnere, Ed ..Bene, !ooie rnnhist � throu marring 11�,Hew ��ires ta Then t IUlturefa !ij�rre!sio liKe a !Up I l�r the pq nil jaw a� ; ..... --- ... �" --. ,�" ' t ��lLH� -:----::::_ leared that !O� But it was Ot that evenin�!: tre even to t� MOMMA 145 a biologist. They overlapped and blurred in life. This trait was what kept life and Momma's bar from being black and white. If everything were so clear cut, there'd be nothing to learn after the age of six and arithmetic. Among the later comers to Momma's were certain persons from the port battalion that sweated loading and unloading ships in the Bay of Naples. They turned up in her bar in the Galleria Um­ berto as soon as the afternoon shift got off, just as the truck drivers make a beeline for coffee and doughnuts. They usually came with fatigues damp with their sweat, with green-visored caps askew on their knotted hair. Because they were out of uniform Momma feared trouble with the MP's. But some of these port battalion GI's were Momma's favorites since they brought her many odds and ends they'd taken from the holds of Liberty ships: tidbits destined for generals' villas and the like. They knew Momma's nature as a curio collector of things and people. There was Eddie, an American corporal. Momma loved Eddie the way she'd love a child of her own who was born not quite all there. Eddie'd been a garage mechanic in Vermont. He squirmed with that twisted tenderness often acquired by people who spend their lives lying under motors and having axle grease drip on them. Eddie had misty lonely eyes; his mouth was that of one who has never made the transition out of babyhood. His red hair yielded to no comb, and there was always a thick mechanical residue under his fingernails, which Momma sometimes cleaned herself. Eddie was drunk on duty and off. As he bought his chits, he leaned over Momma and patted her clumsily on her hair. -Come stai, figlio mio? Momma asked. -Bene, bene, Momma, he replied. Eddie would caress people in a soft frightened way and then run his tongue over his lips. After he'd got good and tight, he'd go through the crowded bar playing games, pulling neckties, snapping belt buckles, and thrusting his knee between people's legs. He was like a little dog that has got mixed up in society and desires to find a master. Then there was a supply sergeant of the port battalion, with his vulture face. His every movement seemed to Momma a raucous suppression of some deeper inferiority sense. He talked constantly like a supply catalogue, reeling off lists of things in his warehouse for the potent music of their names. Then he would shoot out his jaw and the blood would capillate into his eyes. Momma got II II' 146 THE GALLERY him rooms around Naples with spinster acquaintances of hers. He stayed in these rooms on his one night off a week. This sergeant loved to sally into off-limits areas and wet-smelling vichi. -Color and glamour, the sergeant said, all there is to life, baby.... Eddie meanwhile had drunk three glasses of vermouth and came and stood by Momma, slipping cakes of soap into her hand behind the cash desk. -Jees, I tink I got da scabies, Momma ... The last delegate from the port battalion was one of its tech sergeants named Wilbur. He treated Momma like a serving girl and spent his time going over everyone with his eyes. Wilbur should have been born a lynx, for he draped his length over any available area with a slow rehearsed lewdness. Tonight he was growing a mustache, but it didn't camouflage his violet eyes that glowed like amethysts in his face. Momma could never get him to look her in the eyes. He simply drawled at everyone, and all the things he said lay around in gluey pools like melted lavender sherbet. -Bonsoir, ducks, Wilbur said to the two British sergeants. When is all this blah going to end? Because it is blah, and nobody knows it better than you.... Done anyone nice lately? What a town to cruise this is. All the belles in the States would give their eye­ teeth to be in Naples tonight. And when they sawall there is here, they'd be so confused they wouldn't know what to do with it.... Can you imagine the smell of their breaths? ... Blah, that's all it is. Two of Momma's more distinguished patrons now entered from the Galleria. They did it every evening, but every evening a little hush fell over the drinkers. They came in a little flushed, as though they'd been surprised in a closet. Perhaps the momentary pall proceeded from a certain awe at their rank, or at their temerity in coming at all. For by now the party was well under way, susceptible to that hiatus in levels of euphoria when people come late to a group that is already from alcohol in a state of dubious social cohesion. One was a pasty-faced major of the American medical corps who gave Momma a free physical examination every month and got his dentist friends to clean her teeth gratis. The major's breath" always boiled in an asthmatic fashion, as though he were in the last stages of love-making. With him was his crony, a not so young second lieutenant who'd been commissioned for valor in combat at Cassino. The major and the lieutenant both wore gold wedding Lands on their fingers. Momma gathered that they pre· ferred iliousa -Po -Id lor his fill on anrhowl Mom crary a oattle-I Di!low 01 an It ricturef -Eel �lo!lr prilHe COY nitel and rdlowan -Neve, rocKet. Momm� Toerentel oaon'tco� in!�ciOUItime ignor t1tonnoitel �ee! for I �aco(k's t; a�arette 51 �ound, Wfl trel of eVI oowlswiml Next the Toe sailon �� two Fn little braid (oaki shirt ! • : '. 'I • --. - - .. / ill : � MOMMA 147 ferred not to discuss their wives, since these little women were four thousand miles away.. -Poor pickins tonight, said the major to the lieutenant. -1 don't waste any time any more, the lieutenant grunted, paying for his chits. 1 just say do you and pushem into a dark corner.... Piss on all introductions and flourishes.... Who started this way anyhow? Not me, buddy.... Momma looked at the half-bald head of the lieutenant under the crazy angle of his cap. She knew that he'd been most heroic in battle-that was how he'd got his commission. There was strife in his low grating voice. Once he'd told her of last winter in battle, of an Italian boy sewing by moonlight in the arch of a bombed house near Formia: -1 was drinking vino with my GI's And he just sits there looking at me. Fifteen, he said he was white skin. I remember his eyes over his needle.... 1 wonder where he is now. As the lieutenant fumbled to pay her for their chits, a woman's picture fell on Momma's counter out of his pocket: -Ees your wife in Stati Vniti? Momma said, trying to tum the glossy print over. He covered it from her gaze with a hand pocked with sandfly bites and umber with cigarette stains. His eyes were dose to hers, yellow and protruding. -Never mind that, Momma, he said, restoring the picture to his pocket. Momma knew that the bravest and coolest entered her bar alone. They entered with a curt functionalism that informed everyone that hadn't come just to drink or to watch or to brood. Still others came in specious twosomes, talked together a little, and spent most of the time ignoring one another and looking into the mirrors in a sort of reconnoitering restlessness. And a few came in groups of twos and threes for protection. When Momma's bar was full, it was like a peacock's tail because she could see nothing but eyes through the cigarette smoke. Restless and unsocketed eyes that wheeled all around, wholly taken up in the business of looking and calculating, Eyes of every color. Momma's bar when crowded was a goldfish bowl swimming with retinas and irises in motion. Next there came two French lieutenants and two French sailors. The sailors were ubriachi and the lieutenants were icily sobers In the two French officers Momma'd always noted an excellence in the little braided pips through their shoulder loops, their American khaki shirts, and their tailored shorts. Their conversation played - I I ---- •. ,:-_-- -":_�------=-""/ • • \ �I r � I • .., I "', '" ..._ � � / .. _ :-.;;-.:.; I I 148 MOTHE GALLERY over the heads of their sailors with a silvery irony. Momma under­ stood their tongue decently enough, that perfect language which gave all their remarks a literary quality beyond even the intelligence of the speakers. -Ainsi je noie toute mon angoisse, said the first French officer. -C'est rna femme qui m'incite a de telles folies, said the other. -Tilimbom, the drunken sailors said, clapping the pompons on their caps. The French officers had a jeep which they parked at the steps of the Galleria. When Momma dosed her bar, she knew that they whisked into this jeep an assorted and sparkling company and drove to the top of Naples to admire the August moonlight. Momma wondered if the ripple of their epigrams and refinements ceased even when they were making love. -C'est une manie, Pierre. -Bon appetit, Andre. �na per Tnat'� t a�!ire to Ilv� for t omen a �rfectio Knowwli In� tra�c !ttin� co marK on -J! th �ma, wi -In t D�r�ndin oacK in tl ilie!eeru wflollr u are revolt wfllch lee ar� the !a �u�en Vi� Ine whole �vare, E aearlr the mlfered t� !�cl! !ati!f,!IOn of th� not !love! ...What' �eant. ...Thanl morality n oliliefew lion may 1 nomic ana intermingl �d enligb Momma had less than half an hour till closing time. Her bar, into which people now must wedge themselves, was swimming in smoke and a terrific tempo of talk and innuendo. Under its surface there was a force of madness and a laughter of gods about to burst. Momma put her hand to her throat and swallowed hard in the strangling ecstasy of one dropping down an elevator shaft. For this was the time she loved best of her three hours: a presentiment of infinite possibilities, of hectic enchantments, of the fleeting moment that never could be again because it was too preposterous and frantic and keyed up. The Desert Rat was finishing his fifth white wine in his prison of detachment and musing. Ella the Aussie was being removed by Gaetano and Vincenzo from the top of the bar, where he was executing a cancan. Rhoda was booming out a quotation from Spengler. The Negro second lieutenant was examining his nail polish. Eddie had put his arms around one of the French officers, talking about parlayvoo-fransay. And the two British sergeants reared up like Savonarolas. -I'm asking you, Esther, to take a good look at all these mad people. For they are mad. And consider the subtle thread that brings them all together here. Not so subtle as that either, Esther, since their personalities are so deeply rooted in it. What an odd force to unite so many varied personalities! Something they all want ... and when they've had it, their reactions will be different. Some will feel themselves defiled. Others will want another try at ""_.��"'.. ��.illl I -, MOMMA at a;] Wf'i� hue tbrea� � r,ll. reitber,Ll': j 'Ina! an � I ethinO'tOr1' , iJi be ru�a� I another �i it. Others will feel that they haven't found what they were looking for and will be back here tomorrow night. -Does either of us know what these people are looking for, Magda? the second sergeant asked with thickened tongue. -Don't be dull, Esther. They're all looking for perfection .•• and perfection is a love of death, if you face the issue squarely. That's the reason why these people live so hysterically. Since the desire to live, in its truest sense of reproducing, isn't in them, they live for the moment more passionately than most. That makes them brazen and shortsighted.... In this life, Esther, when you find perfection, you either die on the spot in orgasm, or else you don't know what to do with it. ... These people are the embodiment of the tragic principle of life. They contain tragedy as surely as a taut string contains a musical note. They're the race's own question mark on its value to survive. -Is there any hope for them, Magda? the second sergeant whim­ pered, wiping a mist from his glasses. -In the exact measure that they believe in themselves, Esther. Depending on how they control their centripetal desires. Some hold back in their minds and distrust what they're doing. In them are the seeds of schizophrenia and destruction. Others give themselves wholly up to their impulses with a dizziness and a comic sense that are revolting to the more serious ones.... Lastly there's a group which sees that they can profit by everything in this world. These are the sane. The Orientals are wiser in these matters than we or Queen Victoria. No phase of human life is evil in itself, provided the whole doesn't grow static or subservient to the part.... But beware, Esther, of the bright psychiatrists who try to demarcate clearly the normal from the abnormal. In the Middle Ages people suffered themselves to be burnt as witches because it gave them such satisfaction to keep up their act. It was just a harmless expres­ sion of their ego. And children allow themselves to be pinked by hot stoves just to get a little sympathy out of their parents. -What does God think of all this, Magda? mourned the second sergeant. -Thank Him, if He exists, that we don't know. . . . A new morality may come into existence in our time, Esther. That's one of the few facts that thrills me, old bitch that I am. Some distinc­ tion may be made between public and private sins, between eco­ nomic and ethical issues. In 1944 you find the most incredible intermingling, a porridge of the old and the new, of superstition and enlightenment. How can we speak of sin when thousands are 149 C' 150 THE GALLERY cremated in �erman furnaces, when it isn't wrong to make a million pounds, but a crime to steal a loaf of bread? Perhaps some new code may come out of all this ... I hope so. -And if not? -Why then, the first British sergeant said in drunken triumph, we shall have a chaos far worse than in Momma's bar this evening. This is merely a polite kind of anarchy, Esther. These people are expressing a desire disapproved of by society. But in relation to the world of 1944, this is just a bunch of gay people letting down their back hair ... We mustn't go mad over details, Esther. Big issues are much more important. It is they which should drive us insane if we must be driven at all.... All I say is, some compromise must and will be reached.... Esther, I'm stinko. Momma watched the two British sergeants embrace each other with an acid tenderness. Then they slid to the floor unconscious, in a welter of battle dress and chevrons and spectacles. They lay with their eyes closed in the quiet bliss of two spinsters who have fought out their differences at whist, falling asleep over the rubber. And it was typical of Momma's at this time of the evening that no one paid any attention to the collapse, just pushed and wedged in closer to give the corpses room. The talk was now at its full tide of animation, like a river ravenous to reach the sea, yet a little apprehensive to lose its identity in that amorphous mass which ends everything. Momma knew the secret of an evening's drinking, that life grows sweeter as the sun sets and one gets tighter. If only drinkers knew how to hold their sights on that yellow target bobbing on their horizons! For Momma understood the drunkenness of the Nordic better than most Italians did. They drank out of impatience with details, with personalities that were centrifugal, with a certain feminine desire to have a crutch for the spirit, with a certain sluggishness of their metabolism. Momma thought it weak of them to drink, but it was a weakness as amiable as modesty, courtesy, or the desire to live at all when the odds were against them. In a delirium Momma leaned over her cash desk and strained her ear at the hurtling shafts of talk: -How can you possibly like actors? Every goddam one of them is constantly playing a part. Off the stage too ... -I am essentially an aristocrat. People must come to me. But I'm by no means passive ... -My aunt, a refined colored woman, brought me up most dr- !!Dartest -Firs -�o I iDe did, -Do 1 l�aCners( =i'c�ul -Ciao, -Inili �ome I mean .. -There film .. , -Let's -Don't Ilara'sslip -forC -Ther "'",am �iln their ...And ... �ussu I��", ...Whr "'",sim !�aKer at 11111.., ...Inas -i:iao, ...1 lOok Asudde ffi1ntof 1�actlr wh MOMMA 151 da:J one 0 �t cumspectly. 1 come from a long line of missionaries. So don't think 1 don't spread the good word among the Gentiles ... -I don't know why our sort is always in the best jobs and the smartest ... -First time for me, ya see. I'm not the lowered-eyelash kind ... -So 1 told this Nellie to go peddle her fish somewhere else. And she did ... -Do you remember loathing your father and doting on your teachers? .. You didn't? .. - ... not responsible for anything 1 do tonight ... -II n'y a rien au monde comme deux personnes qui s'aiment ... -Every time I think this is the real thing, the bottom falls right out from under me. Here 1 go again ... - ... un vero appassionato di quelle cose misteriose ... -I could be faithful all night long ... -Ciao, cara ... -In the Pincio Gardens all I saw was flesh flesh flesh ... -Sometime we'll read the Phaedo together. Then you'll see what 1 mean ... - There's somethin in ya eyes. I dunno, I just know when I'm happy ... -Let's you and me stop beating around the bush ... -Don't feel you have to be elegant with me, Bella, cause your tiara's slippin over one ear ... -For Chrissakes, what in hell do ya take me for? .. -They're all suckin for a bruise ... or somethin else ... - ... am frankly revolted with the spectacle of human beings with their bobbie pins flying all over the place ... -And when they expect you to pay them for it ... -Pussunally I tink da Eyetalians is a hunnert years behind da times ... -Why do I wear a tie? Just to be different, that's why ... - ... simply no idea of the effect of Mozart coming over a loud- speaker at the edge of the desert. The Krauts simply lovedddd itttl ... -In a society predominantly militaristic ... -Ciao, cara ... -I looked at you earlier ... but I didn't dare think ..• A sudden silence descended on Momma's bar. There was a move­ ment of many bodies giving way to make space. She now knew exactly what time it was and who had come. It was Captain JoeI e up m�!� - II I - _---.. '-��--- • \ � f • I .... • ��" AIiIii .. _._.;.0 .....• m-,;;", _.,... .It.. 152 THE GALLERY and the young Florentine. This was the climax of every evening. Captain Joe stalked cool and somber in his tank boots, a green bandanna tucked round his neck in the negligence of magnificence. He had gold hair which caught the light like bees shuttling at high noon. He had a hard intense sunburned face that smoldered like a monk in a Spanish painting. Momma knew that he was a perfect law unto himself, though gentle and courteous with all. He came only in the company of the young Florentine, whose eyes never "eft his face. The captain smiled with amusement and understand- 'ng at all, but he spoke only to his friend. Their faces complemented one another as a spoon shapes what it holds. The Florentine had dark thoughtful eyes and olive skin. He seemed wholly selfless. He and Captain Joe shared a delight and a comprehension that couldn't be heard. But they gave out a peace, a wild tranquillity. -Buona sera a Lei, said Captain Joe to Momma. You keep a great circus at Naples, signora. And the miraculous thing about you is that you don't need the whip of a ringmaster.... You and I and Orlando are the last of a vanishing tribe. We live in the sun­ shine of our own nobility. A perilous charge in these days. I wonder if our time will ever come again. We give because we have to. And others try to draw us into their own common mold, reading their own defects into our virtues. Momma signaled to Vincenzo and Gaetano to shut down the rolling steel shutter. It was closing time. Captain Joe lit her ciga­ rette. -Happiness, Captain Joe said, is a compromise, signora, between being what you are and not hurting others.... We smile, Orlando and I. . . . Genius knows its own weaknesses and hammers them into jewels. All our triumphs come from within. We've never learned to weep ... A shout, a thud, and screams tore the air. -Ya will, willya! a drunken voice roared, hoarse with murder. Fists began to fly and people retreated against the walls. There was kicking and petitioning and cursing. The Desert Rat roused from his torpor and leaped in to defend the fallen. In the narrow bar persons swirled back and forth in a millrace. There were bloody noses and snapping joints. And when Momma saw the MP's break in from the Galleria, flailing their night sticks, she knew that the time had come for her to faint. So almost effortlessly she fell out and across her cash desk. She'd been practicing mentally all eve­ ning long. F I I REMEI wall. I intoili of the Ho IUrf! that rnoto!ma li�nt !liC (amera 0 wa! f!peC' iailors wi 1vilmi!t, Tnm I k tioni!m of cruellightlIremem round the mallenginjom the Cnos�ital sh itoodon th III along tt Mofth! neal'em, Ti �ment ana -{hoom Irememl now ther'd tner ever g �n the grl] ; .... � -. - - . / / � rJ' -----r .. � , / FIFTH PROMENADE (Algiers) I REMEMBER THAT ALONG THE HARBOR OF ALGIERS THERE'S A SEA wall. It dams the city up on the side of the hill lest it slide into the sea. In daylight I used to walk along this wall back of the Hotel Aletti. There were Ayrab cameramen who took pic.. tures that came out in reverse on gray sensitized paper. These photos made me look as though I'd happened before 1865, in a sad light such as surrounded Mr. Lincoln. And alongside the box camera on clothespins there were suspended pictures the Ayrab was especially proud of: a French family on Sunday afternoon, sailors with their arms around girls, and GI's peering out of an evil mist, with their shirts open and flowers in their buttonholes. Then I knew that they were drunk, with that same sharp exhibi­ tionism of convict photos or those taken in penny arcades under cruel lighting, so that all subjects look depraved and pimply. I remember how men overseas in Alger in 1944 tended to gather round the water front, as though by going near water they were challenging the barrier that kept them from home. They'd hang over the concrete balustrade and glare at the water and at the hospital ships and at the barrage balloons. They were people who stood on the edge of the moon, looking longingly at the earth. And all along this sea wall were sentry posts of antiaircraft installations. Back of these, thousands of soldiers peered out to sea or into the heavens. The British in their shorts rubbed themselves against the cement and murmured to one another: -Choom, I'm browned off. Are you? I remember how they talked of Africa and Africa and Africa, of how they'd been in the bloody place for four years, and would they ever get back to Blighty. Nor were the Americans any the less on the griping, except that it was more focused-against officers 153 154 THE GALLERY and against food and against what the folks in America were doing. The Americans and the British rarely liked one another. The Limeys thought we had too many PX's and cinemas where they couldn't go, and too good rations and all the wimmin. And we thought that their battle dress smelled musty, and that what with the radio there was no excuse for so many accents and dialects as they spoke. Neither understood the other, or tried to. But we shared places with them along the Mediterranean at Alger. Their shorts hitched high as they leaned over the wall, pointing out things in the harbor. And our pants tightened over our buttocks as we pressed ourselves against the concrete, observing the shipping rid­ ing at anchor. There's a torture in ports when one is landbound. Along this gauntlet of men reaching out to sea and wishing they weren't there the French families of Alger used to take their Sunday walks. 1 thought it wasn't fair for them to be so natural and at home in a foreign land. Also there used to be ladies who got whistled at, and French officers on leave, and little Ayrabs trying to turn a franc. For the money in North Africa was like tinted toilet paper with murals on it. It was so dirty I couldn't be con­ vinced of its value. It was printed in Philadelphia, however. 1 remember that in the evening the press around the harbor gut thicker. Then the wall was lined with uniformed men standing elbow to elbow, as though they were in a firing squad. The moon showed their faces or their backs. There was a ripple of talk like the afterswish of a wave. But most just stared. Their eyes were points like a battalion of waiting cats in single file. There was a mute panic in them. At one cry they'd have pushed down the wall and tumbled into the Mediterranean. -1 should thrill to be in Algiers, 1 suppose. But in wartime nothing gives you any satisfaction, does it? You do all sorts of things and find that it's like sucking dried fruit. You thought you wanted it from the outside, but inside there's nothing but ashes. -The MP's let me into the Kasbah this afternoon. I went to a house and persuaded the Fatima to let me take pictures of her, bollocky. Such exposures too. I'm squeezing this and I'm squeezing that of her anatomy. She just loved to be photographed ... for a price. So now I have my own French pictures. But much clearer than those they peddle on the streets back home. I'm having copies struck off for all my boys. By moonlight too I remember the mustaches of the old French gentlemen who use to talk to me and bum cigarettes. I'd lift them up on the wall beside me. In their quavering voices they'd speak min �oaaa You m ilieirl Di�o with ( �af( fro�, Ire dlfOUg !tair� i JeviUe En�li!n Decau�e Iva! thi rni�ion! !talrca!e fanning in� rece ��er WI wall, Fo Olea in -Jeez -Wh� came to lome con -And around (I -..Dfo �ara!itica -And out five fl mr!eif in �on't spil Or Ire ". �--." --. � �' . . . . / / � n -T�, t GAllHl � I 'ca \l;ere Q�� e another, n '+fne�� , min, .�Q at �'nat \�, , anailial1(Ei I Butwe�� , ,Thtrr !�r, '. out �n�' )' �ttoc� �. �'�r�� e" anQoo� (ALGIERS) 155 of Petain and De Gaulle and Paris before 1940. They hated the Germans as a father hates the man who has ravished his daughter. Shaking palsied hands in the moonlight, they'd vow that France would rise again. Only my country wasn't helping her enough. -What in God's name do you want, monsewer? We have our own war to win, you know. -Frogs, frogs, frogs. First and last and always frogs. They kicked us in the pants in 1919 and they'll do it again. Mark my words. That goddam little teakettle still thinks she's in the eighteenth century. You may talk of the perfection of their culture and the polish of their language. But you must consider too their penury and their bigotry for anything that isn't France. And her squat little men with the braided caps were caught snoring in 1940. France had graft and filth within her ... and that disease has sapped all the frogs. I remember how some nights I'd walk up from the sea wall through a little park into the Place de I'Opera. I'd climb a flight of stairs into that intimate theater. I heard Tosca and the Barber of Seville in French. There was also the Desert Song with asides in English to please the Americans. I heard opera in a warm frenzy because I could drink white wine between the acts. The orchestra was thirty. The singers looked better than they sang. In the inter­ missions the white wine tempted me to slide down the Lon Chaney staircase and mistily eye the people there: chic women of Alger fanning themselves in the heat, French naval officers, British hold­ ing receptions in bad French. I soon discovered that the Opera of Alger was a great meeting place, classier than the parks or the sea wall. For to the opera came coiffured ladies whose husbands had died in France or in Tunisia. -Jeez, what a dainty little auditorium! Like Liederkranz Hall. -What the hell is all this movement that goes in theaters? I came to see the show even if they didn't. Why don't they have some consideration for others? I didn't come to be stared at. -And those ushers that make ya stand in line till they get around to showin ya to ya seat. They just want my tip. -Of course, of course, butch. You're beginning to see into the parasitical life of Europe. -And while we're on the subject, it burns me to haveta shell out five francs to some old doll every time I take a notion to relieve myself in the little boys' room. What's she there for, ta see that I don't spill it all over myself? Or I remember how some nights I used to climb the interminable 156 THE GALLERY stairs to the Salle Pierre Bordes for concerts. There the Orchestre Symphonique gave a concert of modern English music. All the French walked out when they heard Vaughn Williams and Arnold Bax and Delius. And there too Lelia Gousseau used to play the piano. I'd sit and watch the somber trance in which she floated onto the stage of the Salle Pierre Bordes. She played Ravel with a rush of silver. Lelia Gousseau never seemed to me to be fully awake. But she was something miraculous and noble. She leaned over the keyboard and stopped breathing while she played. -Ya see how that babe plays the pianer? Ya know what she needs, don't ya? -Ah, can it. Every time 1 try to get kultchah, ya open ya trap and talk like ya was at a stag party. At one of her concerts a Negro corporal started a ballet on the stage behind her. She simply lifted her hands off the keys and laughed without a sound till the drunk had been removed by two French janitors. Then 1 was sure that Lelia Gousseau was a great artist. r I, nand, �o -It �l �rorle � oon't �a ilieworl romrlete -You -You' (0 �a\Vlo �rur ad ili�wvere mmlelf, , we �tart �llooK e dna the g�ine!! f w�atever �I,imtea I remember that in Algiers, because 1 had too much time to think and because the Mediterranean lay in front of me like a soft yet cynical mirror of time, 1 began to ponder on variety and dif­ ference. I lost something, because I became other people by think­ ing about them. For better or for worse 1 think 1 annihilated myself at this time. -Just wait, said the pfc with the horn-rimmed glasses, everything we know is going to be swept under. -But sex is here to stay, the mess sergeant said, chewing on a toothpick. -I didn't say it wasn't, the pfc said. But so many things are coming into your life that you can't imagine. Imagine a world in which there's a flatter plane of possible experience, in which the levels of poetry and prose come closer together than they ever have before. There's too much difference between the people of the world, yet surprisingly little variety ... What sort of world do you want, anyway? A world in which no one speaks to anyone else, like the people in aNew York apartment? -If ya'd take off ya glasses, the mess sergeant said, and look at the world insteada books ... -Well, that's my tragedy, the pfc said. I'm steeped in the past. I'm not yet convinced that the break with the past is going to be complete. . . . I hope not, anyhow. ;"- -- .... �' '. /�'\ (ALGIERS) 157 I remember the tiny dark Ayrab kids with brilliant eyes who shined shoes in front of the Red Cross. What was the difference between them and me, except that they were Ayrabs? They were so much smarter than I, but they hadn't been born in Detroit. They had the same mouths as I; they loved American chewing gum. But they lived in a world where people didn't even pretend to have ideals. Consequently they lived in a world realer than my own. And I wondered who was equal to the world in 1944, who was capable of seeing and understanding everything. Why wasn't I a prostitute? or a French child begging? or a Foreign Legionnaire with scars instead of milky skin? Why was I alive at all? How had I possibly managed to live? -You won't go mad, the pfc said laughing. You're attempting to be great in the old patterns. You have the disease of empathy. You try to enter into the minds of others. Perhaps you do. -When I see an Ayrab child watching the chocolate bar in my hand, something tears at me. -It should. You're arriving at the focus of the modern world. People are killing one another right and left. The newspapers don't say why. It's very simple. There's an unfair distribution of the world's goods.... We're heading either for world socialism or complete destruction. -You mean I'm not crazy when I feel like crying all the time? -You're hopelessly sane. Most people have to go to the movies to bawl. A few do it over the life they see around them.... The only advancement made by the human race is because some guy discovered pity. He found out that everyone was really quite like himself, with unimportant differences. We all must die alone. And we start dying with our birth. And a thousand years from now we'll all look equally silly: the movie star, the Ayrab whore, the financier, and the hustler.... If only we could publicly acknowledge our silliness for the few years that we are alive, we could then pool whatever dignity we possess. Then life would be worth living for all, instead of for the few. I remember that in Alger, through too much thinking, I did something I never used to do in the States. I'd leave the boys and go into the city by myself. Perhaps it was because I was getting to know them too well. When you live only with men, something in you revolts after a while. Men by themselves are sterile; they tend to become brutal and onetrack. Night after night the same jokes keep popping up, the same crap games, the same vocabulary.. II, �' I I " 158 THE GALLERY itnatUi �!eblAnd talKed I around oorn in -Par Hi! n Ol! nigH rlene!, H eoairwn �e!tufe! waetner �ood al (i�arette Iflcnant tnatal! the same weary comedy. So everyone in a group of men grows to hate the others with affection, as people do after a long marriage in which they've had no children to distract them from themselves. To this day I don't know what I was looking for in the dark streets of Algiers. But I was alone; I heard my blood softly boiling. My brain was going like a stove. I started again to justify my own life. Why had I been born? Was there some scheme from which I wasn't distracting, some harmony that I was smashing? In those evenings whatever God I believed in receded from me like a comet. I found myself walking in a world in which I was an alien. I'd just come out of the womb, but there was no mother to take me by the hand. Often around midnight in a glacial fever of horror and loneliness I thought I hated everyone in the world, which had thrust me into exile. And all the cordialities that men pay to one another seemed to me only a polite uproar to drown the rattle of death. All men, I came near deciding, were secretly enemies. I'd wonder what would happen to three men who found themselves alone at the end of the world. Would they kill one another? Was society there­ fore simply a charade to ease the torture of life? Were we all more divided than we were united? At such times I'd lay my head on the concrete wall along the Mediterranean. I wanted to cry, but noth­ ing came except some dry hiccoughs. You're a monster and a mis­ anthrope, I'd tell myself. . . . I remember that one night in June, 1944, I was walking in the garden leading from the Place de l'Opera to the port of Alger. It was near midnight. The lights flickered yellowly through the trees. Sometimes an Ayrab working at the port would stumble past and cadge a cigarette. Little old men muttering to themselves made their way home. I thought of my tent at Maison Blanche. I wasn't sorry for myself, but I felt passionately displaced, a body already buried alive. I chattered in my bones with a paroxysm of anguish. I put my hands tightly against the suntans on my back and called out to the leaves and the moon and the sky: -0 my God, my God! ... I was still sane enough to laugh after my outcry because some­ thing in a safe corner of my brain said I was acting like a Shake­ spearean ham. But all the same I was alone, and for the moment out of my mind. I heard a noise behind me and turned to look, with my cry still dribbling on my lips. Behind me was a Frenchman of Algiers, not a man, not a boy. Under the twittering uncertain French bulbs his face was like a ;""--.�.--. /�� (ALGIERS) 159 hawk's in repose. He was wearing shorts and a torn faded blue shirt that was open in the June heat. Under his arm he had a sheaf of typewri tten papers. -Qu'est-ce que tu as, Yank? Nous autres Francais, nous connais­ sons bien la melancholie. I felt compelled, like a little child, to give him my arm. He took it naturally. - Je suis ecrivain, he said, flourishing his manuscripts with a smile bi tter and consoling. And I knew he'd been farther down than 1'd ever yet known. He talked of Rimbaud and Verlaine and Debussy. His voice was all around me in a stream of cool elegance. He told me he'd been born in Rio, but had sought out Paris: -Parce que c'est la, tu vois, rna patrie spirituelle.... His room smelled of the linen on his cot and a dish of fruit on his night table and the leather of his books. These were his only riches. He poured me a glass of sweet yellow wine. I sat in his one chair while he read me verses out his few books. He made shooting gestures of delight with his hands, often looking at me to see whether I was following him. Evidently he desired to know how good a.l audience I was. Sometimes he reached over and took a cigarette out of my breast pocket. He knew some magic of dis­ enchantment and exorcism. He told me that I was still young, and that all was vanity. But not yet. He said that men had wept before I was ever born.••• SIXTH PORTRAIT was tea a the p fora herm � in the relati Or !Iiael hi! IV The Leaf Inl of the !mall !elf or lina, � j�wel�) at ho ainner, nvere �try. Lucl (Offee, �ravel� -I! \�oKI 1m1r�en invaaed (Qntine� now w� ilirou�hJ utterlr, -Or] lau�hin� �ince t �n� him navetol men fron ri�e! on fel, he'd tnat com o�nizat SOMETHING KEPT TELLING HIM THAT THE WAR OF 1918 HADN'T been the last. He'd enough of the Virginia gentleman in him to know that men always have fought and always will fight over women or more abstract ideals. And he'd a degree from a southern university which had inculcated on him a certain esprit de corps. He decided to get himself a reserve commission. So he wrote to the adjutant general in Washington, went to camp each summer, and before he knew it he was a second lieutenant. He wore his uniform on state occasions: at the Rotary Club, at the Elks', at the Masons'. At their luncheons they called him captain or colonel with a certain manly affection. They spoke of him as a young man with an eye to the future of his country and of him­ self. He spent his time in his laboratory at Roanoke. He was a petroleum engineer. By nature he was a dreamer. He thought of himself as a catalyst of the aristocracy of the Old South who'd somehow made the conversion to the world of 1930. He never spoke of the Civil War because he liked to assert huffily that he lived very much in the present. And he'd married a dreamer too. She was a belle of Roanoke, belonged to the DAR and the Metho­ dist Church. She wrote poetry with the rapt efficiency in which most women cook. And when no editor took her verses, which fluttered and sighed like herself, she published them herself. Though she had no children, each year she Brought Out a slim lavender or ocher or mauve book containing her thoughts on love, flowers, and life. She said that she loved life with a fierceness known only to the elect. She'd married him because great loves, unlike butterflies, can be pinned down. Yet they saw little of each other in their Roanoke apartment. She wrote her poems and read them at women's clubs, where she 160 r -- ._""_ :�� eol THE LEAF 161 was applauded by wrenlike elderly ladies who then drank iced tea and champed on shortcake. He in his laboratory brooded on the possibilities of gasoline. Sometimes he forgot to take any food for a whole day, and she was too preoccupied with what she called her muse to bring him anything. -Ours is the ideal love, she'd say with a towel round her head in the steaming Virginia summers. Few men or women have had a relationship as spiritual as ours. Or sometimes when a visiting business associate was about to slide under the table from bourbon, he'd read him excerpts from his wife's poetry. -Has she any children? the business associate would say. In 1941 his hour struck. He was already a captain in the reserve of the Army of the United States. This, he told himself, was no small potatoes. With the passage of selective service he found him­ self ordered to active duty to a new infantry camp in South Caro­ lina. So he had all his uniforms dry-cleaned. And he polished his jewels, as he called his brass, with a blitzcloth. On his final night at home they gave the nigress the evening off and went out to dinner. It was the first time they'd appeared together in public in five years. They'd had few friends. Lucinda'd been busy with her poetry. And he-well, a petroleum engineer is like a priest. Lucinda sat across from him over her lobster salad and iced coffee. Her eyes were crinkling, for she had a splitting headache. Bravely she rolled her gentian eyes in torment: -I should have stood in bed tonight. I'm doing it for you, lovey. Who knows how often we'll see each other during this frightful emergency? As I wrote today in blank verse, Europe has again invaded us We Americans try to lead decent lives on our own continent, and those Europeans always manage to suck us in. I see now why our ancestors left Europe. She's rotten through and through.... Perhaps it would be better if she were destroyed utterly. -Or perhaps we should send the goddam nigras there, he said laughing. Since tomorrow he was going on active duty, he was now permit­ ting himself a modicum of profantity. After all, he was going to have to emerge from the cloister of his laboratory and deal with men from every state in the Union. He looked down at the crossed rifles on his dinner jacket, seeing himself shouting at his company. Yes, he'd have a company, his very own. He thought long about that company. He'd already planned the precision of his whole organization. He saw an order emanating from himself and passing tl" if'" , II t Ir" ,"'I I ,'''', , "� I Q I 162 THE GALLERY i: down Through Channels and being put into effect with clarity of detail and economy of effort. He was silent over the strawberry shortcake. He and Lucinda never spoke much except about her poetry. That was the excellence of their marriage, that neither needed to say much. Since they both had the temperaments of dreamers, the essential thing was that they shouldn't get in each other's hair, or dreams. Now a sheet of silence hung between them like plate glass. He broke it. -If you like, I could take an apartment for you near camp. It's not fair that you should hang around Roanoke like a goddam grass widow. Lucinda held up her little cramped hand on which the solitaire glittered like a hag's eye: -Lovey, don't. You'll make my migraine worse. It's caused by your leaving me. Please don't make me suffer any more than I'm doing, lovey..•. I'd go mad in the red sand of South Carolina. I need green grass and the fluting of the birds of Virginia..•. Besides there's my "Ode on Thomas Jefferson." Outside this state, I'd lose all feeling for the mood. . . . I'm an honest artist, lovey. I write only what I see and what I feel, not what the public wants. That's why my books are so sad and solitary...• And in South Carolina I couldn't recapture what I feel right now in Virginia..•. Perhaps around Christmas I might be down. But right now there's something in me that says No.... Lovey, don't urge me. You know what my soul is like . . . a bird at. dusk. . . . So he put out his hand and stroked her wrist. He'd never been much of a caresser; possibly his mind was a trifle chilly. He remem­ bered how in college the boys would run after spirits and nigresses, while he'd sit in his room and read. Lucinda withdrew her hand and poked at the swilled whipped cream on her plate. -Oh lovey, she said, I thank you for our love. There's something perfect between us. Because it's not ... passionate ••• it can never burn itself out. -Lucinda, he said, your name is you.••• It was the wildest transport of fantasy he'd ever permitted him­ self. And after a while she said she was cold and her headache worse. He got her wraps. At the house before going to her room she kissed him on the corner of his mouth. -You'll be gone when I get up in the morning, she said. And I wonder if you know how sometimes I wish I could be the sort of wifey who could get up and cook your breakfast and do all those little things that wifeys do.... But I can't, lovey. When a woman !e� 0 hi�hd -0 ticKetlao til -1 the di rOll d rOll a� Wh� thetoJ He rei &wn in !noulas �ut ilien Cartai He came I'ery well ru�erent. nlaesire �fl!e�ue WIre gelt WIre still ))In Am��Ives to � t GAllH� � : wiili c1ari��1 He and Lucin� i'ilieexcellenQ IL :�ce ilie� oo� 'n� was ili!t � �ow a !heet � j eit. o� near (4fn� e e a �oomm THE LEAF 163 sets out to write poetry, she sacrifices most of herself ... for a higher good. Sappho knew it. So did Elizabeth Barrett Browning. -Goddam it, hush, he said gallantly. I'd rather you gave me a ticket to immortality than slave over a hot stove. Any wife can do that. -I swore, she said, making a gesture of weary renunciation in the dim hallway among the antiques, that I'd never marry. But you dissuaded me, lovey. And I've never regretted it. For I've had you and my art too. . . . When he left in the morning he found a manuscript lying on the top of his visored cap. It was dedicated to his initials: For you, my love, Through all the bridegroom spontaneity, Through all your e'er-retreating suave compassion, A thrill immutable Sustains me like a wing of eider. And I know That I shall never faint or feel forlorn As long as you, my love, Return to me like snow, like spring, like birds. The seasons' secret Turns in me as the earth remembers time, Remembering and wanting and desiring: These are the solitary sins of wives, And I am scarlet with them, Vermilion with my love for you, my love. He read this lovely thing through in the chill dead light of the dawn in the streets of Roanoke. He had a vague impulse that he should seek Lucinda out in her bed and smother her with kisses. But then he reconsidered and went to his train. Captain Motes arrived at the infantry camp in South Carolina. He came with just a smidgin of fanfare. He knew that it was all very well to slip into your place like a late guest. But this was different. He was a captain in the Army of the United States, and he desired to make his position plain, without goading anybody. Consequently he demanded a little more attention than civilians were getting. And he got it on the train because officers' uniforms were still virtually unknown. His tactical intuition told him that soon America was going to war. Americans must accustom them­ selves to the idea of the army officer. Consequently he sat haughtily I,,'" , . , � I 164 THE GALLERY in his parlor car and answered in considerable detail the questions of anxious old ladies. He made dark prophecies of what their grandchildren might have to go through in the next few years. At the station he was slightly autocratic with the nigra porters. Arriving at five-thirty in the morning, he spent half an hour calling goddam over the telephone wires till he got some action. Rancid from their sleep, a group of drowsy nigras turned up in dungarees. They fumbled around with his baggage, heavy with his impedi­ menta and Lucinda's poems. -Goddam it, get a move on, Captain Motes called. Are you still wai ting for John Brown? - Yassuh, the nigras said in chorus. At the gate of the camp a sentinel stopped his taxi and saluted. It was the first time he'd been saluted outside of summer camp. He knew that soon, all over America, young men would be saluting him on every street in every town. He'd got in early. Soon he'd be Major Motes, and then Lieutenant Colonel Motes and then.... The dawn in South Carolina is a red and sullen thing. First the trees stand out like corpses with splayed arms. Then the captain saw the rocks resting on the hillsides, the hardness of the sky, and the burnish of the air. While waiting for headquarters to open, he took his breakfast at the PX. He hadn't a stomach for coffee, but he did take some tomato juice, several glasses of milk, and a piece of toast. -Guess it's not often that you see an officer here, eh? he said cheerily to the waitress. -No suh, she squeaked. An dey ain't supposed to come here at all at all. Ah hates officers. Tinks dere rears doesn't stink like other folkeses' does. When dese American men gits a piece of brass on dere shoulders, dey tinks dey's Mussolini. No suh, ah done want no truck widdem, ah don't. -Well, there are officers and officers, Captain Motes said, laugh­ ing indulgently. -Dere shouldn't be any officers at all, the nigra waitress said, furrowing her mouth and mopping the other tables. When you gits an army, you gits to killin fore ya knows it. An killin makes trouble to Americans. Dey ain't used to it, cept on a small scale like in lynchins. An when you makes some better dan udders, you is askin for a bruise. -Wishful thinking, Captain Motes answered, leaving her a nickel tip. There have always been wars and there always will be wars. And there will always be officers and enlisted men. arID, men, At a�lns 01 our Lineol on the -Yo Yermo for nunared cycle, he !ame 01 ooxof !er�eant cycle he ment in !nacKed, ...The I���l�!no�ldn'tlaollate ; .. :- .:': �.' .... ,�� t GAllHr � lallthe queHi�: 01 What tnt) ,t !ew)ean, e nl�a �n� I [an hour ca�� , action, RQn� I r In dun�� I hl� im� THE LEAF 165 -Dere's wars, said the nigress, retreating and waving an umber arm, cause a few men wants em. An ah sees yo is one of dose men.... Goomawnin to yo, capting. At post headquarters he went through the formality of saluting the adjutant, even though this officer was only a first lieutenant. Captain Motes enjoyed the games of the army. After his salute he stood alertly at attention in the ideal position of the officer, accord­ ing to the Officers' Guide. The adjutant had a Vermont twang and the businesslike air of one whose inner life is at loose ends. -Captain Motes, we are somewhat embarrassed.... You're a Virginia man. . . . May I ask whether you have all the prejudices and double standards of Virginia men? I have never yet met one who realized he was living after the year 1861, either in respect to the Great Rebellion or in his relations with women. -Goddam it, sir, cried Captain Motes, keeping his hands tight against the seam of his trousers, we're all together in the service of our country. I was ordered to active duty, sir, not to fight Mr. Lincoln's war all over again. You think that all we southerners are on the aggressive against you ... ·-You reassure me, captain, the adjutant said, uncramping his Vermont fingers. The fact is, a captain is a difficult rank to fit into an infantry replacement training center.... You're neither a second nor a first lieutenant, with whom we could do something. . . . Thus I must inform you that the verbal orders of the command­ ing general are for you to command D Company of the 50th Battalion. This is an all-Negro outfit. Report to regimental head­ quarters for your billet. Good morning, Captain Motes. For more than a year he was company commander to one hundred and fifty nigras. Since they had a thirteen-week training cycle, he saw the same black faces for three months. He saw the same black mess sergeant who kept thick steaks for him in the ice­ box of the mess. Cycle after cycle he saw the same black first sergeant who'd gone to Harvard and wrote sonnets. Cycle after cycle he saw the same black supply sergeant who whisked GI equip­ ment into town and sold it through the nigress with whom he shacked. -These goddam nigras will drive me mad, Captain Motes said to himself as he played solitaire in the bachelor officers' quarters. Gradually therefore he evolved a policy whereby the nigras shouldn't drive him mad. He knew that the War Department vacillated on the nigra issue. On one hand every privilege was given " :,11 . 166 TH E GALLERY them, but on the other their segregation was complete. Captain Motes, from under his campaign hat with the oak leaves, standing rigid and tense in his leggins, watched his nigras fire on the range, run the obstacle course, take their shortarm inspections. He shook his head over MP reports on their Saturday nights in town. He cut out all passes. He smelled the musk of their bodies as they forgot to stand at attention before his desk in the orderly room. Their venereal rate was the highest in camp. He tried court-martialing for every case of venereal disease until the commanding general heard of it. Finally he no longer dealt with his men personally. From his orderly room, himself unseen, came a vise of control and dis­ cipline. On Sunday afternoons he had his men, wearing full field packs, out washing their barracks windows. Pearl Harbor came and went. Every month Captain Motes put in for a transfer away from his nigras. He was always refused. His invisible regimentation froze his nigras and their officers. They became machines. Captain Motes said that, now America had de­ clared war, this was the way it should be. He'd sacrified friends and the good will of his men for results. He was always by himself, playing solitaire or charting graphs of training cycles. In the Louisiana maneuvers Captain Motes's nigras were captured to the last man while storming Hill Fifty-eight, -Captain, a brigadier general said, you have done a beautiful job in killing all combat initiative in your men. I hereby hand you the booby prize as an infantry company officer. In the summer of 1942 Captain Motes was relieved of his nigras. Summoned by the adjutant, he found the Vermonter, still a first lieutenant, crinkling typewritten onionskin in his hands. --Captain, the twang clattered, the War Department wants you. Remember us when you go to Washington. Think of us poor foot soldiers. Yours is the fate of all those too good for the infantry...• You're going into military intelligence. You seem to have some recherche talent that the rest of us lack. Or perhaps you know your congressman too well? ... At any rate here are your orders, and Godspeed to you..•. I have a feeling you won't die in this war, captain. -Goddam it, sir, Captain Motes said, we can do no more than obey our orders, can we? -Some orders, said the lieutenant, returning the salute, are easier to take than others. Captain Motes was sent to Camp Ritchie to learn prisoner-of-war interrogation. On the way up he wondered how he'd ever learn in!� �rac �UI �et U, in Ih Hi!! Alri Rir� he'd �Iooe taCK! itru�o �em Me Fro It wa cluo! -If Luan -I mr lif -Do lo\'er, iliin�, ourOi Her itandin fainted trarwi In 01 ment, 1 THE LEAF German. But then any Kraut knew German. So for days at Ritchie he fought from dummy house to dummy house. When those play­ ing the part of prisoners allowed themselves to be interrogated, he'd listen to the hiss and sputter of their German, and his face would ease into an understanding smile. At every ja he'd nod his head. Colonels often came to Ritchie from Washington to look at the school, for it was a pet of the War Department. Then Captain Motes would take it upon himself to explain what was going on to these visiting dignitaries. He kept on the lookout to buttonhole inspecting parties. The other student officers were all too busy practicing hiccoughing in German at one another. Such and other things he told Lucinda. Occasionally he could get up to see her in Roanoke. Spreading his hands on the oilcloth in their antique kitchen, he'd hint of task forces, of combat teams. His strategic sense told him that there must be an invasion of North Africa to start taking the Mediterranean away from the Axis. Ripples of horror spread over Lucinda's face. It was the first time he'd ever really been eloquent with her. He bought an illuminated globe for their library and a supply of colored ribbons and thumb­ tacks so that she could plot every phase of the coming American struggle in Europe. She began reading War and Peace and wrote a poem beginning: Men who run forth to die From the Mississippi, from Iowa, from Nohwata Oklahoma .•. It was published in a Roanoke evening newspaper. The ladies' clubs said that she would be the Winifred M. Letts of this war. -If I should die someplace in Europe, Captain Motes said. Lucinda covered her temples with her hands. -Goddam it, darling, he resumed, how strange life is ••. all my life I've had something unsatisfied in the back of my brain. -Don't, she breathed, looking at him through her fingers, don't, lovey. We play with greatness to our own peril. It's such a perilous thing. We mature so slowly, keeping within ourselves the kernel of our own time sense. And suddenly it bursts on the world.... Her fecundity in these days was such that she wrote and wrote, standing at her black walnut antique writing desk. She would have fainted if Hattie the nigress hadn't occasional1y brought her a tray with sandwiches and fruit juice. In October, 1942, Captain Motes was alerted for overseas move­ ment. "Washington was whirling softly and pregnantly. People 167 -1" I 168 THE GALLERY ducked in and out of the Mayflower and the Willard. Briefcases tossed through the streets like flat somber Japanese lanterns. And Captain Motes got a company of one hundred men. Daily he went with them on the range, insisting on their firing all the weapons in the training manuals. There kept recurring in his vocabulary phrases such as D-Day and Cut to Pieces. He scurried around tight-lipped and absent, forgetting to speak to old acquaint­ ances. One night, though they were alerted for staging, he slipped under the barbed wire and met Lucinda at Hampton Roads. It was for­ bidden to hold any communication from the port of embarkation, but Captain Motes knew that as an intelligence officer he could trust himself. Lucinda wept when he told her they were sailing the fol­ lowing morning. He told too the number of ships in the convoy. He guessed also that they'd land on the northwest coast of Africa. -We must rig up a code, lovey, she said panting, so I'll always know just where you are. And all the other pieces of information a wifey needs for her peace of mind. -Not necessary, he answered smiling and patting her hand. He looked around the restaurant with a hideous penetration, then took something with a wooden handle on it out of his pocket. -Mercy, lovey! What's that, a grenade? -A base censor stamp. With this on the envelope I can write you every goddam thing that happens.... And ... if I shouldn't come back, remember me as I am tonight ... and if I have ever hurt you ... She laid her head on the tablecloth and streaked it with the rivers from her eyes. Captain Motes kissed her on the hair and raced out into the night. That was the way he desired to remember Lucinda in the pelting of bullets and the screaming and battle fury of mad­ dened and dying men. On 7 November 1942, the great armada bobbed uncertainly. Word passed that they were off the coast of Africa. -This is it, kids, was the word that flicked from mouth to mouth like a tight bit. Captain Motes spent all his time with his men, though it was difficult to brake himself down to their tempo, which seemed mad­ deningly inert. They chewed gum and shot craps. He encouraged them and cracked jokes at them. He called up his store of warlike stories, even going back to Julius Caesar. -One of the great moments in the history of the world! God­ dam it, men, look at me! Whereas the other officers on his ship seemed idiotically calm, wnvoy Toe s onCa5 Dis leg was the But snoutin snore b voicero -PUI WIlat t� One slveral unloade �ar A tantalizi 1xrected �uite 50 �oatin� french 5 HI nm� ana �er HI hear alter the lI'iili the jra Divi Motes 5 nary gun ...Fine itcning fq 01 it a s� On 16 t GMlH� ----.:..:: __ ! i\\ard. Brie[c� I lamerm. cd men. DlW I • nring all w; nin� in t HelCurTIi: I � old ac�u�rll THE LEAF 169 like men playing in the shadow of doom. This was the way it had been at Pearl Harbor, Captain Motes told himself, pitying them their complacency. -Captain, one officer drawled, you're purple. How's your blood pressure? -Fine, fine, goddam it to hell! he screamed and raced about the deck with his field glasses. Before dawn on 8 November 1942, a fearful roaring set up. The convoy began to move in toward the murky outlines of Africa. The sky vibrated with lights and tracers. The navy opened up on Casablanca and Fedhala. Captain Motes, sleeping clothed and in his leggins, rushed to hearten and exhort his troops. Poor lads, this was the last of life for many of them. But nothing happened. Captain Motes raced over the decks shouting that someone had blundered, that they should all be on shore by this time. Then through the hell of firing and smoke a voice roared through the speakers on the bridge: -Put on ya helmet or go below. We ain't landin for a week yet. What the hell do ya think ya are, assault troops? One week after the Casablanca landings, after lying offshore several miles, Captain Motes's ship entered the harbor and leisurely unloaded. But that week he spent tossing in the slow swells of the gray Atlantic and listening to the firing ashore was the most tantalizing the captain had spent in his life. He began to accuse his company of malingering and cowardice when he detected signs of relief that they hadn't been in on the landing operations. He heard news from the shore that casualties had been heavier than expected because the French and the French Navy hadn't been quite so co-operative as everyone had counted on. He heard of legs floating off Oran. He heard of American dead at Fedhala, of French sniping from the windows in the Place de France in Casa. He heard how Ayrabs went from side to side selling information and perpetrating ghoulish atrocities on dead American engineers. He heard of General Patton making his bed in the Villa Miramar after the German armistice delegation had fled into the torchy night with their mistresses and their nightshirts. He heard how the entire 3rd Division was bivouacked on the Fedhala golf course. Captain Motes scrambled fretfully about the vessel, shuttling between the navy gun crews and American officers waiting to go ashore: -Fine scrap, fine scrap ... and we would have to miss it. I was, itching for the real thing..•. Well, they goddam won't do me out. of it a second time. On 16 November 1942)1 he entered Casa with his company. 170 THE GALLERY TH IDrb ana! Jiving Mrica A! ilDa�e Ca They marched tranquilly off the ship. There was little to show that only eight days ago Americans had been killed here-a little wreckage in the harbor. The Ayrabs were already well versed in the Americanese of cigarettes, bonbons, and chewing gum. The French on the streets were lean and leering, just as he'd expected them to be from books. Captain Motes knew at sight that he'd never trust the French. And as for learning their language, that would be like apprenticing himself as a quisling to the Vichy government. His eyes narrowed under his helmet as he marched along, tearing at the strap of his carbine. Under his armpit a tiny revolver nestled. He was ready for anything. The privilege of entering Casa on D-Day had been denied him. But he'd make up for it. The Atlantic Base Section was already in operation. Its function was supply. Choice hotels and villas had been requisitioned from Casablanca to Fez. There were already messes and clubs throughout French Morocco. Some officers of the base section had already chosen their mistresses and had settled down to the luxurious drudgery of rear area life, where they expected to vegetate for years. Captain Motes got a room at the Hotel Majestique. It had a floor of Moroccan tile with cabalistic symbols, a chamber pot, and a closet. The bed smelled like the Ayrabs. To clean his room he'd a Fatima with blue stars on her cheeks. She giggled and filliped her small breasts. She wore an American mattress cover and clinking jewelry. He gave her cigarettes to stay out of his room while he was in it, for she stank like goat's milk. After he'd unpacked his bed­ ding roll and hung up his carbine and helmet in a military and sinister manner, he sat down to write a letter to Lucinda. Somewhere in North Africa 9 November 1942 wal th aiaew -Do He'!!t! My darling, The headlines will have told you exactly where I am. I'm lying under my shelterhalf as I write this. In the distance I can still hear the firing. It sounds like fat popping in a frying pan. Darling, I've been through an indescribable twenty-four hours. With your lovely poet's mind you can intuit the horror of it all. I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that they gave us hell. I haven't suffered so much myself. I'm still in one piece. What got me was to see those lovely fellows in my company fall bubbling into the ocean or drop soundlessly in their tracks as I led them up the beach. I'm writing to you first, my darling. After that I have a long string of letters to get off to the families of my poor devils. Lucinda, I know what death means now. I noticed some white hairs in railing h Tnen �e inne mouth w toattenti -For four han� ilier flew ��alw /', - .:': �..... /�'\. • GA��tR� � I \it\eto!nrr, I.til here-alill 'e I ,ersedint i m.1heFrec: : �edili�m I • �'d neverm Viould �G THE LEAF 171 my beard as I was shaving out of my helmet this morning. But this is war, and I hope the American people will wise up to the fact-but fast. I'm living in a grove where the rain never stops falling. The mud of North Africa is like melted chocolate ice cream. A sentinel has just passed. Perhaps he too is thinking of his wife. The image of you is constantly before me. Keep sweet..•• Captain Motes read his letter over several times. Then he filled his washbowl and put the sheet of paper into it. He swooshed his letter quickly around in the water, then let the blurred letters dry. He sealed it in its envelope. On the lower left-hand corner he affixed the base censor's stamp he'd brought overseas with him. He didn't know whether a base censorship detachment had yet been set up in Casa; but if it had, that stamp would let his letter go through unopened. Next morning Captain Motes, wearing leggins and side arms, reported to the Shell Building on Boulevard de la Gare. It was the headquarters of the Atlantic Base Section. He went at once to a certain office, the location of which he'd demanded of the MP. This was the most ornate and inaccessible of all the offices. At the desk was the captain who was aide to the commanding general. This aide sounded off, out of an easy familiarity with the great: -Don't be a goon, captain. You simply can not see the general. He's still setting up ABS. The fighting stopped in Casablanca only last week. He's a very busy man, the general ... -I'm afraid you don't understand, sir, said Captain Motes with a mellow laugh. I am ... keep this under your hat ••. an intel­ ligence officer . . . -A dime a dozen, captain, the aide beamed, picking up a phone. There were scads of em running around and asking stupid ques­ tions on the beach under fire.... He hates em. Now they're com­ ing out of their holes and askin for cushy jobs. Come back in a month, captain . . . -I advise you to let me see the general, Captain Motes said, raising his voice to underline his intentions. Then a short fierce man with a star on his collar stormed out of the inner sanctum. His white eyebrows met over his nose. His mouth was a cold dash of red on his face. Captain Motes snapped to attention. -For Chrissake step inside, the general bawled. Stop rubbing your hands together and talk to me as man to man. . . . I suppose they flew you over from Washington. That's the way the hellish thing always operates. No replacements or no prophylactics or glare II' I , tf I . 172 THE GALLERY goggles, but they're forever flying in intelligence officers and the CID to check up on me.... I knew they'd put the hooks to me be­ cause I haven't had time yet to take care of the security angle. What for Chrissakes do they think a war is in Washington? Cutting up letters? The little old man ran round his desk like a terrier trying to remember where he's buried a bone. Back of his desk was an Amer­ ican flag drooping from an ebony pole, the perch of a golden eagle. Captain Motes hesitated, prodding his dubbined toe into the rich nap of the rug. -I won't lie to the general, he said softly, returning to the posi­ tion of attention. Washington is ... well, disappointed at the in­ telligence setup here. No BCD. No traveler censorship at the air­ port. As they understand it, and the general does too, a base section must do all the brainwork for our fighting men ... -Close your yap, the general screamed, running in the opposite direction. I suppose this means I'll never get my second star . -There was talk in Washington, Captain Motes said, discreetly lowering his voice, of the fine work the general is doing here.... One man can't think of everything, sir. -Very well! ... Shut up and listen to me and stop rubbing your hands. I'm giving you a direct order. VOCG. The stencils will be cut this afternoon.... It is my desire that you take charge of all censorship in the Atlantic Base Section.... Are you listening? I don't want to be bothered ever again with any of this damn G-2 nonsense, do you hear, captain? I delegate it all to you. Read all the letters you please. But I don't ever want to see your face again unless I send for you. Now get the hell out of my office. Captain Motes saluted and wheeled into the streets of Casa­ blanca. tnat (0 co nead lecon exactl !endin, He dis 101 he na!nin WOllin, -Ca to rea attnes lour ho -Th tne but nOle!ffi 01 the R -Are o�ides overtryi !nacljob writingi1 :;�Utl ranil -ln � -If yO! alternoon Captain lor week.� (1a!e at 01 �!oline t jauntsl H re�onal j So as the North African Theater of Operations became the ominous and murky name NATOUSA, Captain Motes became postal censor of this area, which some thought was an Ayrab city which they sought in vain on the maps of Morocco and Algeria. The importance of the work of censorship made Captain Motes secretive and distrustful. He was jealous of the weight of his own mission. He thought of himself as uneasy and as friendless as a king. After office hours he tended to spend all his time in his hotel room, dreaming up ways to extend his censorship empire. Eventually, as the war came onto the continent of Europe, he saw himself as chief theater censor with offices in each new fallen city. r • :. --. _. - '.. /' �' , t GAllH� � Q 'JS ana ili! '. boo to me �, I • ano\e, \\n� : Cuttln��1 THE LEAF 173 And as Hollywood magnates acquire the feeling that they control the emotions of the world, so did Captain Motes grow aware that he wielded a baton over the thoughts of all the soldiers and officers in North Africa. He became more nervous. His walk developed a sidelong twitch that was almost a wish. He smoked more because he couldn't take to cognac and Casablancaises the way all the others seemed to. His head was too full of military secrets and classified material for him to trust himself to relax. If he drank or made love, he'd babble of recondite things. His hair Was growing gray. He never told Lucinda exactly what he was doing, even though he had the privilege of sending his letters out of the theater with his special stamp affixed. He discouraged his officers' leaving the city where they worked, for he had a dread of intelligence officers' getting together and hashing over what they knew. Finally he decreed that all officers working together should mess and live together in the same billets. -Captain, said one of his examiners, isn't it hell enough to have to read mail all day long side by side with sixty other officers at the same table? Do I have to look at their ugly faces for twenty· four hours on end? -This is war, Captain Motes answered, lighting a cigarette from the butt of the last. People in Tunisia are living in the same fox­ holes month after month. Goddam it, you're better off than most of the people in the States. -Are you threatening me with the front? It would be heaven besides sitting on my arse for eight hours a day and going blind over trying to decipher what an illiterate Negro writes to his ex­ shackjob back in Georgia.... Smiles.... Ha-ha, baby.... Letter writing is no longer a fine art, captain.•.• I'm bucking for a section eight. -You were commissioned in military intelligence, Captain Motes replied, toying with Lucinda's picture. Do you wish to resign your rank? -I'm going rapidly mad, the lieutenant said. -If you think you are, it's a sure sign you're not.... Take the afternoon off and go to the movies. Captain Motes heard that his officers were using the unit's trucks for week-end trips to Fez and Rabat. He ordered the practice to cease at once. What would the taxpayers say if they knew that the gasoline they were doing without was being used for pleasure jaunts? He took none himself. He even begrudged himself his personal jeep. He looked with a bloodshot eye on the time his 174 THE GALLERY tn�rl Lieu �rin� ult,iOioi r��lme Nartn hamin in�J one �1 �acn fl1ente �ut rer �Ilwer! mitteu al w�re resl m�nt 0] Lieutena mnr; tn muen lit �ometi n1arin� t m�anin� i1ttm tn ��ry ni� worK and ina�creetl !Unt nan officers spent with the girls of Casablanca, talking French, which he couldn't understand. God only knew what military secrets they might be revealing to these girls. One day he made a speech to all his command as they sat under the rows of strung lights at the long tables laden with mail. They peered at him from under their eyeshades: -We must not forget, men, that a short time ago these French were entertaining the Germans. They shot at our boys when theylanded here.... I'm putting this to you as American commissioned officers. Do you think it ... prudent to ... fraternize with these French? . . . I am not forbidding it, gentlemen. I merely suggest that you think it over. On whose side are you fighting? These North African French are simply milking you for all they can get. -But the captain knows no French, a voice spoke up. A lot of us do, and enjoy talking the language. -That's beside the point. Neither do I know Japanese. I simply would think twice about handing over my PX rations and my health to some woman who doesn't even pay me the compliment of learning my language. God only knows what's going on in the back of a frog's head. -I resent that! another voice cried. The French are our allies. -Well, think it over, gentlemen, Captain Motes said. Think it over.... Remember that you're in Africa to help win a war. After this uneasy session Captain Motes rarely addressed his com­ mands directly. He knew their hostility. He arranged that the base post office should send him all his officers' mail. He read it and censored it in his hotel room each evening. A leader must know how far he can trust his subordinates. Many evenings at his desk his cheeks scorched at what was said about him in V-mails. But now he had an exact index of whom he could trust of his officers and how far. From the letters of a plump sturdy lieutenant he chose his executive officer. Lieutenant Frank was a cavalry sergeant of the regular army, paunchy, bluff, and, he said, straightshooting. He'd come up the hard way, so he had no use for an army of conscripts and pale civilians commissioned after ninety days at officer candidate school. Lieutenant Frank entered rooms like a steam roller, never knocking, but kicking doors open. Oaths dropped liberally from his lips. He said that men must be sworn at to get things done. -Them goddam letter openers, he would cry. A buncha ninnies. Commissioned schoolteachers.... Ya too kind withem, captain. i�rroverted Iltll iliink �"" �drtain �!letter, �ef! that �were �tth, but ; •... ,._. _._ ".' " v: � // 01 " t G�lltR� � � trench, wni(� • :�ctetltnt\ � a I�e(n � . no \i�nt � [romunl! THE LEAF 175 I treat em like an old first sergeant, and they think morea me., Throw the book at em when they step outa line. It's the only language they'll understand . -But they're commissioned officers in the United States Army. -Ah, crud. They'll do as they're tole. They're in the army, ain't they? They'll take their orders just like you an me. Lieutenant Frank sometimes nudged his commanding officer to bring home the point of his remarks. Captain Motes smiled fastidiously. But under the influence of Lieutenant Frank a new regimen was adopted in all the base censorship detachments of North Africa. The ten-minute break for each hour was abolished. Examiners were permitted one fifteen-minute interval in the morn­ ing, one in the afternoon. A time clock was set up at the entrance of each examination room. Each officer must punch his ticket as he entered and left work. There was no going to the latrine with­ out permission of the front office. In order to step up the number of letters that each officer read, no talking or whispering was per­ mitted at the examination tables. Officers late to their office hours were restricted to quarters for the week end and given a punish­ ment ODe Captain Motes told his officers through the mouth of Lieutenant Frank that they must not forget they were still in the army; there was danger of hemorrhoids and potbellies from too much sitting. Sometimes, sitting till after midnight in his hotel room and hearing the buzz of Casablanca fade out till there was only the moaning of the sea, Captain Motes found it necessary to condemn letters that his officers had written home. He read them all now every night. For they bitched to their wives and friends about the work and about himself. He was hurt and astonished to see how indiscreetly intelligence officers wrote. He suspected that the con­ stant handling of classified matter had blunted their sensitivity to securi ty measures. One officer wrote to his girl: A commissioned officer in the United States Army! Why, with this introverted bastard who's our CO, I had more prestige and privilege as a Pfe! I think that nothing worse can happen in this outfit, and it always does...• Captain Motes didn't speak directly to the officer who wrote this letter. He simply had him transferred to the Oran office, with orders that he be employed on the table where all day long pack­ ages were opened, censored, and tied up again. Work for grocery clerks" but done by men with bars. 176 THE GALLERY rH Often in the mornings he'd stand in front of the plate-glass screen that shut off the front office from the room where the mail was examined. He'd observe the examiners at their work, how many were reading Stars and Stripes or magazines on the govern­ ment's time, how many were writing V-mails, how many were star­ ing into space. As a result of this reconnoitering a new order came out, signed by Lieutenant Frank as executive officer. This order stated that each officer must read two hundred ordinary letters or five hundred V-mails in one working day. Those who fell below their quota would report for evening duty. But because Captain Motes had observed how pale and weary his examiners had grown under the screaming nitrogen reading lamps, he prescribed one hour of close-order drill for all officers after work was done in the afternoon, to be taken in the open sunlight. The order ended rationally and sweetly: -We are all officers and owe it to ourselves and our country to keep in A-I physical condition. As he was about to leave the front office that evening, Captain Motes had a visit from one of his letter openers, the redheaded Lieutenant Almeranti, who'd been yanked out of the armored force into censorship. Captain Motes knew him only from the beetling and whining letters he wrote home. Lieutenant Almeranti's red eyebrows were bouncing like springs. He leaned with both hands on Captain Motes's desk. -Don't you believe in standing at attention before your com­ manding officer? -I'm not an enlisted man. And I'm tired of playing soldier around here.... You're demoralizing all of us by treating us like prisoners of war. You've made a sweatshop of this detachment and then you turn around and pretend you're GI. You're not. You're the warden of a reform school. ... Captain, I want a transfer.... Are you trying to drive us all crazy? Have you ever sat and tried to read mail for eight hours? After a while your head starts to whirl and all you can think about is the war and your home and your wife ... -It is a difficult task, Captain Motes said smoothly. As your commanding officer, no one is more aware of your complaints than I. ... As I wrote my wife only last night, there are many unsung heroes in the rear echelons. At the front they face danger. Here we die of boredom.... Did I ever tell you about my wife? She's something of a writer. This is her latest book of verse, Lieuten­ ant ... ? want armol worK, !'lIri war -il ci�arel Don't wnat -T lion'! -TI -\ itl" row l' I �uildin -Th Hna When !ffiOKed �none, � lateinl wlitaire, french s wloneli -Colo Lon�tim dna a m oottom 0 �f ),our ti Then me tap� wnolVis� dna unwQ �rermitl ��tage tl W�s doing Was a job r '0 ". __ • _. .: '.',/ � THE LEAF 177 -Can't you even remember my name? ... Listen, captain. I want to pull out of this censorship shit. I was trained for the armored force. I'm willing to go into combat It's this negative work, day after day after day, that gets me I want some action. I'll risk my life rather than my reason But I won't sit out the war on my tail snipping Casablanca off the dateline of letters. -Don't undervalue yourself, Captain Motes said, lighting another cigarette. You're an expert, and censorship is a very restrictive field. Don't imagine that every officer in the army is capable of doing what you're doing. -That's all very fine, Lieutenant Almeranti said, tossing his lion's mane, but I still wish to get transferred out of your outfit. -Then have the sergeant major type you up a transfer. -What good will that do if you only write disapproved on it? ... Listen, captain. I know G-2 policy inside out. They hold onto their personnel like bulldogs so they can have big commands and get promotions ... by our sweat.... I want your permission to go over your head for this transfer. -You have it, Captain Motes said with weary sweetness. Tomor­ row I'm giving you an hour off from work to go to the Shell Building and see the A C of S G-2 yourself. -This is almost too good to be true, Lieutenant Almeranti said. He saluted and left the front office. When the lieutenant had gone, .Captain Motes thought and smoked three cigarettes. Then he put out his hand for his field phone. He knew that the assistant chief of staff G-2 for ABS stayed late in his office in the Shell Building. There he drank, played solitaire', wrote poetry for Stars and Stripes, and made love to his French secretary. So Captain Motes dialed, hoping to find this colonel in. He was. -Colonel? Evening.... Motes speaking, sir.... How are tricks? Long time no see.... Well, fancy that, sir.... Sir, I have a problem, and a man of your experience should be able to see right to the bottom of it. Are you listening, colonel? I'll only take a moment of your time, sir.... Then over the phone, dropping his voice as though the wires were tapped, Captain Motes told the tale of a certain officer of his who wished to leave his outfit. Of how the man was incompetent and unworthy of his commission. Of how this officer should not be permitted to go to another outfit, where he might irreparably sabotage the war effort of the United States. Of how at present he was doing a minimum of harm by reading letters, which after all was a lob for a deadhead. How Captain Motes hoped by his in- 178 THE GALLERY fluence to rehabilitate this officer and make him again into a real man. Of how this officer was often drunk and scandalous in public. Of how this officer in question would probably come in to see the colonel tomorrow with a pack of alarmist lies. . . . In� cal·When he'd finished telephoning, Captain Motes sighed over the lna!1perfidy of the world, donned his field jacket, and went out into Inna the sunset on the Boulevard de la Gare. He messed at the Roi de la -G Biere. As he sat down to his soup of C-ration, a young lieutenant in arn,N the seat opposite rose until he'd taken his chair. This pleased (DIDin Captain Motes. Deference to rank was rarely observed in officers' li��I' messes outside the United States. Then he realized he'd seen the jUlt!a� young lieutenant that very morning, one of five fresh replacements r�tatfl to his own detachment of censors. As he dabbed at his mouth with -Tn his napkin, he looked the young lieutenant over: the brown face, �nr, the thick oiled mustache, the huge eyes of beasties peering out of �o copses (Lucinda' s phrase). Iflrard -Just call me Stuki, the lieutenant said. !tinKerl, His teeth seemed of vanilla. -Perl -Well, of course there are certain formalities to be observed, �lrtainsaid Captain Motes amiably. Unless I'm mistaken, I'm your new Al tn commanding officer. nm 1n -1 know it.... Pleased ta meetcha, I'm sure.... And can I (lrarto say some thin, captain? 1 felt sorta bad this mornin when ya didn't tonim, come over an shake me by the hand.... A fella sorta likes to meet In lrite up with his CO when he reports to a new assignment. ni�note -Of course; of course. . . . 1 was very busy . . . but 1 made a note on my desk calendar to call you in first thing tomorrow Witn morning. o�m and -The boys tole me, Stuki said, sailing languorously into his rmrtninmeat loaf, that ya never have anything to do with em.... That's Innoom,what they said.... But when 1 sawya in ya office, 1 said to myself, wnrn !rr'That's a soldier. Regular army maybe. The kind of guy that knows �itle�wee he has a job to do an no nonsense. That's the kinda guy 1 like to maliltentake orders from. Also (he leaned forward, twitching his mustache lluli'! bo daintily) 1 thought to myself that guys that talk that way about lija�oantheir own CO must be yella rats. �ijnet! 0 -They are difficult men to deal with, Captain Motes conceded. 1�lolVing-I hope ya don't mind me talking to ya in this frank manner, �ee,!Stuki said, a warm glaze crinkling his eyes. But 1 like ta put my 1'm �onnacards on the table, captain. 1 came inta this man's army to do a dOOrt mejob and take orders.... Willya shake hands with me, captain? taptainCaptain Motes was Ignited from within by a strange flaring of llu�i, The , .. - - _. - .... -' � � THE LEAF '�bed OVtt� 'ent out i�t 'ilieRoiu11 "'l!eutenl( '. Th� �Ittt edino� .. e'dletn': rt�b(tlll" . :·mOuilii: e Dro�n u: hope and joy. He'd been lonely. Yet he must be on his guard. He'd got so used to living in himself, to trusting no one, that any kind little remark lit him up inside. But he put out his hand across the catsup bottles and pressed Stuki's. Into his own slid a warm and slightly moist hand like a bird into her nest. Stuki held on to the captain's hand with varying pressures and affections. -Gee, thanks, Stuki said, his mustache in repose like a setting hen. Now I feel better.... Ya'll never know how I felt this mornin comin inta ya outfit. Seemed like nobody wanted me. Treated me like I had men tal BO. . .. An I take a bath every night. . . . They just sat an looked at me and kept sayin, You'll be sorry! ... The resta the time they tore you apart . -They hate me. I try to be impartial and end by pleasing no one. -So there ya are, Stuki sighed. That's life for ya.... But when I heard the way they talked about ya, I knew they was a bunch of stinkers. -Perhaps you can help me to understand them better, said Captain Motes. As the meal advanced, so did their intimacy. They seemed to have known one another a long time. By the pineapple, it was clear to Captain Motes that Stuki had conceived a doglike devotion to him. A rocket of inspiration went off in Captain Motes's head. In spite of the difference in their ranks, he invited Stuki to share his hotel room. With Stuki he began a new sort of life, centered around a free .. dom and devotion he'd never before known. Stuki took care of everything: sending out laundry, tipping the Fatima who cleaned the room, even writing the captain's letters for him. By May, 1943, when spring came to Casa with a smell of jasmine and dung in bittersweet layers, Stuki would lie nude under his mosquito netting and listen while Captain Motes read aloud from Lucinda's poetry. Stuki's body was black and sheathed in glossy fur. He'd squirm and groan with pleasure at Lucinda's love poems. Or during her sonnets on renunciation Stuki would lie motionless, his cigarette a glowing dot of red, his mustache placid as a half-moon. -Gee, she sends me. Ya wife's a great poet. One of these days I'm gonna meet her. Da ya think she'll like me? Da ya think she'll adopt me inta the family? Captain Motes got so he couldn't bear to spend time away from Stuki, The relationship between them was perfect: Stuki never 179 180 THE GALLERY overstepped the boundary between their ranks; there was a subtle deference in everything he said to Captain Motes, though he called him simply you when they weren't in public. Eventually, to have his lieutenant always with him, Captain Motes ordered that Stuki be taken off the examination table. Another desk was put in the captain's glass front office, and the position of supply officer was created for him. That night in their room Stuki got drunk on Casablanca rum and began to cry: -Gee, thanks for takin me off that table of letter openers.... Ya know what they call me? ... Brown-nose.... They said that no second lieutenant should be the roommate of his commanding officer ... If it's gonna cause ya so much embarrassment, I'll move out. -Goddam it, Captain Motes cried nobly, I won't hear of it. In the spring of 1943 his nerves were stringy. Stuki could deal with that too. The captain would lie belly down on his bed, and Stuki would massage his spinal column. His body would go slack all over as those powerful moist fingers tugged at his nerves, and he'd fall into a swoonlike sleep. He'd awake at dawn next morning to find that Stuki'd undressed him and had put up his mosquito netting. And by the rising sun Captain Motes would look over into the other bed and see that dark face snoring soundlessly up at the ceiling, the mustache furled like wings over the half-open mouth. And Captain Motes's letters to his wife were full of Stuki. One day Lucinda wrote back in a V-mail: -And who, pray, is this Stuki? I suspect you have an Arab mistress.... On week ends he and Stuki would take the jeep and drive out to Fedhala for golf, or to Rabat to a black market restaurant for spicy lobsters and wine. Or they'd go swimming by Villa Moss. Stuki would lie in the sun till his skin got like teak. Stuki went to the Sixth General Hospital for a three days' ream­ ing because he got piles from too much desk work. Captain Motes felt lost in his office and in his room. Each night he visited his roommate in the Sixth General, bringing fruit and flowers. -Ya shouldn't do all this for me. Ya mustn't put yaself out this way. Ya too good. Meanwhile Captain Motes did some manipulating and some furious talking to the assistant chief of staff G-2. So when Stuki limped out of the hospital, the captain was waiting for him in the jeep, looking secretive. He drove Stuki out to look at the sea at frana !ilver -0 �l ilie AIte 1�lved nrw!i rune �e na, ilikK !oout j�o in �ut of orialed �uure '-Fr ni�ntl Tile ijffi(m li�n�, r rneu e rimetl une�ual �erin� �nml �ut ilie� men and -fre!� oon't(lla1iLiMe nmfii!]in� tfie Q �e !ttee� lmo tfie �lle, It 1 ij'e ami �!aminatil mationta manum1 �r to let I ...Jnce!t T�en L t G�llHl � .:e '+.'as a !U�' ough h��; ah, wru .ed iliat �'l Iai �ut in I ,l,offit1rl, • OtUrun!1 THE LEAF 181 Fedhala. He took the gold bar off Stuki's collar and pinned on a silver one. Stuki looked down; his chest began to quiver: -Oh ya shouldn'ta, ya shouldn'ta, chief. ... Now they'll hate me all the more.... I have ta live among them vultures and hyenas. After Stuki's promotion the situation in the front office got in­ volved. Lieutenant Frank sat at his desk and glowered at Stuki's new silver bar. Lieutenant Frank's paunch was growing heavier; his rear end had a spread like an ashcan dropped from a top story. He had a Casablancaise mistress and smoked two PX rations of thick dark cigars. But he wasn't happy. He mumbled to himself about the length of time he'd been in grade, and how doing your job in the army really didn't payoff. He glared at Captain Motes out of the fat around his little eyes, and he stared at Stuki, who bridled a dozen times a morning, flickered his mustache like a squirrel, and twittered: -Fressssssshl Whaddya lookin at? Didja bang yaself silly all las night? The strain in the front office was palpable even to the files of officers sitting out in the examination room under the harsh lights, reading their mail or talking up their whispering campaign. Their eyes in their black glasses or horn-rimmed spectacles would pierce the glass partition, where they could see the uneven and unequal triangle of Captain Motes, Stuki, and Lieutenant Frank peering at one another. Captain Motes at first thought it might be necessary to transfer his executive officer to Oran or Algiers. But then, who but Lieutenant Frank was capable of talking to the men and striking the fear of God into them? -Fresssssh! Stuki said again. Nervous in the service? Why don'tcha go out for a nice long walk? Lieutenant Frank strode into the examination room. They could hear his voice and see his broad rear in pink pants. He was lectur­ ing the officers on mili tary courtesy. Someone had passed him in the streets of Casa without saluting. There was a swish and a hiss. Into the open door of the front office hurled a censor's exacto knife. It gibbered in the cork wall behind Captain Motes's head like a movie dagger. Simultaneously there was bedlam in the examination room. Stuki and Captain Motes ran out to the exam­ ination tables. The officers had left their work and were standing in a numb knot around Lieutenant Almeranti, who was winding up to let fly another exacto knife. He was chuckling to himself: -Incest, kids, incest.... Then Lieutenant Almeranti took a pile of unread V-mails and 182 THE GALLERY tore them to pieces. He was ripping to shreds letters written by officers and C'I's of the army in Africa. The pupils of his eyes were popping like eggs, his forehead was glistening with sweat. -Stop him, someone, Captain Motes hollered. This is a court­ martial offense. He took several steps forward, and Lieutenant Almeranti smashed the rest of the stack of mail into his face. The censors peered at the scene with dull absorption, like moronic children. -Censorship! Lieutenant Almeranti chortled. I'll censor you all! I'll G-2 you! ... There ain't no promotions this side of the ocean. -Put down that knife, ya fool! Stuki shrieked. Lieutenant Almeranti bore down again on Captain Motes. His arms were swinging, his eyes bloody and spinning. -And this, kids, is our chief base censor ... Stuki leaped through the air. Captain Motes saw the blur of his rush and Stuki's mustache grim and taut. There was a smell of cologne. Lieutenant Almeranti went down under Stuki in a litter of torn V-mails and ruptured envelopes. He went rigid, his eyeballs rolled up, he had a quick sighing paroxysm, and passed out. Now Lieutenant Frank became the man of action. He champed on his cigar, called out orders in his beefy voice, and stamped to the phone for a psychiatrist and ambulance from the Sixth General Hospital. -Go right on with ya readin, boys, Stuki said, picking himself off the floor and mopping his face with a fragrant yellow hand­ kerchief. But there was little work done that morning. The examiners sat at their tables and smoked and muttered. It seemed that Lieutenant Almeranti had gone nuttier than a fruitcake and would be sent back to the States. Lieutenant Frank made two speeches, telling them they could all hope to end up like Almeranti if they didn't settle down: -Why don'tcha act like officers insteada the wimmin's garment union? --Send em all back to their billets for the day, huh, chief? Stuki said. ·-1 won't coddle them! Captain Motes shouted, pacing the front office. We have our quota of mail for each day. They'll read it, godrlam it, they'll read it. . ...He'd decided however to fly to Algiers that evenmg to investi- gate censorship procedures at Allied Force Headquarters. He told Stuki to pack two bags and meet him at Cazes airport. They heard THE LEAF 183 the voice of Lieutenant Frank still haranguing the frightened examiners: -Oh ya don't believe me? I can court-martial each an everyone a yez an have ya returned to the ZI in the permanent grade of private.... Ya don't believe me? On their second day in Algiers they had a phone call from Lieu­ tenant Frank, shouting over the wires as though he desired to make himself heard all the way from Casablanca: -Ya, ya heard me right. The inspector general's here givin ya entire outfit the shakedown No, it ain't a routine inspection. All ya goddam officers petitioned for him to come here.... Ya, that's right. Right now he's sittin at the desk in ya office. Every officer and GI of ya command is standing in line, waiting his turn to cry on the IG's shoulder.... Some of them has written out complaints a mile long. Half the officers tole me ta my face that the least you could expect after the IG gets through with ya is Leavenworth.... That evening in his Algiers billet, thinking of what the inspector general must be doing in his office in Casa, Captain Motes had one of his nervous fits. As the moonlight tittered in, he lay under his mosquito netting. His teeth began to dick and his eyes to roll. He gave out small moans and gasps like a woman in love. Cramps gathered in the calves of his legs. He felt his fists clenching at his sides. It seemed to him he'd never known such indefinable terror, with all the frightful things of this world and the next gathering in the dusk to spring upon him. Stuki jumped out of his bed and was at his side in a flowered kimono. -Whassamatta, chief? -My God, they're crucifying- me in Casa, the captain mur.. mured, cushioning his forehead. -They're filthy sneakin dogs. Don't pay no heed to em.•.. Ya'Il come out on top. And Stuki's moist hard hands commenced working at the captain's spine. And Stuk.i's voice dropped to the liquid caressing whimper that it adopted on such occasions: -Ya hear me, chief? Ya much too good for the whole dam lot of em.... Lissen ta me, chief. Ya all right? .•• We'll lick em together, you an me. . After a while the spasms faded and the horrors paled. Captam Motes fell asleep. The last thing he remembered was hands, kind hands that knew him as well as a mold informs a piece of clay to its own image. lilt' tt, I� '" . ( , I " I 184 THE GALLERY rH E track�. 1 arrroac ' wllich he wllich th -Majo a long ti �a!ablan ,.' But ilian the II'a! Fren (wwrlhip, it il, ha·h Major li�nting, \ in Irom 0 !�ow and Man, �tuK nil name Major Mo ilimwa! �riti!h bri [am a b Mote!'! ne, -His M Major Mot Tnat ev It oe�an 0 a�went!w mthelo\ witnhima -Tnil, anunared Ana �tUK I� tni! colo iliat �tuki K Iner were: �rnr, code ilielaltwat �r crack a i Major M �trwas Mter all, it On the following morning he and Stuki called on the chief of staff, G-2, AFHQ, in the Saint George Hotel. He was a cheery colonel who before the war had owned a grocery store in Chicago. N ow with a brigadier general and a British and American staff he ran most of the intelligence operations in the North African theater. His shirt breast was plaqued with ribbons. On his collar was the star of the general staff corps. He had the red and seamyface of one accustomed to attend midnight sessions of plotters and planners. He shook hands with Captain Motes and Stuki, who surprised him doing a crossword puzzle. -Well, well, well! Surprise, surprise, surprise! ... Didn't know you were in Algiers.... We call you our country cousins from Casa. How's every little thing? Just step in to my inner office.... Got a little treat for you. The colonel's inner office was four walls covered with enameled maps. All the maps were stamped SECRET in red block letters at top and bottom. They were planted with hedges of thumbtacks from which streamed ribbons of pastel silk. On the colonel's desk was a herd of camels of graduated sizes walking along the glass insafari file . -This office, said the colonel clearing his throat, well, you might almost call it the brain of all NATOUSA. -Gee, sir, Stuki said, fingering a map stamped MOST SECRET EQUALS BRITISH SECRET, sorta makes a guy stop and think, don't it? -I'd advise you not to try to take secret photographs of those maps, lieutenant, the colonel said loudly. -He's my most trusted officer, Captain Motes said timidly. -I know, 1 know, the colonel said, leading them away from the maps and slapping their backs. But we in military intelligence can't even afford to trust one another, can we, ha-ha.... You know how it is, boys.... My God, when 1 think of how much I know, I'm almost afraid to chugalug a drink or go out with a pretty little French girl, ha-ha.... Sometimes 1 wake up at night with a cold shiver and think of how much there is in this old skull of mine, ha-ha. -Ya wouldn't be wearin that eagle if ya weren't capable of ya job, sir, Stuk.i said. -WeB, thank you, ha-ha, thank you, the colonel boomed, bend­ ing over his desk drawer. And now, Captain Motes, if you'll be so good as to take off your insignia . . . Captain Motes felt his heart dive from some trapeze. But he reached up and fumbled with his collar, tearing loose his silver ""_o"_-":_'-o ��.;f � i!l I '" i t GAHH� � on the chl�! �I Ho '"as a ch1t; I ute In Chlt� erican Itaf: . lorth .�nQ On hll mt red ana �� (I[ pIOlt�n� d tuu, � THE LEAF tracks. The colonel took something out of his desk drawer and approached him. He opened his palm to display a chaste gold leaf, which he then with his own hands fastened to the collar tab from which the former insignia had been tremulously torn away . -Major Motes I Military intelligence takes care of its own. For a long time our office has been watching your operations down Casablanca way. We lamented that we couldn't do more for you. . . . But like all great and honest men, you can now reap more than the inner reward, satisfying as that may be, ha-ha. . .. If I was French I'd kiss you on both cheeks.... You are the father of censorship in North Africa. And what a bouncing healthy baby it is, ha-ha. . . . Congratulations, Major Motes. Major Motes saw the whole vaulted office, its maps and indirect lighting, whirling like a pinwhcl before his eyes. People streamed in from other offices to shake his hand. Bri tish colonels in their shorts and pipes and scarves pressed his hand and called him Old Man. Stuki stood beside the new major like a hostess, murmuring his name to the queue of officers. Stuki even linked his arm with Major Motes's, who was so moved he could scarcely stand. Then there was a shrill yap of attention. There entered goutily an elderly British brigadier, carrying in both hands a small medal hanging from a broad violet ribbon. 'Fhis he suspended round Major Motes's neck, all the while burring away like a sewing machine: -His Majesty the King of England is pleased to acknowledge Major Motes's services to military censorship.... Stout fellow.... That evening Allied Force G-2 gave a party for Major Motes. It began on the beach at Ain-Taya. Colonels, majors, and captains all went swimming in the mellow surf of the Mediterranean. Stuki's was the lowest rank there, but the major kept his assistant always with him and presented him to all, beaming: -This, gentlemen, is the backbone of censorship in Casa. I have a hundred other officers like him. But he's the cream. And Stuki, shy at first, gradually sallied forth with a good word to this colonel or that major. Major Motes was surprised to find that Stuki knew all their names, and in exactly what branch of G-2 they were: maps, photo reconnaissance, documents, liaison, topog­ raphy, code and cipher. Stuki's mustache was foam-flecked from the salt water. After a few drinks he'd chase a major on the beach or crack a joke with a captain from the I and E office. Major Motes was slightly worried when he saw how alcoholic the party was going to be. Tonight he'd have to let himself go a bit. After all, it was his promotion party. He'd dispatch Stuki to pour 185 - :1(1 1 / '\ ---" ���-_/ • • .. � f ..' • •• �, � -� --� - ... .. .. � .. I" IU III I 1 186 THE GALLERY TH E Stuk oarten out. So Otello t oeclarin oetting tnin� 01 oawlas md the at their -Cal �uiveri� The 0 every other glass out in the sand. In the clubhouse at Ain-Taya a keg of American beer was broached. It burst its staves, and one of the British majors lay down in the foamy flood on the tile floor and did the breast stroke. -Oh that type! the British chortled. -Character ! howled the American officers. The dinner was a relay affair, with one course served at each colonel's villa around the hills of Algiers. The party would pile into jeeps and staff cars and screech through the streets from one villa to the next. They'd have soup in Maison Carree and steak in Maison Blanche. Major Motes was a little envious, for he now knew that Casa was pretty small potatoes compared to the way The Boys lived at AFHQ. All officers of field grade had villas. In each the major noted the presence of a lovely Algerienne as hostess. The last course of dinner ended at 2200 hours. All the officers were in high spirits. They decided to round out the evening at the Center District Club of the Mediterranean Base Section, three blocks from the Aletti Hotel, near Algiers Harbor. Jeeps and staff and command cars tore through the blacked-out streets of Algiers, screaming at the French to get the hell off the roads. Captains and majors and colonels yelled good fellowship at one another like kids on an outing. Occasionally (just for sport) two jeeps would drive parallel till they were abreast. Then they'd lock wheels. Just kids at heart. -I think I'm going to be sick, Major Motes said into Stuki's ear. -Now just ya hold on, chief. It's all in ya imagination.... An say, ain't this fun? ... We gotta leave that stinky Casa, huh? We gotta move here an get in with these bigtime operators. The Center District Club was low and cool, hung with green and ocher chintzes. Service was by Italian prisoners of war in white linen coats. These stood behind the bar leaning on their elbows, their eyes misty with nostalgia. Seeing the PjW, Major Motes re­ vived from his rum dizziness and said impressively to a small circle: -Goddam it now, boys. Look at those goddam Dagos. Feeling sorry for themselves, as usual. ... Don't they like American rations? A few months ago they were killing our boys in Tunisia ... A Negro band blared up. An elderly lieutenant colonel of the party lurched to his feet and cried whoopee. He grabbed the pret­ tiest and youngest of the PjW waiters and pushed him into a tango over the floor among sparring junior officers and nurses and the girls of Algiers. From the club's doorway came an MP to break up the clinch of the colonel and the Italian, who had begun to cry. aorunke Inirnbles c 1ven thes overAI� All the 0 01 ilie foa rulvert. -Bes t mouth a ijjve bomo But no Major 1 ATC bus 01 the mor �I the city - --- ._- _' '." , ' / /' �111 � THE LEAF 187 Stuki left Major Motes's side and went to talk with the Italian bartenders. His mustache quivered with joy as his Italian poured out. Soon he came back to tell the major that their names were Otello and Enzo and Gabriele, and how he'd upbraided them for declaring war on us, how he'd taunted them for Mussolini and for betting on the wrong horse. In short Stuki'd told those wops a thing or two. Presently the prisoners of war began to blubber and bawl as they drew the beer and rum. This brought out the sergeant and the officer in charge of the club, who yelled and waved threats at their help. -Call a strike, Ginsoes! Stuki railed at them, his mustaches quivering with passion. I dare yal Call a strike. The G-2 section roosted on the edge of the dance floor, British and American mingled. Drinks kept coming and coming, the strong­ est sweetest rum, schooners of beer, tall emerald Tom Collinses. Major Motes's stomach was squeezing like an accordion. So he sat where he could pour most of these libations into the base of the potted palm behind him. Toward midnight the Negro band got hotter and hotter. The girls of Algiers in the scented gloom of the dance floor lay across officers' laps and submitted to long laughing embraces while their escorts' hands tore at the straps of their gowns. - Ya livin, kids! Stuki screamed over the brass and drums. Then a captain arose from his cane-bottomed chair and bounced it off the chintz-arrased wall. -Christ, but this place is dullt I want action. So the party repaired to their jeeps and staff cars. They formed a drunken convoy and tore through the town of Algiers, where only thimbles of light showed through the trees on Rue Michelet. Then even these tiny landmarks flickered out. Sirens began to shriek all over Algiers. The convoy screeched to a stop. Two jeeps telescoped. All the officers wove or were carried out of their vehicles to the side of the road, where they threw themselves down on their faces in a culvert. -Bes thing in an air raid is a woman! someone shouted with his mouth against the dirt. Where is she? Beaucoup women, beaucoup dive bombers! But no planes came over Algiers that night. Malor Motes and Stuki landed at Cazes airfield and took the ATC "bus into Casablanca. They had hangovers. It was the middle of the morning. The domes and finger-slim white apartment houses of the city glowed like solid geometry alive. 188 THE GALLERY The en On the n�w titles ilii! one s another p TH Th where Capta order. rlared (Qurt· ri!!ing manru me del iliroug unmre. Majo rerom officers Tnat s officm rolicie! aetachm Her 01 his n IG repo He read even to tnela!t wmman noisilr, -Cen Grrtr lin �ut in pr He co olarpla �ttohis -Majo -Let's lliving fo -le 0 -Va got a ordeal aheada ya, chief, Stuki mumbled. Lieutenant Frank was waiting at the office with a clipped­ together file of typewritten paper. He chomped on his cigar and twisted at the embossed belt about his paunch. His pink pants had a stain over his left cheek. In the examination room Major Motes saw that the examiners were bent over their Stars and Stripes. There was peace with them. Nevertheless he called out a bright good morning. They glanced up and, noting the new gold leaf on his collar, blanched and blinked. He heard them whispering chaotically to one another as he took the document from Lieutenant Frank's mottled hand and went behind the glass partition of the front office to scan it. He had to keep from trembling at his desk, for he knew that every eye was upon him. For the first time he cursed the glass wall of the front office that made him as vulnerable as a floodlighted thief. The report of the inspector general was a lengthy and detailed document. Before he settled down to reading it, he leafed through it for a skimming, lighting a cigarette with shaking all-thumbs and moistening the tip of his forefinger. He observed that nearly every officer and GI of his detachment had registered a complaint against him. It was all there in stenographic fullness. He had the sixth carbon. Major Motes took an hour to read the report. He pored over it in a concentration of horror, just as a hypochondriac notes the symptoms of a disease in an encyclopedia and compares them with his own. His officers had complained to the IG that they enjoyed none of the prestige or authority of their commissions. Some mentioned having been humiliated by Lieutenant Frank in the presence of enlisted men. All agreed that the process of censoring mail had been reduced to a frightful and unnecessary drudgery. One used the expression that they were worse off than slaveys at sewing machines in a sweatshop. In the depositions of the officers there recurred the phrase Unholy Three, meaning Major Motes, Stuki, and Lieuten­ ant Frank. They were also called the Inner Circle. Others averred that the outfit was run in a style befitting a reform school for girls, with flagrant abuses occurring under a facade of being GI. There were protests against the freezing of transportation, whereas the Unholy Three used jeeps and trucks at their own sweet pleasure. Officers swore that they weren't allowed to entertain ladies in their billets, but that Lieutenant Frank violated the order continually and with impunity. THE LEAF 189 The GI's of the outfit had told the IG that they never knew where they stood with the officers. The sergeant major said that Captain Motes never looked him in the eyes when he gave him an order. Other GI's said that some officers had drunk with them and played golf with them at Fedhala, while other officers would press court-martial charges without provocation. But the focus of all the pissing and moaning was that Captain Motes was a spineless com­ manding officer, that the disunity and confusion and cruelty of the detachment all stemmed from him, that he gave his orders through his mouthpiece, as though he himself were afraid and unsure. Major Motes began to exude an icy sweat when he got to the recommendations of the inspector general. There were three. That officers should not be forced to live so close together when off duty. That stricter demarcation he made between the treatment of officers and enlisted men. That Captain Motes establish sound policies of leadership or else be removed from command of his detachments. He rose from his desk, made a giant effort to master the quaking of his nerves, and rushed out into the examination room with the IG report in his hand. There he summarily had an officers' call. He read to all his examiners the report of the inspector general even to the recommendations, not sparing himself. When he'd read the last sentence, with its implication of his being removed from command for incompetence, he laid his face in his hands and wept noisily. -Gentlemen, forgive me.... All I can say is that if we have had dirty linen in this detachment, we should have aired it together ... but in privacy. He continued to sob snortingly for a full minute. Then a round of applause rippled through the examination room, and one officer got to his feet and called: -Major, you're a man's man. We'll stand by you. =-Let's wipe the slate clean and start anew, Major Motes sniffled, diving for his handkerchief. -Let bygones be bygones! a roar went up through the room. The entire detachment entrained for Algiers. On the three-day train ride Major Motes busied himself creating new titles for almost all his officers. This one would be mess officer, this one soldier voting officer, another in charge of special service, another PX officer, another war bond officer. Major Motes rushed "II / .....- \ I I ---- " '��'----- \ . - '" . , .. '. rt�, . .......... A ... . .• • " .. 190 THE GALLERY t. 1.,1 �'I from car to car, personally distributing special orders and designa­ tions and citations he'd had the sergeant major type up. Thus with all the officers become something in their own eyes, the trip was made in a gala and phoenix spirit. He spoke much of the advance detail of specially trusted officers he'd dispatched in trucks to Algiers to set up housekeeping. Yet when they detrained at Maison Blanche at the depot where they were to live, it was discovered that the advance detail hadn't yet arrived. But Lieutenant Frank did some shouting and cigar chew­ ing, and at last the dirty weary frayed detachment was permitted to partake of Spam in an abandoned mess after a nigra band had finished its chow. For himself and Stuki he chose a pyramidal tent at the head of a blocked row close to the latrines. On the sand in front of it was an attempt at a lawn, colored pebbles and flowers plotted out by the Italian P/W who were their orderlies. Next morning Major Motes was awakened at 1000 hours by a full colonel standing over him and prodding him. -Stand at attention. Who the hell are you? Major Motes scrambled out of his cot in his flowered pajamas. -You're in charge of that censorship gang that moved in yester- day? In the future you and all your detachment will stand reveille, like everyone else in this depot. We're all in the army here. -But we're a separate intelligence outfit. We're simply billeted here for the convenience of AFHQ ... -You heard me, the colonel yelled. I am in command of this depot. As long as you and your letter openers live in these tents, you'll abide by my orders.... Major Motes spent much of his time at AFHQ offices in Algiers. He carried in his briefcase samples of comment sheets, which are extracts of violations found in troop mail. He was like a peddler going from door to door. He had a theory that military censorship still hadn't the importance it deserved. By persistence he soon made his organization well known. Shortly afterwards, at his own request, there was transferred to his detachment one of the bright young men of AFHQ. This young officer told Major Motes that he could never forgive the war for interrupting his doctor's dissertation in Erse philology. Lieutenant Mayberry sought out Major Motes every night. He was a short boyish second lieu tcnan t wi th thin blond hair and an incisive baritone. He always carried with him Fowler's Modern Eng.. rH E -----. lish Us Marber Known, !at war ne��like �ook, -I'm �ood en writin, -Do Jaia,Is I inrourn rrealure, -Hem -Take (now well !ir, ao fO Qd�er, th Inin�1 Pe lom war !(Orin� ev )�ur com ,��ers, Fe �nain tal !u�er in t �e a spec�'�Than�Dan'tMd I spe , -- _ - .. _- -' . -"; �- t GAtlHr � . and deli�l' I ��, Th\Q�i� �e tri� �1! THE LEAF 191 lish Usage. Before long Major Motes said to himself that Lieutenant Mayberry was t.he most cultivated and disciplined mind he'd ever known. Each night he'd root out the major and Stuki where they sat working late in their office, entering the Boyle hut after a busi­ nesslike knock. He'd take off his field jacket and set down his Blue Book. -I'm afraid, lieutenant, said Stuki languidly, that we ain't good enough for ya here. We don't know much about readin and writin. -Do you mind leaving us alone? 1 have some business with your commanding officer. Lieutenant Mayberry had a way with Stuki as though he weren't even in the room. -Who tha hell ya talkin to? Stuki shrilled. 1 know more about postal censorship than you do.... So ya better be nice to me.... Besides I think ya pretty fresssssssh bargin in here this way. Nobody asked for your advice. -1 appeal to you, sir, Lieutenant Mayberry cried to Major Motes with a Shakespearean gesture of outraged sensibility. This is a confidential matter I wish to discuss with you. So Stuki left the Boyle hut, his mustache working and his brown �yes sparking. -That fellow should change his hair oil, Lieutenant Mayberry said, 1 speak of him so frankly with you, sir, because I know that in your heart of hearts you size him up the way I do ... he's a creature. -He means well, Major Motes said quickly. -Takes more than good intentions to win a war, as you and I know well, sir.... That fellow is what I'd call a greaser.... Frankly, sir, do you trust Italo-Americans of the first generation? Cloak and dagger, that's all they are.... But why am I telling you these things? Perhaps I lecture a little bit too much.... I've just come Lorn working with inferior minds. I've got into the habit of under­ scoring everything I say.... Sir, I was delighted to be transferred to your command. I was getting sick of the intellectual stagnation of Algiers. Fed up with it.... Sir, I desire to place at your disposal certain talents which have so far been wasted.... Special skills suffer in the army, don't they? You, sir, should know •.• for you are a specialist. -Thank you, Major Motes said. -Don't thank me for facts, sir. I don't underestimate myself. And I speak thus frankly to you because I've known you and heard �II / _A ---" ���--, \ • �� f .' • •• t� - ". - - J �., 0, I' I ' 192 � lookin' ing wh rour P1AlL THE GALLERY of you as a man who lives by plain dealing.... I don't pay oily compliments, sir. My semantic training has taught me the value of language. Oh sir, the waste that goes on in meanings in this modern world! ... With your permission.. ' . Lieutenant Mayberry brought a folding metal chair to the desk and seated himself next the major under the green-hooded white light. Major Motes studied the thinning yellow hair, the tuft of yellow mustache, the slashed line of the mouth. The forehead was etched out in pool-like hollows, the pale blue eyes were hooded with thought. Lieutenant Mayberry opened a folder full of dia­ grams and figures. -Major, sir, in justice I must tell you that I know all about your unfortunate ... incident in Casablanca.... I read all the files. And I said to myself, there's a man being done to death. A modern Acteon. . . . My heart bled for you, sir. -The ... incident ... has all blown over, Major Motes said, making a vague pass at the air. -Thank God justice has been done, Lieutenant Mayberry mur­ mured, devoutly lifting his eyes into the dark beyond the shaded light. His white hand moved over the figured sheets, which were full of lines and arrows and labeled boxes. There were also sheets of graph paper and canals in particolored crayon. -Now sir, work of your kind is enormously important to the Allied war effort.... But because censorship is essentially negative in action and results, it needs advertising and pictorial aids to keep it before the eyes and in the consciousness of the bigwigs in Algiers. Pardon the vulgarism.... Otherwise your valuable work gets lost in the shuffle of more voluble intelligence agencies. -I see what you mean, Major Motes said, warming, and eying the patchwork quilt of graphs. -Of course you do, sir; of course you do.... Now, do you get out a mimeographed monthly report? Are you making the fullest possible use of charts and figures as visual aids? . . . Think for example of the stunning effect on some stuffy brigadier general of a huge colored sketch on oilcloth, showing the ratio of V-mail read in relation to the number of ordinary letters, with legends and percentiles of the types of censorship violations.... Then you will of course forward carbons of your comment sheets to all user agen­ cies. . . . Do you have punch headlines to attract the weary and wandering eye? ... Do you make appropriate use of underscoring and italics in order to-shall we say-slant the material? Do you quote only sections that are pertinent? ... And have you arresting- Lieuten opn I �tuki sa �r Ion Lieuten authorit One da� BetaKa, in� alou fmendat -You Macaula It took cnan�li tnf enlisl Wfnt to l�wm to ffiu!tache liant sha !aring th tnfnf![ tultural louti�h by ili�r took two weeks out Tho it�poem) to thee force that in alllite�Imrth Lo� . -- __-_ -. -/�'\ - THE LEAF " .. ,ao lnij� .' tDdill� : Trunlll ;',' �n1�� , \"lD�I�: ',' 1�00l�I , , ", T enrOij\', " 0 all u�r!ic the �'��ry�; of unaefl(O� atcriall Do;: Ie au arrei� looking buckslips to be returned from the offices concerned, show­ ing what action has been taken, or whether they've simply thrown your precious submissions into the wastebaskets? ... As Lieutenant Mayberry talked, vistas fell open to Major Motes's eyes. He saw that to this hour he hadn't even tapped the poten­ tialities of censorship. It was one of the most vital of all America's secret weapons. The two men shook hands after a three-hour dis­ cussion. Major Motes was exhausted and thrilled by the controlled violence of Lieutenant Mayberry's mind, by the clarity and ruthless­ ness of his new young officer's thinking. The following morning a desk was set up in the front office for Lieutenant Mayberry. Over his head was suspended a sign, lettered by an Italian Pj"vV: REPORTS, RETURNS, AND STATISTICAL DIVISION. Stuki sat at his own field desk and glared and purred rawly. And all day long every error in Stuki's grammar was pounced on by Lieutenant Mayberry, with Fowler's book open to be cited as the authority. To all this Major Motes listened with pride and avidity. One day he gave Lieutenant Mayberry authority to wear his Phi Beta Kappa key on his watch chain. He'd got into the habit of read­ ing aloud his V-mails to his new section chief, who'd make slight emendations in their style. -You write a fine prose, sir. . . . But do read a little more Macaulay. It took less than a week for Lieutenant Mayberry to work drastic' changes in the front office. He undertook first the rehabilitation of the enlisted clerks of the detachment. In his evenings (he never went to Algiers for amusement or distraction) he gave French lessons to several corporals from Baltimore, bending his blond mustache over them as they squirmed and parsed under the bril­ liant shaded lights. Then he made them read Francois Villon, saying that it would help them with their Algerian loves. Nor did the first sergeant or the sergeant major escape him. He waged a cultural war on them. First he made them feel ridiculous and loutish by working up a comedy campaign against them every time they took out their comic books from under their typewriters. In two weeks he'd reduced them to such despair that they were spelling out Thomas Mann and puzzling over Lieutenant Mayberry's favor­ ite poem, a line of which was always on his lips: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.... He told the whole GI office­ force that than this poem there was nothing more magic or golden in all literature; it was better than Joyce Kilmer or Henry Wads­ worth Longfellow. 193 III/_"", - �u I, / ���---- \----.. , . - ., ."'. '��""'''-''-' - ,-.- .'!..L ..• -. t�' , 194 THE GALLERY rHI Lieutenant Mayberry said that the modern American language was falling apart from lack of discipline or surface tension. There­ fore as an antidote he insisted on a Victorian tautness and perio­ dicity in all the prose emanating from his office. He organized a glee club for the officers and enlisted men of the detachment. Major Motes, observing that, while they sang, his command had the first unity of its army career, made attendance at glee club rehearsals compulsory to all. On nights when Lieutenant Mayberry bullied his choir through nigra spirituals in an aban­ doned mess hall, nobody got a pass to Algiers. But the noblest achievements were wrought at month's end in the monthly censorship report that went to AFHQ. When this was in the mill, starting with the twenty-seventh of each month, Lieutenant Mayberry would shut himself in the office till midnight and be unapproachable. It was miraculous what he could do with the detachment's figures, which, unvarnished, were simply a list of the number of V-mails and ordinary letters read each month, violations of military security, and recommendations of new ground rules for postal censorship. What went to G-2 in Algiers was a ten­ page mimeographed brochure accompanied by graphs, charts, ar­ rows, slots of different altitudes and colors. And the history of the censorship detachment for each thirty days was set forth in gor­ geous army-ese, with paragraphs commencing with such stately tidbits as: -Attention is directed to a chain of malfeasances by ... -It is felt that such directives would irreparably condone ... Major Motes had never been so happy or important or aware of his contribution to the war effort. He had frequent meetings with his officers in which he lashed them on to new heights of work and achievement. Officers who read fewer than five hundred letters a day were excoriated in Mayberry prose on the bulletin boards. The examination of mail reached such velocity that a wit remarked that the turning over of letters on the examination tables created a breeze which blew planes backwards at Maison Blanche airport. In his executive ecstasy Major Motes created still more posts for his officers. Nothing now was too good for them. He gave Lieuten­ ant Mayberry a jeep all his own, which that officer christened under its windshield CYNARA in letters of Caslon style six inches high. Major Mot.es designated a club officer to open a little bar in an empty tent. He named an assistant recreational officer to preview all films to be shown to the detachment. There was only one fly now in the ointment: it was still difficult to get promotions for hi" ni! ex� ma!ted tore at mueh t nee, An tnere � enangln -Ahj rour kn rou ca narde!t ilie Unl In M lelt thai andenh ao out andrea ninted, replace Hadn't t on the p. �nch!B in� gene ilieWar tionalre �realiz When WMCw executive �et along WorK�, , There war� Li ...... /� - -- r I--. - - . � il� � ...... THE LEAF officers in relation to their just deserts. Reading their mail in the evenings, he noticed a rising tendency to bitch about promotions. Requests for transfer again mounted and had to cool off in his top desk drawer. One day Major Motes asked the A C of S G-2 to come and address his examiners. The colonel turned up and talked for an hour in a masterful yet cajoling way. He scolded and railed and wept and tore at his iron-gray hair, saying how he himself would like very much to be a brigadier general, but how he too was making a sacri­ fice. And in a roaring peroration the colonel told the officers that there were richer rewards in the army than the outward one of changing the brass on their collars. He concluded: -Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen! When your babies cluster around your knee and ask, Daddy, what did you do to help win the war? you can bow your heads without shame and say, Son, I had the hardest job of all. I was in the intelligence service of the Army of the United States.... ... , !luml LiTh : ,trow: .5 a�trol ai?l� re��f� H reUfUI� • !tDrO un�B . inclla ru�� ::.!e oar in � r to �ff\i� . ooh onfi!� . , , oliomlorhli In May, 1944, pressure was put on AFHQ by Washington. It was felt that there were in North Africa altogether too many officers and enlisted men hanging around the base sections with nothing to do but keep meaningless office hours, put their feet on their desks! and read Stars and Stripes. Many of these malingerers, Washington hinted, could very well be sent to the Italian front as infantry replacements. The general officers of AFHQ went into a panic. Hadn't they figured on huge commands simply to take up the slack, on the principle that a team must have many substitutes on the bench? But the reckoning came to AFHQ, in the persons of inspect­ ing generals flown to Algiers from the Pentagon. They represented the War Manpower Commission, and they came with the convic­ tion already implanted in them that work in the Algiers area could be realized with a cut of one-third of the personnel. When Major Motes got a phone call that a brigadier general of WMC would visit his detachment that afternoon, he held a confer­ ence in the front office. Present were Stuki, Lieutenant Frank, and Lieutenant Mayberry. -Goddam it, what am I going to do? Major Motes screamed in executive anguish. They'll cut half the detachment. I simply can't get along on a skeleton office force. You all know how vital our work is.... There was some hasty whispering and planning. Shortly after­ wards Lieutenant Frank stalked out into the examination room, 195 , - 'II I _..- ---'. ���' , , - �,f -, I •• • • - ,.:;;. ... ,I I�' I 196 THE GALLERY bit his cigar, called for the officers' attention, and said in a curdling voice: -News item: They're hard up in Italy for infantry replacements. If they don't find those replacements damn quick, they're gonna start pickin em outa the hat. Here for instance. . . . Those of ya who wish to volunteer for combat kindly step into the front office after this meetin is over Ya'Il get six weeks training an then be sent to tha Eyetalian front. After all we gotta take Rome, ain't we? . . . An I know that some a ya feel ya could make a more important contribution than ya been makin. . . . Like leadin a platoon inta a chatterin machine-gun nest.... Almost immediately a fat looie tottered into the front office. He dragged Major Motes into one of the shed latrines. He gibbered and sobbed: -Major, Iissen ... I never caused ya no trouble, did I, now? ... An there's sonsabitches out in that room ud cut ya throat Single guys. Now I gotta wife an two kids I ain't never seen I wanna go back to em in one piece, see? ... Ya wouldn't, ya couldn't ... -I understand, I understand, goddam it, Major Motes said hoarsely, wringing the officer's hand. And after noon chow there turned up a brigadier general from the War Manpower Commission in an olive-drab staff car, with a pretty WAC sergeant for a secretary and a covey of aides with clipboards. Meanwhile Lieutenant Mayberry and Stuki were busy in the examination room. They dumped all the mailbags on the reading tables, so that each examiner, when he returned from lunch, would find himself surrounded with sufficient mail to censor for the next month. They piled the mail on three sides of each examiner's field desk. When they'd finished, each desk looked like a machine-gun emplacement. While this was going according to instructions, the general was standing in the front office, haranguing Major Motes and Lieuten­ ant Frank, who'd offered him a fine chunky cigar. -We're convinced back in the Pentagon, said the general, nib­ bling at the tip of the cigar, that something funny is going on over here. We believe that many overseas headquarters are something of a war crime in themselves. They tend to get bigger and bigger, like a snowball.... While on the Italian front there's a critical shortage of infantrymen. We suspect that Allied Force Headquarters is ridiculously overstaffed. -Well, sir, I know only my own outfit, Major Motes said meekly. THE A good washin� -T� or, the -Wil �elturi trrewri� �oor jo weeK., , I've got overworl -Let lellows, -Quit Wasningt law who justasw Tile br MajorM rmonally examiners -But d �arrened wanted to WAC's., , Major � rnoned at a�st lieut �awer Li� iliemon hi ---. - - "_, J � ,_ THE LEAF 197 A good commanding officer must stay at home and tend to his own washing. -There must be some of your personnel you feel you can get rid of, the general roared. -Will the general look at my poor clerks? the major moaned, gesturing at rows of corporals who were beating the life out of their typewriters. Sir, a good officer thinks of his GI's first.... And these poor joes, sir, I haven't been able to give them an Algiers pass this week.... They have to work nights ... beg to, poor devils.... And I've got three officers in the hospital, sir ... nervous breakdowns ... overwork. -Let me see the room where the mail isread.said the general. -Let me impress upon the general that everything he's about to see is strictly confidential. ... Examination of personal mail is the privilege and the responsibility of the cream of American commis­ sioned officers. The general blew out a tuberose of cigar smoke. The major stepped aside to let him pass into the examination room. Here there was the silence of a library. The head of each examiner could barely be seen over the top of the litter of letters that Stuki and Lieutenant Mayberry had piled on the field desks. It looked like Christmas Eve in a post office. -0 my God! the general said softly. Don't envy those poor fellows. Read read read is this a normal day for them, major? -Quite normal, sir Perhaps when the general goes hack to Washington, he may remember to mention in his report officers he saw who never make the headlines or the Purple Heart, but who just as surely were giving their eyes in the service of their country. The brigadier general later left, muttering apologetically that Major Motes did indeed need a larger staff, and that himself would personally see what could be done. Lieutenant Frank told the examiners that they might take the rest of the afternoon off: -But don't go tattlin to ya little friends in Algiers about what happened here this afternoon ... if ya wise.... That general wanted to send ya all to the Eyetalian front and replace ya with WAC's.... Not that they couldn't do a better job.... Major Motes's triumph of the day was complete when Algiers phoned at 1600 hours to state that Lieutenant Mayberry was now a first lieutenant and Lieutenant Frank a captain. Out of his secret drawer Lieutenant Frank fished a set of silver tracks and pinned them on himself. , il / --- " \�'----" � .' -. "'.' •••• • ��_ • w. • ,,( '.' " F' 198 THE GALLERY TH -Seventeen months of sweatini he bellowed. An I got gold leaves bought too. -1 have no silver bars, Lieutenant Mayberry murmured pite­ ously to himself. I didn't come overseas expecting to be promoted. -Well, I ain't got no extras to giveya, Stuki said, yellow under his tan. Like a bridegroom bull Captain Frank hurtled around the front office: -So they called me a permanent first, hey? He then ripped the old silver bars off his cap and off his field jacket and threw them like deadly little brooches with the pins open at Lieutenant Mayberry, who caught them humbly, his eyes shining thankfulness, his blond mustache rampant. -Take em take em take em.... Ya can shove em up if ya like.... Major Motes wasn't a great one for wasting the pay of the army. but his Virginia sense told him that tonight was the unavoidable occasion for a party. Promotion parties are simply de rigueur to old soldiers. So he invited Stuki, First Lieutenant Mayberry, and Captain Frank to be his guests for the evening. They got into his jeep with festive solemnity and headed for Algiers. Even as he drove, Major Motes was aware that Stuki was brooding because he hadn't been promoted too. -A few more months yet, he said cheerily in Stuki's ear, laying his hand consolingly on his roommate's arm. -Few more months, balls, Stuki said with feeling. At first Major Motes wondered whether he could get away with taking them all to the TAM mess, paying five francs for each, and throwing in two bottles of white wine. But as they descended into Algiers where in the blue water the hospital ships were falling and heaving under the barrage balloons, he knew he couldn't get away with that for a promotion party. So he took them to a black market restaurant off Rue d'Isly, where for two thousand francs they got a peasant soup, eggs, a thin steak, a salad, pastry baked without sugar, and wine. -Kinda expensive, these promotion parties, Stuki leered. Betcha glad they don't come around too often, huh, chief? Then they picked up in the jeep Captain Frank's Algiers mis­ tress, a huge and vociferous French girl with hair under her arms. When she saw her lover's new insignia, she screamed and ran her tongue over his thick purple lips. The final touch in Major Motes's hospitality was an invitation to the Center District Club for drinks. He himself got nervous and broody as usual with alcohol. But. he On � citr of imell 0 -M rut hi !eif, he oacK to fate ur, -Tha tweaKing tneir ole monume Cartai itreet!, -�oI �(hoice When w� a ste rrojecL --. - - " '} �. '1'iWm� . nderDer� • . J and ran �!.lo I � )fajor Mot�! • Club forOri� �coho], But� THE LEAF pretended for the occasion's sake that he was having mad fun, even to nudging the mistress once, for which she goosed him feelingly and invited him up some evening when her capitaine couldn't come. Then all except Major Motes got drunk on PjW gin. Captain Frank believed himself Napoleon, putting his cap on sidewise and sticking a hand inside his meaty chest. Lieutenant Mayberry lec­ tured on the English language as distinct from Americanese. And Stuki just drank and drank till the tears dribbled off his mustache into his gin. At midnight he announced he was going out into the streets of Algiers to cruise up a little heavy lovin. On Saturday morning 31 July 1944, Major Motes first saw the city of Naples checkered in the sunlight. Over the bay rode the smell of all the world's garbage. -My ole man started out from this burg, Stuki said. His ole man put him on a boat when he was eleven. Told him to shift for him­ self, he didn't never wanna see his puss again.... Now I'm comin back to Napoli. I'll show em they couldn't treat my ole man the way they did. -All your relatives' houses will be off limits anyhow, Lieutenant Mayberry said. So you'll be spared the trouble of a courtesy call on them.... I smell that pasta and hair oil already. It took six hours to unload the ship. It was late afternoon when they and their baggage rattled out of the barbed wire round the port. Major Motes appraised the ruin around Naples Harbor. -Goddam it, he cried exulting. See what happens to people who declare war on Uncle Sam? Lieutenant Mayberry wondered aloud: -I wonder how many greasers are still lying under that rubble? ... Well, Italy always was overpopulated. Musso sends the birth rate up, so we choose our own means of bringing it down. -That's what they get for kickin my ole man out, Stuki said, tweaking his mustache in approbation. So now I'll stamp all over their ole ruins.... My ole man says Italy always did have too many monuments. Captain Frank looked at the carts picking through the narrower streets. -So I left my baby doll in Algiers for this.... Well, guess there'll be choicer pickins here, though . When Major Motes first saw it at the end of July, 1944, Naples was a steaming and shattered anthill committed to some furious project. Besides the Neapolitans, the streets were mad with Allied 199 , - �I,I / _ .. ----.. ���--- , , � r I • t •• .. • .. �. 1,1 200 THE GALLERY TH E ooors Inside long gr -Car or -Was soldiers. He felt already faint from the heat. They drove to the palazzo where their offices were to be set up. It was a huge block of stone and balconies that had once housed offices and German companies. On its four floors room after room yearned out emptily, echoing rooms with painted plaster and nothing else but rubble in them. He and his party climbed to the roof of the palazzo, which was a fla.t square of gravel girdled with a railing. They could see the shrill blue of the Bay of Naples. To their rear was a column and a heap of plaster shag from which flowers were already poking out their heads like war orphans. To their right was a church where the bombs had ripped away half the wall; they saw the statues and the benches and the organpipes and the tattered winy draperies that once sheathed the arches. To their left was the turn of an alley from which rose the steam of urine vaporizing in the sun. Here stood a queue of GI's waiting at the entrance to a house. Girls peeped out from its tiny balconies on the second floor; screaming children were hawking the charms to be bought upstairs. In and out of this house the GI's were in constant motion. They'd posted watches against the coming of MP's. Captain Frank watched this shifting line with interest. Finally he leaned his paunch in its pink trousers over the railing of the roof terrace and hooted paternally at the GI's: -Oooh you VD I Lieutenant Mayberry looked out over the housetops, heavy with his sense of history and of time: -That's the Italy of the guidebooks and paintings for you: a cat house next door to a church. -It stinks, Stuki said, holding his nose over his mustache. I see why my ole man never came back to it. -I feel, the major said, that our organization is going into a new and brilliant phase here in Naples.... I want you all to share my triumphs. Early in August, 1944, Major Motes's palazzo opened for busi­ ness. He'd made it the headquarters for most of the censorship in meridian Italy. He'd screened out hordes of Italian civilians who desired to work for the Allies at twenty-one hundred lire a week: refugees from Trieste, penniless students of the University of Naples, pale Jews who'd hidden from pillar to post in Italy. And Major Motes got them all seated at long examination tables in hushed rooms under hard Iights. He locked the massive wooden wries 0 tioned f tnerwe -Tho -The saio, is -The Motes sa But si unner th, to trr fo ne'd nev war on t 01 EuroR (ensoring aottoria Next it, snould di snould ne staircase would sta �ITeaming III arm Ot �rellas, unoergro �ot to feel o\'erofas ,Br trips WIth secti� oerrr pro� �et too s� " --. "_- -' . ."; �-_ t GMltRY-- __ drove to ili1 • a bu�e ol� and Genn� o t em�lilll but fUODI! THE LEAF 2.01 doors on them and labeled the entrances with secret designations . Inside these inquisitorial rooms the furren examiners unfolded the long green sheets of the provost marshal general and read: -Carissima mamma, io sto bene, e cosl spero di te e dell'intera £amiglia ••• or -Was ich auch von dir hoffe � those twenty-four lines which Italian and German P/W wrote their families each week by permission of the Geneva Convention. These furren examiners brought their lunches to work wrapped in old copies of Risorgimento: black bread and cheese. Soon they peti­ tioned for American rations to be served as the noon meal, since they were now in the employ of the United States Army. -Those Ginsoes expect us to serve em a lunch! Stuki cried. -The only logical position fer a greaser, Lieutenant Mayberry said, is under a wolf, sucking her teats like Romulus and Remus. -They're like nigras and must be kept in their place, Major Motes said. But since so many of the Italians fainted away at their work under the hard lights in the airless examination rooms, he promised to try for a GI food issue. To himself, however, he declared that he'd never lift a finger to help feed a people which had declared war on the United States and which had been the turncoat traitors of Europe throughout their history. More Italians fainted while censoring the mail, and more were hired to take their places: dottori and professori and geometri and ragionieri and studenti. Next it was arranged that the Italians and the American officers should dine and be released at different hours in order that they should never meet to make friends or compare notes on the winding staircase of the palazzo. And often in the afternoons Major Motes would stand in the cortile of the palazzo to watch his workers streaming out when the bell set them free. The Italians walked arm in arm or skidded along in sandals and shorts carrying their um­ brellas. The American officers looked like moles coming from underground and rubbing the itching of their eyes. Major Motes got to feel like Henry Ford watching his plants empty at the change­ over of a shift. By trips to Caserta and crying on colonel's desks and pleading with section chiefs, Major Motes got Stuki and Lieutenant May­ berry promoted to captaincies. Mayberry said his own cap would get too small if the major didn't stop being so kind. And Stuki in ____ •• ,���__ A' - • f • , •••• �\�OJl"�.�mtr!'F;�Y:,��..:;� • �t oJ � J" " 11, I ; . I' • 1 I I • 202 THE GALLERY TH E his shining double bars presided over rooms of gray brooding I talians reading PjW mail. One examination room opened into the next. From his high rostrum Stuki looked like a master in study hall tyrannizing over the bowed heads, the thick lenses of the spectacles, the shabby dandruffed shoulders. He sat all day long on this dais screaming exhortations at his slaves, lecturing on Italy's political perfidy, or tapping with the eraser of his pencil while he scribbled V-mails to his Mom informing her that he'd at last got to be a pezzo grosso in the city they kicked Pop out of. Stuki loved to fire Neapolitans for the slightest laxness in their duties. If they asked for half an hour off to go to the questura to bailout their sisters on charges of prostitution, he fired them for goldbricking. If they fainted from hunger at their work, he gave them the sack for shirking their duty to the United States, which had liberated them. -Perche avete buttato fuori mio Papa, eh? he would cry. Considering the huge office force under his control, Major Motes rejoiced that there were so few incidents. One afternoon on the second floor some Austrian refugees beat up an Italian Jew who was reading PjW mail in German. Major Motes arrived on the scene with his interpreter, the sergeant major, and two MP's from the questura. All the offenders were fired and jailed for investiga­ tion and trial by AMG in the 'Provincia Building. -More screening, that's the answer, Major Motes told higher headquarters at AFHQ in Caserta. -What a comedy, Captain Mayberry said, looking up from his charts and reports. A year ago the Italians were at war with us. Now they're reading the mail of their own prisoners of war. . . . What an obscene comedy. -The whole war is obscene, goddam it, Major Motes said. All Europe and its parasitic population are obscene ... like the nigras.... On the ground floor of the palazzo Major Motes established a mess hall for the American personnel, a barbershop, and a glassed-in booth where an armed guard sat and frisked all the furren help when they came to work in the morning and left in the evening. At noon the Neapolitans pressed their noses against the screen door of the mess and watched everything the Americans lifted to their mouths. Some of them wept when they saw half-eaten dishes dumped into GI cans. -Set up garbage pails in the cortile! Stuki railed. Let em dive for the food we waste! That oughta nourish the bastards! realized i A� on theater H Divi!lon, dockwor He �pent officer!' c� the �ecurjtanceled 1anahh 0 Captai� -MJwl -You t nelped bu; -Jt'sno nair, But 1 mrweaq there in so -Godd� !tricken m Out at Cal colonel ye . -_ .. -_ .. }'�" . THE LEAF 203 When he wasn't necking the panties off the signorina in his office, Captain Frank amused himself with a game against the Neapolitans on the sidewalk below his window. He'd stand smoking his cigar and holding a pail of water. Every Neapolitan who re­ lieved himself against the wall below this window got a bucket of water dumped on his head. Major Motes wrote Lucinda that ha-ha, they were teaching the Neapolitans a little practical sanitation. Major Motes was the first at the door of the palazzo in the morn­ ing. Some evenings he stayed till midnight. There wasn't a place in the palazzo where his quick step mightn't be heard at any moment. He'd peer with pride at his jeeps and trucks in their rows in the inner cortile, at the mailbags ferried in and out of the great double-gated portone. And he observed the stream of Italians and American officers swarming up and down the staircase, which he called Jacob's Ladder in a V-mail to Lucinda. In the daylight hours there was always in his palazzo a combination hum and silence, a clatter of typewriters and that air of concentration and mystery befitting the intelligence service of the United States. He pardoned himself his pride. All this had been his dream. He alone had realized it. As one of the leading censorship officers in the Mediterranean theater he was invited to visit the front, attached to the 34th Division. It would mean a month's absence from Naples and his clockwork command, but he left Stuki and Captain Frank in charge. He spent a week rubbing dubbin into his combat boots and having officers' calls in which he told them how lucky they were to be in the security of Naples. But at the last moment his orders were canceled because Caserta said that the Arno front was far too risky and his own life too precious for a German bullet. Captain Mayberry said one morning: -My work here is almost done. -You belong to this outfit, Major Motes replied tenderly. You helped build it up.... Surely you don't want to leave me? -It's not that, sir, Captain Mayberry said, stroking his thin blond hair. But I thought I might ask for a transfer to Caserta.... I am very weary.... I thought perhaps they might hide me away out there in some obscure little job in documents. -Goddam it, what are you up to? Major Motes cried like a stricken mother. Don't think you'll get your majority any easier out at Caserta. Besides, they haven't even made me a lieutenant colonel yet. \ _ �II I / A -- " ��'------ \ -, ".' .... . ,,���.;�d 204 THE GALLERY TH E .....---1 women � making rfiallic. mirror 1 un!teady Dull of tI �ing to over the olaer an Godda Inoulder, -�ir, i Major Ine moon �la!!less f �orred a� Bul for al icy and e ana tfie n !ocKet.Hi! -You know I don't think in terms of promotion, Captain May­ berry said. But my ancestors were pioneers. I want something new. -Well, just don't try to pull any fine Italian deals to get out of this outfit. In the next few days Captain Mayberry drove often to Caserta in his jeep. He said AFHQ was no longer satisfied with the reports over which he slaved. Would Major Motes please transfer him to a quieter and easier job? He was terribly weary, he said. -You're up to something, Major Motes said accusingly. -Besides, sir, have you looked at your hair? It's almost white. When I knew you, it was still brown ... you have a terrible twitch too, sir you're eligible for rotation to the United States ... �'our wife . Major Motes felt his scalp prickle: -Goddam it, how can anyone think of going home when this frightful war is still on? -We must all be selfish, even in our unselfishnesses, Captain Mayberry replied. That very week Major Motes's heart broke. An order came down from Caserta returning him to the United States for rotation. He was relieved of all his command in Italy. Captain Mayberry and Captain Frank were transferred to Caserta. Stuki was to take over Major Motes's own duties. -Sorry to see ya go, chief, Stuki said, taking his erm carelessly. -Sure you can keep things running here? Major Motes begged, stuttering more than ever. -Oh boy, can If ... Let me say now that ya've been just a little too easy around here. I got a few new policies I'm gonna tryon those Ginsoes after ya leave us After all, chief, ya didn't know the languages ya was workin with maybe that's why they gave ya the air. He wrote Lucinda that he was coming home to her for a little rest. Nervous exhaustion. He spoke of the perfidies of Stuki, of Captains Frank and Mayberry, to all of whom he'd given their start, out of pure benevolence. But then the army was full of opportunists and fingermen. On his last night in Naples before sailing, Major Motes walked alone in the Galleria Umberto. It was after sunset, the first time he'd been alone with himself since that hotel room in Casa almost two years ago. The Galleria was full of Neapolitans, of Americans on leave from the hospitals at Bagnoli. The bars were full, even to the chairs on the pavements. Everywhere there were girls and old mlong eivi one anoth t G�ttH� � , Captain �b\ I methin�nfl I s to ��\�, THE LEAF 205 women screeching and selling and sweeping. Little boys tore around making deals with GI's, buying their cigarettes and selling them phallic charms and silver horseshoes. Major Motes saw himself in a mirror in one of the bars-white-haired, quite stooped, his walk unsteady, a tic under his left eye. On his left shoulder was the red bull of the 34th Division he'd sewed on when he thought he was going to inspect the front. He kept telling himself that men all over the world had died in this war, whereas he himself was only older and wiser and full of a bottomless grief. Goddam it, he said, fraternally clapping a lounging GI on the shoulder, who started this war anyway? -Sir, if I was a major like you, I wouldn't even care. Major Motes walked and walked in the Galleria Umberto till the moon rose over Vesuvius and a pale light rippled through the glassless frames of the domed roof. People came and went, drunks flopped against the archways, girls were chased into black alcoves. But for all the heat that remained over Naples in the dark, he felt icy and empty and alone. He lit a cigarette. His hand trembled and the nervousness under his left eye set up a crackling along the socket. His heart was broken. -Guess I'm out of my time, he said to himself. I'm a gentleman from Virginia. Such must suffer in Naples of August, 1944. This thought comforted Major Motes. When he got home, he'd go to the Pentagon and sell them the idea of setting up censorship among civilians in the United States. Americans couldn't trust even one another in wartime. illl / -. ---.. ���--� \- ·f ••••••• �_'" • SIXTH PROMENADE (Naples) I REMEMBER THAT ITALY IN AUGUST, 1944, LAY OFF OUR PORT like a golden porpoise lapped in dawn. She had eggs and lumps on her outline which the sun and the light mist grossened into wens. From nearer 1 made them out to be the island of Capri and the volcano Vesuvius. I peered with more interest than I had at Africa, for I had precise and confused ideas of what Italy'd be like. I remember how in my head and in my heart the city of Naples had always nestled like a sleeping question mark, as an entity gay and sad and full of what they call Life. 1 knew it would be a port town, but a port town over which lay a color and a weight peculiarly Naples' own, a short girl with dark eyes and rich skin and body hair. Motherhood. Huge and inscrutable as the feminine Idea. In August, 1944, the port of Naples was a flytrap of bustle and efficiency and robbery in the midst of ruin and panic. Images of disaster lay about the harbor: ships sunk at their berths, shattered unloading machinery, pumiced tenements along the docks. And back of this lunette the island of Capri sheered out of the bay, a sunny yellow bulkhead. Vesuvius smoked softly and solemnly, the way a philosophic plumber does at a wake. The Bay of Naples was crammed with Liberty ships and boats with red crosses on their sides and decks. Out Bagnoli way among the laurels and the myrtles landing craft infantry thumped up and down in the water. -1 don't like to look at bombed buildings, the pfc said, putting polaroid lenses over his spectacles. Not that this will shut out the view. -Ten months ago, the mess sergeant said, these greasy bastards were still hearin sirens and gettin pasted. I remember how the blue of the Mediterranean shaded into gray 206 (NA creamy 0 li�! of C oecause i to�ether nalf·deat The hills' trembles midday, a !rmbol, tender in -I don terrinc to maKe! me dtr, like ail' above -Ah, bl over them I reme !trolled in iliat ruffle women. It �m, talki tfie !habbi leats of A breh of t (NAPLES) 207 or rainbowed oil around the berths. Everything floated near the piers: watermelons, condoms, chunks of fissured wood, strips 01 faded cloth. -Europe drains into the Bay of Naples, the pfc said. And I remember the jeeps along Via Caracciolo near the section of Santa Lucia, and how Zi' Teresa's restaurant jutting on a small float was then a French officers' mess, and the tunnel to Bagnoli. I remember whizzing past the statues of the aquarium, the war monuments (Napoli ai suoi caduti) that stared out to sea in the sunlight as stiff and superannuated as warriors on the porch of an old-soldiers' home. The sunlight gives Naples a hardness and a mercilessness. It pokes its realistic fingers into the bombed build­ ings by Navy House. In the half shot houses what plaster yet re­ mains in the eaves is as living and suppurating as human skin. And just over Naples stand the hills where the Vomero sits on its snaky terraces and flights of stairs like an old lady precarious on a trapeze. The houses of Naples as they swarm up the hillside are yellow or creamy or brown; they get lost in the verdure that mustaches the lips of Castel Sant'Elmo. I couldn't place Naples in any century because it had a taste at once modern and medieval, all grown together in weariness and urgency and disgust. Yet even in her half-death Naples is alive and furious with herself and with life. The hillside on which she lies, legs open like a drunken trollop, trembles when she turns on her fan bed. I remember too that at midday, when she was sleepiest of all in the lurid heat, she was a symbol of life itself, resentful and spiteful and cursing, yet very tender in her ruin. -I don't care what anybody says, the corporal said, this is a terrific town. Absolutely terrific. There's something here that makes me restless and drowsy at the same time. Naples ain't just a city, like St. Louis or Omaha. There's something moving in the ail' above Naples.... Poison gas? Perfume? -Ah, blow it, the mess sergeant said. Look at them skirts jigglin over them rears. I remember that along Via Caracciolo thousands of people strolled in the late afternon. There came a hot wind off the bay that ruffled the buttocks and the marvelous breasts of the Italian women. It mussed their black thick hair. Everyone walked arm in arm, talking, laughing, crying, shouting, gesticulating. I remember the shabbiness of Neapolitan suits, different from the shine on the seats of American pants. I remember the mourning bands on the lapels of the Neapolitan men. I remember Neapolitan shoes- I , III L, I too 'I � I I 208 THE GALLERY (N� rhony radron Nar1es sheets Madon the bale and do �rocerie! families and dan Roma Ii them wa and the -I'm liKe a flo I reme heard in afteraf, Italian (� it sounds thehuma the endin 01 convel lan�uage motion bl with one lan�uage, JUI! as w nothing to arealwa�s static, And Italian pa -�e io Iremem silKen weD When I \Va tions, the I �i! tongue, �I�n langu lis capable I �e:sonality 10lce runs' �assion wit when there were any-cracked or sprouting or leaking, of sick flashy leather like the cheeks of the feverish. I remember the lipstick and powder that the women used-when they could get any­ of the tint of fevered blood. I remember the dark pallidity of those girls who could get none. I remember the glistening damp under­ arm hair when the Neapolitan women put up a hand to their heads, and their legs, which seemed often to be skinned in dewy feathers. I remember the walls along Piazza Municipio, stuck with movie posters and the yellow playbills of the San Carlo and the Italian review Febbre Azzurra, or "Prossimamente Greer Garson in Prigio­ nieri del Passato," and Charlie Chaplin in Il Grande Dittatore, and Napoli Milionaria, and Soffia So'. And the shops with their windows half-empty, with their scant goods cutely spread out to fake a display: -Prezzi sbalordativi. ... -Riduzioni del 20% •••• Or the bookstores where Louisa May Alcott became Piccole Donne, where paper-bound ocher books lay in carts like cheeses on their sides, where Benedetto Croce was bedfellow with old copies of Life and that bitching Roman periodical Marjorio, with nude girls prancing on the cover. And in every street and vieo the little rafts on wheels selling shoelaces, and combs that shattered when they touched my scalp. And how bottles were sawed down to make glasses and vases, and how chestnuts and oranges and tomatoes and spinaci stood wilting in the food stores. -Oggi si vendee . . . -Si distribuisce sale. . . . -Non si riparano gomme per mancanza di materiale.... -Lo spaccio, la tessera. . . . I remember the San Carlo Opera House on the corner by the traffic island, across the street from a pro station-its 1743 A.D. arches, its lines sweating out opera and ballet at thirty-five lire. Near it the palazzo where the Limeys took their tea and the British officers got drunk on their roof terrace and poured gin on pedes­ trians passing into the Galleria Umberto. And I remember that every vico and salita had a different smell. Along Via Roma there was the color of movement: the OD's of the combat troops, the rusty shorts of the UK, the melting splotches of the Neapolitan housewives' house dresses, the patter of sandals, the click of hob­ nails, the squunch of children's brown bare soles as they begged, pimped, screamed, tugged, cried, and offered. On Via Roma there was a smell, I remember, of fake coffee roasting, of ice cream with -- ..... .: .... f�"" .. (NAPLES) 209 phony flavors and colors, of musty dry goods gloated over by the padrone behind his bars against thieves. Out of every alley in Naples the whiff of a thousand years of life and death and bed sheets and urination. The glass over the colored picture of the Madonna of Torre Annunziata. The clinking of the gratings on the balconies. And especially that small basket being hauled up and down many stories on its string, pulling up newspapers and groceries and the baby. Each alley had a different stench from many families with their own residua of body excretion, sweat, halitosis, and dandruff. And I remember alley after alley winding off Via Roma like a bowel, each with its off-limits sign. All I could see of them was the entrance, a flash of cobblestones, a turn of sunlight, and the scarred face of a wall shutting off all further exploration. -I'm lost in Naples, said the pfc. Life has struck me in the face like a flounder. Cold, hot, ghastly, and lovely. I remember making acquaintance with Italian. At first all I heard in Naples was asssshpett and capeeesh and payyysannn. But after a few days it broke down into something more articulate. Italian (not Neapolitan dialect) can soon be understood because it sounds like what it's saying. Italian is a language as natural as the human breath. Italian is a feminine and flowing tongue in which the endings fill up the pauses, covering those gaps and gaucheries of conversation that embarrass Americans and British. It's a language whose inertia has remained on the plus side. It keeps in motion by its own inherent drive. The Italians are never silent with one another. It isn't necessary even to think in this lovely language, for your breath comes and goes anyhow, and you might just as well use it to talk with. And good loving talk! If you've nothing to say, ehhh and scnz'altro and per forza and per questo are always tumbling from your lips to prevent the flow from getting static. And then there were dico and dice, and the tumble of the Italian past subjunctive, like smoke turning on itself: -Se io andassi 0 se tu potessi. I remember that Italian used to amuse me till it caught me in its silken web. I remember how kind the Neapolitans were to me when I was learning it, the sweetness of their grammatical correc­ tions, the look of joy on an Italian's face when you address him in his tongue, however poorly. Italian is the most sociable and Chris­ tian language in this world. It's full of a bubble like laughter. Yet it's capable of power and bitterness. It has nouns that tick off a personality as neatly as a wisecrack. It's a language in which the voice runs to all levels. You all but sing, and you work off your passion 'with your hands. ,- tj, / --" ��'-----/ - ',{ • ' •••• . �).._��rt. - • �'4iIi .. - .I/!' ; t ' 'I r • 210 THE GALLERY iliewome and wo� combed a tner had de�ign or mangling mothers' come in � dentes�eJ Tner wer me with t oDIi�ue w and hJpo Italian wO! Neapolitan a few, ver� in� indep tarough th 11�! a little waile I sa l�ci!ts and Ilim and fo jUll in Na� ilierr canes were those i�aK Italial American 0 force sergea �ew "Star woras bette But I rem Naples is t� -10 andare a casa tua per mangiare e per fare amore ... finito capiro amato andato venduto.... Capeeesh? ... Molto buono, no buono, acqua fresca.... I remember that sometimes I used to wonder if so tender and human a language might disappear from the world because of the pattern of conquest. Italian is an atavistic language. All the rest have been visited by some torture or trickery or introspection. Italian alone is the language of the moment, cunning yet unpre­ meditated. I learned Italian in order to make love. And I found Italian feminine and secret and grave and puzzled and laughing, like a woman. Perhaps it came from the tit of Signora Eve in the Garden. For Italian is like milk and butter, sauced with some pepper lest it cloy you with its sweetness. Once Italian got into my palate, I remember, it never again left me. So I learned Italian in Naples. I remember also the dialect of the city of Naples, which is Italian chewed to shreds in the mouth of a hungry man. It varies even within the city. The fishermen in the bay talk differently from the rich in the Vomero. Every six blocks in the squashed. together city there's a new dialect. But the dialect is Naples and Naples is the dialect. It's as raw as tenement living, as mercurial as a thief to your face, as tender as the flesh on the breast. Some­ times in one sentence it's all three. The stateliness of Tuscan Italian is missing in Neapolitan. But there's no false stateliness in Naples either, except in some alien fountain presented by a Duchess of Lombardy. Neapolitan dialect isn't ornamental. Its endings have been amputated just as Neapolitan living pares to the heart and hardness of life. Wild sandwiches occur in the middle of words, doublings of z's, cramming of m's and n's. When they say some­ thing, the Neapolitans scream and moan and stab and hug and vituperate. All at once. And 0 God, their gestures! The hand before the groin, the finger under the chin, the cluckings, the head­ shakings. In each sentence they seem to recapitulate all the emo­ tions that human beings know. They die and live and faint and desire and despair. I remember the dialect of Naples. It was the most moving language I ever listened to. It came out of the fierce sun over the bleached and smelly roofs, the heavy night, childbirth, starvation, and death. I remember too the tongues that spoke Neapolitan to me: the humorous, the sly, the gentle, the anguished, the merciful, and the murderous. Those tongues that spoke it were like lizards warm in the sun, jiggling their tails because they were alive. (NAPLES) -I have hoid, said the mess sergeant, teasing a Neapolitan child with a chocolate bar, that da wimmin are purtier in Nort Italy. But ya can't trump da build on da Neapolitan goils. Nuttin but rear ends bouncin like JelIo and milk factories under dere dresses. I'm goin crazy for it. I remember how the women and girls of Naples stood for all the women and girls of the world. There were girls like the Kresge and Woolworth pigs of Joisey City, with their hair not quite combed and dark and too long. Under this fluffy frowzy rat's-nest they had earrings too heavy for their ears, with some cabalistic design or jewel. And there were the girls of the Vornero, of the strangling middle class, who were rushed along Via Roma on their mothers' arms, girls who were locked up after nightfall when they'd come in from their classes at the university. Now they were stu­ dentesse, but soon they'd be dottoresse: Un libro di latino Per un giovinottino ... They were like pretty mice in cotton dresses as they whisked by me with their chaperones. Sometimes I caught their eyes on the oblique when Mamma was looking the other way, eyes demure and hypocritical, eyes shooting feudal disdain for the poorer Italian women, eyes masking jealousy and curiosity of those lower Neapolitan women who went with gli alleati. And there were also a few, very few Neapolitan women who reminded me of the blar­ ing independence of American girls, who promenaded slowly through the street, well made up, their hair a little lighter, their legs a little daintier, their dresses fresh and trim. And once in a while I saw a marchesa or a contessa who'd played ball with the fascists and was now doing likewise with gli alleati, These were slim and forty and chic. They could be seen all over Europe, not just in Naples. And there were also the widows of Naples with their canes and sober bags. But most ubiquitous on Via Roma were those signurrine who chewed gum and had forgotten how to speak Italian. These walked always in pairs, and they screeched American obscenities at one another, taught them by some armored force sergeant in heat. They called every American Joe, and they knew "Stardust" and "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." They knew the words better than I did. But I remember best of all the children of Naples. The scugnizz', Naples is the greatest baby plant in the world. Once they come 211 - I I --" '�':.�./ - • r • • •••• • ....'\1' = AI""'/ - i I I ' I � I 212 THE GALLERY (NAP. _..--j -I su Mussolin Badoglio and Mila -Yago -Las outa the or twelve. �tart em -Well, !aid, That -If the it too, off the assembly line, they lose no time getting onto the streets. They learn to walk and talk in the gutters. Many of them seem to live there. As the curfew was progressively lifted to a later and later hour, the children of Naples spent the evenings on the side­ walks. 1£ I had to keep in my memory just one picture of the Neapolitan kaleidoscope, it would be of a brother and sister, never over ten years of age, sleeping on a curbstone in the sunlight with a piece of chewed dark bread beside them. Sometimes I thought that in Naples the order of bees and human beings was upside down, that the children supported and brought up their parents. Once I remember attempting to count the number of shoeshine boys between Via Diaz and the Galleria Umberto. I never could, for new shoeshine stands opened behind my back by the time I'd walked ten feet. Those incredible scugnizz'l They weren't children at all, the scugnizz', but sorrowful wise mocking gremlins. They sold Yank and Stars and Stripes. They lurked outside the PX to buy my rations. They pimped for their sisters, who stood looking out at me from behind the balcony of a primo piano tenement. They sold charms and divisional insignia in the streets. They hawked dough that looked like doughnuts or fritters, but tasted like grilled papier-mache. They stole everything with a brilliance and furtiveness and constancy that made me think of old Ayrab fairy tales. They shrilled and railed at me in perfect and scouring American, as though they'd learned it from some sailor lying in a gutter and hollering holy hell to ease his heart. The children of Naples were determined not to die, with the determination in which corpuscles mass to fight a virus that has invaded them. They owned the vitality of the damned. And they laughed at me, them­ selves, the whole world. Often I thought that we, the conquering army, were weaker and siller than they. I loved the scugnizz' be­ cause I had no illusions about them. -Wanna eat, Joe? -Wanna souvenir of Naples? -Wanna drink, Joe? -Wanna nice signorina? Wanna piecea arse? -The kids are so dirty, the corporal said. But they have such fine teeth and eyes and skin ... like coffee with a little milk in it.... An they're smart as whips. Look at the way they've learned American just so they can buy an sell to us.... An, Christ, what can ya do when the poor little tykes stand outside ya mess and watch ya dumpin out GI food that somebody's wasted? The MP's won't let ya feed em. Why? Why? 1 reme tfie Vome tne top of EverJbody rou skied tween two Everyone's of darkness rocket. In -Di,Pi Or Ire tile funicu! �lieved th� tame a prou Narles was.bel!. God !i�ntl It me� lD�my step one and a ha �u�e, and �llarof Sffi( tame the 501 !larped and ��ta. Somet Q�!cent a liQ lIlHl'c!osedc !�ctrum. E' --. - - . /' -; --_ (NAPLES) -I suppose, said the pfc, that these children are responsible for Mussol�ni? that the babies of Naples supported Farinacci and Badoglio and the house of Savoy and the vested interests of Turin and Milan? - Ya go crazy if ya study on it too much, said the corporal. -Las night, the mess sergeant said, I seen two marines come outa the docks. An they met up with two signorinas of about eleven or twelve. Ya can't tell. They become wimmin so young here.... Start em young, I always say. -Well, I guess the good must suffer with the bad, the corporal said. That's what the Bible says. -If the Bible says that, said the pfc, Hitler should have burnt it too. I remember the levels and terraces of Naples, slipping rrom the Vomero into the bay. I'd go from the bottom of the town to the top of the funiculars, which slide under the hillside on cables. Everybody fought their way into the cars in the stations. Then you skied along the wire. Sometimes you came into the light be­ tween two palazzi. Sometimes you scudded through a brief tunnel. Everyone's shoulder was against everyone else's gut. In the spells of darkness I'd reassure myself that my Ayrab wallet was still in my pocket. In the dark the storm of Neapolitan dialect went on: -Di, Pino, hai portato tua moglie Pina? Or I remember sometimes being stranded in the Vomero. For the funiculars stopped running at 2100 hours. The Neapolitans believed that the force of gravity ceased at sundown. Then it be­ came a problem of descent down stairs that I couldn't even see, for Naples was blacked out. There must have been forty flights and levels. God help me when I got caught at the top without a flash­ light! It meant groping along the dank walls of the houses, of gaug­ ing my step on stairs set at a pitch I couldn't walk or run: about one and a half times the normal stride. Each stairway had a different gauge, and each angle was different. It was like walking into a cellar of smells and secret life, for out of the houses over my head came the sound of GI's haggling for vino after hours, of women slapped and cursed by their husbands, of children eating their pasta. Sometimes I remember how across the path of my uncertain descent a light would fall athwart the mossy chipped stairs from an ill-closed door. Or a woman and her child would appear in the spectrum. Even as I stumbled down, I wondered what they were 213 - I I / --'. '�� - ".' , .. , , :;-."'�<����.-'��_/ ,- 214 THE GALLERY thinking. A piece of their lives had fallen across my way in an ax of radiation. Sometimes around midnight I remember that a peace would hit Naples. The heat 'shifted gears for the hour of dawn. Only then did any silence come to the wrestling odorous city. There were stars over Vesuvius. The LeI's in the bay rocked and bubbled like ducks. The lights of the MP's kiosks and the glow from the pro stations rode in the hot dark like beacons. Then I'd twist under my mosquito netting. -Napoli? ... I've had it ... or it's having me.... �'" in the ri " I �lane mol tneir heal The E fifteen h Ciulia an rl ilou!e, In tile parap� -�e ci ci uccidon Tney'd ing but Ie ing a! frie du!ion tha all, They I totting up office gossi] leaH in Na of Piedigro After the u� handful �ring to Pa toe old ma ". --. ,,_. -'" "'r' .-_ - '" . .-_ ..-: 111 " SEVENTH PORTRAIT Giulia IN 1943 THE ALLIED BOMBERS HIT NAPLES INCESSANTLY. THEY came in the afternoons with a noise like mad cicadas. But Giulia and her brother Gennaro rarely took to the shelters. It smelled foul down there. And Giulia and Gennaro had had enough of the stench of families living night after night at lap's length. They'd had enough of the screams of women giving birth to their babies in the ricoveri, those screams which could pierce the hum of the plane motors and the crunch of the bombs hitting the streets above their heads. The English bombers made sorties almost daily from noon to fifteen hours. While families scurried screaming underground, Giulia and Gennaro would take to the top of their apartment house. In the sunlight on the roof they'd lean like connoisseurs on the parapet railing and watch the aircraft diving on the port. -Se ci uccidono, Giulia said, clutching Gennaro's cool hand, ci uccidono e basta, no? They'd boo fine hi ts. Often the American planes dropped noth­ ing but leaflets, telling the Neapolitans that the Allies were com­ ing as friends. Giulia and Gennaro had long arrived at the con­ elusion that it mightn't be such a bad thing to be liberated after all. They knew the score. Their Papa was a ragioniere, endlessly totting up figures in the employ of the state. He told them all the office gossip of the Questura. Hence they knew that fascism, at least in Naples, was as bloated as those balloons sold at the feast of Piedigrotta, which exploded when their rubber saw the sun. After the pamphlet bombings Giulia and Gennaro would gather up handfuls of the leaflets that fell on their roof. These they'd bring to Papa. They'd all sit around the dining room table while the old man put on his spectacles and deciphered them. He read 215 1,1 • 216 THE GALLERY every ti moment� Gennaro heart atl Papa w Tedeschi if they e Only Gi at the dG stood in ever laid however (always u up in the to Bagno Giulia' influence coat, she I or greasy but every with her best whe �lasslamp passion, t his eres. as her ow ming, br which he 1 GOwn by too unsta Knew whe �appho. B under his of a Nea� Mamma slowly and avidly under the stained-glass light. So Papa too came to the conclusion that it mightn't be such a bad idea for the Allies to take Naples. He didn't tell this to his children, but they read his thoughts. Giulia was nineteen. She had a pale little face under brown ringlets that hung over her forehead like spun sugar. Everythingabout her was tiny: her mouth, her throat, her breasts, her waist, her ankles. Her expression was always of contented repose, even when she was talking most animatedly with her chum Elvira, whom she'd chosen as her foil because Elvira was a dowd. Giulia dressed in gay cotton or linen dresses, with a tiny belt about her minute waist, tiny white sport pumps with heels that were almost too high. After every bombing she'd pick her way with Elvira or Gen­ naro through the streets of Naples. She avoided the rubble and the corpses. The sun danced on a segment of her honeyed skin and made a halo on her small beribboned straw hat. She knew she didn't look much like a Neapolitan girl. Possibly because her mother Rina had been a Florentine before Papa had induced her to settle with him in Naples. But Giulia was politician enough to speak Neapolitan dialect when she was with her chums. She'd had a better education than most girls of her class. She had almost as much book learning as Gennaro, who was in his second year at the University of Naples. When she was at the liceo, Guilia by some premonition had taken all the English courses she could get. Now she was teaching Gennaro English in the evenings after the dishes were done. From her maestra Giulia had an Oxford accent. She and her brother used to laugh over these lessons, his brown high brow crinkling over the difference between louse lice and spouse spouses. Two years ago Giulia'd allowed her family to engage her hand for marriage. To a Neapolitan sottotenente with mustaches, spec­ tacles, and serious intentions. But Pasquale became a prisoner of war. From his barbed-wire enclosure in Oran he wrote Giulia weekly a twenty-four line letter on green American stationery, with the return address in Italian, German, and Japanese. He told her of his loneliness, of the American Spam he was eating. He hoped that the war would soon end so that she and he could settle down with his family on Via Chiaia, and he could go on with his career as an engineer. In her mind Giulia had already written him off as a liability. She wrote Carissimo fidanzato to him once a week. And like all good Italian girls she led the life of a respectablefidanzata. She visited Pasquale's family once a month and mourned for him as though he were dead. She passed her time as a ragazza ' .... "_" . ��' ._--. - - . / - 'i:� I • ",,-", / 11 " GAllHl � Papa tooQ' : [or ili�,U I tthe)m( GIUlIA 217 per bene, shut up in the house with Mamma or going to the cinema with her brother Gennaro or her chum Elvira, that simpatica dowd. Giulia lived in that vacuum and parenthesis that was Naples from July to October, 1943. Yet in her small breast she nurtured a hope. The only excitement in Giulia's life (she'd never batted an eye­ lash at the bombings) was the periodic concealing of her brother every time the Germans came around to conscript him. In such moments coolness and resourcefulness shone forth all over Giulia. Gennaro would go 'white under his tan. Mamma would have a heart attack and lie moaning on the tasseled couch, praying that Papa wouldn't show up from his office, lose his temper with the Tedeschi, and get shot. Gennaro was also in danger of a fucilazione if they ever caught him. Such crises happened every other week. Only Giulia was capable of holding the entire Wehrmacht at bay at the door of their apartment. The Tedeschi respected her as she stood in the doorway, shaking her brown ringlets at them. None ever laid a finger on her, from Gefreiter to Hauptmann. Elvira however licked her chops over frightful stories of Neapolitan girls (always unidentified) whose nude bodies were said to have bobbed up in the Bay of Naples or been stuffed up a culvert on the road to Bagnoli. Giulia's brother Gennaro was seventeen. She knew she had more influence on him than either Mamma or Papa. She doted on Gen­ naro. As she watched him comb his black hair over his white linen coat, she often told herself that Gennaro was bello: he wasn't dark or greasy like many Neapolitans. She wished he was a little taller, but everything in Gennaro's body was in fine harmony as he walked with her and Elvira, taking both their arms. Giulia loved him best when he was groaning over his English under the stained­ glass lamp at the dinner table, his delicate face puckered into a cold passion, the rich undulations of his hair escaping down almost into his eyes. She noted that he'd a quick brain, though not so agile as her own. Gennaro kept his body to a whiplike temper by swim­ ming, by fencing with other young Camicie Nere, and by dancing, which he loved dearly. And he was wise enough not to tic himself down by going steady with a Neapolitan girl. The times were too unstable. Occasionally he'd disappear with a friend. Giulia knew where they went those evenings. To the casino of Madam Sappho. But then Gennaro was seventeen, and the heart that beat under his short-sleeved shirts and crisp summer jacket was the heart of a Neapolitan, which must make love. Mamma had gained many chili since Paoa'd brought her in 1924 �I / --���--' . - ',I. ' •••. • � _"' ... ' - I . 218 THE GALLERY GI as a bride from Florence. Once she'd been as slim as Giulia, accord­ ing to her photos. Now she sat huge and bloated in her dark deep chair, listening to forbidden English radio broadcasts. Her heart wasn't good. Mamma was happiest when she heard jazz from London or when she ate a pizza prepared by Giulia to trick her appetite or when her cronies dropped up for co£fee-a thing that didn't happen too often in these days of constant air-raid sirens. Every evening after supper she lectured her children on the vices of the world and reminisced on their one trip back to Florence to visit her relatives. Mamma hated Naples. She told the same stories over and over, but the children gave her her allotted hour every evening, sitting at her feet and listening to the hoarse gasping voice coming out of her chins and the mole on her lip. Giulia sat with her small feet tucked up under her buttocks, and Gennaro in the dim apartment smoked a Nazionale and nodded his head dreamily, saying: -Eh si, cara mamma.... And Giulia, in the thousandth repetinon of the warning that Naples would be dangerous for a ragazza after the Allies took it (as they eventually must) would study Gennaro's nose in the moon­ light and feel a compulsion to tweak it. She wondered if at Madam Sappho's too the women loved 'and understood her brother. Every afternoon at fifteen hours Papa banged up the five flights of stairs to the apartment. He came directly from his office in the Questura, where he spent the day playing poker and adding up columns of lire and centesimi. He was always furious and splenetic till he'd had three cups of scalding caffe espresso. Then his spirits would rise and he'd bawl and mime in dialect for the rest of the afternoon. His gray mustaches and gray hair and small paunch quivered with apprehension. This apprehension was founded on the insecurity of all employees of the Fascist state. Till now they were doing all right. They were the middle class with comfortable fixed stipends. But after the Allies came (as they surely would) the stipend would remain unchanged and the lira would go down down down. Papa could always awake Mamma from her doze by the radio by telling her that as soon as Naples fell, she'd lose all her avoirdupois because there wouldn't be anything to eat in the house. He also described with gestures his daughter earning her living on the streets and his son withdrawing from the university to work as a truck driver for the Allies, and at a wage that wouldn't keep him in shoelaces. At this point Mamma would awake with a jump, scream, say her rosary, caress her children, and say that Italia was [0 hearin other. sians t� In hil than m eted th played Papa w future G under tI and int offascis well ena instead WartW unifiedt ragioniel -Ho And w ceased to against tl a speedy the hous In their tinually. On j Mamma chain of � sounds of were far Tedeschi rers on t lived to s of them. S of going t made Giul tne swirli coming, SH to all the from the I ��HHl ----:_ Ciulia,at(� her darK� I:'i, Hell ard jau rr 'a to ��j -a��: : ir'nin!:: tilit' GL.(. GIULIA was rovinata and they would all be rovesciati. Giulia and Gennaro, hearing of these predicted horrors, would merely smile at each other. For they knew they'd get along somehow, even if the Rus­ sians took over Naples. In his youth Papa had been more progressive and socially minded than most of the employees of the Fascist state, who simply pock.. eted their stipends and their bribes, did as they were told, and played mad politics with the questore at the questura, In 1919 Papa was returning from under arms, sad and confused for the future of Italy. Then he had met Benito Mussolini and had fallen under the spell. U ntiI the Ethiopian War Papa had been a vigorous and intelligent Fascist. Papa knew so well the good and the evil of fascism. Why hadn't the combines of Torino and Milano let well enough alone? Why hadn't they built up Campania and Puglie instead of distracting the public'S attention with the Ethiopian War? Why a dream of empire when Italy had only begun to be unified? So from 1935 on Papa had been as tepid a Fascist as a ragioniere employed by the state dared to be. -Ho smarrito la fede nel sognato destino, he said. And with the outbreak of the Second World War Papa in despair ceased to go to Mass on Sundays. In his home he wept and railed against the farabutti who had brought this on Italy. He predicted a speedy end to Europe. He cursed the Italian middle class and the house of Savoy. His curses were in his throatiest Neapolitan. In their hearts his children agreed with him. Mamma wept con­ tinually. Her heart condition got worse. On 3 October 1943, Naples fell to the Fifth Army. For a week Mamma kept her entire family about her in the house. She had a chain of cardiac attacks. The house was without light or gas. The sounds of the liberators in movement that came up from the streets were far more ominous than during the air raids or when the Tedeschi were in Naples. Mamma, with her feet in sheepskin slip­ pers on the divan, was tended by all. She lamented that she'd ever lived to see this day. She said it was the end of the world for all of them. She lambasted Papa for not having consummated his plan of going to America twenty years ago. And every five minutes she made Giulia or Gennaro peer out of the apartment window into the swirling toggy streets to see if there were any New Zealanders coming. She remembered what II Duce had said the Kiwis would do to all the women of Italy. She had Giulia fetch the carving knife from the cupboard. She promised that this knife would finish in rl I • 220 THE GALLERY Giulia's heart if ever a New Zealand tread were heard on their stairs. Then Mamma would turn the knife, smoking from her daughter's blood, on herself: for who knew that even a matron of her age would be safe from ravishing New Zealand soldiery? But peer and descry as they could, Giulia and Gennaro saw noth­ ing but truck convoys tearing through the streets below. No New Zealanders came to their apartment to violate them. Over the nightly English lesson Giulia whispered to Gennaro that, while Mamma was keeping them all shut up like canaries, all the other Neapolitans were out hunting up choice jobs with the Allies. A week later Mamma allowed Papa to return to his office in the Questura. She also allowed Giulia and Gennaro to go out and try to buy some food. In their week of immurement they'd eaten up everything in the house. So Giulia, Gennaro, and Elvira sallied out to buy food. Gennaro carried the carving knife under his arm­ pit, also a little biretta that Papa kept in a secret place. Elvira had also been kept locked up by her family. Her mousy face was unwashed, her hair all mad and atwirl. Giulia in her neat frock and little cloth coat with the fur collar thought privately that her chum looked a fright. When a girl isn't by nature attractive, she becomes a monster when she lets herself go. In early October, 1943, Naples was a city of chaos, of movement with no purpose, of charnel smells, of rain, of army truck headlights coming out of the mist like eyes without lids. The shoe was on the other foot now: the Germans had taken over bombing the town as soon as they'd vacated the premises in favor of the Fifth Army. After the sun set through the fall rains, the few who dared go abroad stumbled their way over sidewalks in a close dreadful blackness. There wasn't a light, except from the truck convoys. Corpses were let lie where they fell, creasing and bloating from the rain. Living Neapolitans stripped the clothing from them: the living needed the cloth. The city's sewage had all backed up in a spasm of vomiting, like stomachs nauseated with war. What stench didn't renege from the bay wafted through the ruptured mains in the streets. There were red whispers of typhus, and prayers that it was true that the Americans' had a new disinfectant. And in the daytime the poor sun squeaking through the rains showed a spectacle more ghoulish than you imagined by darkness. Clots of returning Neapolitans trekked in from their hiding places outside the city. Household furniture was pushed through the streets. Wagons and carts swamped the roads through which the army trucks were trying to pass. Horses and van owners were a! rno r�, o tno �ne wnl tfie �1 ana arrilDla! lla!!1 t1m� ll�W! war wor1laia Giuli t1vir: tiom Were �ne t( oinil ...v �ne o!wu Genm GIULIA 221 dubbed and kicked and screamed at by American MP's. They writhed and wrestled with the traffic like Laocoons in a haze. -La nostra citta e morta, Gennaro said, his voice sickened and phlegmy. -Non credo, Giulia said, but she too was ashgreen with terror as they felt their way through the vichi, where rubbish and foul moisture trembled on the walls like rotten emeralds. Then she noticed that Elvira was chewing gum. Giulia whirled on her friend and demanded to know, her eyes narrowing into sparks, where that American gum came from. Elvira began to splutter and said that an American soldier had given it to her brother yesterday. -Ebbene? Giulia said savagely, elbowing her bosom friend agains t an archway. -No, no, no, no, Elvira said, bursting into tears. Non ci pensa- reo ••• Giulia felt relieved, even though she despised herself for the thought that had popped into her head.... These were times... e She'd always sensed a weakness in Elvira, but not of that kind which would send her amica out onto the sidewalks to proposition the Allied soldiers. By a series of leaps across streets, slinking along the narrowest and remotest alleys, they were approaching the Questura. They arrived at a church slit in two by bombs. There remained the blasted portico with its picture of the Madonna under shattered glass, its candelabra twisted like a frostbitten branch. Under the tempera of the walls lay a cadaver in overalls. Its dead eyes turned upward and outward like buttons fearful of a buttonhook. A little way off, on another pile of slag, was the hat that the head had worn when alive. Elvira let out one cluck and fainted. Gennaro laid his head against the shattered wall and vomited soundlessly. Giulia desired to hold his head, but instead she knelt down by Elvira and chafed her hands. After a time of murmuring incanta­ tions and encouragements, the way her mother had when they were babies, Giulia got her party restored and walking on again. She told Gennaro to use his silk handkerchief to wipe the corners of his mouth, from which dribbled a thread of slime. -Vergogna, Giulia scolded. She heard her small clear voice like a flute over the tympanum of sound that was Naples that morning. The pallor sank under Gennaro's olive skin, he resumed his spry gentle gait. Elvira pulled rl I If • 222 THE GALLERY her shapeless hat over her eyes and marched on in a blind stupor like a pig to the slaughter. At the main entrance to the Questura, where her father worked, Giulia and her party came upon a long queue of screaming and buzzing Neapolitans, talking with hands and throats. At the side door cordons of MP's were hustling others under arrest to cells. The American MP's girdled the creamy stone walls of the entire Questura building. In the glassed vestibule hung the sign: QUI GLI ALLEATI IMPIEGANO CIVILI COMPETENTI AL LAVORO So Giulia told her brother and her friend to take heart; there were good jobs waiting for them inside with the Americans. She stood on Via Medina on the outskirts of the mob, trying to for­ mulate some plan of action. But the yowling of the Neapolitans and the shouted orders of the MP's drove everything out of her head. She felt again that long-ago sensation when, as a tiny girl with sparkling ringlets, she'd take refuge in her mother's skirts if strangers spoke to her. But then she looked at her brother's sad proud face, at Elvira, who was beginning to jitter again. So she pulled her furpiece about her, took both their arms, and prepared herself to rush the line in the best Neapolitan tradition on trolleys. -Where's this pretty baby goin so fast, huh? An American MP blocked her path. His sudden appearance, al­ most out of the ground, stopped them dead in their tracks. It was the first American soldier the three had seen at close range. EI. vira burst into silly sobbing. Gennaro came to attention and gave the Fascist salute. Giulia stood her ground and simply looked at the MP. She was as tall as to his chest. Under his helmet she saw his yellowish face, pitted with the craters of his adolescence. His eyes were like oranges in blood. His mouth was a line of purple. He was in a tight olive-drab uniform and leggins. Over one shoulder and by his waist hung a burnished leather holster and a pistol. The blue and white MP brassard on his arm was pinned below the single chevron. He looked at her and she returned his glare until his eyes softened and netted into wrinkles. All her English flew out of her brain, then seeped back in. And Giulia spoke with her Oxford accent: -Please, sir, please . . . -Ah, molto buono, said the MP, tu parlare americano? -I know English discreetly well, Giulia said. And sir, we three desire a post with the liberating army.... We are good decent ilion more Gonl Giu Ameri � (fUa �llO K:01aoi Toe] murnn Ina Ih I ltupi tOatan rmor �er he ilan ob On I law ani �tnerel GIULIA americanal And sir, we� are good af((: Italians.... My father is not an active Fascist.••• We will do anything that good people ought to do to live ... -A sharp mouse, a sharp mouse, the MP said, clapping his holster in a dour delight. He put out his gauntleted hand and with a finger lighter than she'd have imagined stroked the soft line below her ear to her chin. Giulia's impulse was to step smartly back out of his reach, but she stayed herself. Back of her she heard Gennaro's breath go into a snort. She hoped her brother would control himself. -Please sir, Giulia said, I am an honest young Italian girl. This is my husband behind me.... We are recently married ... -0 scusate, the American MP said, himself stepping back. I didn't know ya was married.... Well, baby, come around in a few more days and ask for Gibson. I might be able to help ya. But don't walk in that door now unless ya fixin to take a blood test an maybe end up in Poggioreale jail. ... But if ya wanta come back in a day or so, there might be somethin cookin.... Frankly, I like ya, baby.... Ya the first Ginso girl I could imagine myself goin for.... Why don't ya come to America? Ya smart enough to do all right for yaself. -Thank you, sir, Giulia said. She gathered her brood and hustled them around the corner of the Questura to Via Diaz. Yet once again she looked back at the MP. He was still standing with his hands on his Sam Browne belt and gazing after her. -An stay off these streets, baby, he yelled at her. Giulia didn't tell her brother or her friend, but she liked the American MP for all his seamy looks. He had a brusqueness and a crudity that wouldn't be acceptable in an Italian man. But Giulia also knew from some core of insight that he would be incapable of doing her any treachery. They walked up Via Diaz. Gennaro was lost within himself, murmuring something about the soldiering in the Italian Army and the fine manners of their ex-carabinieri. Elvira was sunk in a stupid terror; she'd retracted her head like a tortoise into her coat and was trusting only to Giulia's arm to guide her. From the rear of the Questura, where the cells were under the ground floor, they heard the screaming of incarcerated ladies calling out Neapol­ itan obscenities and protesting that they'd never heard of syphilis. On the facade of the nco-something Provincia Building Giulia saw another advertisement for Italian help. At this portal wen" gathered petitioners of a different feather. She asked one of the 223 I • • I 224 asa citJ' now hve nad THE GALLERY hangers-on whose offices were here and was told that Allied Mili­ tary Government was setting up its control of Naples. In the tense postulant faces Giulia saw most of the South Italian nobility. Contesse had risen early from their beds to get themselves a job as social secretary to a colonel; marchesi were ready to put their Ischia or Capri villas at the disposal of the Americans and the British. All the elite of Campania were waiting here to prove that they'd never been Fascist, but had been just biding their time till they could give cocktail parties for the Allies. -Razza di cani, Gennaro said and spat on the ground. Giulia led him and Elvira away. She saw that there was no hope from AMGOT. She couldn't compete with really big operators­ yet. In a market of Naples where she'd always traded Giulia found reality of a closer sort. There was almost no food on the shelves and no meat in the windows except a few chines of red runny flesh looking like no beef or pork she'd ever seen before. And what li ttle there was of anything was selling for from four to ten times its price of two weeks ago. Giulia felt herself going sick and frightened under her gay dress and trim coat. She heard her voice shake on the brink of a sob as she asked Mr. Gargiulo if this weren't just a temporary shortage, if the Allies wouldn't soon be rushing food into Naples. Thereupon Mr. Gargiulo, who'd always been so kind to her, seemed to blow up under his bloody apron. He delivered himself of five minutes' blistering Neapolitan rhetoric, of pleading and sobbing and suicide threats. He told Giulia that she was a cretin, then apologized to her; he called Elvira a ninny from Calabria, and he asked Gennaro in a burst of irony what good all that fine Latin and Greek were going to do him now. Then before Giulia's eyes, which were beginning to seep the tears she'd been suppressing all morning, Mr. Gargiulo waved a freshly printed one-lira note. He told them that this was the new currency of the Allies, and that it wasn't worth enough to buy a chicken with, no, not a whole bale of it. He told them that from now on Napoli was liberated -liberated from life itself, because henceforth money would mean nothing in the markets, nothing. He told them that the Allies had also liberated the lira of any value. So all four of them cried there in the bu tcher shop wi th the rainy October air looking in on them. Then Mr. Gargiulo threw into Giu1 ia's shopping basket some suspicious pasta, a few old greens, and a chunk of wormy meat. He said that he didn't want her money !(ran thn and) ther to d, as tn all 0 Allie! Irom Qrea�OomH mu!tl01 he mm c (QuId nis ha Th( slate I Naple wiresl wastl (Qntin re�ave GIULIA 225 because it was the last time they'd see one another alive. They wept some more and cursed. Only Giulia stood a little apart from her own anguish and thought and puzzled inside her small studious head. When they got home and told Mamma what Naples was like, she had a really good heart attack. For a week it was thought that Mamma wouldn't live. From that time on Giulia and her family entered a desert of hopelessness. Since they'd kept alive all during the German occu­ pation of Naples and the bombings, they looked back on those days as a rather gay paradise compared to their existence now after the city's fall. Then they hadn't minded living from day to day. But now it was a minute to minute struggle, in which any problem five minutes hence seemed a lifetime removed. Every evening they had bleak sessions under the stained-glass lamp on the dining room table. They admitted that they hadn't been liberated from anything at all, that the war was just beginning for them. Giulia felt like the man who survives pneumonia only to discover that his heart has been weakened forever. Worst of all she found that misery doesn't necessarily make strange bedfellows-or any bedfellows at all. Those other ladies in the apartment to whom Mamma, when they were ill, lent coffee and fruit and fresh meat now withdrew into chilly hostility when they discovered that the bounty was ended. Hence Giulia began to doubt whether privation and suffering unite people so much as they divide them. Each family went into a sniping war against all others. Everyone in Naples agreed only in saying that the Allies were worse liars than the Fascists. Everyone was divided from everyone else. Whereas the Neapolitans had known a certain dreary camaraderie when they all faced the war together in the bomb shelters, they now became one another's enemies, since each must go out and forage for food. And Giulia watched the comedy of her father's weekly stipend. Each week he collected the same sum of lire that he'd been receiving for ten years. But with it he could buy a day's ration of bread. It was like a child putting up his hands to stop a tidal wave. The first weeks they managed only with the thought that this state of affairs couldn't last. For Papa was known and loved in Naples. He worked every angle and every connection, pulled every wire so that his family could buy in secret shops. His only luxury was that he smoked much. For a while his cherished cigarettes continued to dribble in: three from the Vomero, two from Tor­ regaveta, four from Caserta. � i -_. -. -�� . / ",I., -.. . 226 �re!! Giul Brazi BraZl A Vmo �avel oft Napl oar! Giu]' a�err in he vira'! enao �u� theca here; noons, Ihe!u lalKinl (Qa� ( chin, !olaier lor th� �llJ thl THE GALLERY Act leva mas vira raa' ifsi EI the and out In the third week typhus burst out all over Naples the way a rash seeps through after presages of itching. Mamma said sta bene, it would carry her off quickly, then she wouldn't have to bother about her heart any longer, and there'd be one less mouth to feed. She rose from her sofa more than she should and spent time in the kitchen beside Giulia, trying to cook something into or out of the gray heavy pasta and the vegetables that seemed to have lain in the Sahara. She howled for the white bread the Allies had prom­ ised in their propaganda leaflets. Then began the foul rectification of a foul situation. Everyone knew that you could buy in Naples any amount of American meat and medical supplies. If you had the price. Papa knew where these things were sold, for most of his friends had gone into the black market. The only catch was that the prices were ten to twenty times the normal level. Two weeks after its fall there was anything you wanted to buy in Naples. For two thousand lire a day a small family could live quite well. But Giulia knew no small Neapolitan families with an income of two thousand lire a day. She didn" know any millionaires. One evening after a supper of dark bread, beans, and a potato soup Papa announced that they might as well bid farewell to hon­ esty. He said that only two classes were destined to survive in N apIes-the very rich and the very poor. The rich could afford to live through the parenthesis by selling all they had, to buy on the black market. And the poor stole more than they ever had because with the Allies here there was more to steal. Papa's mus­ taches were as stiff as iron. He described himself as a man tied to a plank and ordered to stand on his feet. Giulia listened. She wished she had more of the Italian woman's gift of tears. In her throat she felt only a pain as though there were a hot cauter there. After a while she went into the gabinetto. Her stomach wouldn't keep down what she'd just eaten for it was as delicious as grass and as palatable as cardboard. She stood over the bowI holding her hot dry forehead and feeling her stomach twitch oysterlike and deathly. Then she put on her coat and went out to find Elvira for a walk. Elvira's family had already entered the bracket of the war rich. Papa Brazzi had closed his barbershop and had taken a position as head waiter in an American officers' mess. From the kitchen door of this installation there streamed a small but precious rivulet of American meats, coffee, sugar, and white bread. Enough of this contraband appeared on Papa Brazzi's table to keep his family as well nourished as they'd always been. The rest he sold or bartered. GIULIA 227 Actually Elvira and her family were living on a slightly higher level than the prewar "One fot their class, but in comparison to most other Neapolitans in October, 1943, they were princes. El­ vira's posture was better, her eyes prouder, her complexion almost radiant. She was now in a position to make a brilliant marriage, if she chose. Elvira greeted Giulia with condescension. She led her friend into the Brazzi kitchen, remarking happily that poor Giulia looked pale and faint. She set before Giulia a plate of American spiced meat out of a can, two slices of white bread, and a cup of chocolate which she bragged came from American powder. Giulia ate every morsel, trying to conceal how hungry she was. -Ah, poveretta, Elvira squealed, watching Giulia as though she were a canary breakfasting in a cage. And Giulia, dizzy and enervated from her vomiting, knew coolly that this was the moment Elvira'd been waiting for all her sup­ pressed days-the chance to play the queen at her own expense. Giulia tried not to listen to Elvira's itemized boasting over Papa Brazzi's commerce in the borsa nera, of the goods that lay in the Brazzi cellar. Arm in arm she and her new patroness walked in the Galleria Umberto. The arcade was moist and dark after the rains. On the pavement still lay the splinters of glass that had been bombed out of the skylight. A few bars were open. There was no electricity in Naples, but lighted candles stood in their own wax on the marble bar tops. By this wan light Allied soldiers drank vermouth. And Giulia noticed that they were being whistled at in a casual sav­ agery that made a pain press on her eyeballs. It was the first time in her life she'd been treated so. She tightened her grasp on El­ vira's arm and forced her into a swifter pace toward the Via Verdi end of the Galleria. Suddenly there came to her mind in the midst of the murk and the candlelight and the slippery pavement those walks she'd taken here as a little girl with her Mamma and Papa on Sunday after­ noons. There was glass then in the dome of the Galleria Umberto; the sun dropped like a gay flag, the murmur of the Neapolitans talking was bright and sure. In those days Giulia wore small green coats and green ankle socks and a small straw hat fastened to her chin with a green ribbon. In those same bars where the Allied soldiers were now drinking, she used to reach up her little hand for the Sunday ice-cream cone. She was picked up and kissed by All, though Mamma didn't like compliments paid in her presence .. �-----J� / -- . -------------=-- � ., . , ." . . - � ,// I I� , I I 228 THE GALLERY rev( trOO G !till up i and IVa! I rigid lieulJ out!1 ��� cryl� Te DOdrlama � !oldai Jddi� �ti' �ne onto !udde �a�e �ne t andt, !nru� uom !oreh Fifteen years ago! Out of the haze and the feeling of sleepwalking in a dank cellar, Giulia heard those voices praising her baby beauty: -Ah, la piccina! Eh, che piccola regina! Com'e carina, signora, e ben educata pure. But this memory broke off and mangled, for it was October, 1943, and Giulia and Elvira were walking through a changed Galleria. She observed-at first she thought it her imagination­ that Elvira was gawking at the Allied soldiers, obviously turning her head as they passed concentrations of them chewing gum or passing around a cognac bottle. Giulia queried softly, Was it Elvira's plan to marry an American? Elvira replied with a coy casting down of her eyes, Well, she'd considered the matter. Then Giulia said with the tinkle of an icicle that the Americans were different from us and might easily break the hearts of us Italian girls. And Elvira gave a too loud laugh and stated that sentimen­ tality was out of date; it didn't pay. -Ah, ti prego, said Giulia, di non dirmi piu simili sciocchezze. To which Elvira replied with heavy scorn that it was all very well for Giulia to talk big ideals when she hadn't enough to eat. For the first time in her tranquil life Giulia had the impulse to slap someone. But she merely tightened her hold on Elvira's arm. In the exact center of the Galleria Giulia saw a sight that was new. It scored her wi th the fascina tion of a pimple on the back of one's neck. She saw many girls alone and in pairs, girls she'd never noticed on the streets of Naples before. Their attire, even in the dark, shone with a determined if shabby brilliance. They laughed constantly in a sound like crows jeering. They urged themselves boldly on the soldiers, who waited or pulled on their bottles. Through the night air tumbled estimates in lire such as one would hear on the stock exchange in Piazza della Borsa. Giulia'd never heard Italian women talking money so much before. The price of four thousand lire was much bandied between the soldiers and the girls. Then Elvira nudged her. An American soldier was leaning against the slate-hued wall of the Galleria. He wore a fur-collared jacket and muddy leggins. In his hands were two tin cans which he pushed and retracted from the girl in front of him, who put out her tongue and wriggled the tip of her nose. Her dress was ragged. She was in a hysteria of several moods. She seemed hungry and frightened and lewd all at once. Finally she seized the soldier's arm, pulled him along with a searing laugh, and they both ran out of the Galleria. Elvira tittered and GIULIA 229 late·Dueo ��: 'udd,1eWru,: retracteo from� \tri�leo WI� 'jteria of !el� ;'I'd all at o�� ,qwitha!ea� ira tittered � revealed that in those tin cans was the food served to American troops at the front. Her Papa called it C-ration. Giulia put two and two together. She began to quiver, standing still in the Galleria. Lightning raked across her eyes. There stormed up in her small breast a bitterness and a fury that frightened her and tore at her. She thought her heart was going to stop, that she was going blind with rage. And she heard her voice clang over her rigid lips like knives. She cried, not to Elvira or to anyone in par­ ticular, that a soldier who gave food to a hungry girl for love was outside the human race. Elvira tittered some more, said that this was war, and that Italian women could make riffraff of themselves if they chose. But then she stopped, for she saw that Giulia was crying. Tears plopped down Giulia's cheeks. Sobs came from her small body in a series of waves, dry waves like sheaves of paper ripped by a mad hand. -Siamo vinti.... In questa guerra sono morti non soltanto i soldati ... rna l'anima, le donne, e l'onore di tutti quanti.... Che Iddio ci aiuti.... Still sobbing, she forced Elvira to quit the Galleria with her. She knew that if Elvira so much as giggled once more, she'd hurl her onto the wet sidewalk, though she was smaller than Elvira. Elvira suddenly took her leave and went into her own house. Giulia passed a church which the sacristan was just locking for the night. She told the sacristan that it was a gracious idea to lock Christ in and the people out of the churches when the sun set. The sacristan shrugged and stepped aside to let her pass in. Giulia took water from the holy-water font and made the sign of the cross on her forehead. She was glad that Elvira had gone on home. She was still trembling, as a leaf remembers the wind. After the black rainy air of Naples the church was glowing with vigil lights. These streaked out the offerings in the glass showcases, the cups of gold, the jewels, the token offerings for miraculous cures. Because of these treasures the church was locked at sundown. At a side altar a plump old priest was saying his rosary. Because she made some noise in entering, he looked at her testily and clucked. Giulia knelt before the statue of the Madonna, which every year was borne through the streets on August 15 covered with flowers and smoked over with torches and incense. And Giulia prayed to Our Lady. She'd never really prayed before in her life. She told Holy Mary Mother of God that she was a Neapolitan \/' / �� I _-_. � . ., .' . . . -�- - - - � // 230 THE GALLERY as � be� all. af no pr dri1 rou her En� A girl of nineteen. That she had her selfishnesses. That perhaps she was a little too proud for her station in life.... But (Giulia begged Mary) what are women put into this world for? Aren't they to make good wives to men ... at least in Italy.... Every good Italian girl wishes to be a wife and mother.... A woman doesn't fear suffering as much as a man does.... Having children isn't pleasant ... but at least it's natural. ... Mother of God, a woman can't cope with unnatural things like war, because a woman was put here to bring life into this world ... women aren't interested in killing.... Giulia asked the Madonna to help her. Her lips formed most pas sionately around that word, help. Then she left the church. It was only two minutes now to the door of the apartment. She rounded an alley and came upon a tableau. An American soldier was lying unconscious on a doorstep. In her reflex of flinching back Giulia saw that this drunk was being relieved of his lire and his packs of cigarettes. At her step the thief jumped up from bending over the unconscious figure. It was Giulia's brother Gennaro, all pale and with a murderous grief in his eyes. Her brother Gennaro. �, Giulia discovered the consequences of sharing a secret which must never again be referred to, even with its imparter. This weight forced her deeper into herself and removed her completely from this life. Hitherto her adjustment to living had been a sweet mod- leve eration: neither mad for society nor shunning it. She'd lived well !aid in herself, but not with that intensity or misanthropy which marks pro the queer or the gifted. Now all was changed. The sight of her pra! nrother bending over the drunken American soldier and rifling his angi pockets had burnt Giulia's eyes, as though she'd looked straight at Arne the sun. Often at night she saw this vision, asleep or awake, as a Tepa light remains on our retina after we turn away into the dark. With orin this there came to her moral and ethical nature a rift which re- lhin fused to heal, which caused her night after night to cry into her �he'l pillow. mel She knew that Gennaro had done what she saw him doing not ilie through meanness or tendency to burglary in himself. He'd done hi! what he'd done not for himself but because his family had to eat hi!!i and because he could sell a pack of American cigarettes for three G hundred lire. He had only to steal a few packs a week, and his Iam- Dille] ily would revert to their former tranquil prosperity. All this Giulia In hl knew, but the explanation didn't help any. And she knew too that woul in these times Neapolitans of the middle class could starve slowly, from -- perha�ll� 'ulla ��� n't tn�l � �ooa It�i;' aQe\n't Ie 'm't �I�� n can'tm1 put n�rn 'n Killin�", ea mOlt �ecret willi r.mw1i� pletel1uu: a Iweetmoo e'd liven �l . whien m�1 licrnt o! �1 and ri�in�m :ed �rrai�nt:' r awaKe, �I e darK. \l'i� riltll'nicnrt, o err into n� jm doin� �� f. He'noO[: ih' had tOti' ettel!ortNc andni![� I�Jl thi) Gium Knew toO� starve !lo�11 GIULIA 231 as effectively as if they'd willfully gone on a hunger strike. No, it wasn't that Gennaro had st olen that brought agony to Giulia's soul; it was that he had had to steal, that there was no way out of doing what he'd done. Thus the worshiped figure of her brother became a symbol of that scabrous destiny which was debasing them all. He was no more her Gennaro, but a marionete whipped on by a fury and a fate beyond him. It wasn't fair. It was filthy. He was now much more and much less her brother. He'd become the projection of all that was diseased in Naples of 1943. To her dying day Giulia could never forget that figure crouched in the murky vico, that look of horror and fascination outstarting from her brother's eyes, that brown hand she'd so often spanked in their English lessons going like a shuttle through the pockets of the American soldier. Both their hearts broke at that instant-Gen­ naro's and Giulia's. They'd understood one another perfectly from the days when the little sister used to take the baby brother's hand There could never again be between them that ripeness and gentle­ ness, never, never. It was as though in a moment of madness they'd committed incest together, and had arisen defiled from the act, resolving never to see one another again. For their love had been close. They'd collided and passed through and beyond one another, like shadows embracing in hell. Mamma, noting that the family's diet had returned to its old level of abundance and variety, nodded sagely from her couch. She said, See, they'd done wrong to curse the Allies, for they'd kept their promises. Italians were overhasty in praise and in blame. She praised the American Spam and found that American coffee did her angina good. She hoped Gennaro'd make the acquaintance of an American and bring him home for dinner. In this way they might repay some of their debt to the Allies for liberating Naples and bringing fine American rations into the house. Giulia, when these things were said at table, would feel a knife go through her brain. She'd excuse herself from the meal and go to her room, for she knew that remaining at table would mean screaming. Her brother, the sad bent tool of injustice, simply sat in his place and stared at his plate. His dark hair seemed to have turned into sleek snakes hissing along his forehead. Gennaro's own sorrow forced him into a kind of flagrance of bitterness, as those with skin diseases appear brazenly in public. In his room he kept cartons of American cigarettes. These Giulia would find as she did her morning dusting while Mamma chattered from the couch in the parlor. Then Giulia, in an ecstasy of horrid 232 THE GALLERY GI fascination, would pick up the shining cellophane packages with the reo target in the center. She'd count them with loathing, letting each tall back into the drawer through her fingers. Each morning she would play with these American cigarettes till she had to sit on Gennaro's bed and weep. Mamma in the salortino would get peevish and restless and call out that Giulia was getting lazy in her housekeeping, and would make no man a good wife. Giulia knew that Papa, anything but stupid, guessed what his son was up to after a few days' lying. So, living off the American food a ud the American cigarettes which he so passionately loved, Papa's mustache grew white. Giulia watched a metaphysical corset twine round Papa's plump chest that was strangling off his breath. One evening in November Papa walked with Giulia to the door of her bedroom. All evening long he'd been ostensibly in high spirits, jesting of his Fascist youth, of Mussolini's violin playing, of Edda Ciano's legs. He was as gay as one coming out of an anesthetic. But Giulia, inured to agony, saw his mirth for what it was, the abandon of a clown with a dying son. At her door Giulia's father kissed her good night so hard that she tasted the small onions he'd eaten with such bravura, the tart red wine he'd drunk with dinner, the stinging afterbreath of American cigarettes. And Papa's chest shook as he drew her head over his heart. -Ah, cara mia, che bellezza! Abbiamo un figlio ed un fratello Iadro.... And as she lay in her bed she sounded the depths of her father's bitterness. Or sometimes Ciulia tried to exchange a few words with Gen­ naro, those teasing sisterly sallies she'd always made. But their hollowness was obvious to her and, she knew, to him. Any conver­ sation on their old level was as intolerable to both as a house hit by an incendiary bomb: only walls stood in the void where once were lovely rooms. nim, to his vital it aeme took rmhe eat. F nerce nr!tti o'cloc Tnere,rlume o[Na� oialect nan to olnoOl !eeing In December, 1943, Ciulia sat under the stained-glass lamp over miped the dining room table. She was reading Risorgimento, which she oeautr, hadn't had time to glance over all day. It was full of news of the ForI countless Neapolitan political parties and their diatribes against �tet one another. Giulia thought of the line of steel and death to the Irom e north of her. The Germans were making Italy a shambles by rain teo retreating slowly to the north, destroying as they went. She won- amino dered what other girls of nineteen were thinking tonight in Rome, Conyers in Firenze, in Milano. Then her eye hit upon an ad. It said that tremon ; �. • - • .' �- �_-_-__ '.r---'-- __ - --. -- - . �rl-- I' �. II\t -, GIULIA .rrll"' lamr�': IJ 10, wni(n � I of �ewlolr diatIibela� md deatn !O� 3 shambkl � lI'ent. �he W�; niaht in Ro� Id. It said � shortly a club for American officers would open in the Bank of Naples. They were going to hire Neapolitan ladies and gentle­ men as cashiers and wai terse Giulia arose from her chair, smoothing her somber dress and her hair. She was wearing also her cloth coat with the fur collar because the house was damp and cold. Nowhere in Naples could you buy wood or coal, even on the mercato nero. Giulia considered again. Then she went to her brother's room. She knew how she'd find him. And he was. Bent over their old English grammar. He lurched to his feet as she switched on the ceiling light. His passionate vitality at once wove an armor about him. She felt it opaque and dense as a wall, but she kept walking till she stood beside him and took his hand. She put her index finger on the advertisement and pushed it to him to read as though she were forcing an invalid to eat. For a minute they stood there looking at one another with a fierceness that gathered and stiffened them both. Because it was the first time she'd brought herself to look upon Gennaro in months, Giulia saw how beautiful was his face, like the face of one with a wasting disease, where all the life and reserve passion pounds into the cheeks and sits there in a wildness of decisi:on and husbandry, saying, Kill me if you dare. For a second she thought she was going to die. But some cyclone blew them into one another's arms, where they wept loudly for some while. In the cold brightness of Naples in December Giulia and Gennaro and Elvira walked through the Galleria U m berto. It was nine o'clock in the morning. The night had brought the usual air raid. There were American ambulances in the streets, and Neapolitan plumed hearses were carrying those who'd died earlier. The winter of Naples has its own peculiar sting like the cursing in Neapolitan dialect. Giulia shivered and drew her fur about her neck" Since she had to wear it in the house too to keep warm, it mocked her out of doors. But she was soon distracted from her own discomfort by seeing the seat of Gennaro's trousers. He was wearing a gray pencil­ striped business suit. A year ago it had been a quiet vessel for his beauty. Now the seat was shiny and the elbows the same. For herself and her brother, however, Elvira more than compen­ sated. The Brazzis were now rich. Elvira was getting a double chin from eating so opulently. She did her nails in various colors and painted her face till it was a mixed vegetable plate. She'd developed a mince in her walk that once was clumsy and nervous. Into her conversation, which had always been dreary, full of hot flashes and tremors and palpitations, Elvira now injected American words of 233 - :;1 I / ___ . ....-: =--...z,e_-----.:»_ " .' '" . - //. fl 234 THE GALLERY whose meaning she wasn't precisely sure. Gennaro, who in his deal­ ings knew a practical and earthy English, would correct her hastily and beg her not to use such expressions. Then Elvira would titter furiously and say, My stars, she was getting as wicked as Countess Ciano, wasn't she? Elvira wanted to see society, especially American. She'd developed a thirst for night life. And no matter how rich Papa Brazzi got from the black market, he'd still lock Elvira in every night at curfew time unless she got a respectable job. Elvira was attempting to get this job to get away from her family. With a job in the officers' club at the Bank of Naples, she hoped to snare herself a handsome American officer. All this Giulia guessed. Neapolitans said that the gray modern slate-colored Bank of Naples had escaped bombing because North Italian bankers had bought off the pilots of American and British bombers. It was the only clean and solid building on Via Roma. Its whole front was bricked and buttressed off from the street, against having its brass and glass doors shattered from detonations. The rear entrance was through a crypt with a subterranean car park. Inside this cave were many Neapolitans, wearing a suitable manner to be hired as waitress or cashier. They were all murmuring to one another, but they became demure and formal when they expected the officer in charge of the club to appear at the head of the stairs. Would they be fed three times a day by the Americans? What were the wages? The Americans could afford anything. They ought to get together like a trade union and force the Americans to accede to their demands. Giulia noticed among the feminine applicants girls who swaggered on Via Roma. The males were nearly all Neapolitans with spectacles and greased hair and a classic air of exasperation as though they'd been whipped by their families out of the library of the University of Naples in the middle of their doctor's dissertation. Gennaro and Giulia and Elvira took their place in the queue and waited in silent listening. A queue is an unnatural formation for Neapolitans, who like to swarm and catch as catch can. Late, very late, perhaps to show the Neapolitans that they were a conquered people and not patients at a charity dispensary, a glass door opened in the wall of gray granite. The hundreds of petitioners fell into reverent silence and arranged their clothes and hair. There appeared two American officers in short monkey [ackets of green cloth. Their breasts were barred with colored ribbons. There was a major built like a duck, his beard like gravel alan higH carr ITomilt look] pasl soun bursl the J hear I listen sen Ie ane ouah heah .,.1 neah . to U now.. friendl Hal 01 the and sH littles walls, milled oronzx once �oor I a ligh ;". ... � -_ =-_ . . -_ - - _ .·1 �1---1� GIULlA 235 along the jowls resting on his collar. A cheery stomach butted the high waist of his jacket. With him was a sad young lieutenant carrying a clipboard. The lieutenant's glasses drooped over his nose. To Giulia he seemed an unhappy grandmother commissioned by mistake in the United States Army. Beside these two an interpreter looking like an osprey took up his position. The major made a pass in the air past his paunch with his jeweled hand. There sounded in the half-cellar a voice as rich and persuasive as a ph. bursting with suet. The major stopped after every sentence, ��1hich the interpreter then translated to the crowd. Giulia had never heard anything quite like the English that the major used. She listened only to him, paying no attention to the sentence by sentence rendition of the interpreter: -Mah deah N eahpolitan friends ... for you ah mah friends, each an everyone of yo.... We ah openin this here little club to give ouah pooah American officers a place to relax in. . . . But this heah club is also a friendly gesture to you, ouah Neapolitan friends.... Those of yo whom we find competent we ah goin to hiah as waiters or cashiers.... For when ouah Uncle Sam liberates Italy, he also takes thought of her suffrin people.... Theah'll be no partiali ty shown in the hirin or in the firin. . . . We know yoah reputation for bein lazy, my deah friends, an we ain't standin for none of yoah nonsense heah.... But ah just want to ask yo to play the game with me, and ah'll play ball with yo.... Ah come from a state in the Union that is as bighearted as she is big.... Now yoah wages will be ninety lire a day, an you can take home what sandwiches and pastry they is left at the close of the workin day ... if they's any.... All't ah'll say heah is, if theah is inybody heah who won't work for ninety lire, why they is just plain ingrates to Uncle Sam, that's all. ... They can go to theah homes right now.... We don't want no truck with them.... Now my deah friends, just form an orderly line and wait yoah turn for interview. Half of the Neapolitans broke away from the mass and went out of the rear of the Bank of Naples. Under their breaths they mewed and spat and cursed. Those who'd decided to stay pushed up the little stairway past the custode and turned left along the cool dark walls, cloudy with the veins and strata of the stone. Then they milled through another corridor where the doors were tall and bronzy. Then they mounted a stairway with sweep and curve where once Fascist bankers climbed with their briefcases. On the second floor more brass doors gave into a room where a faun played over a lighted fountain. Then came the vastest room Giulia'd ever seen 236 GI -. Tn after cross,!the PI enclO! THE GALLERY outside of the movies, and lastly a narrower apartment where benches had been linked on a trestle to make a long bar. The windows were all arched and hung with valances of cream and green. This led through a small reception room with a pink piano to a door tha t said Office-Off Limits. They were oddly silent for Neapolitans as they sat down in the deep green leather divans and looked at one another with that mutual suspicion of outer offices. Giulia and Gennaro and Elvira found a seat close to the office door on a long sofa, in which they seemed to drop into a well of cushions. Then a girl ran in with a shriek and collapsed beside them. She was pursued by a brilliant-eyed man in the belted jacket and the loud trousers of Italian racing drivers. They introduced themselves as Wilma and Gino. Giulia measured Wilma with interest and sympathy. Wilma wasn't young any more, but she balanced the equation by a mockery of everything, herself included. She began at once talking to Giulia. She told Giulia that Gino wasn't so rich as lovers she'd had in Trieste and Tripoli, but that he was shrewder. Wilma chain-smoked, thieving cigarette after cigarette from Gino's waistcoat and stabbing at her lipsticked charred butts with violet fingernails. Her laughter was low and one inch this side of spiteful. And Gino talked over her voice, saying that Wilma was a vecchia strega, how he'd been an interpreter for the Americans since Salerno, how they were really quite nice to work for; and when they saw that you did a little feathering of your own nest, they took it all in the spirit of business competition. In the affection between "Vilma and Gino Giulia noticed something as bitter and close as mint under grass. Wilma kept grabbing Giulia's hands and caressing them as she reminisced of high life in Trieste and Tripoli. Gino got into a conversation with Gennaro on fencing and swimming and calcio. In track, alas, Gino had hardened his arteries before his time. Wilma's mouth, except when she laughed, was a long generous sphincter of carmine. During all this badinage Elvira just sat lean­ ing her chins on her bosom and gasping with delight that she was at last getting a taste of high society. But Wilma, whatever she was or had been, was a wise woman. Love and tricks and shrewd­ ness and irony dropped from her lips into Giulia's ear as most women burble platitudes. She told Giulia that no woman need ever condescend in this life; no, not even if she worked in a casino. Giulia never forgot what Wilma told her that morning. time, TIr!t made Ciulla made The 0 Of a mulle at the to the Ie!! fu tone thewH taKing Mor� that c1 TOere Two n� what A of Radl Dollar, ni!!]ee til] he tnrico Demet� and Lu oragge GIULIA 237 de tn�lIl� cket analli d tneffil1!1: interell �: balanc�a � d, �ne �l �\'aln'l �rr. wallnme e homGiru � wiln 1i�:: ide 01 Iriltl� \l'alam� The Officers' Club of the Peninsular Base Section opened on an afternoon in late December, 1943. The light of winter Naples crossed Via Roma, cut the standards on the balconies, and grazed the parquet of the dance floor. Wilma and Elvira sat behind high enclosed cash desks and sold books of chits for drinks. Giulia's post was a small throne behind a long directorial table with a silver salver of Spamwiches and chocolate eclairs. For seven hours it was her function and her duty to lift up these refreshments on a silver spatula and put them into the wax paper in the hand of the pur­ chaser. She could look across the dance floor and watch Wilma at her cash desk. Wilma's pose was to lean Sapphically on her hand and lazily to accept cigarettes from officers. The major had ordered all his girls out of their pretty dresses and into Mother Hubbards of the hue of discolored wallpaper. He did this, he said, because he knew the desires of men in war­ time. His aim was to make his girls as mouselike as possible. At first Wilma and Giulia raged because the faded Mother Hubbards made them look like graduates of the Pompei orphanage. But Giulia soon found out that at closing time at the bar it would have made no difference if she'd been wearing a washed-out pea pod. The officers came around anyway. Of all the major's employees only Elvira was sad. She moped and mulled behind her cash desk. Nobody came to her to buy chits. So at the end of two weeks the major fired her, advising her to go up to the Anzio beachhead, where it was darker and the men were less fussy about what they looked at. Elvira returned to her family, to be locked up every night at curfew time. She said she'd hated the whole vulgar job from the start, and had only been talked into taking it because she was too goodhearted. More men than women worked at PBS Club. The major said that Giulia and Wilma were simply the dash of sugar in the staff. There was a corps of waiters, tricked out in white ties and tails. Two bars functioned simultaneously, for the major roared out that what American officers wanted for relaxation was a combination of Radio Ci ty Music Hall, Minsky's, Jack Dempsey's, and the Silver Dollar. What he meant by this Giulia never learned. And the major, his sleeves rolled up, personally schooled the Neapolitan bartenders till he said they could get a job anywhere in New York. They were Enrico, always melancholy and almost sweetly pock-marked; and Demetrio, that acute little rat who couldn't stop having children; and Luigi, who rolled his eyes on either side of his huge nose and br agged or his friendships with German officers and sang "Firenze ilieu� :no �Ol inw: 'flU ana �I�; [orcnilli[i lon� �eneNI 3 jUll lal!1� tthallnel1 lI'hatel'ertl lan01flrf!; s ear � m� woman n�; lI'OfKea i�: at mornin!, 238 GrTHE GALLERY Stanotte"; and handsome Sergio, who'd somehow got trapped in Naples from Torino and never talked to anybody, but kept a diary and lived in the vibrant and closed sweetness of his own nostalgia. Then there were the waiters who shot across the polished floor with their coattails clanging like gossips' tongues, banging their trays on the bar and calling for Eight Jeeen e J ooos over the orchestra. Of these there was first of all Giulia's brother Gennaro, who kept himself aloof from the rest. She never discovered where he got his tails. Gennaro had taken to brilliantining his hair, which glistened like phosphorus. He now spoke perfect American, bragged much with the American officers, called his sister keed or mouse or butch. Giulia watched the American nurses gasping for Gennaro. And there was Furio, the tiny Communist who was once a tenente di vascello in the Regia Marina and spent his Fridays off at party meetings in the Vornero. And there was Alfredo and his mustaches, who'd made what he hoped was his pile in a Brooklyn barbershop and had come back to Naples to die in peace. But a bomb had got the house and the family for which Alfredo'd slaved in the Brooklyn barbershop. Alfredo said grazie too many times for a tip of ciga­ rettes. His bows to majors and colonels made his chin almost touch the floor and his coattails lash up his spine. There was also a troop of Neapolitan ladies and gentlemen who did odd jobs about PBS Officers' Club. They didn't belong to the white-collar crowd. Giulia soon got bored with seven hours' sitting behind her sandwiches and looking like a madonna, as the rnajor had instructed her to do. So she watched everything. She observed Gaetano the electrician climb ladders in his sandals and replace burnt-out bulbs in the chandeliers. From her table she might also observe the sales talks and outraged nobility of Signora Anna Negri, who stood beside her showcase on her aching feet and sold miniatures of Capri or cameos especially tailored to the mothers of Americans. The major's retinue reported to work at 1630 hours each after­ noon. They trailed chilled and peeved up the sharp noble stairs to the second floor of the Banco di Napoli, each carrying his or her supper: mozzarella and black bread and tomatoes and an egg wrapped in last night's newspaper. Giulia used to listen to them talk as she held her own black market supper tight against her small sharp breasts and marched up the staircase. How they talked! They couldn't live on the ninety lire a day the major was paying, nor on the leftover smelly old cheese sandwiches, nor on the old choco- illue �I'thewg alive! reputat born to it aiL 1 behind till her relembl �ioux F Both (alh de be�an t lou�ht �elture enterpd on the Ciulia, majors Witna Ciulia treated !nelea mOCKin Wilma's elo�uenl timel trumpet men loy taln de oetween tnemaj, tUrtle·ne toWil witn as ner face lad for J Whe � I • ---. - - . .., /--i =- t� otuu x 239 linea ��:, �ln� tne: I over t� r Genn�� ereawoe: hair,\\oili n, Dra�l�: rmoU)1r,: r Genn�l, e a tenm!i offatrm mUlta(06 bar�nnf;: mbhaQ�: e Broohl)l late eclairs which they were allowed to carry out of the club when the cream became like pus. As Giulia mounted that staircase every afternoon, all of Naples in the winter of 1943-44 was around her ears: babies freezing because there wasn't any firewood, American­ issue pasta that turned to gray entrails when you put it in the pot, the sugar at wild prices, whose office boss (God love himl) was buried alive in last night's bombing, what girl had finally gih:n up her reputation and gone with the Allies, the rate of Negro children born to Sicilian women. Giulia knew only that she was numb from it all. Then she would put on her Mother Hubbard and sit down behind her sandwiches and play tittattoe with an American captain till her eyes sang with pain, or listen to an American colonel who resembled her Papa tell her why he hadn't won the mayoralty of Sioux Falls, wherever that was. Both Giulia and Wilma had their own following. Around her cash desk Wilma attracted young airplane drivers whose tongues began to drip after their eighth Martini. For Wilma's benefit they fought all over again the bombing sorties out of Foggia. They gestured and goaded one another into new heights of theatrical enterprise in their tales, as little boys vie to entertain a little girl on the sidewalk. And Wilma also had a patronage that intrigued Giulia. These were bright and disillusioned parachute captains, majors from rich Baltimore families, lieutenants who wrote verses. With all these characters Wilma held court. She was magnificent, Giulia thought. Wilma knew what was in God's mind when He created Woman. When Wilma entertained her boys at her cash desk, she leaned slightly back from them in tender hauteur, her eyes mocking and affectionate from inside their azure mascara shadows. Wilma's mouth was too big, but it was in such constant motion of eloquence that Giulia was never sure how large it was. And some­ times Wilma's laugh of protest came through the dance band, a trumpet all her own. Giulia saw that Wilma loved men. Therefore men loved Wilma. Or when no men were clustered about Wilma's cash desk, Gino would visit her from his office. He was liaison between all the Neapolitans and the mournful lieutenant who was the major's assistant. By privilege of his caste Gino wore only a turtle-necked sweater and tweed trousers. He'd talk long and low to Wilma, their faces scarcely apart. Often he'd make love to her with a speed and surety and intimacy which caused Giulia to turn her face away. The spectacle of this light bandit love made her sad for hours. When Giulia first took her job at PBS Club, Mamma had all sorts tlemenwt: e1on� to � our)' �lttl�: I the maj�: 'he oDlm� anorer1a[i e ml�ntt. 'Q11ora Anm J ! eet ana I�!. emotnm�! ieacllaftrl' bleltairlW � hil orne ana an � ten to tn� Oit her Ima� [aIKeo! 105 pa�in�1 n� Ie old cnoro - til /' /"'�. -_. � - • I .' ", , A • ,"�� • - ",. // " If. I 240 THE GALLERY GI had tc a mas cross. guesse( ing gir waftel andLal it to h� chaplai child, 1 officers �redato -Ha ing up -Oh whips al -It night I The I Wllloat -Giu BOHon I '" err. mea to �he la of cautions to her daughter, reminding her that Italian girls were trained to handle men. Perhaps Giulia, to be on the safe side, ought always to carry a small dagger? Giulia laughed painedly and Wilma shrieked at the idea as they sat sipping coffee by Mamma's couch. For indeed Giulia did carry about her an armor deceptive as a cobweb. Officers used to lean over her by the hour. They asked her what was the Italian word for love. They told her that she was as lovely as their sister Elaine. Sometimes at closing time when they were tight Giulia noticed something painful and cruel in their eyes, but it faded when they looked at the down on her cheeks. She knew what they wanted of her, but no one ever framed it to her. And Giulia came to learn much of the world's men simply by observing them. She doubted that she'd marry Pasquale when he came back from his imprisonment in Oran. One evening in August, 1944, she was sitting on her small enclosed throne, the cash desk of the bar at PBS Officers' Club. The boys were jammed four deep at the bar; the air was silky gray with cigarette smoke. The officers kept up a roaring and a laughing over their drinks, a curtain which was in its turn pierced by the public-address system piping in the orchestra from the dance floor. For the major was determined that in no place in the club should there be any silence. He told the sad lieutenant who was his office boy (and the lieutenant told Giulia) that they were endeavoring to avoid that stuffiness which always endangers a men's club. By now Giulia was used to American noises and to the American idea of living loudly and in public. The dais on which she sat was so walled that in her six-hour shift she could cross or uncross her legs without anybody's seeing the results. At her right hand she had a stack of chit books and a lined roster to be signed by all who bought her tickets. At her left was an English dictionary and a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin. She'd make her sale with an automatic swift smile, then reimmerse her­ self in her novel. The tumult of the bar would die in her ears, and she could forget that she was the only woman in a vaulted roomful of drinking men. She was halfway through Uncle Tom. Next she'd lined up Gone With the Wind� which she possessed in both English and Italian. By collating both copies she figured that in another month her English would have arrived at perfection. Long ago she'd dropped the Oxford accent she'd learned from her maestra at the liceo. On this August night the officers hadn't bothered her. In eight months at PBS Club she'd polished up the brushoff tactics 'Wilma ana turn -Goo -Goo� �he wa wilh the Jnea he rnat was for the a remembe !i�hed an IlilJ wit lne shut GIULIA 241 Walnll[ endeavor, n'l eM" mericant had taught her. But just now opposite her leaning on the bar was a most simpatico person. On one tab of his collar he had a silver cross. By a little questioning Giulia proved to herself what she'd guessed when she first saw him-that he was a priest. He was drink­ ing gin and juice. He minded his own business, except that every so often he gave her a kind smile. He spoke to her in both English and Latin. When she got stuck on a word in her novel, he'd explain it to her, poising his brown finger on the pages of her book. This chaplain's hair was cropped to the bone. His face had the glow of a child. To Giulia he was a contrast with all the other American officers at the bar, whose faces were angry or soiled or lined or predatory. -Have you many Simon Legrees in America? Giulia asked, look.. ing up from her book. Her forehead was resting on her hand. -Oh lots, the priest said laughing. But we've taken their horse­ whips away from them. -I take this book home with me every night, said Giulia. Last night I read where Little Eva dies, and I cried myself to sleep. The priest laughed again and rocked back and forth on his combat boots. -Giulia, you're great. I wish some of the bobby-soxers in my Boston parish could see you. They wouldn't believe you existed. . . . Crying yourself to sleep over a book I . . . American women used to do that fifty years ago ... but not now. She laid her novel face down and searched his face. The bar was weighted with the stifling August air. She felt the tiny ringlets fan over her moist brow. -Am I so different, Father? she asked earnestly. -Well, frankly, Giulia, you're out of this world.... Then his face rushed a wild crimson, and he set down his glass and turned away. -Good night, Giulia, and God bless you. -Good night, Father, and thank you. She watched him leave the bar through its lurid smoke. He was with the 3rd Division, which was crowding the streets of Naples. She'd heard that soon there'd be an invasion of southern France. That was why in August, 1944, you couldn't turn around in Naples for the americani. There were more of them here now than she remembered when the city fell in October of last year. Giulia sighed and resumed her novel. She found that her thoughts were still with the priest, not with Signora Harriet Beecher Stowe. � she shut her book and thrust it under her dictionary. ner �ix'��. 00d"11�:: lJoobanl " Atnerl: Cavin, )� Iffimer�k nere�II�' ulted roorof, 'n, �ext)� ootn In�l� r in ano� n. Lon� � her mar!: her. In 1i:: aeries i\'1� I' / __ . ",,-�=-J� __ :. ., .' . . � .. -»� _ ... - / 242 THE GALLERY GI -j Giuli Th other! Giull: Onlr on d� Thl Via �Giulil OffiCe]ned!tan! tiler I own t of the rerO!� wa!D oreaK (i�are awar nar!] amerila!lUffi four·o! tnat!! -B real! I -y -� nn�er nau�n nau�n He �ut al tnou� tne p� li\'in� in� an ana th And ritner Then there came to the only open space at the bar a florid major clasping the waist of an American nurse. Giulia'd never got used to seeing women in officers' greens and wearing lieutenant's bars. Most of the American nurses had been gracious to her, saying that she was a dream. But this major and this nurse exuded an ugly reckless giddiness of alcohol. The nurse snuggled into the major and chuckled. She was a stout blonde, her cap set madly on her dyed hair. She had also a double chin. She began to size up Giulia, going all over her dreary Mother Hubbard with eyes like a parrot's. -Sell me some chits, baby, the major said. Don't just sit there and look like a doll. -Please sign the paper, Giulia said, pushing it and a pen toward him. -Well, just who does she think she is? the nurse said, blowing cigarette smoke into Giulia's face. Giulia's eyes watered, but she said nothing. -A mighty pretty piece of quail, the major said to the nurse, indicating Giulia with a whistle. -Herbert, the nurse said, don't g� ve me any of that crap that she reminds you of your daughter. I've heard that crap out of you before. The nurse leaned her head on the major's shoulder and closed her eyes. Her double chin bobbled while she swallowed her drink. Then she leaned close to Giulia. -Why don't you use lipstick, girlie? -1 have naturally good color, Giulia said. And lipstick is hard to get in Naples this year. And if 1 put too much on, my mother would have me wash it off ... -Well, listen to that now, said the nurse. Don't get on your high horse with me, girlie. 1 have to take enough crap on the ward in the daytime. 1 didn't come here to have the likes of you insult me.... I'm a commissioned officer in the American Army in case you don't realize it, girlie. I've a good mind to report you to the military manager.... 1 could have you thrown out on Via Roma with the rest of them ... -Oh dry up, Mary, the major said. Why don't you buy her some Ii pstick from your own PX? -I'd croak first, the nurse said, her double chin jiggling. Let's get the hell out of this flea joint.... Get the jeep and drive me back to Aversa.... I'm all sweaty. 1 can't beat this damn heat. GIULIA -And just mind your p's and q's with me, girlie, she added to Giulia. I'd hate to tell you what I think of you Ginso women. The nurse and her major went out of the bar nudging one an­ other, the major protesting that he hadn't made eyes at Giulia. Giulia watched their exit. Then she laid her head in her hands. Only for an instant, for the major insisted that his girls look sharp on duty. Through the open windows of the Bank of Naples looking out on Via Rome the sultry music of the Neapolitan night came up to Giulia, an undertone discernible even through the rumble of the officer's bar. She could all but distinguish the press of the women's heels on the pavements beneath her, could almost see the Neapoli­ tans lounging in doorways and the scugnizz' peddling things till they must leave the streets at curfew hour. This murmur of her own town had a certain meaning for Giulia. The simulated gaiety of the Americans in their bar had none. She was weary. The very repose of sitting and selling chits or sandwiches for eight months was beginning to fatigue her. Wilma and the other girls could break the monotonly by ducking down behind the cassa for a quick cigarette. Lately she noticed that she'd a headache when she walked away from the club around midnight. Perhaps it was the war. Per­ haps it was Naples in August, 1944. Perhaps she was what the americani called fed up. But it did seem to her that her life was assuming the quality of a grinning automaton who worked on the four-o'clock shift. She knew that she was giving nothing of herself, that she was turning into a slightly stale vase of flowers.... -Buck up, Giulia, said an officer, buying some chits. Life is real, life is earnest. -Yes, Giulia said, lowering her eyes. -So ye won't talk to me tonight? the officer said, waggling a finger. Okay, don't. I'll go and shoot the breeze with Wilma. She's naughty.•.• I like em naughty. Why don'tcha wise up and get naughty too? He left her in. an irritation. Giulia sold more books of chits, but all the time her mind was running in its own groove. She thought of her fidanzato Pasquale. Every week his letters came from the PjW enclosure in Oran. They were flatulent and lamenting, living over the years 1940 and 1941. They were full of noble whin­ ing and quotations from Leopardi. He kept telling her that Italy and the Italians were done for. And Giulia thought of the Neapolitan girls she'd grown up with. Either they'd gone giggling over to the Allies for what they could n jjgglin�, � � and dnv�) � damn b�� 243 � I : �"'� -_. - - . ".' '. .�,' � --_.- / .. 244 THE GALLERY GI to wH cold, Giu tearss -w riange �he Ameri �he pee talKing The te heanfI returnel-Me �ia, Her j maae G Ituriillr olinalr -Yo rrienasl -No Know ro totilis IN's oe -Yes, TfieDlItalian) le� colla -Yes, rletelr h �e love romes, , Irrained 1 ",mere This} looKed Uj liKe a we �e smilel IroKe,it � hideo1 �irr tah get, or else their mothers had locked them up for the duration. She knew that the lives of all Neapolitans had been cut in two. They might all be said to have died; yet she doubted if they'd had a rebirth, though their bodies went right on living. Only herself seemed unchanged, moving in some orbit of her own that had no relation to any reality. On this night in August, 1944, Giulia was lonely. She was the only Neapolitan girl who was hewing to her own destiny, as though the war had never been. Thus now in her breast she felt a pulse of fierceness and resentment when she looked at the Naples of August, 1944. There was nothing here now that offered her any consolation or the old quiet delight she once took from life: the sip of a glass of new wine, the walks with her girl friends (she'd none now, though she visited many), and that old pleasure she used to get from combing out her hair before going to bed. All these simple processes and habits had become routine and zestless to her. She felt like a starving person who has lost the taste for food. She wondered if she were dying of staleness. -0 Dio mio, she said fiercely to herself, su, sul coraggiol ... She wondered to what a pretty pass she'd come that often now she carried on dialogues with herself. And it was all very simple, for she saw clean through the rhetoric of Italian. She wished to be loved. This craving had crystallized in Giulia during her eight months at PBS Club. But she wished to be loved according to the old standards of honor passed down through generations of Italian mothers. She wasn't interested in something mad and fragrant for a few nights, such as she sawall about her in Naples of August, 1944. Before the fall of Naples she'd been on the right path to be loved according to her lights. She saw the purpose of her training, to be an Italian girl of softness and dignity. Nearly all Italian women had these traits. But many had abandoned them in the catastrophe that was rending Italy. Giulia had abandoned nothing. Now as a result of still living as she'd been taught to live, she found herself like an island, off by herself. She wondered if she were mad. She feared she'd schooled her soul for something that could never again materialize in Italy. She was objective enough to know that in a normal time she'd have had a quietly happy life. She'd have been a good wife and a good mother. That was what women did best. But how were these things to be now? Sometimes she got such a perspective on herself that she seemed a quiet feast set on a table GIULIA 245 to which no man would ever come. Now the food was growing cold, and all the loving pains of the cook were wasted.... Giulia couldn't resist laying her face in her hands. She felt her tears squeezing through her tightly locked fingers. -Why you're crying, a voice spoke to her. Ma Lei non deve piangere COS! amaramente.... Perche? She looked up and made a grab for the handkerchief that an American captain whom she'd never seen was holding out to her. She peered swiftly up and down the bar. Everyone was drunk and talking wildly. No one had noticed her disgraceful giving-way. The tears in her eyes stopped quite suddenly. She turned away her head from the American captain and blew her nose. Reality returned to her in wave upon wave of mortification. -Metterei volentieri mille fazzoletti Sua disposizione, the captain said. Her joy at being addressed in formal Italian by an American made Giulia weak. She gripped both sides of her cash desk, smiled stupidly, and returned his handkerchief to him. She reached blindly for her green bag to take out her own. -You mustn't speak Italian to me, she said. Among my American friends I speak American. -Now who taught you that pretty speech? the captain said. I know you're too sharp a girl to think that the people who come to this club are your friends. So don't begin with a hypocrisy ..• let's be honest with one another from the start, shall we? -Yes, said Giulia, I do so want someone to be honest with. The brazen sound of this speech in English (she still thought in Italian) stunned her. She felt her color coming up over the shape­ less collar of her Mother Hubbard. -Yes, the captain said, setting down his glass, let us be com.. pletely honest with one another.... I'll be honest with you. You're the loveliest girl I've ever laid eyes on. And your loveliness comes ... from being ... just there.... I walked into this smelly strained room, expecting to find nothing. And I find you ... just ... there ... how wonderful. ... And I'm not drunk either. This American captain was the ugliest man Giulia had ever looked upon. His face was square. In his combat boots he looked like a wooden robot. His hair was gray at the temples. Yet when he smiled or gestured with his long gentle hands, or when he spoke, it seemed to her that granite dissolved into music. He was so hideous that he made her want to laugh, as at a gnome in a fairy tale. Yet her laughter at him turned back on herself. In his tanOa�: oili�n, � {�W ru!�l , Bdol�� naccoll an Jt�[ nan t�a ne tnat �i are!ulti eli Il�eZ �ne {WI: nev�r a� IV tnat i�i nave� ,en ilia� � got !Ud,i t on a u� - l I -_. �� • 1 .' • '-..... ;.r ...... '" ... - • 246 THE GALLERY G first contact with her this captain had beckoned her into a peace Eng! in which he himself moved. This peace wasn't specious. Giulia wa�] sensed it was a solid block which only his death could shatter. that, Within five minutes she thought that this captain had always been le�ta, resident some place inside her, had chosen this moment to step She out and introduce himself. For he had a way of allaying her doubts citr H before she uttered them. He knew her, and she knew him, as though afro all their lives they'd instinctively been preparing for one another. lived -You're smiling now, the captain said. That's better. Tell me thea' that you never smiled at anyone that way before. along -No, said Ciulia, hardly daring to look at him, I never have. Carroj For the rest of the evening till the bar closed Giulia and the the H American captain talked together. Quietly, when the spirit moved !tand� them to say something; casually, without effort. He leaned opposite 01 pro her on the bar. Never too near or too familiar, because the externals rort U weren't necessary. Something else in them was touching. And there Daleo was respect for each other's privacy, like two civilized people bow­ ing in a maelstrom. The bar ceased to exist for them. Giulia con­ tinued to sell chits. Even when she took her eyes from him to count chits or change or to speak to the officer purchasing, she knew that this captain was with her. From this moment on he wouldn't leave her. Some force had come up under her and was buoying her up as she'd never swum before. And she'd look into that face with no redeeming trait of beauty to make a man desir­ able. Then a laugh of the wildest joy would seem to smother her. He responded to everything she thought or said as though, well, Wil that was exactly what he'd expected her to think or say. Diaz,:-We're not mad, the captain said. Sanity is so marvelous. �B�CIYet Giulia in her bed that night was sure she was mad. She ITom t laughed and cried till the sun came up over Naples. Looking at wuple her sorry face in the morning, she laughed again and fell back on �rted her bed. cynical -Si, sana pazza, she said. Non potrei essere cosl felice. . . . Thi! I That afternoon Giulia knew she'd gone mad, but in a precise taKing 1 and scheming way. She put on and took off nearly all her dresses. railing; She experimented with her hair, ending by doing it the old way GinoJ! r with the delta of ringlets around her brow. Mamma from her �a!!iom couch kept calling out Whatever on earth was the matter with wnite fi: Giulia? And Giulia only smiled from before her mirror, her mouth in the' full of hairpins. Finally she put on her green frock, her green The wh shoes, her green Meravigliosa hat with the green bow. Then she IVa! low tucked under her arm the copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the ner feal GIULIA English dictionary. Mamma, inspecting her, pointed out that today was neither Sunday nor a giorno di festa. To which Giulia replied that, given the right frame of mind, every day was a giorno di festa. She went down into the streets of Naples. In August, 1944, the city had a smell of baking stone shot through with the spicy tang of mandarini sold in the corner wagons. In that salita where Giulia lived the corrugated iron walls of the public urinal impregnated the air 'with an acrid fume poignant as history. She walked quickly along humming to herself that tune "Polvere di Stelle" by Hoagy Carmichael. She swung her green bag so gaily that shoeshine boys in the public garden of Piazza Municipio turned round at their stands and called out to her invitations that had an American tone of provocation. She had also to pass the palazzo where an American port battalion was quartered; the Of's were hanging out of their balcony windows in their undershirts, chewing gum and swapping with one another observations on current events and Neapolitan girls with whom they were shacking. Giulia's passage provoked a madrigal of whistles. The sentinel at the barbed wire, a GI of more feudal heritage, presented arms to her. Ordinarily she'd have cast down her eyes and felt her body go taut, but today she smiled and looked him straight in the face. -Come stare? Tu molto buono, the sentinel said, shifting his carbine back to its shoulder sling. -Grazie assai, Giulia said. Wilma and Gino were living together in two rooms on Via Diaz. They were quite comfortable by pooling their salaries from PBS Club and by drawing American rations that Gino'd promoted from the quartermaster. They were easily the happiest unwed couple in all Naples. Their prosperity and their love were sup­ ported by the Americans, whom they both cherished with the cynical devotion of people below stairs. This afternoon Giulia found them where she'd hoped she would, taking the sun from their second-story balcony, leaning on the railing and holding hands. They talked incessantly to each other, Gino's mouth against Wilma's hidden ear, whispering ironies and passions. Gino was wearing his turtle-necked sweater and a pair of white flannels. His brilliantined curls wriggled like garter snakes in the Neapolitan sunlight. Wilma had on a blue silk kimono. The white globes of her breasts twinkled in the sun. Her blue hair was low over her forehead; her rouged and mascaraed face made her features sharp and clear to GiuIia, who was standing thirty 247 II' , / -_. �� • • I .' • rrti't • _: -�=_... ,. - --- �-- "r 248 THE GALLERY GI feet below the doting couple. Wilma sent up her scream of welcome. -Ho bisogno di te, Giulia called up to the balcony, beckoning urgently up to Wilma. -Giulietta, aspetta un po'! Wilma cried and vanished from the balcony, roguishly tucking her kimono about her creamy shoulders. -Ciao, Giulietta, Gino said, leaning out over Giulia. -Ciao, Gino, said Giulia. After a while Wilma appeared on the sidewalk and took Giulia's arm. They waved good-by to Gino on his balcony and whisked off along Via Medina at a businesslike clip. Wilma'd put on a dramatic hat with a veil and had applied more paint so that her generous flamboyant face glistened like porcelain under the veil. With her breezy tact she didn't even inquire what Giulia wanted of her. Obviously she remembered her ancient promise to be Giulia's chaperone in any emergency. =-Come mai sei cosi cambiata in una notte? 'Vilma said chuckling. By this one sentence Giulia knew that this wise girl was in on her secret. Wilma smoked a cigarette through the mesh of her veil, giving her the appearance of a network on fire. They turned up Via Diaz, arriving at the Intendenza di Finanza Building. In August, 1944, this was the headquarters of the Peninsular Base Section. Without any difficulty they got by the MP and into the cool foyer, for Wilma had a pass. As they seated themselves on the bench by the information booth, Giulia suddenly asked what would Wilma think if she married an American? Wilma gave out a jolly cackle, patted her hand, and said that Giulia for quite some time had been spoiling for an American. They didn't say much while they waited. Giulia's body went into her usual meek relaxation. Inside however she felt like a faggot of dynamite. Wilma smoked two cigarettes. At all officers who passed by she gave a benign look. For by now Wilma and Giulia knew every American officer in Naples who drank at PBS Club. Some stopped and kissed Wilma's hand and exchanged veiled obscenities with her. And they bowed and said Hi to Giulia. Wilma held a little salon in the cortile. At seventeen hours the court filled up with officers and Gl's coming down from the offices above. The GI's went shooting out into the streets of Naples for their mess and the long questing Neapolitan evening. The officers carried themselves more stuffily. They moved in tight groups, talking shop and vengeance and pro­ motions. For the PBS officers were quite different from the combat officer GiuJi� was Ii then I -n �he Afte feeling whethe a�ainsl -Eo Wiln mannel Her KhaKi � his han ana wei si�h a�1-Ma Dr this, Giuli introau It was tenaing rmon unGer �artain Wilma, witn �o own pe -Ma For a Giulia's men�, One face ilieady eacn otl Italian lion of was by n te�ect g Wilma ;. . .. "J _ '�___, --'---. �. •. , GIULIA 249 officers who descended on Naples for their leaves from the front. Giulia watched them all go by from under her green bonnet. It was like counting sheep. She peered quickly at the faces of each, then lowered her eyes to the green bows of her tiny slippers. -Dov'c, dov'e? Wilma whispered nervously. She was taking it almost as hard as Giulia herself. After a stretch of watching faces and confessing to a sinking feeling that maybe He wasn't coming after all, and wondering whether she'd gone too far, Giulia suddenly planted her elbow against Wilma's fruity Hank. -Eccolo che viene, Giulia said. Wilma gave a sigh and gathered herself up in her noblest manner. Her Captain came gravely toward them. He'd been planting his khaki cap over his right ear. Catching sight of them, he dropped his hands to his sides, then squared out in a gesture of surprise and welcome. His ugly face fired into a smile. Giulia heard Wilma sigh again, gustily. -Ma! ... said Wilma, and Giulia had no idea what she meant by this. Giulia made Her Captain a curtsy of humility and joy. She introduced him to Wilma, who broke out into praise and effusions. It was one of those things that Wilma did gorgeously well, pre­ tending that she was merely renewing the acquaintance of the person presented to her. But all the while (Giulia knew) from under the veil Wilma's merciless witty eyes were giving Her Captain an appraisal like the last judgment. Nothing escaped Wilma. It was for this reason Giulia'd brought her along: to comply with South Italian standards of decorum, and also to check on her own perceptions. -Ma parla cosl bene italianol Wilma squealed graciously . For a few minutes they all three spoke in Italian. Wilma and Giulia's Captain outdid one another in gallantries and compli.. ments. Giulia just watched and listened, her gray eyes going from one face to the other. Inside she felt proud and gay, for it was already clear that Wilma and Her Captain liked and respected each other. Buon indizio. Both excelled in a mellow worldly Italian chatter of the formalest sort. Both realized that conversa­ tion of this civilized order was a means to an end. Giulia herself was by no means so glib. She was accustomed to sit in a corner and reflect gravely to herself. Yet she derived a delight in watching Wilma and Her Captain hit it off :\I'UIDlI ':l'I�11 !nf [cll'l� .Al�OC Oll'\\'liml! dranlll � nd fX(��: Hi to0i� Cerlanaf lhoolin� , long �U�� more �W[ ance anal' n the com: I I - 11 I -_. ��� • r .' • 250 THE GALLERY Gl Then Her Captain took Giulia's arm ever so lightly, as though Tn a feather had insinuated itself into the crook of her elbow. And the G he observed to Wilma in English: Mam -I've been thinking of my girl all day long. the 0 -You are making no mistake, said Wilma, whose English was a disl slow and stately. was H There was a pause, seemingly contrived by Wilma, in which Capta Giulia and Her Captain looked at each other. Their eyes inter- tnes� laced in hunger and questioning, and Giulia's small doubts were and sl again put at rest. There came to her again that odd mad peace, that lne w sense of being pulled out of the tempest and the dark, of flying (noug upward into the sun. Giulia felt giddy, and she heard Wilma laugh out n at Her Captain: ner e) -Carina la nostra bimba, eh? -1 -Ma sl, said the captain. Ma S1. Un tesoro. . . . -� -Ciao, Giulia, the captain said. -� -Ciao, capitano, Giulia answered. The words came from deep tner'v within her. -1 invite you both to tea, the captain said. -I He placed himself in the middle, took both their arms, and they rou tl walked out into Naples. For Giulia the sun had never been so warm, -B the browns and grays of Napoli so rich. She looked at the thousanas Amen of Neapolitans scurrying on Via Roma, screaming and gesticulating �heland worrying; and she found herself blessing them all: the weary with widows, the frenetic scugnizz', the anxious studenti and studentesse -�Iburbling about their examinations and the spleen of their profes- ao tnsori. All the while during their walk Her Captain and Wilma Tn� chattered of tiny nothings and amenities. Giulia didn't feel as 1taliaJIthough she were left out of the conversation, but rather that with �ualittheir words they were making a garland for her. They were both !rOKe aware of her. Tnen The three entered the Galleria Umberto and made for a cafe. lhft�The bars were just opening. In the center of the Galleria, the focus �ame of the cross that was its floor plan, a Neapolitan in the middle of -N a crowd talked against Russia and II Comunismo. A trio of Italian Giu. soldiers hissed and made scissors motions toward the hair of a girl �een in conference with American GI's. Children scooted along the ealeal walls selling cameos and carrying trays of fried fish and dough. to wis And through the Galleria ran a rumble as though they were all alone underground. For the first time in a year Giulia could look at all tnat a these human faces and feel that maybe there weren't too many on th( people in the world after all. \Vond( I'. •.•• • �_� __ .- ...._� :.._ _ --- - - - . �1---,�'---, •• III -, GIULIA They sat down at the wicker table of a cafe on the pavement of the Galleria. Giulia had never appeared in public before without Mamma or Papa. Her Captain helped her shed her green coat over the back of her chair. For Wilma and herself he ordered a torta, a dish of ice cream, and an orangeade. Wilma lit into whatever was put in front of her, gossiping without pause. She and Giulia's Captain discussed Badoglio, Hitler, and American movies. It wasn't the sort of discussion in which Giulia was at home. But she listened and smiled and shifted her eyes from one to the other as though she were a spectator at a tennis match. In former times she'd have thought herself a nitwit not to be able to engage in their repartee, but now she knew it wasn't really necessary. She felt like closing her eyes and just listening. -This is a conversation piece, Her Captain told her. -A what? Giulia asked, reaching for her dictionary. -A way for ladies and gentlemen to pass their time when they've nothing better to do. -Must I learn how to do it? Giulia asked worriedly. -I wish you wouldn't, the captain said gravely.-I don't want you to be a bluestocking. -Blue stockings? said Giulia, looking down at her own. Do American girls wear those? She suddenly felt frightened. Both of them might be playing with her. -You just be Giulia, the captain said. No American girl could do that, you see. Then Wilma changed her rhythm and got off into a long Italianate speech of set pattern, in which she enumerated Giulia's qualities, as though she were preaching a funeral sermon. She spoke feelingly of Giulia's reserve, piety, industry, and frugality. Then she finished off with a conundrum twist, that she doubted whether Giulia would marry an American. They weren't fine­ grained enough for Giulia, Wilma thought. -No? said the captain, lighting Wilma's cigarette. Giulia saw herself as a statue in green hat, green dress, and green shoes, perched on an auction block. She began to feel ill at ease and wished that Wilma would stop talking. She began almost to wish that Her Captain weren't there either, that she could be alone in her room and brood for a little while. It seemed to her that an issue was being forced and shaped by conventions, when on the face of it it was so easy and so natural. Then she began to wonder if there weren't something more than a little mad about .a�iiru!' all: I�n: ana itU�f of IDlir � 'nanal[ aian'lff: ilieriliali ne)' \\'1[1 � 251 - r i / --'. �-� . , .' . . � - _. �-::", . 252 THE GALLERY GI chanl some cigarf he W2 at the Giuli� Gen�jIt 'I lorestl tfie B broth� countl captailat on, Genn� !ion �I -0 -TI laid, -A wifel -I tain necess Tw Ciulia lowed immin Ciulia oltne brou� 01 dey learlul icama �ot ou lo�ot inolal !ervice Fuenze !trong eclairs on sHvr herself, too secret and private and egoistic. But at this very moment Her Captain reached over, took the tips of her fingers, and squeezed them lightly. -Giulietta is not of this world, Wilma said laughing. -She's not worldly, the captain corrected. And they walked in their threesome back along Via Roma. It was time for Giulia and Wilma to climb the stairs of the Bank of Naples, slip into their chaste Mother Hubbards, and go on duty for the evening. But at the entrance to the club Wilma suddenly said grazie and arrivederLa to the captain and dashed upstairs, leaving them alone together. Giulia was dazed and embarrassed. She prepared to say arrivederLa to Her Captain and follow Wilma. But Her Captain laid his long hands on her shoulders. She saw a convulsion cross his dark hard features. Then he kissed her fingers. -My darling, he said, it mustn't frighten you that I love you. Giulia turned slowly away in hot tears. She groped her way up the stairs like a blind girl. Reversing the principles of Italian courtship, Giulia took the initiative because Her Captain was a straniero. She suddenly found herself so strong and resourceful that she feared she might be wearing the figurative pants, like those American women who appeared on the streets of Naples with slacks emphasizing their buttocks. In this period of Giulia's love Wilma was her second, embodying all the traditional functions of duenna, cicisbeo, and arbiter. It was a role that Wilma loved because her nature gloried in all duplicities. At thirty-one Wilma had a heart as rich and scheming as a dowager or matriarch of eighty. If Giulia in her poised timidity made the balls, it was Wilma who aimed them and fired them to their mark. The process was simply this: gradually to lead Her Captain by threads of silk into Giulia's house, where his intentions would be sounded out. If he passed all the Neapolitan tests, he'd then be secured to the household with chains of steel. Her Captain, know­ ing Italian and the Italians, saw clearly what was going on behind the scenes and grinned wi thin himself. He suffered himself to be led to the slaughter, as cheerful as a sacrificial heifer. He never made any of the breaks or gaucheries perpetrated by most Ameri­ cans when they enter the European marital labyrinth. Giulia's brother Gennaro was the first hurdle to leap, a prickly one in his position as Younger Brother. Gennaro still worked evenings as a waiter at PBS Club. In one year Giulia'd seen hill! I ' • • •••• •• _ •••• " -e-, � I ;> . - - . - ���:---." -, •• 1 GrUllA 253 change from something adored and gilded into a bitter and hand­ some Neapolitan, out for Number One. He dealt in American cigarettes and food. He was now quite rich. Giulia believed that he was the lover of an American WAC captain. He kept his job at the club only to maintain some respectability in Mamma's eyes. Giulia of course (and Papa to a lesser extent) had no illusions about Gennaro. It was Wilma, the great fixer, who delivered the first coup and forestalled any nonsense from Gennaro. In the major's office at the Bank of Naples she presented Giulia's Captain to Giulia's brother. Five minutes later she reported to Giulia that the en­ counter had been as economical and efficacious as lightning. The captain had offered Gennaro a cigarette and lit it. They'd looked at one another like boxers in their corners. Then, Wilma said, Gennaro had folded his hands on his breast in Neapolitan exhorta­ tion and had said in his brand-new business Americanese: -Captain, you know my sister is strictly a ragazza per Ilene? -That fact has always been uppermost in my mind, the captain said. -And are you going to take her to America with you as your wife? -I don't look upon your sister as a week-end vacation, the cap­ tain had said, bristling at the directness, yet aware that it was necessary. Two days later things got going like a clockwork juggernaut. Giulia's Mamma invited Giulia's Captain to coffee. The affair fol­ lowed the rules for the first formal encounter of all parties to the imminent transaction. There were present Papa, Mamma, Gennaro, Giulia, Wilma, Gino, and Elvira the dowd. To mark the austerity of the occasion Giulia's ninety-year-old paternal grandmother was brought in from Caserta. This old lady was there to play the role of devil's advocate, lecturing on the risks of marriage and citing fearful examples of Neapolitan girls who'd been betrayed by Amer­ icans and Negroes. In honor to the occasion, angina or no, Mamma got out of her sheepskin slippers and rose from her couch. She forgot about her heart condition and rustled about the apartmem in black silk, giving instructions on the disposition of the coffee service and reminiscing on how such matters were carried off in Firenze when she was a girl. Wilma brewed the coffee (American) strong and black. She'd also stolen from PBS Club several dozen eclairs and sandwiches made of Spam. These were all set formally on silver trays of Mamma's dowry. f I I - II I -_. ��� - -� .. • ! .' • 254 GITHE GALLERY When Giulia's Captain, precisely at sixteen hours, knocked on the apartment door, he was admitted by Gennaro to a scene as stylized as a Chinese play. On the couch sat Mamma, her double tan tn chin and moles propped over her black silk gown, her fingers having queenly with rings. She didn't look at the captain till he was pre- centage sented to her. At Mamma's right hunched the grandmother in !elve� mauve lace, muttering to herself the part she was to play and peer- marria� ing about with bleary Cassandra eyes. Papa paced up and down joined the salotto with a thick bitten cigar in his hand. He wore his gold out!ide watch chain. Giulia sat demurely by herself on a leather ottoman. le�l pl She must pretend that she had nothing at all to do with the cere- nnishe monies, that she was a timid and nubile slave girl about to be sold �oodh to the highest bidder. She'd known this role since she was a tiny till the girl. But she'd never imagined that some day it would come her made t turn to play it. -M The introductory sallies and pleasantries took five minutes. Papa Eve� in his excitement was lordly and dictatorial. Once he wept. The entire trope was conducted in Italian, everyone using the Lei form, which is sometimes thorny for Neapolitans of the middle class. The paternal grandmother kept lapsing into dialect. Gennaro occasion­ ally lapsed into choice Americanese. Papa, as a kind of marital toastmaster, made his introductory remarks, keyed to Naples in August, 1944. He spoke of the collapse of fascism, of the liberating Allies. Then he became eloquent on prices and the black market. This second section of his prepared discourse was punctuated by comments and illustrative examples from Gennaro and Gino. Now Next it was Mamma's turn. She folded her delicate hands in her [ree of great lap. In her wheezy voice she confessed that Giulia had been worst n engaged to a Neapolitan sottotenente called Pasquale. But that walks, person was to be considered dead because he was an unrepentant an�inaFascist and a prisoner of war at Oran. Pasquale'S family had re- Ri�ole! leased Giulia from her bond. Then Mamma launched into Giulia alone n and Giulia's upbringing. She gave a picture of Ciulia's faults and Bri�idavirtues. But since Giulia was a ragazza seria, her virtues outweighed wflere her faults. The captain was invited to form the opinion that erone. whoever wed Giulia was getting a treasure. dub fOI To all this Giulia's Captain smiled and nodded whenever wapnMamma gasped for breath: �rden -Ehhhhh, sl, gentile signora. · . • li�ht a�Then there was the third and grim act before the refreshments flour ah could be served. The paternal grandmother talked for twenty Caracci( minutes, with gestures, on vice among young women. After its roint 01 GIUllA initial hoarseness her voice was as great as Duse's, falling in periods and strophes through the dingy apartment. She sniffed at Neapoli­ tan trash that walked Via Roma, but discounted these girls as having always been cattive. Then she mentioned a higher per­ centage of girls who had once been good, but now prostituted them­ selves to the Allies per qualche scopo. She whispered of a lurid marriage in which a Neapolitan girl had imagined herself legally joined to an American MP, only to discover that they'd been wed outside the church, and now had a child on the way without any legal proof of who was the father. But the paternal grandmother finished in radiance and optimism, picturing a tiny percentage of good Italian girls who'd shut themselves up in their houses waiting till the right man came along. And to all of this Giulia's Captain made the proper comment: -Ma si figuri un po', che strazi, che sofferenze.... Everybody relaxed after the speeches were over. Giulia from her ottoman smiled on Her Captain. The captain and Papa and Gino and Gennaro had some men's talk, weighty and discerning. Giulia and Wilma withdrew to the kitchen and whisked out the coffee and the sweets. Mamma allowed the captain to kiss her cheek, under a mole. Everybody praised everybody else. The air twittered with Italian delight. The world was good after all. And the paternal grandmother, in reaching greedily for her ninth eclair, fell into the hammered silver tray and got chocolate icing all over her lavender lace. Now that she'd complied with all the formalities, Giulia was free of certain restrictions, though she was bound by others. The worst machinations were over. She might now, for example, take walks with Her Captain if Wilma came along. Once even Mamma, �ntwi angina and all, turned up as the captain's guest in a box for naG II, Rigoletto at the San Carlo. But 0 Dio mio, Giulia could go neither Gilll� alone nor in company to Her Captain's apartment on Via Santa Brigida. In point of fact she shouldn't be alone with him any­ where anytime. But Wilma was an indulgent and winking chap­ erone. Often she contrived to relieve Giulia of her cash desk at the club for one hour at a time. Then Giulia would slip out the back way and meet Her Captain in Piazza Municipio, in the public garden full of rustling figures aimlessly wandering, full of moon­ light and queues before the urinals. Then Giulia had one full hour alone with Her Captain. They'd walk hand in hand along Via Caracciolo. The bay was cobalt under the August moonlight. He'd point out to her the shipping that teemed on the water, the land- 255 r �� -_. . �--- �-� ��----- ......-- .. ' • 'iI� � � • TH E GALLERY256 G ing craft for infantry, sharp metal wedges that rode low on the tide, :l the sulking hospital ships. ;�o� It was on Via Caracciolo that Giulia got her first kiss. -I think often at night, she said, that I must lose you. I'm too thinM happy. . . . -1 They were leaning by a little altar to Neptune in a niche with prollc sculpted conch shells. Below them the fishermen had beached their rou s, boats on a mole, wooden-bellied crescents of tar piled along one -D another like dead whales. Sometimes the light of a motorboat slashed their faces. In an interlude of darkness he tilted up her chin and covered her mouth with his. He drew in her lower lip like a little fig. Giulia was inundated by a new sensation. Concentric circles flowed out from her heart till her whole small body shook. Her hand went around his neck, and they swayed together in the hot darkness. His fingers slipped up from her waist. She felt she was being invaded with a warmth terrible and sweet, a presenti­ ment of dying with delight. Her breath choked up in her throat; she felt that she was being crushed. Something red and beaconlike with a flickered in her mind, crying Not Yet, Not Yet. With a violence, looked not of revulsion, but to keep her mind intact, she released herself. -�e -Puritan, he said. By God, you'll be both wife and mistress, Hn Giulia. -Ye -We must be getting back, she said in joy and terror. I put I oackt, In the next days Her Captain seemed to have sloughed off most I'm go of his marvelous peace. He chafed at the politics and meanness of oelonglbase section life. He said he hadn't been happy since he left his withtH tank outfit. Each day he told her of friends killed a few hundred �om� kilometers to the north of them. Then he began to lecture her on nadn't I ! her adjustment to American life. He told her sadly that to be happy nersh,I as his wife in America she must convert her personality. He said -Yolshe was too utterly dependent on him. That an American wife was ling he something quite different from an Italian wife, shut up in the -Is I house with her children. His words hurt her, though she never told -Do him so. They -And it's this paradox that saddens me, he said. I fell in love peak!, with you, Giulia, because you're something apart from all cheap- -Gil ness. You're everything that women have always insisted that they to tell 1 were, yet rarely succeeded in being. I wonder if in America you �he f could stay that way. -I tl -You think I'm not real? she said hotly. You think me in- -l t capable of being myself anywhere? tonight -I know, I know ... but the noblest Italian life doesn't belong died \Ai -,. -. -, �-.---- -- :--- --. - -- . _ /.0;- '�----I' ... / r II ' "" GIULIA 257 l'm� in the twentieth century at all. . .. There seems to be no mor e room for flowers in this world. -I may be a flower, said Ciulia, puzzled and piqued, but I think I have roots ... and ... what you call in American ... guts. -It's the guts of woman, he said moodily, that ability to be prone' without insulting, to stand childbirth and sacrifice.... But you scare me because I can't find a trace of bitchiness in you. -Do you want there to be? -God no, my darling, he said, sighing and pulling her against him. And Giulia saw with a comic relief that she was stronger than he. That was the way it was decreed to be. She looked detachedly at her superiority with an odd wistfulness. It might be something given her to serve her in the long years ahead. One night he came to their meeting with an air restless and sheepish. It didn't become him. Hand in hand they walked for fifteen minutes along Via Caracciolo. She waited, listening to him with a new ear that had been born in her. At last they stopped and looked out at the bay from the railing. -Sei nervoso, she said reproachfully. Hai qualche segreto ..• He took her hand and rubbed her fingers. -Yes, Giulia, I have.... Tomorrow I'm leaving for the front. I put myself in for it. I thought it over for a long time. I'm going back to the tanks.... It's not fair to you, but it's the way I feel. I'm going up there with all the others.... For that's where I belong.... I'm sick to death of all the Americans in Naples, with their villas and their jeeps and their mistresses. Something snapped in Giulia's heart. She gushed with a woe she hadn't dreamed possible in this world. She felt that God had tricked her shabbily. -You must do what you think is right, she said gently, control- ling herself. -Is that your heart or your brain talking? -Don't be cruel to me ... it's both. They had a long silence. Vesuvius glowed weakly on both its peaks. -Giulia ... you must stay with me tonight. ... Get Wilma to tell your mother you're visiting your grandmother in Caserta. She felt her nails gouge into her palms. -I thought you were different from the rest, she said. -I thought so too. But I've got to make love to you, Giulia, and tonight. ... Suppose ... up there .•. they got me ... and I died without ever having had you? !r / �i I -_. �� _. • I .' •• � - '" - �---� 258 I �i �U;!l war �r il Nap! me �lum (who THE GALLERY -Then that's the way it would have to be, she said. -You must be made of ice, he said. -I'm not made of ice, she answered, feeling her cheeks scalding. When you touch me I know I'm not made of ice. . . . I want your love ... all your love ... just as much as you want mine. I mean some day to give myself wholly to you ... and not to any other man ... -You and your codes of respectability, he cried. In wartime they don't mean a damn..•• All that matters is that we love one another. -I am what I am, Giulia said. I love you. Do you doubt that? This is the first and last time I'll love. I'm made that way. . .. But I won't stay with you tonight. Not ... brutal as it sounds ..• if you were to be killed next week ... -Thank you, my dear, he said roughly. -Oh I know it's all a game, she said. But I'm so made that I must play that game ... call it what you will ... stuffiness ..• respectability ... -You're a fool, he said. -I'm anything but a fool, she said and began to cry. I know all the arguments and all the answers. All women do.... We have to hold you off till we get a ring on our fingers. . . . My mother and her mother before her played that game.... And I shall do so too. . . . Don't you see, my darling? The world is built on such games. Most of those games are invented by women for their own protection ... for their children's protection.... In every woman there are two things all mixed up. . . her heart and her head . . . but that's what makes her a woman.... And you, my darling, will never know me in love till I'm your wife. He said nothing further. They walked back along Via Caracciolo by the statue of Pompey in the little garden with the white railing. Gi ulia was in agony, yet she smiled to herself. She'd gladly pass with him one night in which all their love was rolled up into one knot. But against this, something merciless and logical in her saw the possibility of a lifetime of bitterness and loneliness and aridity. It was a gamble she was willing to make. On such odds her whole life had been predicated. They entered the Galleria Umberto, where the life and the motion had died. There remained only the black heat of Naples in August, 1944. Their loitering footfalls were prescient and austere. -My God, Giulia, her Captain said, you're a fiend. -Why, every woman is, she answered. For she knew he'd be coming back to her. nate �rta DUma rou h, attack! iliat I OlU1 SEVENTH PROMENADE (Naples) I REMEMBER THAT MY HEART FINALLY BROKE IN NAPLES. NOT over a girl or a thing, but over an idea. When I was little, they'd told me I should be proud to be an American. And I suppose I was, though I saw no reason I should applaud every time I saw the flag in a newsreel. But I did believe that the American way of life was an idea holy in itself, an idea of freedom bestowed by intelligent citizens on one another. Yet after a little while in Naples I found out that America was a country just like any other, except that she had more material wealth and more advanced plumbing. And I found that outside of the propaganda writers (who were making a handsome living from the deal) Americans were very poor spiritually. Their ideals were something to make dollars on. They had bankrupt souls. Perhaps this is true of most of the people of the twentieth century. Therefore my heart broke. I remember that this conceit came home to me in crudest black and white. In Naples of 1944 we Americans had everything. The Italians, having lost their war, had nothing. And what was this war really about? I decided that it was because most of the people of the world didn't have the cigarettes, the gasoline, and the food that we Americans had. I remember my mother's teaching me out of her wisdom that the possession of Things implies a responsibility for Their use, that They shouldn't be wasted, that Having Things should never domi­ nate my living. When this happens, Things become more im­ portant than People. Comfort then becomes the be-and-end-all of human life. And when other people threaten your material comfort, you have no recourse but to fight them. It makes no difference who attacks whom first. The result is the same, a killing and a chaos that the world of 1944 wasn't big enough to stand. Our propaganda did everything but tell us Americans the 259 I I, 260 THE GALLERY truth: that we had most of the riches of the modern world, but very little of its soul. We were nice enough guys in our own country, most of us; but when we got overseas, we couldn't resist the tempta­ tion to turn a dollar or two at the expense of people who wert already down. I can speak only of Italy, for I didn't see France or Germany. But with our Hollywood ethics and our radio network reasoning we didn't take the trouble to think out the fact that the war was supposed to be against fascism-not against every man, woman, and child in Italy.... But then a modern war is total. Armies on the battlefield are simply a remnant from the old kind of war. In the 1944 war everyone's hand ended by being against everyone else's. Civilization was already dead, but nobody bothered to admi t this to himself. I remember the crimes we committed against the Italians, as I watched them in Naples. In the broadest sense we promised the Italians security and democracy if they came over to our side. All we actually did was to knock the hell out of their system and give them nothing to put in its place. And one of the most tragic spectacles in all history was the Italians' faith in us-for a little while, until we disabused them of it. It seemed to me like the 'swindle of all humanity, and I wondered if perhaps we weren't all lost together. Collective and social decency didn't exist in Naples in August, 1944. And I used to laugh at our attempts at relief and control there, for we undid with one hand what we did with the other. What we should have done was to set up a strict and square rationing for all goods that came into Italy. We should have given the Neapolitans co-operative stores. I remember watching the American acquisitive sense in action. We didn't realize, or we didn't want to realize, that we were in a poor country, now reduced to minus zero by war. Nearly every GI and officer went out and bought everything he could lay hands on, no matter how worthless it was; and he didn't care how much he paid for it. They'd buy all the bamboo canes in a little Nea­ politan shop, junk jewelry, worthless art-all for the joy of spend­ ing. Everywhere we Americans went, the prices of everything sky­ rocketed until the lira was valueless. And the Italians couldn't afford to pay these prices, especially for things they needed just to live on. For all the food we sent into Italy for relief, we should have set up some honest American control by honorable and in­ corruptible Americans. Instead we entrusted it to Italians who, nine times ou t of ten, were grafters of the regime we claimed to be destroying. aIm bee blaolGin then wei �es it to ast I a�ail nve rro rar the, -ou to! Tho I oud 01 en tune mr, !eeo Tn who iliat rul t� Duma iliat �Iit evil! who' heart aavan �A �If iergea (NAPLES) 261 I remember too that an honest American in August, 1944, was almost as hard to find as a Neapolitan who owned up to having been a Fascist. I don't know why, but most Americans had a blanket hatred of all Italians. They figured it this way: These Ginsoes have made war on us; so it doesn't matter what we do to them, boost their prices, shatter their economy, and shack up with their women. I imagine there's some fallacy in my reasoning here. I guess I was asking for the impossible. This was war, and I wanted it to be conducted with honor. I suppose that's as phony reasoning as talking about an honest murder or a respectable rape. I remember that the commonest, and the pettiest, crime we did against the Neapolitans was selling them our PX rations. We paid five lire a package for cigarettes, which was a privilege extended to us by the people of the United States. To a Neapolitan we could sell each package for three hundred lire. Really big business. A profit of 6,000 percent. Of course the Neapolitans were mad to pay this price for them, but I don't see that it made our selling any the righter. I don't believe that these cigarettes were legally ours -ours, that is, to sell at a profit. They were only ours if we wanted to smoke them. If we didn't smoke, we had no right to buy them Though there was no harm in giving these cigarettes away. I remember that we went the next step in vulturism and sold our GI clothes to the Neapolitans. Then we could sign a statement of charges and get new ones, having made meanwhile a small for­ tune out of the deal. This was inexcusable on any grounds what­ ever. There are loopholes in my cigarette syllogism, but none that I see on the clothes question. Then I remember that there were not a few really big criminals who stole stuff off the ships unloading in Naples harbor, stuff that didn't belong to them by any stretch of the imagination. For all this that I saw I could only attribute a deficient moral and humane sense to Americans as a nation and as a people. I saw that we could mouth democratic catchwords and yet give the Nea­ politans a huge black market. I saw that we could prate of the evils of fascism, yet be just as ruthless as Fascists with people who'd already been pushed into the ground. That was why my heart broke in Naples in August, 1944. The arguments that we advanced to cover our delinquencies were as childishly ingenious as American advertising. -If a signorina comes to the door of my mess hall, the mess sergeant said, making a salad, an she says she's hungry, why, I give 11! / -_. �� • r .' •• :..it - ,,-... ---� � ..... -�--=- ""' . . � 262 THE GALLERY J her a meal. ... But first I make it clear to her Eyetie mind that I'm interested in some thin she's got.... If she says ixnay I tell her to get the hell out. -Of course the only reason I sell my cigarettes, the corporal said, is because we're gettin creamed on the rate of exchange for the lira.... What can I buy in Naples on the seventy bucks a month I'm pullin down? -You've got enough to eat and a place to sleep, said the pfe with the glasses. That's better than most of the world is doing in 1944. -I didn't ask for this war, the sergeant major said. I didn't ask to be sent overseas. Guess I've got a right to turn a buck when I see the chance, ain't I? -You must make the distinction, said the pfc, between so-called honest business tactics and making money out of human misery. But he was only a Jewish Communist; so no one paid any atten­ tion to him. Yes, I remember that being at war with the Italians was taken as a license for Americans to defecate all over them. Even though most of us in the base section at Naples had never closed with an Italian in combat. Our argument was that we should treat the N eapoli­ tans as the Neapolitans would have treated our cities presumably if they'd won the war. I watched old ladies of Naples pushed off the sidewalks by drunken GI's and officers. Every Italian girl was fair prey to propositions we wouldn't have made tc a streetwalker back home. Those who spoke Italian used the tu on everyone they met. And I remember seeing American MP's beating the driver of a horse and wagon because they were obstructing traffic on Via Roma. I don't think the Germans could have done any better in their concentration camps. I thought that all humanity had gone from the world, and that this war had smothered decency forever. -These Eyeties, the mess sergeant said, ain't human beins. They're just Gooks, that's all. -All I know, the corporal said doggedly and worriedly, is that they ain't Americans.... They don't see things the way we do. -They'd steal anything, the mess sergeant said, stuffing a turkey, his mouth crammed with giblet leavings. I remember that other arguments against the Neapolitans, besides the cardinal one, that they'd declared war on us, were that they stole and were filthydirty. I only know that no Neapolitan ever stole anything from me, for I took pains to see that no temptation was put in their way. Though once my wallet was lifted in a New York subway. And for those Neapolitans to whom I sometimes gave an the�ha'jf I suI 1l0� Ani won bot wp �a I ilt �ar lau� one I and Ithei lo�iTI I hay A Neal hea TI tam varie 1I'ito lew I ne�� woo' orag� ican� toat (NAPLES) an extra bar of soap, I noticed that they used this soap joyfully on themselves, their children, their clothes. I've buried my face in the hair of Neapolitan girls. It was just as sweet as an American girl's if the Napoletana had the wherewithal to wash it. I remember that in Naples after my heart broke I decided that a strictly American point of view in itself offered no peace or solu­ tion for the world. So I began to make friends with the Neapolitans. And it didn't surprise me to find that, like everyone else in the world, they had their good and their bad and their admixtures of both. To know them, I'd been working on my Italian. That lovely supple language was kind to my tongue. The Neapolitans were gracious in helping me with it. I met agile dapper thieves who'd steal the apple out of my eye if they could sell it on the black market. But this tribute I must �ay even to the crooks: when I answered them in Italian, they'd �augh and shake my hand and say they were going to try some­ one else who didn't know their language quite so well. I met studenti and young soldiers just fled from the army, baffled and bitter, with nothing but a black bottomless pit of despair for their future. Perhaps I'd have been like them if I'd been on the losing side? I met Neapolitan whores who charged a rate a countess couldn't have earned from her favors in the old days. And I met ragazze and mamme so warm and laughing that in Neapolitan dining rooms I thought I was back in my own house, hearing the talk of my mother with my sisters. This forced me to the not original conclusion that the Neapoli­ tans were like everybody else in the world, and in an infinite variety. Because I was an americano the Neapolitans treated me with a strange pudding of respect, dismay, and bewilderment. A few loathed me. But from most Italians I got a decency and a kind­ ness that they'd have showered on any other American in Naples who'd made up his mind to treat them like human beings. I'm not bragging. I'm not unique. I'm not Christlike. Many other Amer­ icans in Naples made friends they'll never forget. Thus I remember that in Naples, though my heart had broken from one idea, it mended again when I saw how good most human beings are if they have enough to eat and are free from imminent annihilation. I remember that I came to love the courtesy and the laughter and the simplicity of Italian life. The compliment I pay to most Italians who haven't too much of this world's goods is that they 263 - l I --- . ���------ . . .. -- -.;---� -- . 264 THE GALLERY (N __, love life and love. I don't know what else there is, after all. Even in their frankness the I talians were so seldom offensive. An Italian mother told a friend of mine that he could never marry her daughter because he had the face of a whoremaster. And we all laughed. No one was hurt. I remember the passion and the understanding of Italian love. There's no barrier between the lovers. Everything is oxidized at the moment, without rancor or reservation. -Fammi male, amore mio.... Fammi godere da movire... And I remember the storms and quarrels of Italian love, mostly rhetorical. The going to bed is all the sweeter for the reconciliation For I thought that to this people, broken and saddened and dis­ mayed, there yet remained much of that something which had made Italy flower-though not as a nation of warriors. To this day I'm convinced of Italy's greatness in the world of the spirit. In war she's a tragic farce. In love and sunlight and music and humanity she has something that humanity sorely needs. It's still there. Some­ thing of this distillation of noble and gentle grandeur seeps down through most of Italy'S population, from contessa to contadina. I don't think I'm romanticizing or kidding myself. In the middle of the war, in August, 1944, with my heart broken for an ideal, I touched the beach of heaven in Naples. At moments. couldnj and thl mo,vies'l�Ulte taoubts \�sned witn al movies and to 01 tnin Tne taKe m remol �ner mioole orotnel\ wOlld � stooolo �uritr ) lorm pI were fe1 Tnere v witn tn( our per �int 0 Tilis w; limits, � �ut if 1 marrrin Then -n em, YOl test. I remember how the children of Naples pointed my dim concep­ tion of American waste. They'd stand about our mess hall quiet or noisy, watching the glutted riches from our mess kits being dumped into the garbage cans. I remember the surprise and terror in their faces. We were forbidden to feed them, though I heard that combat soldiers, gentler and more determined than we, took the law into their hands and were much kinder to Italian children than we were allowed to be. When I watched the bitten steaks, the nibbled lettuce, the half-eaten bread go sliding into the swill cans in a spectrum of waste and bad planning, I realized at last the prob­ lem of the modern world, simple yet huge. I saw then what was behind the war. I'll never forget those Neapolitan children whom we were forbidden to feed. After a while many of us couldn't stand it any longer. We'd brush past the guard with our mess kit full of supper and share it with Adalgisa and Sergio and Pasqualino. They were only the scugnizz' of Napoli, but they had mouths and stomachs just like us. I remember the wild hungry faces of those kids diving into cold Spam. But our orders were that since America was in no position to feed all the Italians, we were not to feed any. Just dump your waste in the GI cans, men. (NAPLES) 265 But I remember even then thinking and fearing that we'd come to a day when we too, we rich rich rich Americans, would pay for this mortal sin of waste. We've always thought that there was no end to our plenty, that the horn would never dry up. Already I seem to hear the menacing rumblings, like a long-starved stomach. But in Naples in August, 1944, we were on the crest of the wave. We? We were Americans, from the best little old country on God's green earth. And if you don't believe me, mister, I'll knock your teeth in.... And I remember well our first facing of the problem that we couldn't live in Naples as though there were a wall between us and the Neapolitans. There were American clubs and American movies, but only a blind man can carry his life around with him quite that much. Perhaps in Washington the generals had their doubts about the perfect probity of the American way of life and wished to make sure that overseas we wouldn't come in contact with any other. Consequently we were flooded with American movies and with Coca-Cola to distract our wandering attention and to insure that we shouldn't fall into dangerous furren ways IOf thinking. But some of us wondered none the. less. The main leak, I remember, was in sex. It just isn't possible to take millions of American men and shut them off from love for years on end-no, not with a thousand other American distractions. Sooner or later every man's thoughts start centering around his middle. The cold and scientific solution would have been to have brothels attached to all our armies overseas, as other nations of the world have always done. But the American people wouldn't have stood for that. I mean the American people back home. Too many purity lobbies from old ladies who have nothing else to do but form pressure groups to guard other people's morals. And there were few women in our army as compared to our own percentage. There were WAC's, to be sure, but in such a tiny ratio to us. And with the nurses we couldn't go out because they were officers. Thus our perfect chastity was theoretically assured. From the hygienic point of view there were pro stations on every corner of Naples. This was a nice paradox in that every interesting alley was off limits. The army took the point of view: You absolutely must not But if by chance you do.... Finally they had a restriction on marrying overseas. Then we started casting our eyes on the Neapolitan girls. -These Cook wimmin, the mess sergeant said. It's so easy with em. You just walk down Via Roma an some signorina does all the rest. 1/: / -_. '��--- .! .' • f:r'''' ...._ .... : ... ,,_... "-�-::",,,,----,,.....- ..-- 266 THE GALLERY -But, the corporal said, dreamy in his shorts, I don't wanna girls hafta pay for it. I just wanna little girl all my own to love. -There's something very nice about Italian women, the pfc with The) spectacles said. No funny ideas about fur coats and higher income out j brackets and silk stockings, like American girls. And they don't rem! feel they have to discuss books with you that they haven't read ... not that women shouldn't be emancipated to a certain degree, finge as companion to man and as his helpmate But the Neapolitan -] women are so down to earth. First they cook you a spaghet.ti. dinner. !he's ... Then... real I remember that we GI's were used to women in a different tradition. American women, with their emancipation, had imposed ther', their own standards on us. In America most Nice Girls Would. . . KnO\� if you knew them well enough. NearIy all college girls Would, and ra ha waitresses too, if they thought there was a reasonable chance of your eventually getting spliced. And as for the separate career inter women of America, with their apartments-well, they'd abrogated honel to themselves all the freedom of single men. A Career Girl would -� keep you, or you kept her, depending on the financial status of one Italr, or both. And in America there were lots of rich middle-aged ladies never who liked their young chauffeurs or gardeners, but didn't dare Ire marry them for fear of what Cousin Hattie would say. �rlsl But to us GI's the girls of southern Italy fell into two ti.;ht ,t'.lasses jobs only. 'That's where we got stymied. There were the girls of Via camO! Roma, whom the Neapolitans, mincing no words, called puttane. nice� These girls asked fixed prices in either lire or PX rations. They tne �� satisfied for a while as long as we had money, but their fee was �ooa steep for a GI unless he were a big operator in the black market. (abba And then too something in a man's vanity craves something other Tn than a girl who's shacking with Tom, Dick, and Harry. American auell) men are so sentimental that they refuse to have a whore for their (nem girl-if they can help it. That's the schizophrenia of our civilization, lias," with its sharp distinction between the Good Girl and the Bad Girl. Knows Consequently after a few tries, with the fear of VD always sus- neanl pended over our heads, we began to look at the Good women of anA Naples. And here entered the problem of the GI Italian bride. I can be remember that Italian girls began to look sweet to us early. Perhaps But because their virginity was put on such a pedestal. There were few liaes, of us who didn't have access to some Neapolitan home, where we ana were welcomed, once our entree was definite and our purposes be ha aboveboard. We usually got in through a Neapolitan brother. Then made we discovered that there were girls in the family, carefully kept Ire and cherished as novices in a nunnery. It was obvious that these t!le T (NAPLES) girls were interested in us ... if we proposed marriage to them. -1 don't get a minute alone with Rosetta, the corporal said. They treat me swell at her casa, but Mamma doesn't trust Rosetta out her sight for one minnit. An after midnight Papa's always remindin me what time it is ... as if 1 didn't have a wrist watch. -Ah, I keep to Via Roma, the mess sergeant said. Ya can't lay a finger on the others. -But north of Rome, said the pfc with the spectacles, a girl once she's engaged will do anything to satisfy her fiance ... short of the real McCoy. I don't get these fine distinctions in tribal ethics. -These Ginso girls, the sergeant major said, never forget that they're women. That's their strongest and weakest point. They know how to get in ya hair and under ya skin with wantin em till ya have ta slide that gold ring on their finger. -Onelia told me quite frankly, the corporal said, that she was interested in a passport to the States as my wife.... I liked that honesty in her. 1 guess she likes me too. -Us GI's is so hot, the mess sergeant said, that once we leave Italy, these signorinas will never be satisfied with the Eytie men ... never again .... I remember that we Americans brought heartbreak to Neapolitan girls in many instances. There were Negroes who told their shack­ jobs that they weren't really black, just stained that way for camouflage and night fighting. There were mess sergeants who told nice Neapolitan girls that they owned chains of restaurants back in the States. I've often wondered at the face of some of those girls of good faith, arriving in the States to discover they'd live in one cabbage-smelling room over the stairs. There were, I remember, American GI's and officers who most cruelly betrayed and seduced Neapolitan girls, concealing from them and their families that back in the States they'd a wife and kids. These girls weren't in the positic.i of an American girl, who knows the language and can make her own investigations. For the heartless deceit of such as these I sometimes felt shame that I was an American because the life of a pure woman is like a mirror, and can be smashed but once. But I also remember instances of love and good faith on both sides. GI's and officers met Neapolitan girls, fell in love with them, and married them. I see no reason why such marriages shouldn't be happy and lasting, once the girls have learned English and made the not easy adjustment to American wifehood. I remember Lydia, the gay shy mouse who sang in the chorus of the Tcatro Reale di San Carlo. She was courted and won by our 267 268 THE GALLERY A Hil col and st But week H And f, medic. I remember their wedding at Sorrento and their honeymoon at Taormina in Sicilia. Unless the world falls apart, I think that little Lydia and her capitano medico will be as happy in their lives together as human beings ever are outside of fairy tales. I remember Laura, to whom a GI killed at Cassino made two presents. He gave her a baby and a white spirochete. When I see flowers lying crushed in a muddy street, I think of Laura. I remember plump and smiling Emilia, who thought she'd married an MP. The MP disappeared forever after the wedding, and Emilia just sat in the kitchen night after night and wept so bitterly that her heart would have broken if it hadn't already been in tiny pieces. Her mother kept cursing her and asking where were all those allotment checks from America? And her brother yelled that he'd put a razor into the first americano he met on a dark night. And I remember Wanda, stately and blonde, who used to sit by the stove and feel the life stirring within her. We all said she was too big to be having just one. And sure enough she came out with twins whom she christened Mario and Maria. They were brilliant gay babies, the way Italian children know how to be. Wanda hoped they'd grow up strong in St. Louis. She got me to point out that city for her on the map of America. I remember that in Naples in August, 1944, for all the red tape and the army regulations and the blood tests and the warning talks by chaplains, there was still a great deal of human love. And this rejoiced me. For all the ruin and economic asphyxiation we'd brought the Neapolitans, we also in some cases gave them a new hope. They'd been like Jews standing against a wall and waiting to be shot for something they'd never done. And I began to think that perhaps something good might emerge or be salvaged from the abattoir of the world. Though in the main all national decency and sense of duty might be dead, I saw much individual goodness and loveliness that reassured me in my agony. I saw it in some Neapolitans. I saw it in some Americans. And I wondered if per­ haps the world must eventually be governed by individuality con­ secrated and unselfish, rather than by any collectivism of the propagandists, the students, and the politicians. In Naples in August, 1944, I drowned in mass ideologies, but was fished out by separate thinking and will. I remember watching the mad hordes in the streets of Naples and wondering what it all meant. But there was a certain unity in the bay, in the August moon over Vesuvius. Then humanity fell away from me like the rind of an orange, and I was something much more and much less than myself.... ret co !ooero] naked I n� 100 I examin e!t.He mor� Vo withsw Back He he re�ardi -Go -YUI -Go His awaken EIGHTH PORTRAIT Queen Penicillin I\WAKENING THESE MORNINGS IN NAPLES, HE'D TURN ON HIS canvas cot, shove aside his mosquito netting, light a ciga­ rette, and look out at the bell tower of Maria Egiziaca. His consciousness was clear, the way he used to come to as a child and start thinking of what he'd do today. But the deliciousness of those awakenings had gone. Up till last week he'd known them with Marisa. But now she'd gone to Rome. And for days there'd been something in his mind, something crouching that he could escape only when he slept. All day long it sat on his shoulder whispering the red doubts and fears into his ear. He was free only in those first instants of awaking. But with the first few puffs on his cigarette the Idea came back. This morn­ ing It was especially pressing. Today he'd Know. He got up and groped down to the latrine. The sunlight hadn't yet come into this corridor, but he knew the passageway drunk or sober. In the latrine he voided his bladder and stood looking at his naked body in the mirror. By the early August sunlight of Naples he looked like a Moor. Marisa'd loved this color of his skin. He examined his flesh, peering over himself with a wild hushed inter­ est. He knew every inch of himself. Then the Idea broke over him more viciously than in the past four days. His dark skin globuled with sweat. Back in the room he dressed himself quickly. He was shaking. He heard his heart say yes yes yes. And from the other cot Roy was regarding him with sleepy compassion. -Gain to find out this mornin? -Yup. -Good luck, boy. Ya been sweatin this one out. His boots clattered on the stairs of the palazzo. Naples too was awakening in the August morning. By the windows the sandflies 269 , : II : / ___ . �-----1 _ <-_ _-... _# .e_4'ro<�"-h__ .. • U r. -_ 270 THE GALLERY QU I�along 1 pass OL had bu: He cuss path, Therlasleep 1 pavemel weatherl their tn vermilio their rOllthe areathe peel aoove hi eyeless s� of light) oodies i� annihilal nis dark August &OCK, hel -Vie Think'i Roma, � fiim wha Irarrowy iliemselve �ealers as lOOpS and in the pin ruooerst, He turl ilie side, iliatread maniple 0 He was Ii liKe a spa titer theil Inake, Tn !tiffened hung poised in their clouds. And he heard the clatter of the carts in the street and the prickly whispering of the women's brooms as they swept the sidewalks. He walked through the screen door of the mess hall, taking more than his usual pains not to let it slam. The mess sergeant sat at a wooden table littered with lettuce. He looked up with an iron petulance. -Now what, Jo-Jo? Ya feelin hung over? -Nope. Got any black coffee? One of the Neapolitan kitchen help poured him a mess cup full of scalding java and passed it to him. -Grazie, Joe, he said. -Niente, Joe, the Neapolitan said. The metal lip of the canteen cup singed his lips and his tongue, but the coffee flooded down his throat. Again the sweat seeped out through his shirt. He felt the cup teetering against his teeth from the trembling of his wrist. -Va ain't feelin good, Jo-Jo? the mess sergeant said. Ya ain't been on the beam since ya quit ya shackin ... -Nope, he said, setting down his cup, 1 ain't feelin well. -Knock her up or somethin? -Nope. Me an Marisa just broke up. -Well, they's plenty more where she came from, the mess sergeant said, shoving a mound of lettuce wearily away from him. Plenty more. -1 don't want no more. Now in a lewd sweat from the steaming coffee and the reeking Neapolitan morning, he plowed along, his cap on the back of his head and his hands in his pockets. Seeing Vesuvius and the barbed wire round the port enclosures, he decided to smoke a cigarette. As he was lighting his butt with fingers that wobbled, an officer passed. He lowered his eyes. -Say, soldier, the lieutenant said, don't ya salute officers any more? -This ain't a salutin area, sir ... -Shut up an salute me, the lieutenant said. 1 don't know why I don't take ya name an serial number.... Wearin ya dogtags? -Yessir. -Well, get on ya way. Next time watch ya step. Not all officers is as square as me. He saluted again and walked on, replacing his hands in his pockets. He put his cigarette in the farthest angle of his mouth. -, � ii I �----- • - -- . / � :fl, - I' -, �t I I QUEEN PENICILLIN 271 He felt that his shoulders were sagging. He didn't care. He dragged along with his eyes on the ground. For he wished that he could pass out quietly some place, that the March eruption of Vesuvius had buried both Naples and himself under lava as stiff as molasses. He cussed and spat against a tree that grew from the sidewalk in his path. There was no one in the Galleria Umberto except some children asleep like sweaty kittens, and little old men who went over the pavement searching for cigarette butts. From the cornices the weather-eaten angels looked snottily down at him from behind their trumpets. He saw the canvases in the art shops -as daubs of vermilion and ocher and cobalt. The bars were all shut behind their rolling corrugated blinds. The new sun filled every nook of the arcade, microscopically adumbrating the smears on the walls, the peeling posters, the chipped mosaics in the pavement. And above him the empty skylight crisscrossed the sky like veins in an eyeless socket. He remembered the Galleria in past evenings: blots of light leaking from under the bars till curfew time, the smell of bodies in movement, the shrill laughter, and the voices promising annihilation from the heat and the pain. And like a flashlight into his dark hot misery he saw the figure of Marisa swaying in the August darkness, the cleft of her breasts in her gray figured cotton frock, her tiny brown feet. He heard her voice: -Vieni, amor mio ... fammi tua per sempre.... Thinking of the past, he walked across the Galleria into Via Roma. A Neapolitan kid asked him if he wanted to eat; so he told him what he could do with himself. On Via Roma there was the sparrowy life of Neapolitans hurrying to work, old ladies fanning themselves with their morning paper, the screams of the cameo dealers as they set up their displays in the porticos of abandoned shops and ruined tenements. British and American convoys rumbled in the pinched street. In the gutters lay squashed oranges and spent rubbers that had been hurled from the windows above. He turned, crossed Via Diaz, and entered PBS Building from the side. For a while he stood before the red and white canvas sign that read FIFTH GENERAL DISPENSARY. He laid his hand on the bronze maniple of the door. It was as hot as a molten ingot to his palm. He was listening too to his heart throbbing, opening and closing like a spastic fist. It had beat lik� that when he lay. in Marisa's �rms after their lovemaking.... Mansa.... He felt hIS knees begm to shake. There seemed to be a pool of ice water in his belly. But he stiffened his legs and pulled the door of the dispensary open. 272 THE GALLERY It was cool in there. The floor was a pepper-colored parquet. The GI's who worked there stood behind glass wickets like bank tellers. And in the coolness there was a reek of phenol and anti­ septic. As they set up their cages for the day, the GI's called out to one another their piss in and their moanin. They yelled back and forth criticisms of the breakfast they'd just eaten. -I've had Naples! 0 Mr. Roosevelt, can't I please go home? To stop the trembling of his knees and the turbine in his chest, he sat down on a bench near the door. He wondered were his eyes bloodshot. He felt like an ulcerous scarecrow sitting alone in the middle of that cool noisy dispensary, with the click and hum of the dental clinic just beyond. The other GI's were unconcerned and gay. Finally he got up, clutching his cap, and walked to a window that said ADMISSIONS. He ran his tongue over his Iips and looked at the floor. -Ya too early for sick call, sarge, the corporal back of the plate glass said. Go outside an wait a while ... -But I took a blood test ... five days ago, he murmured. -Oh ya did? Imagine that! Blood tests is SOP in Napoli ... -Will ya please do me a favor an look? he said, giving his name. -Okay, okay, sarge, the corporal said. I hate to see a guy sweat. Out of a pigeonhole the corporal took a sheaf of small pink slips and leisurely ruffled through them. With tormenting indifference. -I don't seem to find ya name, sarge Oh wait, here it is.... Outa alphabetical order ... damn that lab . Through a swimming mist he saw the pink slip thrust at him along the counter. A kettledrum was beating in his ears, thudding out Yes Yes Yes and NoN 0 No in acceleration. He saw the mani­ cured fingers of the corporal holding the upper edges of the slip. He read down till he saw the brash rubber stamp and the red crayon r� al ; 1 nal :1 coo J Dr� 000 mu comment: ]OUI Wassermann-Pos Kahn-Pos Everything inside him seemed to whirl up and go down in r crash. Besides the drumming there now came a ringing in his ears. His knees buckled. He gripped the marble counter to keep from dropping to the floor. -Tough luck, sarge, the corporal said. -What do I do now? he said, his vision clearing. For his previous weakness there was now substituted an icy cnlv lao QUEEN PENICILLIN 273 a winw d IOO!N: surety of horror that carried him out to a pinpoint in space. And he saw Marisa's face, her mouth open, her eyes closed, murmuring: -0 come sai bene amarmi, tesoro mio. . . . -Just step into number four, the corporal said briskly and pro- fessionally. He stumbled along by the cages,. clutching the pink slip in his palm, which seemed to be gushing hot butter. He steered through a railing and into a long corridor with clinics and rooms opening off it. He knocked on the door of number four. At a call he opened to find a medical captain washing his hands in a sink and chewing gum in rhythm with the oscillation of his forearms. -Mind waiting outside, sergeant? the doctor called sharply. So he all bu t lay down on a bench, the slip dangling from his hand. He tried to close his eyes and swallow the searing sensation in his eyes and throat. Finally the sound of running water stopped and the doctor beckoned him in. He thrust the pink slip into the cool moist hand. -Well, got the dreadfuldreadful at last, hey? You're one of the bright joes who thinks that the signs and the films are for every­ body in the army except himself.... And you won't be sergeant much longer, boy. - Yessir, he said. -Well, we'll start treatment at once.... We don't mess with this. -Is there ... any hope, sir? he said hoarsely. -I'm no great believer in this new treatment. ... Take down your pants. Then began the questionnaire, which the captain wrote down. -Take a pro after your last exposure? -Nossir. -Italian girl, I suppose.... Give me her name and address. -Don't know, sir. -Don't try to protect her through any mistaken notions of chivalry. She gave you a nice burning, and she'll do it to others. I advise you to give me her name and address. -I told ya, I don't know, sir.... He went outside the dispensary and hung around the several waiting ambulances, holding in his hand an admission slip to the hospital. One of the ambulance drivers, a tech five, had one of his boots through a window of the ambulance cab. -What hospital ya goin to, sarge? -Twenty-third General. -Then hop in. Ya can ride in front with me. Just like an officer. hom�1 n hi!(� erehilfl; lon� in c humo!Q GOwn i�' � in fii!la1 o Keer U� utea an ( 274 THE GALLERY I� I� He climbed into the front, to the right of the driver's seat. On the line he'd never had to ride in an ambulance. Now in the rear area of Naples, here he was going to the hospital in style, but not for a wound or for trenchfoot. The tech five pulled his boot inside the window and started his vehicle. -What are ya goin to the Twenty-third for, sarge? Hepatitis? VD? -Nope, neither ... just a general checkup. They drove along Via Caracciolo toward Bagnoli Tunnel. And. seeing the Bay of Naples in the August sun, seeing the fishermen already far out in their skiffs toward Ischia and Capri, he thought of how he and Marisa used to walk and dally here in the bright open moonlight. They'd lean on the parapet by the docks of Santa Lucia and watch the British sailors coming over the ramp on liberty.... But now he was riding in an ambulance with a tech five who talked all the time, having lit a cigar. The tech five made him listen to all the details of his last night's shacking. -I get me one gal an I stick to her, the tech five said. Then I don't stand no chance of pickin up nothin nasty. See my point, sarge? -Ya never can tell about them things, he answered vaguely. He wished Marisa would quit his thoughts. He pressed down on his thighs and peered through the ambulance windshield. He knew that Marisa was very much with him. She was even in his veins. They pummeled through the dark dripping gloom of the Bagnoli Tunnel. The overhead inset lights barely pierced the dusty gloom kicked up by the truck convoys. Marisa and her family used to sleep in this tunnel during the air raids.... And at Bagnoli they turned by the old tenements with the washing on the balconies, the arrows to direct traffic and show the way to the staging areas. Then he got his first look at the Medical Center. Long low modern buildings with friezes and dominant stairs, like WPA American high schools. Unexpected gardens and trellises, phallic arches, and parapets skirmishing like roller coasters out of the pine trees. Excavated rifts piercing white and unfinished out of the hillsides. The tech five explained that Musso had built these grounds for a world's fair or something, that now the Americans were using them for a concentration of hospitals. They passed plaster statues of ripple-thighed naked young men in Fascist atti­ tudes of victory. A couple of swimming pools. The whole Medical Center had an air like an exhibition: sheets of windows, inscriptions everywhere. Q·UEEN PENICILLIN 275 lelaia,Tht ,�e mr�r The tech five stopped his ambulance on an avenue near an MP gate. -That's the Twenty-third right over there, sarge. Just walk straight up to that barbed-wire enclosure ... -Barbed wire? he said. But I ain't no prisoner. -Just wait, the tech five said, wisely chewing off the tip of a fresh cigar. He got out of the ambulance and walked up a flight of stairs to the barbed wire, over which hung the leaves of low trees and vines. Inside was a great press of people moving around. He thought of the courtyard of a jail during exercise period. -No visitors here, Joe, the MP said, raising his carbine to port arms. -I ain't no visitor, he said, presenting his admission slip. -Then welcome, the MP said. This the place where shackees repent their shackin.... There was a series of arrows showing new patients where to go. It was as methodical and cold as his induction into the army. He entered first a long low hut where pfc's sat at typewriters. In a window a major sat with bored but catty stare. To this medical officer he presented his admission slip. The major scanned it quickly, with the air of a movie usher seeing a picture for the hundredth time. -So you got burned? the major said. And you'll be losing those three stripes too. -Yessir. -I don't say: Welcome to our hospital. You're not going to have a good time here. Our whole setup is guaranteed to make you hate everything about us. We don't want men coming back here, do you see? There's no excuse for getting VD. No excuse whatever. We give you treatment here, but we do it in such a way that you won't care to come back as a repeater. Yet I see the same faces again and again. Well, it's their skin.... Take down your pants.... -Pretty sight, aren't you? the major said after the examination. Just as pretty as you saw it in the movies. I'll bet you said: That'll never be me. -Nossir. After the major had got through with him, lashing softly and insistently with his tongue, he was sent over by a wall where t�ere were chairs with armrests, rubber compresses, and a lot of little glass vials with red stuff in them. -Roll up your sleeve, the pfc attendant said. eava�dl' rel\ed do��' ioiela, Hem in oill'1� of toe �1� e allltr �l�: farni1r Ul1�' at Ba�oli� toe oalro�: Ita�in�ami (er, Lon� r irl,IiKel11 ellilel, r�ill ell out of � iheaoutof! d Duilt � the Arn1fi(� , Ther r�(' in Fal(ilt!( whole M�i� �S, imcrirti� 276 THE GALLERY �But I already had a blood 'test, he said. -Roll up your sleeve. You'll be takin blood tests from now on like you would a bath.... An you can't give none of your blood to the Red Cross an get ten dollars for it, neither.... Make a fist. He did as he was told. He felt the rubber hose go about his upper arm and the pressure mount as though an anaconda were squeezing. His blood began to bang in his arm. Looking down, he saw that a blue vein was bulging from his elbow. The pfc took a needle and inserted it into the obvious blood vessel. He felt the cold point go in, and he watched his crimson blood seep into the syringe as its handle was drawn back. -At this point, the pfc said, the jigaboos usually faint.... Now go an draw ya clothes. He got up from the chair, crooking his elbow against the patch of cotton to stop the slow ooze of his blood into the elbow joint. The GI took the vial of his blood and pasted his name to it on a piece of adhesive tape. This he put into the rack along with the other vials. -Looks just as pretty as new wine, the pfc said, indicating the file of vials. Only no wine has got what these tubes have. Next he filed past a counter where another GI leaned on his belly cushioning it and picking his teeth. He had that spleen of al1 supply sergeants. -Take off ya clothes, boy. He undressed himself there in the half-light of that corridor. Outside swarms of men milled in what looked like a desolate and unweeded garden pricked with pyramidal tents. All his clothes went into a little barracks bag tagged with his name. In return he got a set of frayed but freshly laundered green fatigues, shirt and trousers. On the back of the jacket and on the trouser legs were painted these large smeary letters: Tn IIV ram u� ilie� in� m lOOK VD -Guess this is about the last time ya'll be wearing ya stripes, the supply sergeant said.-There ain't no rank here in them green fatigues. Ya'Il sit down next to a major an never know it ... -Take it easy, take it easy, he said, buttoning up the fatigues, which were a casual fit and chafed his crotch. -Va shoulda taken it easy yaself, the supply sergeant replied. -Where do I go now? QUEEN PENICILLIN 277 nom no'! Ot �our�. , , I I M� -Ya'll hafta see about accommodations, I guess. We're full right up in this hotel. An ya never wired us for a reservation. So he walked down, stumbling a little in his fresh fatigues, to another window, where a pfc in harlequin spectacles was reading his Stars and Stripes. -What can we do for you? Have you got number one or number two? -I got the worst ya can possibly get, he said. -Well, lawsy. That entitles you to our very best accommodations. The kids with clap get stuck in tents all over hell. But our guests with syph are put in the bridal suite. You'll get the very finest attention. Every three hours, rain or shine, for a hundred and eighty hours.... You'll find the bridal suite in the first door on your right off the court. He went out into the hot light of the courtyard. Now he under­ stood clearly the confused and mobbed movement he'd seen through the barbed wire. Among the tent pegs walked hundreds of men in green fatigues like his own. It seemed a holiday crowd promenading at a carnival. But those who had their backs turned showed VD signs on their jackets and pants in letters high enough to be read half a mile away. They were like a chain gang without chains. He entered the indicated door into a long shed, half-ruined and rambling as a cattle barn. Canvas cots with mosquito netting tied up over their racks stretched as far as his eyes could see. On these cots more men in green fatigues stretched reading or play­ ing cards or shooting craps in small knots. He knew that they were set apart from all the other men in the world, though they looked perfectly healthy. When he crossed the threshold, a shout went up. Nearly all who weren't asleep turned to look at him and yell: -You'll be sor-ry! Only a hundred and eighty hours more! He flushed, cast his eyes to the ground, and walked between the cots looking for an empty bed. He found one between a Negro who lay looking at the ceiling and an Ayrab in a red fez. -They ain't no pick on the sacks, the Negro said, rolling his eyes slowly around. Ya cain't never get moren three hours sleep at one time anyhow, boy. -What's that Ayrab doin here? he asked in a whisper. -Mohammed? Oh all the Allied GI's gits their shots here ... we got Goums and Eyeties too.... Lend-lease... · He sank down on his cot and looked at his shoelaces. He was casting about in his mind for some way to enter into conversation aboutn�t ingJa!rri� re in W1ffi; knowit." g up th� la� :geant re�li� 278 THE GALLERY with the Negro and get answered some of the questions that flopped like flounders in his brain. The Negro may have been waiting, but he merely looked at the low ceiling of the shed with his deep eyes. ilii� -Is it ... rough ... here? he asked, untying his shoelaces and frigging with the buckles on his boots. -Well, it ain't no rest cure, the Negro said. But it done me a 1 good turn in takin me away from mah woman. Ah'd a shot her. !Ii1dShe gimme bad blood, bad blood. . . me-What I mean is, do they ... cure you fast here? he pressed. He was conscious of a fluttering fright now that the panic and � fever of first discovery had ebbed. ow_�-They claims they does. But man, them needles ... every three hours. Ah feel like mah Aunt Delilah's pincushion. . . nil -Needles? H -Sho, boy. What does yo think they does to yo here? They sticks Ine yo an then they sticks yo again. Every three hours. Sixty times in !Oll all.... But it ain't doin me no good. Ah cain't do thout mah lovin. wer So ah'll go right out an do it agin.... Yessir ... but them needles - sure does go over big with us colored boys. Keel He had a dozen more questions to put. But he was confronted by a sharp sergeant standing by his cot. 100 -You. Didja just come in? mor �a. � - Then get down to the lab for ya first Dark Field. a W -An that ain't no grope, the Negro said, rolling his eyes up to �ol the ceiling. He went past the double file of canvas cots out into the sunlight. �ar He passed through the crowds of men in fatigues who walked alone WOa or together, brooding or laughing aloud. He crossed the clearing !Iow of the pyramidal tents to the swinging sign that said LAB. Inside was another long room with desks where microscopes stood in their metal frames like scrubwomen resting on their brooms. eatr. -You've come for your first Dark Field? a sergeant asked him. -I guess that's what they call it, he said. n�h He had visions of being smothered in black gauze, of pain and probings. rOat -Then down with your pants, the sergeant said. The sergeant's face assumed the expression of one who handles the entrails of a sick rabbit. He put down his cigarette and drew on �elit a pair of rubber gloves. Into his shiny false fingers he took a large He toothpick wadded with cotton on its tip. Then he bent over and �ou went to work. a�rar QUEEN PENICILLIN 279 he rrel.lt� theranit. -Whaddya doin? ... Hey ... you're openin it up ... -That's what I mean to do ••• and if you think I enjoy doing this ... -But ya hurtin like fire .•• -I'm swabbing.... Okay, up with your pants. The sergeant straightened up, brushed the swab against a glass slide and dribbled on the square of glass some drops of staining chemical. This he slipped under a microscope near him. -Now, he said, I want you to see what death looks like. The sergeant stepped aside blandly, allowing him to apply his own eye to the lens of the microscope. -Focus it to your taste, the sergeant said languidly, picking up his cigarette. He finagled around with the brass screw till he saw the field of the slide clarify and harden like setting Jello. He was looking at a shifting orange horizon that seemed to be clouds at sunset. There were strata that buckled and changed their densities. -That, the sergeant's voice said, is your own polluted blood. Keep looking. Then he saw something swim into the pink blobs. At first he thought it was a sunfish. He maneuvered the focusing screw some more and found that it was a tadpole. It passed across his field of vision, delicately rowing, and disappeared gaily from his sight with a flip of its tail. He wondered if it hadn't winked at him like a goldfish on the make. -And that, the sergeant's voice continued like a lecturer's in a darkened room, is Sophie Spirochete. Just one of the girls, but what she can do to you! ... Better than a bomb, though somewhat slower. -Have I got many of those? he asked. -Millions. They're multiplying all the time. And brother, they'll eat you up alive! -Tell me what I must do, he implored, running his tongue along his lips. -Every last one of them, the sergeant said, has got to be killed. That was just one dear little specimen I took off you. -Well, thankya anyhow ... -Oh don't thank me, the sergeant said coquettishly. You didn't get it from me, you know. He'd just got outside the lab when an electric bell went off. All through that dense field of roaming men a mobilization became apparent, as in a factory after lunch hour. Soon there wasn't any- ere1Tn1jl , �ixtr tim: houtm�t u thlrnnt 'el� �e wno m:, �tte ano illil be tOOK o� � bent OV� 280 THE GALLERY lik the jus body left in the tent area. He decided that he too must be con­ cerned in this; so he followed the last straggler round a corner. On a long lading platform hundreds of men in green fatigues were arranging themselves into two files, one much longer than the other. At the end of the platform, by the screen door to what seemed a dispensary a tech sergeant stood with rosters in his hands, adjusted his glasses, and read aloud in a shout: -Hardfieldl Jonesl Miozzal McCauliffe! Mahomet Ben Ali! Get the hell up here for ya shots! Don'tcha wanna be cured? The two lines quickly evened out till the longer reached back to the end of the platform. He wasn't quite sure what the lines were for, and which was which. So he stepped cautiously up to a fellow with glasses: -Maybe ya can tell me what cooks here ... -Je ne comprends pas.... Pardon..•• He tried again and this time got an answer from a pimply fat boy: -This here's the clap line. We get stuck first. Those with syph come after us. He thanked the joe and walked quickly away, placing himself at the tail end of the shorter line. The tech sergeant appeared again at the door of the dispensary with his rosters and hollered through the entire area: -Shots! Shots! For Chrissakes come an get em! Ya'd be late to ya own funerals! An I ain't goin through the whole area to rout you lazy bastards outa ya tents! Tentatively he touched the shoulder of the man in front of him, handsome and blond and shy: -Say, bud, am I in the right line? -Depends on what ya got, the blond boy replied, appraising him languidly. -Same thing you got, I guess. -Well, the blond boy said, this ya first shot? Ya get only fifty- nine more after this one. One every three hours. I don't envy ya much. Ya got a week an a day ta go Christ, ya'll never sweat out anything like ya will these shots Three hours ... three hours ... forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty They even wake ya up in the middle of the night.... An if ya miss one, they make ya start all over again.... I'm gettin out tamorrah. Hope a hope a hope. -Where do ya take these shots? -In both shoulders an in both cheeks a ya butt. Ya get ta feelin ren and oi! onl man rlu !�Uil were I�iaia, I InrOI none -( linel He �r�el !Ieeve IrOn! I�t. ...y �ia, , QUEEN PENICILLIN 281 ! Ya'� �E' earea(OWt: like a sampler. Ya get so ya can't sleep on any part a ya. An still them damn shots go on. Like a pile driver But ya lucky. They just started this new treatment last week . -New treatment? -Ya. Pencil somethin. Before that they gave ya shots for six months. Useta make fellers puke all over the place. Now they give ya sixty shotsa this new pencil stuff, an it usually cures ya. The clap boys get only four. They get out in a day. -I'll never come back here again, he said piously. -That's what they all say, the blond boy said. But they get repeaters here just like in reformatories. Buddy a mine's been in here four times. He gets all cleaned up, then he goes out and picks hisself up another dose. . .. The first and longer line began to press forward with rapidity. He thought to himself it was just like all the other lines he'd sweated out in the army-for movies, for PX, for passes. Soon the second line, his, began to urge up on the screen door. Inside the dispensary there was a wild cry. -Either he's fainted or it's his last shot, the blond boy explained. Finally it came his turn at the end of the file to enter the dis­ pensary. Inside the screen door the line had forked into two prongs and was being funneled past two. GI's, each with a hypodermic in his hand. Along the walls of the room were electric iceboxes. And on the tables glittering with hypodermics and blunted needles were many little glass ampoules of an amber fluid. Into these the GI's plunged their hypodermics, filled them like fountain pens, and squinted at escaping bubbles of the yellow liquid. Ahead of him were men with either arm bared or with their buttocks offered like steak to the needle. -They give ya a choice on where ya want ya shot, the blond boy said. If ya take it in the arse, they'll use a longer needle ta get through the fat. My advice is ta take ya shots round the clock. Then none of ya four parts gets too sore. Ya'Il be hurtin anyhow ... -Come here, a voice called to him. I haven't seen your face in line before, boy. He disengaged himself from the line and went over to where a sergeant with gentian-blue eyes sat at a field desk. This sergean�'s sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. Rosters were spread out III front of him. He gave the sergeant his name, which was last on the list. -You're too nice-looking a guy to get this crap, the sergeant said. Why don't you stay away from women, like I do? et B�n Ni� rea) rta(nen �� ilielinQ' ryurtolli placin� hlITl� lar�ar1n: no�m�� n in [ont �I: Ya get orur I Gon't ��r p'll ne\'a� hOUT! III� ren waKe� e, ther m� Hope a�if: ra get talt 282 THE GALLERY -I'm takin my medicine without any sermons from you, he said doggedly, looking down at his boots. He wanted to be cured, not played with. -Sure, sure, kid.... Look, every time you come in here, be sure to stop by and see that 1 check your name.... Otherwise if you miss a shot ... -Ya, 1 know all that, he said impatiently, rolling up the right sleeve of his green fatigues and preparing to advance into the line for the needle. Then the sergeant thrust out his fair delicate hand and flipped the miraculous medal that nestled with his dogtags among the hair on his chest. -This didn't help you much, did it? the sergeant said. You're a mockery of purity. -1 promised my mother to always wear it, he said, again avoid­ ing the cool blue eyes. -You've got nice brown skin too, the sergeant continued. Too bad to think of soiling it with crap like you've got.... Tell me, did you love that signorina? -Shut up an let me alone, he said and walked into the line. -You'll see me sixty times, the sergeant called after him. He offered his brown right upper arm to a Gl who stood waiting with a hypodermic. He felt the antiseptic go all over his flesh like slippery ice. And then a swift stab as the needle went in. -We ain't interested in making these shots painless, the GI told him. He felt the needle's charge going into him in a compressed enema of spite. Then he knew a stinging worse than he remembered from tetanus shots. The needle was pulled out and his arm wiped again. On his skin he saw many lemon drops shimmering, raised out against the brown. -What's that stuff? he asked, lowering his sleeve. -Penicillin ... and more precious than gold, boy. Being the last to get his shot, he was the last to leave the other door of the dispensary. Barring his way stood the gentian-eyed sergeant, hands folded on his chest. That open neck reminded him, with a jump of memory, of Marisa's throat, glistening and tight in its cords after he'd kissed it. -Look, he said to the sergeant, I just wanna be alone. I just wanna take my shots an be left in peace, see? -1 was wondering, the sergeant said, recrossing his arms, whether you got it from a one-night stand or from love. Because you seem wal wal mOl lreci ro�Bu lfire\! -J even il'll � olal! He �rain lt wa other! �\.\.H� ---....; 10U, h�� QUEEN PENICILLIN 283 so bitter.... Yes, you must have been in love with her. And now you look like a lamb that can't understand why it's being led to the slaughter. Why don't you want to talk with me? - Ya got some ax ta grind with me, he said pushing through the screen door. The sergeant followed him: -You know that I'm in a position to do you dirt. I might forget to check your name on the roster. Then you'd have to take all your shots over again . . . -I wouldn't advise ya to mess with me, he answered. Outside the dispensary there was another corridor leading back to the tent area. It had lighted doors leading off it, with the names of medical officers and their rank printed in curly letters. Along the other wall were tin sinks in which GI's were washing their parts. Under these sinks were tin cans stuffed with bloody gauze. The running water and the septic smell and the pungency of dried blood made him dizzy, so he went out into the open air. The tent area had filled up again with men walking or talking or reading. Now he knew the rhythm of the place. They'd walk or talk or read for the next three hours. Then the bell would ring­ again. Then ... he felt already the stinging in his other shoulder. All his life telescoped down to three-hour periods and a hypodermic needle with yellow drops dribbling out of it. What was it called? Pencilin? Penisssilin? Pencillllin? here,�; envileu' (ontinu�' 1.",11; alonf,I, In the shed the syphilitics had resumed their poses. They didn't walk in the courtyard among the tents with the others, for theirs was the scabrous aristocracy of venereal disease. Between shots most lay on their canvas cots dozing. One boy with horn-rimmed spectacles was reading Plato. And his own Negro neighbor still rolled.Iris eyes slowly at the ceiling. -Ah was a numbers man in Harlem, the Negro began. But in order not to encourage the Negro's reminiscences, he threw himself on his own cot and closed his eyes. -It's bad in the moanin, the Negro's slow voice dribbled through, even past his shut lids. Ya know how a man wakes up. �ell, now it'll hurt. An at night the thoughts yo has! Ya feel lak crym. Least of all ah does . . . He emitted a soft feigned snore and the Negro shut up. His brain kept turning over the sibilant secret n�me of his. dise�se. It was a word that he'd always thought of III connection With others, like leper. He was trying to get used to the idea of having emwroc e �enti��{ eminarot incrano:b nm, w�ft me rou� 284 THE GALLERY it himself. It was as strange now, in the peace of aftershock, as imagining yourself dead. He kept trying to figure out what there was in the name of this disease, its very sound, that was so frighten­ ing. It had a whistling slide when you pronounced it, like a tooth­ less old woman dragging her skirts in a black corridor. Or it re­ minded him of girl's names like Phyllis. Only with this girl he saw the skull showing. He thought also of his mother and his sisters in Pittsburgh; their bathroom with the embroidered cover on the toilet seat, the hems on their towels, the white soap in the rack by the wash­ stand. He remembered how his mother got panicky when she found a speck of dust anywhere. Then he peeped through his eyelids at his own brown body, tense under its shameful green fatigues. And under his flesh he seemed to see microscopic rats running in his blood, squeaking and nibbling as they did their work of demoli­ tion. Till finally the house fell apart with a screaming clatter. He thought also of the army posters against YD. He imagined himself addressing a V-mail to Pittsburgh: Dear Mother, You'll be surprised to know that I'm writing you from the syphilis ward of the Twenty-third General Hospital ••• -I've got a new secondary, a bright lecturing voice said from somewhere down the shed. Not very nice. Just a rash on the inside of my arms and legs. And a few little blisters containing a rather nasty kind of pus . . . -Me and my buddy sweated out the clap for five days, another voice said. Were our faces red when we found out what we really had! ... -Why it takes twenty years to kill you, another voice said. Lastly he thought of Marisa. He remembered yet the brown still fragrance of her body, the round sucking bite of her lips against his shoulder. She'd told him to give himself to her, as she was giving to him, without reserve or fear. She'd said that gli americani made the act of love as sani tary as brushing their teeth or gargling with mouthwash. -Ma perche mi tratti cosi? Hai forse paura ch'io sia malata? Godi, godi, e non torturarti con certi pensieri. ... It had been the first time he'd fallen in love. He remembered how he'd wait for her evenings in the Galleria, longing and hot, yet in a peace that was tender, and how he'd been gentle with her. Each evening he'd brought her candy or cigarettes or a handker- ell !P ne w d T �a ov At wi wa� Ou no 01 -J -J in� fl ratinl -I QUEEN PENICILLIN 285 \'Oic� �Q: bili1� tainin� iW chief such as she loved. And he remembered how, after they'd spent their love, they'd lie together talking and laughing. It had never been so with him before. With all the others, after his fever was cooled, he'd only wanted to pay them and kick them out the door. But with Marisa he'd known a sense of joy and well-being. Thus he'd given her his heart like a piece of fudge in his open palm. He couldn't yet associate this disease with her name. Only over her face there now hung a veil that blotted her features. Yes, he was sick. It didn't feel like much of anything now. But this sickness was like being told definitely just how long he had to live. There was something mocking and foul in his disease, because it was a legacy to him from the happiest moments in his life. He remembered the idiots he'd seen in county jails, leaning out from behind their bars, lolling their tongues and screaming. He re­ membered old men helping themselves along the sides of walls with their canes, so that every step took half an hour to accom­ plish. All this had nothing to do with Marisa. Yet it had.... Someone was tapping the sole of his boot. He opened his eyes. At the end of his cot stood a red-cheeked chaplain, arms loaded with tracts and colored leaflets. So he sat up respectfully. -Well, son, the chaplain said, I guess now we see what the wages of sin are, don't we? -What sin? he said, turning his eyes to the other row of cots. -My boy, my boy. We mustn't be unregenerate in our hearts. Our disease is the punishment of God for fleshly sin. -I happened to be in love, he said, standing up from his cot, putting his hands into his pockets, and whistling a little. -Love! the chaplain said with shining eyes, lifting his plump pink hands. Love brings little children into the world. Not death. We should have saved ourselves for some fine clean American girl. These I talians are all sinful and diseased . . . -Then they should all get some of these here pencil shots, he said sullenly. -My boy, if there were no disease in the world, there would be no decency. The fear of God. Our illness is a sign of the disapproval of God for what we did ... -I was unlucky, that's all ... -And the army doesn't approve either, the chaplain said, search- ing for further backing. After we leave this hospital, we'll lose our rating, if we have one. -I know that too. In Plt��� llietoil11; , b1tnn: \\henilids h 001i1H �n !aU���, runnin� m 'OfK of�' lnbOlltt ,Hf� Ie aa)�, m�. ��at W1W r\'oia� Jet W1W ite olOer. to ncr,�, �aja Wli 'ng ilierr� '0 �ia rot remerok , JI fTlng anu, �tle witH � a han� 286 THE GALLERY -Well, I'll just leave some of these pamphlets, son. Let's all think of our mothers . . . -1 have. -I'd like to shake hands, son, the chaplain said, withdrawing. But God has made certain diseases highly infectious.... The chaplain went on to other cots. He lay down again and cov­ ered his face with his hands. He still saw Marisa's face, but he heard too a crowing laughter. Even her voice now seeemed clotted with slime. jUll H �� ln� in�i He soon got used to the simple reality of life in a syphilis ward. Three hours was the boundary of all his consciousness. He lived only for his next puncture. Every needle meant another x on the roster opposite his name, and three hours nearer to his release. Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty. Night or day had no longer any distinct meaning, for he couldn't count on uninter­ rupted sleep for more than three hours. Then the fleering jangle of the electric bell. At 0300 hours in the morning, having just got to sleep after his midnight injection, he'd hear that silvery rattle­ snake in the court outside. All the tents would come to life, with men groping into their fatigues and tottering out sleepy and curs­ ing to where the threads of light poked out from the dispensary. The sergeant in charge of shots yelling for order. The beams of flashlights thumbing through the dark. The uproar lasting about twenty minutes. The files forming and going through like an assembly belt. Then the voices of a sergeant speeding up slackers who might be still in their cots. He didn't understand how people could take their time about their shots. Here they had death in their blood, yet they were leisurely and dilatory about receiving from the needle's point those yellow drops that meant life to them, life truer than the amber drops of gasoline or bubbles of molten gold. He got into the habit of waking by reflex a few seconds before the electric bell exploded. He'd lie under his mosquito netting with an arm under his head, thinking: Now what did 1 wake up for? Oh, number twenty-two. And as soon as he heard the tingling dissonance he'd be bounding off his cot, buttoning his fatigues and sliding his feet into his boots, which he never bothered to lace or buckle. And he'd go rushing down the line of cots with their shadowy dressing figures. He usually managed to get to the dis­ pensary among the first. Not that it made any difference. The gonorrhea boys always went through first. They took their own QUEEN PENICILLIN 287 sweet time in forming their line. The syph patients were more eager beavers and would stand with their file already in order, cheering and booing the stragglers. For nobody got pincushioned till both lines were formed. Needles around the zodiac of his brown body. At first he tried taking them in alternate arms. But soon the flesh of both shoulders was so raw that he couldn't sleep on either side. By the twentieth shot he was ready and eager to have them jab him in the buttocks. This called for a longer and heavier needle which bit him like a hornet. After a while both of his tight brown cheeks were so sore that he couldn't sleep on his back any more. He asked if he could be shot in the bulging calves of his legs, but they told him it would hurt worse than a cramp. So he finally evolved the least agonizing of many torments, which would carry him through half a day: a shot in the right shoulder, a shot in the left, a shot in his right buttock, a shot in his left. This meant that every twelve hours his compass was boxed. The stings felt worse all the time in his mincemeated flesh; he'd stand watching the penicillin ooze down his skin like the yoke of an egg. And always in the dispensary the ampoules of penicillin stood in a pretty druggist'S window display of bottlets, and the trash barrels outside the dispensary were over­ flowing with the dead ones, like small jars that had contained a lemon preserve put up every fall by his mother. -I wonder how much the government is forking out for my sixty shots? someone asked. -When ya see it in a refrigerator, another said, the stuff looks just like sherry wine on ice. They hafta keep it cool. ... He had to go for his second Dark Field. Again he met the sergeant with the rubber gloves who scraped some fluid off him and put the film on the slide under the microscope. The sergeant indicated he should look again through the lens. He saw his salmon­ colored blood; but try as he might, he didn't see a solitary tadpole wriggling. One floated by in the field, but it looked curled up and lifeless. -Your spirochetes are pretty well done for, the sergeant said dryly. -Ya mean I'm cured? he asked, raising his eyes, dazzled. -You'll take your full sixty shots, just like everyone else. But he walked on air back to the shedlike ward and told every­ one within range that the tadpoles in his blood were kaput. The Negro in the next cot just lay and looked at the ceiling, for the doctor had told him to expect a circumcision tomorrow. The 'leconilioc iton1ltm!1 I waKe �F d the tili: his hi; tiJereow• ots wiili8 ret to tn�; ifference, ! �k their(' 288 THE GALLERY Negro had been saying all day in his dreamy voice that no army doctor was going to circumcise him. Hadn't he still his razor with him? The last shot of t.he night vigil was given just as the dawn came up over Mussolini's fairgrounds at Bagnoli. Nobody slept much between the three o'clock shot and the six o'clock. The sun wouk leak up with a lemon and creeping pace. He'd totter out into the yellow and gray light, his eyes foggy, pulling his fatigues about him. The lines would form and the needles would start pricking. This was the time when the night shift of butchers went off duty to be ! replaced by the day shift. Their tempers were frayed and they did Itheir jabbing with a vindictive spite, hating all who were so stupid ci as to catch diseases which would keep them out of their beds all co night long on a hypodermic line. The six o'clock shots were char- !lacterized by blunt needles which tore his flesh jaggedly. Then 0there was the pulsing orgasm of the penicillin pumping into him w like a piston. th Then he'd limp back to his ward, flexing his stinging arm. By his cot on the mosquito netting bar with his towel and soap hung his mess kit. He'd gather up this metal gear and head for the chow ra line. It was now fully light. tal He'd made a friend in the ward, a shy guy who said he was a staff sergeant in ordnance. They waited together in the chow line. r10allHis new buddy talked about this nurse, and how he never sus­pected she would have passed It on to him. They dipped their mess li� ki ts in the GI can of boiling water. lOa -I wonder if they sterilize these things with each new batch of no patients? rno -Nah, what with the scaldin water an that pencil stuff, ya can't catch a damn thing here. They even have Ginso barbers to �n� shave ya if ya want it. mal He got three meals a day of hot C-ration ladled into his mess kit. tim, Back of the steam tables stood Neapolitans who leered knowingly I�� at them as they dished out the steaming powdered eggs, the scald- ili1 ing coffee, and the chunks of bread. They jested with the patients: !n1 - Whassamatta, Joe? Signorina malata? nito -Ah, fungoo and ya signorinas, the patients answered, helping wall themselves to marmalade and sugar. mal He and his buddy sat down at the long planked tables, which filled up in order as the joes came off the chow line. Occasionally !lrn he saw a guy dressed in OD's instead of fatigues. That was a sign Ai! his shots were finished and he was going into the world outside QUEEN PENICILLIN the barbed wire. Opposite them was a little redheaded man morosely eating his powdered eggs and bacon. He had a burst of friendship for this sad little man. After all they were all members of the freemasonry of penicillin. -Doin all right? he nodded at the little redhead. The little man didn't answer but moved himself and his mess kit to the other end of the table. -They say that's a first looie, his buddy whispered to him. -Oh they get it too, huh? he said, poking some bread into his face. Nobody talked much in the mess hall, except to agree that peni­ cillin was a wonderful thing. Dried you up in no time. Or they compared their symptoms or told one another how many more shots they had to go. A few bragged that they were repeaters in this dump. Some came back constantly in order to keep out of combat, where they'd only get killed. But most held up their hands over their coffee: -No sir! I ain't never comin back to this concentration camp! -Wait till ya get outside the barbed wire, the minority said. An ya meet another signorina an she shakes it at ya. That's all it takes..•. You'll be back. Over their coffee he and his buddy lit cigarettes and looked at each other. All the meals were the same here. Three a day. Then you waited for your next shot. They went outside into the sun­ light and dunked their mess gear into the GI cans of scalding soapy and clear water. The tent flaps were up all over the area. now; the new sunlight made weird curlicues of the monuments, mosaics, and shafts of Mussolini's fair grounds at Bagnoli. After breakfast he made up his cot, rolled up his mosquito net­ ting, and waited for his turn for the broom to come by him. Bed­ making was easy, for he had two GI blankets, nothing more; some­ times it got chilly in the early mornings at Bagnoli in August, 1944. Then he'd sweep the kittens of dust from under his cot into the aisle and would pass the broom to the Negro on his right. He knew now who were the officers in the ward, in spite of the incog­ nito of their green fatigues, because when the morning sweeping was in progress they leaned against the wall and tried to look non- chalant. -Hey, sirrrr, the pfc wardboy called to one, there's no rank in a syph ward. After the policing he'd lie on his cot and wait for �he do�tor to come. Each morning they showed themselves to this medical 'ed t80111,1 ineo occali�: That wal! � world O�: 289 !I/I I / � 'u.. I -- . "'--=------� " ., , . ; _;;- � .��-=- - ...::.- - _- / 290 THE GALLERY officer, who discharged those who were going out that day. For others he prescribed circumcisions or made little notes in their Syphilis Registers. Each had his own little scrapbook in which the progress of his disease was recorded. This doctor felt their glands or said: -Rash fading nicely, isn't she? He was a fat little captain with a face like a doughnut. His eyes had frozen into a perpetual revulsion from looking at men's genitals and thinking in terms of spirochetes and gonococci. He was forever tearing off his rubber gloves, washing his hands, and peeling on the gloves again. Each morning he made a set speech to those who were going out upon completion of their sixtieth shot: -Ninety percent of you men will be permanently cured ... if you don't get another case.... And if you do have a relapse, there's always that nice long-term treatment with mapharsen and arsenic . . . . In three months come back for your spinal. It was always the mention of the spinal tap that sent a shiver and a whispering through the rest of the ward, who always listened to the doctor's baccalaureate sermons even when they weren't in­ cluded in them. The Negroes, at that word spinal, would roll their eyes and gibber at one another: -No, boy, ah ain't takin no spahnal ... no suh ... if dey ties me to dis cot, ah still won't take no spahnal. Dat needle sometimes slips and dere you is, paaaaahlahzed for de rest 0 yo natcherl life. No spahnal fo me.... Hearing this as he lay on his cot waiting for the captain to call out his name for the morning checkup, he'd imagine the needle at the base of his spine, the slip as the target was missed, and all his nerves jolting into paralysis. Or sometimes to relieve the tedium of his morning examinations, the probing of groins and armpits, the questioning about the state of the chancre, the medical captain would bring specialists into the ward with him, colonels who peered at the patients as though they were guinea pigs. -Look, colonel, sir, he had a rare kind of rash. I had him photo­ graphed. With a mask, of course.... -This man insists he never had a primary lesion. . . • There was everyone on that ward: Negroes, Ayrabs, Italians fighting for the Allies, one Hawaiian Japanese. They waited three hours, took their shot, then waited again. They all wore the green fatigues with VD painted on the back. They all lived eight days inside the barbed wire. They all sat on the long planks in the mess. After the medical irispection he was free till ogoo hours. the QUEEN PENICILLIN 291 time of the next injection. He'd take his towel, razor, and tooth­ brush and go out into the sunlit courtyard where the patients walked. He crossed the area of the tents of the common ordinary twenty-four-hour patients who were here for only four shots. He passed also the barbed wire within the barbed wire where prisoners with VD were treated under the eyes of their individual MP's. These real prisoners slept on the ground under the pup tents, issuing forth every three hours with their armed guard to get nipped by the penicillin needle. Then he'd arrive at the latrines, these too in sheds. Then began his one joy of the day. He'd brush his teeth and shave. Then he'd strip away the hateful green fatigues with the advertising on the back and step under the shower. He'd smear his long dark body with soap and let the tepid water gush over his flesh. At such moments he still thought of Marisa's arms that had given him this death. He'd lift his hoarse voice and sing an Italian song she'd taught him. For between the soapsuds and the penicillin something was being washed away from and out of him. Close to 1500 hours he was lying on his cot reading a comic book. His thighs were crossed and his boots were upon the rack for his mosquito netting. He was sleepy, but it was almost time for the next needle. In the cots near him were people different from those who'd been here when he came a week ago. In this ward life went on by relays, constant as to the disease, but different in respect to personalities. He laid down his comic book, aware that someone was coming toward him. It was the gentian-eyed sergeant of the rosters. He sighed. The sergeant was carrying a parcel wrapped in wax paper. -You again? -You weren't very glad to see me, the sergeant said, sitting on the edge of the cot and undoing a package. -A roast-beef sandwich.... Are ya gonna eat it right here in front of me? -It's for you. We get good chow in the detachment mess. You must be tired of that C-ration they give you three times a day. I got the mess sergeant to make this up for me special. I didn't tell him I was giving it to a friend. n.. I • -Well, thanks. . . • yrao!, I� He sank his teeth into the hot red flesh. The soft bread rose ey waite�� round his gums in a contrast of textures and tastes. lI'oretne� -Ya shouldn't bother with me, he said. I'm just another syph- rred ei�ntt ilitic. ksinthe[ -You're not, the sergeant said. 00 houf!, '/ f -- . "'-==---;!-� - � 292 THE GALLERY He edged over on his cot to make room for the sergeant. He buried his face in the roast-beef sandwich to finish it, but he knew that those strange blue eyes were on his face. It made him squeam­ ish to be watched while he was eating. -Ya got some ax to grind with me, he said again, putting the crusts into the wax paper. -Why? the sergeant asked brightly. You don't know me ... yet. -Well, it don't add up somehow, he said, shaking his head and placing his boots again on the rack for mosquito netting. Ya must meet thousands of VD's comin through here for their shots. I'm just another one with the dirty bug . . . -I've watched half the Fifth Army taking shots, the sergeant said. But when I saw you, I knew you were different. -I snafu'd just like the rest of them, he said warily. Besides reminding him of Marisa, something in this sergeant's blue eyes touched him, the way a lame bird would. -You should come out to dinner with me once in a while, the sergeant said. I know a black market restaurant on Via Chiaia. Do you like pasta asciutta? The word thrilled him with a pang of remembrance. He seemed to be with Marisa in a cramped kitchen in Sezione San Ferdi­ nando, she with an apron on standing over the stove. In those days he'd come up behind her and slip his hands over her loins. And she'd turn her face to be kissed.... -Ya don't wanta be bothered with me, he said, wrenching him­ self from this memory. I'm no good. Can't even take care of my­ self. Accordin to the posters the army puts out, I can never get married now nor have kids. I'm just a old piece a meat gatherin flies in the streets. -You'll get cured, the sergeant said. Just don't think you are till you know you are, that's all. ... But you are different.... I need a friend, you see. Being a dancer has given me an unreal view of life. I'm so fed up with the arty boys. I want to know just one real person. You're good and you're decent. ... I'm so bored with sitting around in diques and drinking and talking poetry and scandal. ... Do you like to swim? We could go to Torregaveta and Mondragone for sun baths ... -I don't get much time off, he said. -I need a friend who's real, the sergeant continued softly. Some- one who lives quietly and thoroughly without pointing out that he's doing it. I'm fed up with the idea of sex without love and ideas without deeds.... You shouldn't run with these Neapolitan ilie (an out cal QUEEN PENICILLIN 293 gi�ls .... the ones, �n Via Roma, I �ean. �hey don't offer you any­ thing without a prIce. There are ruce Italian girls, but you won't stand a chance of meeting any . . . -When a guy needs a woman, he said, he needs a woman ... -That's the great old myth of the American male, the sergeant said wearily, picking up the wax paper from the cot. And you see what you've got out of it.... Look at yourself in the mirror some­ times. That fine coffee-colored skin you've got and your black eye· brows and your straight nose. You're a very good-looking man ... too swell to end up with syphilis from some bitch who didn't give a shit for you.... When I first saw you, it was like looking at a statue covered with mud .•• -I was crazy about Marisa, he said, surprised that he wasn't sore at this sergeant. -I suppose you thought you were, the sergeant said. That's all part of the mystery and the pain of life to me ... -Say, he said, sitting up suddenly, don't you like women? -When I don't see through them, the sergeant said, rising from the cot. Will you come to dinner with me next week? Then we can go to the ballet at the San Carlo. The Italians can't dance! but they call it ballet anyhow.... Will you come? -I don't stand to lose nothin, he replied, trying not to sound calculating. I won't be lookin at no women for some time now ..• -You're crazy if you do, the sergeant said hotly. And do you think it would be fair to take any chances? Right now you're not infectious, but you can never be sure until you've had your spinal. It can come back on you at any time. Would you want to pass it on to somebody else? -1 been thinkin of that, he said. I ain't so low that I'd do to another girl what Marisa done for me. -She's doing it for others right now. -N0, he said, closing his eyes. I don't believe that. -Did you give her name on the questionnaire? -Get out. The sergeant with his bright hair and blue eyes and delicate figure stood irresolutely at the foot of the cot. He seemed to want to stay and to go. He looked almost as if Marisa had dressed herself in GI suntans and a blond tight wig. -Willya do somethin for me? he asked, already knowing the answer. He didn't believe in putting friends to the test, but he had an overpowering compulsion to do this. Bring me some of that penicillin) 294 THE GALLERY -What for? the sergeant asked in a quick whisper. Do you want to sell it? Do you know what an ampoule of penicillin is worth on the black market? What do you want it for? -I ain't gonna sell it, he answered stiffly. I just want it for my­ self ... like people keep their appendixes and tonsils in a jar. The sergeant shot a swift look along the ward, where as usual the patients were snoring on their cots or playing cards. He darted off. Shortly he was back carrying something in the same wax paper. -You realize, the sergeant said, passing the wax paper into his hand, that if anybody finds out about this, they'll throw the book and the DTC at me ... -I ain't never done no one dirt in all my life, he replied, re­ turning the sergeant's stare. The ampoule with its amber fluid was still icy and misted from the refrigerator. He thrust it into the chamois bag containing his toilet articles. -What a world, the sergeant said. The mold of yeast turns out to be more precious than gold.... I've got to go, boy. It's almost time for the bell.... Meet you day after tomorrow at 1900 hours in the portico of the San Carlo. -Okay, he . answered. A little later the electric bell began to split the air. He went out to stand in the second line. He had two more shots to go. Fifty­ nine, sixty. Next morning when the 0600 bell pealed for shots and the shad­ owy men in the first orange of dawn groped from under their mosquito netting into their fatigues, he remembered and smiled to himself and turned over on his other shoulder. His butt and arms still felt like hamburg, but it didn't matter any more now. -Hey, Joe, the guy from the next bed was prodding him, get out of that fartsack and take your needle. -Ah, go way, he murmured, I had my sixtieth. He fell back into a delicious sleep during which he sensed an electric excitement in his belly. He awoke again when the others came trooping back from breakfast with their dripping mess kits. -Powdered eggs? he asked dreamily. After a while without hurrying he got out from under his blankets, made his cot, and swept beneath it. He had a sense of victory over all the others, bending over their housekeeping with the painted letters VD on their backs rippling as the muscles in their shoulders moved. He felt particularly affectionate toward a tiny Negro two cots over who'd just come in. an w of !1D QUEEN PENICILLIN 295 -Boy, ah's scared. Does them needles hurt much? -Ya'U faint sixty times, he answered, sweeping under the tiny Negro's cot. -0 Lawd, the Negro said, fainting on his blankets. When he'd revived his small friend, he took his chamois bag and went down to the latrines. Here Italian prisoners of war were swabbing the wooden frames and the corrugated urinal with chlorine. He rejoiced in its clean acridity. Before he seated himself, he reverted to his old fastidiousness of placing clots of toilet paper all around the wooden hole. It was a practice he'd dropped during his treatment here. Now he was beginning it all over again. Cleanli­ ness was no longer a mockery. One Italian PjW called to the other as they mopped: -Sa che cos'e la sifilide? Un'ora con Venere e dopo sei mesi con Mercurio. Shortly he arose in great satisfaction, brushed his teeth, and shaved. He'd observed that the brown skin along his thighs was paler for the eight days he'd spent out of the sun. Then he took a shower, soaping himself with gusto and dodging the Italians as they turned on the other sprays to damp down the floor planking. And his body was once again immaculate. He passed both hands along his loins in a wringing motion to force off the tire of soap. He dressed himself for the last time in the tight green fatigues and walked up among the pyramidal tents. The gonorrhea patients were still making their beds. They had no floor to sweep, for it was of clay pounded down hard. They were rolling up the flaps of their tents to let in the Neapolitan sunlight: Ayrab soldiers under the red fezzes they insisted on coupling with their ignominious fatigues, French soldiers and officers from Alger and Oran, Italian sergenti maggiori who worked for the Allies, and that greater percentage of Americans. Occasionally one would run out to the Lyster Bag and swallow his sulfa tablets. In the great clearing- girdled with barbed wire he paused to look at the bulletin board. On typewritten sheets were thumbtacked the list of dispositions for that day. He found his own name in alp�a­ betical order under American Personnel. At first he had a feeling that perhaps they might never let him out of this place, that he'd stay here till the end of the war in Italy, being jabbed with �illions of units of penicillin. But there was his name. He was gettlllg o.ut today. After each patient to be discharged wa� the �ank and serial number, followed in the last column by the dIagnOSIS. These read: Syphilis. Old, Secondary, Relapse; or Gonorrhea, New, Acute. He h, hicb n1lm� 'n 1I'0en ilit� 'ppin� m&1 from un�: e haa a� ouseKeerin1 i5 the m�: rionate (01; III / � It. I __ . "==--....F� • .. � 4 -- ......... f'!!!II'!I1!!iI� 296 THE GALLERY G - � h� noticed also that some people he'd met (he'd never guessed from their fatigues) were first lieutenants or majors. But most were GI's of all the Allied armies. He returned with his toilet kit into the shed. They were lining up for inspection by the nauseated-looking medical captain. He unbuttoned his own green fatigues and waited his turn in the queue. -You�re going out today, the captain said, looking at his re­ vealed middle and sounding his lymph glands. Take a blood test every month. And come back for your spinal in from three to six months. Come even if we don't send for you.... And behave your­ self, understand? Yessir, he said slowly, then swallowed. An I wanna thank ya for all ya've done for me. The rubbery face contorted into another knot. -Don't thank me. Thank penicillin. Thank Dr. Fleming. The medical captain then wrote out in an acid hand a discharge slip from the Twenty-third General Hospital. Then he consigned to him the little bound Syphilis Register with his name on the cover, like a diary, and two copies of a letter to his commanding officer making it quite clear why he'd been in the hospital-not in the line of duty. -And don't try to tear up that letter, the doctor told him. Be­ cause we mail a carbon to your CO anyway. Then he went out into the sunlight among the pyramidal tents where the men in their green fatigues were milling and talking and waiting for the next electric bell. He went first to the supply sergeant to draw his own clothes. It was the first time in eight days he'd had them on; they were rumpled and a little mildewed from lying in the barracks bag. Then he had an inspiration. He took his razor from his toilet kit and sliced both sets of sergeant's stripes from his sleeves. His chevrons fell to the floor, trailing thread, twisting like crinkled tin foil. -Might just as well bust myself right now, he said to the supply sergeant, handing across the counter the green fatigues with those huge letters painted across the back of jacket and trousers. N ext he went into the large office with the typists and the vials and the chairs with armrests. He sat down against the wall and let a tech five leech more blood from his arm. -Of course this proves nothing, the technician said, emptying the dark blood into a test tube taped with his name. Penicillin turns ya blood negative anyhow. do� had �\.lHI --- �e�edlro )�t we�� QUEEN PENICILLIN 297 rmmia�' b� �nalu tlOmnij; . e in ei!�I! e�lOt�Nm :ion, He 1001, se�e�nl'!!tr; traliin� � Lastly he went to the barrier in the barbed wire and presented his pass to the MP. -See ya. back here in ab�ut an�ther week, the MP said, looking down at hIS sleeve, at the light triangular patch where his stripes had been. -Not me, boy, he answered. He walked slowly down the macadam drive of the Medical Center at Bagnoli. Once he turned in his tracks and looked back at the barbed wire behind which the hundreds of marionettes in green fatigues paced like lifers. He saw also the kiosks, the glittering facades, the nude muscled statues under their helmets, and the swimming pools that Mussolini had laid out for his world's fair. He couldn't forget that here he'd passed eight days of his life in three-hour intervals with a hypodermic needle waiting to prick him a t the end of each period. On the Bagnoli-Naples road a pfc in a weapons carrier picked him up. They rumpled through the Bagnoli Tunnel. In the August morning the town of Naples stretched golden on its hillside. Ischia and Capri stuck like honey-colored thumbs out of the Mediter­ ranean. He had an urge to talk. -Say, that penicillin sure is marvelous stuff, he confided. I was nearly dead from pneumonia an it pulled me out of it. -Ah, it may have worked for you, the pfc said, biting on his cigar. Me, I always say that penicillin is still to be put to the test. It's probably the latest racket of the medical profession. They say it cures VD too. Me, I think it just conceals the symptoms and arrests the disease for a while. But we don't know no thin about its future reactions on the human body. Ten years from now you'll probably find cripples and people dropping dead all over the United States. Victims of the great penicillin swindle. -Nah, it works, he answered in a dreamy sort of happiness. It's great stuff, boy.... Cured my pneumonia.... In Naples he dismounted from the weapons carrier at the end of Via Rome. He entered the Galleria Umberto, where the girls were walking and the children screaming and bargaining in the August sunlight. He walked to that corner of the Galleria tha� he rem�m­ bered best. Though it was noon he seemed to see Marisa standm? there with her arms out to him. So he took the ampoule of pem­ cillin out of his pocket and hurled it against. th� wall �here .her ghost flickered. The glass smashed; the yellow Iiquid ran like bnght molasses to the pavement. :� were� � C4�t��: lS turn m, �\n� atM' leaDI�: om�ttro' �ni\ef id to welijf: 'uuel wiM trOU�en, andtnll e wall a�� aid, ernrl:, e, Peni� (Naples) EIGHTH PROMENADE " I I REMEMBER THAT IN NAPLES OF AUGUST, 1944, I CAME AGAIN TO realities I'd all but forgotten. There are three of them: tears, art, and love. Most people in the world live their lives with at least two of these realities. But between Casablanca and Naples I'd lost all three by watching what was going on around me. So when they came back to me, I felt like one whose heart begins to beat again when he was despaired of. Naples, I remember, is a good city for relearning the reality of tears. Americans assume that tears are wet and that life should be dry. Consequently crying in America is done usually by women and babies. Life as we Americans have made it is presumed to be a gay affair. Even when it wasn't gay, a man mustn't cry. But the old maxims tell me to take the bitter with the sweet. So I reasoned that life isn't so gay as the advertisements pretend it can be-if I'll only use their product. And where is the place of tears in the scheme? When may even a man cry? -Ah, the mess sergeant said. They spend half a their time bawlin. It's all part of the act. But I see through these Eyeties. -Once every hour, the corporal said, twisting his GI handker­ chief, the Neapolitans cry. They cry when they're happy an they cry when they're sad. Don't make sense. -But it does, the pfc with the spectacles said under his mos­ quito netting. Look at a face laughing. Then look at the same face crying.... Which do you think is the truer mask? I remember thinking of this point. In tears there's something very old and very young. In between is the vacuum that laughs or smiles. I decided that Americans cried less because they lived mostly in that vacuum. They weren't close enough to birth or close enough to death. After some time in Naples I saw that by the Mediter­ ranean it's more human to weep than to laugh. More reasons to. 298 (NAPLES) 299 eart�ru I got to love the Italians because they were still able to do some of both. I wasn't satisfied with the easy song and dance that Italians are just volatile. If people cry easily, perhaps they're gentler. P�rhaps they acknowledge the truth of life more honestly. Croco­ dI�e t�ars aside, of course. So often when I was alone in Naples at midnight and saw the moon on the bay, and Capri like hope turned to stone, I saw that too much laughter was a mockery of our own precarious state, a spiting of God, as though to show Him that He couldn't pull these incongruities over our eyes. -I had a signorina las night, the mess sergeant said. She bust out bawlin after it was all over. But I know she oney did it to screw me for a hundred lire more. . • • I saw the women of Naples cry. But I'd seen women cry before. The Neapolitan women wept for strong reasons. They couldn't get food at black market prices. Their two rooms had been blasted by a bomb. Or their man would never come back to them, for the Germans had shot him in North Italy. I saw Neapolitan mothers pass me on the street and suddenly begin to cry. I saw a Neapolitan girl great with child rolling on a doorstep where till recently an American had been billeted. I saw a girl from the Vomero shoot a British captain on Via Roma and fall weeping on his body. Then I began to understand the reasons for tears. I remember I wept once myself, in Algiers. Because I couldn't figure out the mess I and other Americans were in. That crying of mine was like a boy kicking his bicycle or tearing up a crossword puzzle he's too stupid to solve. Mine was selfish weeping because my pride was baffled. Thus I learned the difference between crying over a broken heart and crying over a principle. On this difference depends whether tears lift or debase. Tears can flow from the heart or merely from the eyes. In the first case they're like blood. In the second, just so much salt water. I remember the farmers out Caserta way standing in their fields and crying over the drought. In 1944 Italy needed food. But the war had dried up even the heavens; the fields even down to Bari and Puglie were scorched. I remember a scugnizz' on Via Roma crying in the August noon because the American major confiscated his can of shoe polish, say­ ing that he stole it from the americani. When this kid cried, I thought his heart was spilling out of his dirty thin body. I remember Aida, arrested on the streets where she was walking and not bothering anybody. They jailed her in the questura till ilie re�ll� at life !�Il. H, D) w�s reluIDro I� 't cry, �m. �Im.�: it can�' ! tear!i� [ naerni!ffi1 ilie�md! metnin�\r g)Json�: 'ea mDliii' dOle en��: the Me�i! 'erealoru: �t. i -_. � • .' • .. ? .. _._ _ -*' 1"� 300 THE GALLERY her blood test turned out negative. Today in Naples Aida must still remember how the americani treated her. I saw her in her pink cotton dress and sandals, rolling up her sleeve for the needle. Her tears fell on her brown chest. We Americans stood around laugh­ ing and asking Aida how much she charged. I remember the family Russo: Papa and Mamma and Valerio and Salvatore, looking at the place where they and their blood had lived for two hundred years. In that palazzo Mercadante wrote his songs. After a bomb it looked like a pile of chalk. I remember how the mother put her face on the father's shoulder, how both of them rocked together, how Valerio and Salvatore simply sat down on the dust of the place where they'd been born. I remember Gerarda of the hair that never stayed in place, of the smell of lace and oranges, of the hands that were folded in front of her-but not in resignation. -Una volta, Gerarda said, ero un' ottima pianista, al Conserva­ torio. Anche la maes tra me 10 diceva.... Gerarda wept sometimes out of fury and a refusal to a�cept her own destiny. Her tears taught me that the individual is never so responsible as the moralists hold, that by August, 1944, the Italian personality had long been stymied by collective hell. And I remember an American USO actress weeping because the QM laundry hadn't ironed the pleats into her skirt. Or myself moaning because our cigarette ration got cut from seven packs a week to five. -These Ginsoes are softenin me up, the mess sergeant said. They do so much turnin on of the water works that I'm meltin away myself. -When Rosetta left me to spend a week in Rome, the corporal said, she puts her arms around my neck and she busts out bawl in. ••. So I did too. Just dig that.••• They better get us GI's outa Italy before we all go to pieces. And I remember seeing wounded soldiers in the 300th General cry when they thought no one was around. Except for them I don't believe most of us Americans in Naples of August, 1944, had much real reason to cry. But we did when we'd got a skinful of vino. We were feeling sorry for ourselves. But we were doing all right, compared to the Neapolitans. Then I saw that those who weep honestly had simply come to a point where they must cease acting or break. ho III N It ill iC' ca i� 10 10 OCCI WO I Tn �Iio iliat tion I remember that in Naples I began to observe a dread­ ful harmony among the sorrow, (he hunger, and the filth. I heard �� mi�� a�. Ana QOW� oltenl Mil craft! BUI Nor I �tner {now haw �f a n ana kl inilie trun� (NAPLES) ve a ar� ilth. I nl� how Neapolitan music was this common denominator. It was music, not to amuse or to distract, but to comment on the life of Naples. This music was more than sounds coming out of the air. It was a voice focused from the horror and squalor that I saw in the streets. It didn't need program notes. I knew it for a con­ sciousness of the Neapolitans. I found out where this awareness came from, for I saw poets and painters and musicians by them­ selves, watching the city of Naples from a distance. They weren't followed by publicity agents who took down everything they said, for release to the world the following morning. They just stood and looked and thought. They were sponges sucking in whatever there was in the air in August, Ig44. I was seeing the isolation of the artist. His mind runs along in its own time, and no one can tell him for sure whether he has anything to say. He can only watch and listen and himself become transparent. Everything he sets down is at the focus of the crosscurrents. He feels the fret and push of currents and forces, but he cannot express them except in his own medium. This negating and expanding of himself lets him know that he's great and infinitesimal all at once. He's so occupied with life that he's incapable of living it himself, for that would ruin the barometer in him. I remember that Italian artists are different from American ones. The Americans always announced that they're artists. They were glib about their techniques and their souls. They told me also that they were making money-not that I should pay much atten­ tion to that. They told me a man could be either very rich or very poor from his art. Look at Shakespeare; look at Mozart. But I might as well know that in the twentieth century a good artist had a go-percent chance of making scads of money. They told me so. And they assured me that the most successful artists neither wrote down to their publics nor retreated into meaninglessness. They often blithely referred to such phrases as It Sells, and Giving the Public What it Wants. So I decided that these American artists were craftsmen in the plumbing of the soul. Chromium and plastic. But the Neapolitans never informed me that they were artists. Nor had they a press agent to tell me so. They looked like any other Italian when they came into a room. Only when I'd �ot to know them did I learn that they'd written or composed or painted. I saw no romantic hunger in their eyes. But I was aware in them of a reserve and a delicacy, as though they were playing with fire, and knew it. Often they were inaccessibly melancholy. And except in the cafes (where there was no coffee) they talked of many other things than the problems of the artist. They told me that they 301 302 THE GALLERY worked from their hearts, after they'd tested those hearts. They said that every human heart contained a key to other hearts. But the artist's gaze must be within, after a long time of looking about outside. These Neapolitan artists told me that a man knows if he ever puts down the truth. It hurts as it's being torn out of the heart. But once set down, undeformed and whole, it will lie on the paper forever-more or less. It should never be warped into what the artist thinks mayor should be the truth. These Neapol­ itans told me that a bad artist cooks up what people want to be­ lieve. They told me that in August, 1944, I must listen hard to pick up the least murmur of truth. I remember that the American artists had no such counsel to give me. They spoke of fitting oneself into movements. They talked of periods and tendencies and lucky shots and literary agents. They wouldn't read anything I'd written, but they liked to have me around as audience: -Got a minute? Here's an amusing little thing I just dashed off.... The Neapolitan artists taught me by knowing them. They said that the artist is also a teacher. The striving must be done with his material. And the highest and hardest striving of all with him­ self. No one, they said, could help him in this secret battle. No one but himself for that first carving and that last polishing. They told me that if the artist didn't believe in some worth in life, there wasn't any point in trying to be an artist. For art was an act of life and love, with some of the violence inherent in each. There was no excuse for titillating or frustrating. Just let pen and paper and brush alone for a better man. Good art had been accomplished before and probably would be again. -These Italian buildins, the corporal said, like they grew from the ground without even tryin. -Ah, said the mess sergeant, watching a signorina watch him, when these ole mousetraps was new, they looked as shiny as Rocke­ feller Center does now. -I wonder, the pfc said. -Yuh, Naples is too fulla monuments, the corporal said. Oughta tear em down. All slums. -My boy, the pfc said over his spectacles, you must make the distinction between old lumber and old jewels.... I remember wondering what there was in Italian music and Italian painting and Italian architecture different from anything we Americans had given to the world. And I decided that the best we me tor I � art � tOI 1 ChaJDe ::1 :l art Ne of lov Kilt, lfiil ana I na� , fuli Ire lion 1 rlace lIme (NAPLES) 303 COU1ll11: en�, 1[ no lit1�' ilier 1�: were complete projections of incomplete human life into a dead medium. In them all I found a regret, a sense of something transi­ tory caught on the wing, a humility and a pride inextricably mixed. I saw that, the better succeeding ages had judged these pieces of art, the more fully did they partake of a discipline that man wishes he possessed, of a sweetness such as he rarely has the strength to sustain. But most of all these tunes, these statues, and these poems had an air as though everyone had felt them but had been too lazy to write them down. There's something in these memorials of the human spirit that cheers and terrifies at the same time. Death is coming, but it can't be so awful because everyone goes through with it. And out of death this art speaks to the living. It smiles. With the smile of a mother who knows what her child has to look forward to. But she never speaks of it. This is the crystallized wisdom of art. No­ body heeds it, yet everyone admires it on one plane of taste or another. I remember that in Naples of August, 1944, I found that art achieves what man hopes for and what religions promise. t maK(�: And I remember that something in the air of Naples or in the Neapolitans brought me and other Americans back to the strength of human love. In the middle of a war it's easy to forget how to love, either another's body, or just humanity. War throws out of kilter that part of us which delights in a kiss, the feel of skin, a smile. Our emphasis falls on sheer physical release taken hurriedly and brutally. I wondered why Americans must be taught how to love. Per­ haps it's because in our country there is felt to be something shame­ ful in two human beings taking their pleasure together. In America I remember a tension between the sexes. Human love is a disease for the isolation ward, not at all nice. Thus love in America is often divided into the classifications of Having Sex and Getting Mar­ ried. Neither has much to do with love. It was the Having Sex which began to strike us in Naples as being so cold-blooded. What caused this? The Italian scenery? The Neapolitan women? But after a while I and many other Americans ceased to be satisfied with passion without affection. I'd known Americans who'd lost their virginity without ever kissing or making love in the old sense of the word. So we came to look upon this Having Sex, this ejacula­ tion without tenderness as the orgasm of a frigidaire. There was no place for it in the scheme of human love. It wasn't so much bestial �s meaningless. For Having Sex meant that the two bodies involved mU!I( !�i � anrtni� lat tn�� !II / �L I -- � .... ' � '_"'_�oQI!"'.tJIII'w"-� / . ..- - � 304 THE GALLERY ana !DOI are loot T ex�all, Dill! on'inen love anr neo InerllDan conflline never really knew one another. They just rolled and arose strangers, each loathing the other. For 1 remember that many of us Americans couldn't fit love into our lives. Before marriage we knew the double date, that negation of intimacy and privacy. Two men and two girls go out for an eve­ ning. The men talk between themselves, the girls between them­ selves. Alter four hours everyone is so bored that the only escape is a physical one, as a book is torn to bits by a reader who can't understand it. There were no overtures, no epilogues. I watched Americans when I was on double dates with them. They hadn't much sense of how to lead up to the act by conversation, of how to stir the woman's mind before their fingers touched her body. Their kisses, if they kissed at all, were rough and fumbling. They did outrage to the gentleness of women. I wondered why many Amer­ icans kept their love of women in a tight compartment. And the women in their turn thought the men graceless bulls. -I was standin in the park, the mess sergeant said. An she starts to cry an scratch my face when I wouldn't kiss her. -Rosetta tole me I necked like a butcher, the corporal said. But I caught on fast, with the lessons she gimme. These babes know somethin.... She taught me to kiss slow, to take my time. I useta close my eyes an just jab, hoping for the best.... Rosetta kisses sleepylike. Sometimes she puts her tongue in my ear. Or just brushes her lips along my throat. Gee ... -Neapolitan women know how to hold their men, the pfc said, wiping his spectacles. They've had centuries of training. You don't need divorce when you can cook and make love. Love's a lot simpler than some people make it out to be. Quite natural, you know ... -Damned if 1 do know, the tech sergeant said. Wouldn't it sorta embarrass ya to be married to a gal that responded too well? Wouldn't ya feel she knew a little bit too much to be ya wife? ... If ya had a mouse in ya house that really knew how to love ya up, ya might feel like handin her five bucks before ya went to sleep. -You'd get used to it, the pfc said. And you wouldn't be nervous or dissatisfied half the time. For though we Americans were a conquering army, when history is written it will show that the Neapolitans conquered many of us. They beat us down with love. They loved love. There were Italian boys and girls who slashed their wrists for us, whether we de­ served it or not. The Italians regarded romantic love as what it really is: a viru­ Ient disease. And we only jested about it. They taught us the -I an)'! Ir, \\�e anr H 01 �iv iliatt Qn 01 �ITa� Ire mlran �I!al Moi I'a ah� ,llnm -Irel lOOKing mean!J .lnO the �ople (NAPLES) 305 anatomy of this extraordinary madness. They showed us that it should be en joyed and feared, that the rules and science of love are at least as worthy of consideration as the laws of hygiene, football, and business ethics. The Neapolitans taught us that love's as necessary as eating and excreting. It's a game in which music and cruelty and peace are all at stake. People are only admirable in ratio to their suscepti­ bility to love. Laughter and good manners and wit are all trappings of love. Even when they aren't in love, the Italians ape the man­ nerisms of the lover. Thus they can be joyous at eighty. Italian love is both articulate and silent. The lovers quickly knock down any barrier between them. It's the only time in a man's life when he can forget that people are really alone in life, that actually there's no way to bridge the chasm between hearts. Those physical manifestations of love, the touches and glances and kisses and confessions, are all deceits that we invent to hide our own lone­ liness. -When ya walk down Via Roma, the corporal said, ya can tell by their eyes whether they will or won't. They make no bones about it over here.... Christ, what eyes they giveya. -Back home, the pfc said, they'd call it unbridled sensuality. -I can have any Ginso I want, the mess sergeant said. Any age, any sex. They all love it. It's the one good thing I'll say for em. I remember that love in Naples was both wild and disciplined. When two people enter into this madness, they can't stop short at any point, saying: There, I've loved you enough. Yet this madness of giving and pleasing and reciprocating is governed by strict rules that the lovers seem instinctively to understand. The only evil you can do to love is to thwart it by purely intellectual rules or by betraying what your own heart tells you to do. I remember how easy and fluid the beginning is. That first entrance into a room, that easy lounging on a street corner, that first sally of eyes, those first words that awakened a suspicion or an echo in my cellar. I couldn't believe it was happening to me. Yet I'd always dreamed this was the way it would be when it came. At first I tried to hold off and watch my own mind. But I ended by tumbling into the stream I was charily testing with my toe. I remember the next stage of my disease. Something I've been looking for is here for the asking. Everything we say to each other means more than our words denote. For love is understanding. And the solace! For a night, for a week, for a month, for a year two people are able to forget the riddle of being alive in the greaterlIr il: all :ught VI, __ . �L-l_ -�---- - ---- �- - - - � - -. . THE GALLERY306 (N ,........, delight and torment of being lifted out of themselves and married on some island where nothing else in the world may come. -Dimmi che cosa pensi, John. -Same thing you are, of course. I remember that then I found the difference between love and Having Sex. There's none of the blind preoccupation with my own body and its satisfaction. The first aim is to please my love. And I end by being pleased too. -No, penso ate. Voglio sentirti contento fra le mie braccia. -Don't you feel that I am? If I could keep my lips in your hair forever.... For the act of love is only the continuation and the resolution of a desire and a mystery already set up in two minds. The blue­ print becomes the working model, the raw stone the statue. I remember lying there, lost and wondering. I put my hand out to encounter another hand, already reaching for mine. My mouth went out exploring, only to meet another mouth working toward mine in the darkness. In that kiss I felt as though my tongue had at last articulated a word I'd been striving to pronounce all my life long. In those long kisses there was nothing brutal, nothing rapa· cious, as mad love is said to be, so that the lovers lacerate one another's lips. I think we were both a little sad when we kissed. In those kisses we tried to heal each other's souls. And I remember the sweet slowness of undressing one another, the longing and the languor. The clothes dropping whispering to the floor, the shadowy bodies gradually revealed, the secrets even more secret and removed that they lay under our hands. It seemed that in our lethargic and compassionate caresses we were trying to console each other for every hurt the world had ever inflicted: I am with you to comfort me, and I will comfort you. For I love you. And I remember how exquisite was our leisure with one another. If there was passion-and indeed there must have been much-it only carried us slowly and steadily up to that place where there is understanding. Higher and higher. We didn't say much, only one another's names in a rising intensity of pain and delight. And for one instant we were in a place where there was no difference between us. We melted into all those who've ever loved and lived at all. But then the hand that had buoyed us to these places slowly set us down again on earth. For no one can live very long up there. And after a while of nothing to say out of the huge peace, it's time for sleep. Sleep's a part of love. No man should rise from the looaor �1wh� !m1Ive�1Ireme 1Iu�ion, l��inin i�, or a �1tner I �wer OUi t� ttick� �afin :Jffian be lIT love! �ijitr i� ( I� de�iJ � the I( :Iije!t, Je (NAPLES) bed after loving, button his pants, and run to catch a train. For that's a denial of the peace that love brings. I remember how we turned to each another, to sleep all night long with our arms about each another: -Buona notte e sogni d'oro.... Dormi, John.... Thus in Naples I and other Americans loved. In a war one has to love, if only to reassert that he's very much alive in the face of destruction. Whoever has loved in wartime takes part in a passion­ ate reaffirmation of his life. Such love has all the aspects of terror and surprise. I am bitter when my love seems cold. Nothing can equal the malice with which I plot to pay back every slight, real or imagined. And nothing can match the tears and vows with which we are reconciled for the second or the hundredth time. All my conduct is analyzed scruple by scruple with an ethical nicety which I can never carry into my daily living. If men could live all their lives as virtuously and introspectively as when they're in love, we'd all be gods, and there'd be no need of promises of heaven or of hell. -I deliberately insult Rosetta, the corporal said. An when I've said my piece to her an see the expression on her face, I'd give a month's pay to take back my words.... Yet I won't apologize to her. Why's that? -Those minutes of waitin, the mess sergeant said, wonderin will she show up tonight. -In love, said the pfc with spectacles, laughing for the first time overseas, is the only time when the human race is amusing or good or anything else but scheming beetles ... and it's the only time when we get a true perspective on ourselves, for we can't stand ourselves.... I remember that in Naples I learned that everything in life is a delusion, that all happiness is simply a desire for, and unhappiness a repining of, love. Nothing else matters. All of life is a preparation for, or a retrospection on, those brief hours when two people are together and perfect in each other. Then we're the slaves of a power outside ourselves, that brings us together for its own ends and tricks us into a joy and an equality. And finally I remember that the Neapolitans, because they were human beings and concerned with being nothing else but, carri<:d their loves into their relations with others. I suppose that ChrIS­ tianity is only a code to expand your personal love to all the world. Your desire and your potency are supposed to touch all people. On the lowest scale this means simply good manners. On the highest, Jesus Christ. I wondered sometimes why the Italians struck 307 308 THE GALLERY me as kinder and gentler than many Americans. Perhaps it was because their lives were' more fixed economically, because they knew they could never make a million dollars or be president of the United States. Therefore their energies turned inward: to the enjoyment of life as it could be lived within their own possibilities, to the acquirement of those graces and kindnesses which make life different from the whirring of a machine. --She brought me to her house, the mess sergeant said. I didn't wanna go, but I went because I thought there was a chance of her ending the night shackin with me an Jacobowski. Christ, what a welcome I gotl Ya'd think I was a visitin fireman.... Well, those Ginsoes treated me so white that me an Jacobow5ki decided not to shack with her after all.... Say, maybe that was in the back a their heads all the time. -Maybe, the pfc said. Or maybe they just liked you as a human being. That's not impossible, you know. -Nah, the mess sergeant said. They wanted somethin outa me. Just what they wanted I ain't yet figured out. But I will. -Maybe they didn't want anything at all from you, the pfc said. But no one ever listened to him. And sometimes I wondered why the Neapolitans, with some exceptions, seemed so good to me. Their motives were so unmixed; their gladness so bright, their grief so terrible. I decided that it was because they were living for their bare existence. They'd never had much, and in August, 1944, they'd given up every nonessential and quite a few of the essentials. We Americans were still thinking in terms of nylons and chromium and that raise from fifty to sixty dollars a week. The Neapolitans weren't always sure they'd be eating 'that evening. But instead of inducing a squalor and envy in them, in most cases this bleak reality brought forth in them a helpless gaiety, a simplicity, and a resignation that touched me and many other Americans. This even though they'd lost their war. The fact remained that these people must and would live, the only important fact after the nonsense and cruelty of the moment have been wiped away. There'll be Neapolitans alive in 1960. I say, More power to them. They deserve to live out the end of their days because they caught on sooner than we to how simple human life can be, uncomplicated by advertising and Puritanism and those loathsome values of a civilization in which everything is measured in terms of commercial success. What difference does it make if a man has BO from honest work if he can't buy soap? And does a (NAPLES) 309 rne�n�: I��, \ou,iliq wife care for the hair on her legs if her children aren't eating regularly? I remember that this generalized love of the Italians for life and other human beings brought them to a functionalism that we Americans have so far realized only in our machinery. I don't speak as a romanticist. What complicates human life unbearably is the unequal distribution of goods and favoritism. But the last is far more human and understandable than the first. People aren't born equal intellectually. But that's a truism. All have a right to work, to eat, to sleep, to make love, and to dress, if they choose. Every­ thing else in life has been introduced into it by the so-called ruling and intellectual classes, who in 1944 were too aware of themselves and too little cognizant of their responsibilities. By August, 1944, they'd failed completely. It was time for a new order and straight thinking. The alternative was obvious. I remember that I knew and I saw that the Italians were a more cohesive social group than the Americans. Then that is all to their credit. Have we Americans, for all our preaching, done much to assimilate our minorities, to control vested interests, to distinguish between talent and ballyhoo, to understand the world in which we live? In the future there'll be no satisfaction in saying: I am an American, as the Italians used to tell me, with the pride of an inferiority complex: I am an Italian. So what? Perhaps we must soon all come to the point where we're proud only to say: I am a human being, a citizen of the world. For in Naples I and other Americans learned by a simple application of synecdoche that no one, in himself and by himself, is much better or much worse than anybody else. And we Americans were only fortunate. Our good fortune should be shared, or we'd lose it and ourselves and our humanity. In Naples I and other Americans were reduced by watching the effects of the war to that cipher which is the beginning of wisdom and love. Who am I? Why, only a more or less sensitive piece of chemicals and reactions. I shall live for part of a century. And it's to my own interest and to the interest of my children that others in the world shall know that life can be as good as I have found it to be. This is utter idealism. It is also utter practicality, such as Americans like to talk about. And I remember that in Naples I relearned that man is m?re than a physical being. The religions of the world have been saymg this for several thousand years. But the world has never settled ?n a dogma to define the spiritual nature of man. No one ever will, except for himself. That belongs to liberty of choice. It's at any D!anI,\iTh 'erf�ijE roaeO�t; ce, Th1)'�: ml"in���' �'m'lu�t crom hl�� ) rore ��, �u��r� dom i� � t toumOO�1 a I�t iliffi u]Qlil'e,� the roomfUl; in J�,I endolilie pIe Dum: ni!ffi an�: ing i! mr� oe� it ma! �P( Ana 00 \. :��� '. . ��"' - - ._ ..... ... --.. �.. -- 310 THE GALLERY rate a question that can be settled without murder. All that matters in the twentieth century is that millions of people must never again be thrust out of life through no fault of their own. It seemed, against American rules of A Good Fight and Fair Play, that the Italians should hate us and that we should hate them. Then in twenty years we can all have a Return Engagement on the Home Field. In Naples I saw that this need not necessarily be so. -Dovete aiutarci, the Neapolitans said. This meant that we ought to help them. Why not? I don't remember noticing that most Europeans were content to sit back for the rest of their lives and receive American food and medical supplies. This is the newest form of vicious propaganda. Some, of course, were. But then there are also Ameri­ cans who'd be only too happy with a dole. In August, 1944, I remember that there were many Americans in Naples. They learned from Italian life. They learned the things that were good and bad in both American and Italian life. I remember the Italian women, brought to situations that even the men couldn't cope with. I remember that they still laughed and loved their men and their babies. I remember the wonderful beauty of Italian women, outside and inside. And even the whores had a certain beauty of logic in them. These Italian women were often gentle without weakness, gay without giddiness, and loving without gumdrops. These principles of conduct seemed to be rules for life which held even when life was at rock bottom. They were learned thousands of years ago. Yet we forget them through too much comfort and through bad art. I remember also the Italian men. There were thieves and liars and misanthropes among them, of course. There are everywhere. But I remember Italian men who moved in a sober brilliance of purpose-that nothing like this would ever happen again. They studied things outside Italy, endeavoring to discover what good had been done in the world since 1922, in what respects the outside world has surpassed Italy in science and humanism and govern­ ment. I remember how much they gave me when they thought they had nothing left to give: a sense of tragedy, a sweetness, and an easiness toward little problems. All this for a few cigarettes or an occasional meal. Or for nothing. I remember their dark faces when anyone was kind to them. The gentle and noble Italians (and there are many) never envied me. �All!1 ---....._ II thal� le mUll: town, (NAPLES) 311 --Caro John, ti consiglio di dire a tutti quel che hai visto in Italia . . . Perche, sai, gl'Italiani non vi odiano, non vi odiano, voi altri americani. . . . Thus I walked often in the Galleria Umberto Primo, that arcade in the center of the city of Naples. Most of the modern world could be seen in ruins there in August, 1944. I remember that Galleria as something in me remembers my mother's womb. I walked backwards and forwards in it. I must have spent at least nine months of my life there, watching and wondering. For I got lost in the war in Naples in August, 1944. Often from what I saw I lost the power of speech. It seemed to me that everything happening there could be happening to me. A kind of madness, I suppose. But in the twenty-eighth year of my life I learned that I too must die. Until that time the only thing evil that could be done to me would be to hurry me out of the world before my time. Or to thwart my natural capacities. If this truth held for me, it must be valid for everybody else in the world. This is the reason why I remember the Gallery in Naples. Italy.... Moe J NINTH PORTRAIT one Gin no!� I\THOUGH HE WAS A SECOND LIEUTENANT, THERE WAS BOTH indolence and nervousness in the way he leaned against the wall of the PX on Via Diaz. He had a toothpick in a corner of his mouth, and he was watching the people going in and out of the PX. In brown paper packages was all their wealth for one week: seven packs of cigarettes, a cake of soap, five razor blades, and some candy bars. And they carried their packages fearfully cradled in their elbows, as though they were smuggling something. In the gutter stood Neapolitan kids who bid for the contents of these paper bags. An MP sometimes came up and chased the kids away. But just around the corner from the PX the Americans and the Neapolitans would get together again to engage in trade or barter. A GI with an armored force shoulder patch came sideways up and saluted him. He spat out his toothpick, straightened up, and returned the greeting. This GI wore the Purple Heart on his shirt, which didn't prejudice the second lieutenant one way or another. -Lieutenant, sir, the GI said. -One or the other, he said. But not both. -Ya givin me a hard time, sir. I got mine at Salerno ... -So did I, he said, and I don't wear anything to show it.... And for the GI to see he spread out his right hand, which he'd been keeping in his pocket. He let the GI see how one finger had been bent on itself, how the flesh on the back of the hand was mottled and taut like melted rubber. -And I liked to bang out a tune or two on the piano, he added, when I wasn't driving my taxi. -Well, that's not all, the GI said. Last week I got nicked at Poggibonsi. I'm just gettin outa the hospital ... 312 MOE 313 -So am I, boy, so am I, he said, changing the cant of his legs. But I can't show you my other wound. Not here in public on the streets of Napoli anyhow. -Ya givin me a hard time, sir, the GI said. I thought ya was one of these PBS commandos. -Tell me what you want, he said, wiping his forehead. -I need some shirts' ... an 1 didn't sell my others either. The Ginsoes hocked em. Or some kike sold em while I was in the hospital ... -I'm a k ike, the second lieutenant said. Nevertheless, telling the GI to wait outside, he went into the PX. It was hot and crowded inside the glass doors. Some officers were fighting over the last wicks and flints left on a counter. Others were knocking one another down to get at the shoe counter, where three pairs of low oxfords waited for the victor. Others sat at card tables spread with brown paper, drinking cokes and coffee or eating sugar doughnuts. He looked at them all for a minute. Then he went upstairs to the officers' clothing store. It hurt him a little to climb. His combat boots scraped on the marble stairs. The Neapolitan girl behind the clothing counter was pressing her temples and squeezing tears out of her eyes. She looked at him as though he were the newest rat come to gnaw at her. -Say, maybe you need an aspirin, he said. What did they do to you? -0 Dio, she said. It's this rush rush rush ... the Americans are always in a hurry ... they yell at me ... Maria, Maria, Maria • . . I'm their servan t . . . and they are driving me crazy. . . . He took his right hand out of his pocket and laid it on the counter as he leaned toward her. She saw his proud flesh and his twisted fingers. Then she took a handkerchief from between her breasts and started to dry her eyes. -Your servant, lieutenant. -Have you got a size fifteen suntan shirt? She got hrm one from a dwindling pile on the almost empty shelves. While she was wrapping it, he signed the old business on the yellow sales ticket: -1 certify that this clothing was bought by me for my personal use; Moses Shulman, and Lt, In£. ... And while she was making change from his thousand-lira note, he went downstairs and bought a wax-paper cup of coffee and two sugar doughnuts. These he carried back to the girl Maria. -They never let us buy these, you know, she said. 314 THE GALLERY Then she stepped into a recess and drank the coffee and ate the two doughnuts. He watched her shiny black smock, which all the Neapolitan PX girls wore over their print dresses. He saw the glint of the earrings under her profuse hair. He watched her throat swallowing. Then she came back to the counter, wiping her mouth and looking at him dubiously. -I want you to smile for me, Moe said, picking up his package. I got a feeling there's something you haven't showed me of yourself. -I have no reason to smile, she said, staring at the brown paper on the counter. -Neither do I. So she wiped her lips once more. Her mouth widened. He saw her teeth and the tongue behind them like a frightened polyp. -But that's no smile, Moe said. And suddenly he tweaked her lightly in the ribs. Again her lips parted and she laughed. And he felt his heart sicken and flower all at once. -Maria what? -Maria Rocco, she said, of Naples, Italy. Di una razza vinta e inferiore. -Ah, said Moe, and what conquered and inferior race do you think I come from? -But you're an American, she said, glancing at his frightful right hand. You should be the happiest man on earth. The world is at your feet . . . -Do you think so? he said, putting his hand back into his pocket. Look, Maria Rocco, will you meet me tonight at eight? At the Via Roma side of the Galleria Umberto? -Well, why not? You're the first man today who treated me like a human being. -Take a look at my nose and my dark skin, Moe said. I might almost be a Neapolitan. -At eight at the Galleria, then, Maria Rocco said. He looked at her for a second, then with his package under his arm he went downstairs and out of the PX. The August sun in Naples was broiling. The GI was waiting for him and took a roll of lire from his pocket. -Gee, lieutenant, thanks. Ya gimme a hard time there at first. How much? -I won't be needing money for quite some time, Moe said. The GI saluted him and took off down Via Diaz toward the q_uestura. Moe looked after him, put a toothpick in his teeth, and slowly turned onto Via Roma. 11ri rr1 hlm tn� Doti MOE 315 He turned into the Galleria Umberto. In the heat of August, 1944, he. felt the ca'!terized lips of his new wound murmuring like the gratmgs of a thirsty mouth. A tremor ran up his side along his ribs. He thought maybe the medic had left a wick inside him. He walked till he was in the very center of the Galleria, under the dome. Slowly he spun round in his boots as though he were the needle of a compass orienting itself on the grid lines of a map. Thus he was the very center of that afternoon crowd in the Gal­ leria. He was the nub of hundreds of persons, American, British, French, Polish, Moroccan, and Neapolitan. He smiled and said to himself that this was the first and last time he'd be the center of the world. As he stood poised, a young Italian in a white linen suit came up. He limped on a cane. Out of his handsome head stuck an unlighted cigarette. -Please, the Italian said. I'm not asking for a cigarette, you notice. Just a little fire for my own . -Why certainly, Joe. He put out his zippo lighter so suddenly that the Italian ducked and fell to the pavement of the Galleria. In helping him up Moe saw that one white linen trouser, disordered by the fall, bared an aluminum leg. -You're too used to getting hit, Moe said. -In Ethiopia I was a tenente pilota. I used to strafe the Ethio- pians in the fields. According to orders, you understand. One day my plane was forced down. The neri started to cut me up. You see what they did to my leg ... -That's enough, Moe said. Walk along with me. The handsome Italian took his arm and they cut diagonally into the Galleria, away from its center under the dome. Moe had to walk at half his usual pace. The Italian helped himself puntingly along on his cane. One white linen shoulder hunched up and down. -I have always wanted to know an American. How did you know my name is Joe? It is; Giuseppe Brasi from Taranto.... For one week now I have been standing by myself .every afternoon in the Galleria, waiting for an American to whom I would feel costretto to speak. One whole week I waited, with the excuse of the unlit cigarette in my lips. And then today I saw you.... I don't want anything of you; cigarettes, black market. I am rich, as Italians go nowadays. But I wanted to talk to an American. The right Amer­ ican.... What is there in your face that I find so simpatico? -Damned if I know, Moe said, feeling the Italian's weight rising and falling on his arm. But Hitler probably would. -Well, the Italian said, you Americans have some secret we Italians have missed. So you will pardon me if I make you my friend. At once. -Not at all, Moe said. Let's sit down at this table and have a vermouth. -First, the Italian said, laying a hand on Moe's arm. I must do something for you. I cannot stop giving presents to those I like.... Do you love women? I know an actress from Gorizia here in Napoli. I never kiss her on the mouth. But I buy her food when she meets me on the street and says, Ehhh, Pinuccio, I am hungry, cousin.... Or can I take you to the casini? I go often there for pleasure. The girls give me special attention because of my leg. They cannot tire me out. ... At fifteen I was mad for ballerine. I went every night to the rivista to look at one Wanda. In those days I didn't have much money from my father, so I bored Wanda. Over her I used to cry myself to sleep. At fifteen.... Now I am in Napoli from Taranto on business. Marriage business. I am affiancing myself to a dottoressa of a good family. A serious girl. We fight every day. I leave her in tears and walk into the streets of Napoli. I amuse myself.... Mi piace tutto.... For you I will do anything. -Thank you, Moe said, ordering two vermouths. Thank you very much, Joe. -But, the handsome Italian said, laying his cane across his lap, you must tell me what you know that I do not. I must learn your secret. Is it just that you are an American? ... I think not. I find many of them offensive.... Look, caro, I have an apartment on Via dei Mille. You must come and live with me for a week. As my guest. We will have cene and pranzi such as you have never eaten. We will have women in the moonlight. I will fight with my fidanzata for one solid week in order that I may be always with you. -But this time tomorrow night, Moe said, I'll be north of Napoli. I'll be seeing the houses of the farmers up in Tuscany. Walls spattered with holes, I'll be running with my carbine..•• Think of me up there if the sun is as bright as it is this after­ noon.... You see why I can't accept your hospitality. - Beh, caro mio, the handsome Italian said, shrugging a shoulder as though he were still limping, you mean you are going back to fight? -I'm only an infantry platoon leader, Moe said. Lean and mean ... maybe you'd like to fly me up in your plane? -But the Duce told us, the Italian said, ordering two more ilii 316 THE GALLERY ma MOE 317 eanak vermouths, that Jews did no fighting in the American Army ..• Then he checked himself and added: -Of course you will agree with me that your Roosevelt started this war? -Look, Joe, Moe said. Let's talk like two friends, huh? It's too late in my life for arguing.... I argued for twenty-five years. I saw that somebody had to be the grist for the mill instead of just talking about it.... So here I am ... I have a hand that looks like a claw, and a rip in my chest. I'm no good t.o anyone any longer. All those fine dreams I once had are gone.... The world will never be what I thought it could be. I used to dream at the wheel of my taxi while I waited for a stop light to change. I listened to what people were talking about in back of my meter. . . . Nothing they said made any sense to me.... So here I am in Naples, Italy, in August, 1944. It makes a little more sense to me than a drunken dowager in an evening gown.... Anyway I'm almost happy and almost calm ... I'm seeing the world, like you do in that last look around before you go blind. What more can I ask? -Mi dica un po', the handsome Italian asked. Are you such a strange man because you are a Jew or in spite of it? -I've hungered and I've thirsted after something, Moe said. And it took a war to show me what that something is.... I've lived all my life in insecurity. I feared it and I fought it. I saw what it did to my father. I saw how it embittered my sisters Audrey and Rebecca and Elaine, even as they sat at their typewriters. I saw how only the sweetness of my mother was able to hold out against it.... But now that I accept insecurity I find a weight has been lifted from me ... It means that in this year I must die. -You are a perfectly just man, the handsome Italian said, and tears came into his eyes. You are a good man in 1944 ... -No, not good, Moe said; and he smiled to counteract the Italian's tears. But I see that it's nothing to give up my life. It's easier to do than be slowly smothered. -Spend the rest of today with me, the Italian said, wiping his eyes and smoothing his white lapels. I shall give you a night in which no pleasure will be lacking. -No thanks, Joe. It would be forcing the issue. I've never b�en able to do that. And everything now is so natural to me. LIke one of those dreams in which you want something and it hap. pens ... without any effort on your part. The handsome Italian put the toe of his cane on the pavement of the Galleria. He stood up and wiped his eyes again. 'eaOWM, ... Uitloo " I iliim: aid. Lfa�1 anel ing tWO � 318 THE GALLERY -Ah, he said, I too have a good heart, even though I strafed the Ethiopian contadini. Under orders of the Duce, of course. . . . I had also an amante, a Libyan black girl. I had two children by her. It broke my heart to leave my cugina di guerra and my bambini.... But I feel that I shall see you again. Otherwise .•• morirei di dolore.. to • -Well, take care, Joe, Moe said, putting out his hand. He watched the Italian go along the Galleria on his cane. He limped through the crowds, one white shoulder rising and falling as his weight hit his aluminum leg. Then Moe took out two sheets of V-mail stationery and a pencil and began to think what he would write to his friend Irving, driving his taxi in Brooklyn. He bit on the pencil. The sun was dropping outside the Galleria Umberto. A ray of it smote his chest, and he seemed no longer to be in August, 1944, and the Italian campaign called Rome-Arno like a soccer match. There was just himself close to the Mediter­ ranean Sea. Something specific in himself had come from this sea long ago. He didn't quite know why he felt so at home. Somewhere in Italy 14 Aug. 1944 Hullo Irv, This is that matzoth man talking to you again-I'm writing to you because I could always tell you nearly any ole gunk that came into my head-you just happen to be it, that's all-right now I'm sitting on my fanny in a city in southern Italy and you know dam well I'm not allowed to tell you what the name of it--doesn't matter anyhow-I got out of the horsepital this morning and tomorrow I'm going back to the line-I have been away too long from my boys-I keep wondering what they are doing up north of me and how many of them are still with us-­ right now I'm drinking vermouth-it's late afternoon-anyhoo I'm glad you aren't sitting across from me at Hymie Hamilburg's because then I couldn't tell you what's on my mind-you'd keep butting in with your corny humor (?) like you always do-everybody says this life is unreal -the executive officer of our battalion told me that in the middle of a war everybody contracted a bad case of irrelevance-did I spell that right?-I dunno and I don't much care-what I started out to tell you is that this life, I mean me being a platoon leader in the infantry, is as close to anything real as anybody ever gets-you suddenly see how simple and terrible everything is-and beautiful like a bolt of Iightning- (this V-mail is continued on another sheet-I hope they photograph the two together hope a hope a hope) #2 I have got it figured ou t this way-the Americans, including us taxidrivers (smile), have been living in a vacuum that they thought was MOE 319 paradise-but it wasn't really anything except chromium plating and drunkenness and hunks of sex like a Thanksgiving dinner-it bored us even when we were in the middle of it-and that's the reason millions of us have got to pay-through the nose-I think I'm going to be one of these millions-I feel it like you know you're going to have a tooth­ ache-somebody has to pay the piper and if everybody takes the attitude "it won't be me" it will end by being everybody--don't get me wrong boy-I don't think of Me as a burnt offering-but in the world there's a surgical operation going on-a lot is going to be cut out-I wonder if the world will be a better place when it comes out of the ether­ think about. what our battalion executive officer said-a bad case of irrelevance-if we had to have this war, it kind of looks as though everything we stood for meant nothing-or maybe you can tell me why I can shoot a Jerry without feeling anything, but a dirty deal or a starving kid makes my stomach flop-it must be the vermouth-Irv, keep yours where it belongs and gib ein Kuss for me to Mamma, Sadie, Audrey, Rebecca, Elaine, Anna, and Lilian that works at Cantor's­ and tell Mr. Feingold that there's no Ghetto here-the whole city is one- Be good­ Moe Moe didn't feel like drinking any more vermouth in the Gal­ leria Umberto. He wasn't much of a bibber anyhow. Alcohol mounted to his brain in a spiral of screams and complaints, like charwomen panting into an attic. Alcohol divided something in his head against the other half. After a few drinks he always felt as though he ought to rise to the defense of something. He didn't quite know what. So he pulled at his belt and went out into Via Roma and the heavy sunlight of the Neapolitan afternoon. He strolled into the piazza by the San Carlo Opera House, crossed it, and walked along the palace where in the niches stood brown statues of Carlo d'Angio and the kings of Naples and Sicily leaning on shields and looking like idealized politicians in armor. After the palazzo he came into a little railed park on an escarpment. He could see over the bay, golden in the sunset and thumping with LeI's and hospital ships. He saw the sulphur on the sides of Vesu­ vius and the dotted stretch down to Amalfi and Sorrento. This after­ noon he could see almost to Salerno, where he'd come ashore eleven months ago. Naples wasn't so far from Salerno. So little progress in eleven months. Inching up this sunny sad peninsula. Tomorrow he'd be farther north, in Tuscany. Hearing that cracking and crunching and clumping and roaring, feeling that floating uncer­ tainty, seeing the running dots of men who fired and ducked and 320 THE GALLERY sometimes didn't get up again. And occasionally the arch of a church, with a Jerry rifle peeping like a periscope around the pastelled cornice. Himself running running running or looking back as he ran to see where his boys were.... Moe loved the city of Naples. It must be like Jerusalem, in con­ trast to Tel Aviv. Those corners that gave onto nowhere, the sun­ light slanting on a pile of rubble, those faces looking out laughing or weeping at him-all reminded him that his heart was a hinge, not a valve. And most of all he loved the titter or hum or roar of Naples, saying to him things older than 1944, things that reached back into a time when men were more united in their chaos, willing to be put against a wall for something they believed. It seemed to Moe that in Naples there had somehow survived the passion and coherence of an old faith. All this he only felt, but the city of Naples comforted him. There was a poultice in its dirt, a natural humanity in its screaming. Holding onto the low balustrade, he walked along the path above the street. It was beyond the palm trees on the edge of the escarp­ ment. There were shoeshine boys along his way. Sailors-British, American, French, and Italian-leaned on the balustrade and looked over at Vesuvius. Moe walked till the path turned back on itself round a statue of Pompey and the railing was ornate with low white pot-bellied pilasters. Here to his right Via Caracciolo began and went on for miles around the bend of the bay. And here Moe stopped, for an American officer of the field artillery was sitting on the railing, back to the bay, lighting one cigarette from the stump of another. Moe and he recognized each other with the must of minorities. This captain had a beaked nose, a heavy close­ shaven beard, a narrow chest, and hairy slender wrists. He nodded rapaciously yet shyly and offered Moe a cigarette. -And only dis mornink I vas sayink to Marcus dat a soitin frient of ours iss too bright to be a Christian.... Moe refused the cigarette but stood next to the artillery captain. He waited politely, looking at the huge nose and the resentful eyes. -Oh it's silence then he's eskin, the captain said, gesturing pathetically at the Bay of Naples. Zo maybe I should be shuttink the mouth? I got vound up in my garment business and the big mouth I haven't shut since. -If you want to come out here and talk, Moe said, that's all right too. It's your privilege. -It's a great country ve got, the captain said, dat both of us coicumciscd persons should be officers in its army. If ve vas livink 1 in Poland. . . �� II ��j r-s-, arcn �I Ounot or look -I know, 1 know, Moe said, and he leaned on his elbows and belly to watch the sunlight on Capri. Then the captain brandished a copy of the New Republic in Moe's face. Even with his chain-smoking he couldn't sit still on the wall. He blinked as he talked. There was an agony of the pursued about him. -And dis I'm readink, the captain said, to improve my English. Den my GI's von't be leffink at me. Dey are fine kids, but sometimes dev're leffink yen 1 tuk. -You mean they make an issue of . . . ? -Dis 1 don't say. But sometimes 1 see funny looks. Den dey're sayink, He's a Yid and he's got two silver bars and he can't tuk American. So who is this Yid to be commanding us? Let him go back to his pawnshop . . . -I don't think that's a general attitude, Moe said. I've never had any trouble with my boys ... -Ah but you vouldn't, you vouldn't. You're tukking a perfect American and in da dark, pardon, you could be pessink yourself off as a Yenkee. -It's quite obvious that I'm not, Moe said. -Ah, but pardon, you vasn't born in Vienna like I vas, the artillery captain said. -When did you leave Vienna? Moe asked softly, looking back to the bay. -In January, 1938. -Then you weren't in on the worst of it, Moe said. You've got no cause to complain. The country took you in. As you said yourself, it even gave you a commission in its army. No other country in the world except the United States ... -Lissen a vile. Pardon, but you're tukkin almost as much as me or Marcus.... Only dis mornink I'm tellink Marcus dere's no vun like us ven it comes to tukkink. Dot's how ve sell.... Zo I'm come from Vienna in 1938. And me just a student. Ach, vat a time to learn American. And I'm not spikking it perfect.... But lissen. I arrive vid Reichsmarks in my pocket. I take a job as dishwasher. I go to Columbia. A kind Jewish lady takes an interest in me. She hears I have degrees from a gymnasium in Vienna. Zo translations from Rainer Maria Rilke I'm makink for her at three in da morning in place of sleepink.... Zo kind she vas to me.... But lissen. Dey kilt my fader before ve leafe Vienna ..• -I'm very sorry to hear that, Moe said. The artillery captain slid down from the wall. He took hold of Moe's ann, forcing him to look him full in the face. His skinny MOE 321 322 THE GALLERY figure towered upward; his eyes flashed; he shook his finger under the hot soft Neapolitan sky. A bloodstone leered on his index finger. His nasal voice peaked up into a scream: -He's sorry! ... Lissen a vile.... I'm goink back to Vienna.•.. Dis year or da next ... ven falls the Stadt to our army because I spik good Deutsch, I have a high position.... Lissen I pay back those Viennese for everytink dey do to me and my fader...• I cut them up in liddel pieces if I can. You hear me? ... Dey pay. Vait and see. Dey pay. I pay back does doity bestards. I spit in deir faces, I'm mekking dem eat deir vord Jude ... -That wouldn't be wise, Moe said, offering the captain a stick of gum. -Vise? Vise! ... Zo much he's sayink wid a liddel vord. Lissen to him tukkink. -Don't you think, Moe asked, raising his voice a little, that there's already enough hatred in the world without you settling a private grudge? . . . We must wipe the slate clean and start all over again. The artillery captain stopped buttonholing Moe long enough to light another cigarette from the stub of his latest. Then he screamed: -He's tukkink! Da most dangerous man in da vorld! Everybody, every think he's sellink down da river ... his own race.... Zo I'm goink avay before I'm losing da temper. -You've already lost more than the temper, Moe said, and firmly he turned away from the captain to look on the Bay of Naples. The Captain took one more frenzied puff on his cigarette and tore away up the promenade. He shook his head and muttered to him­ self. Once he turned back and looked at Moe and shook his head. Even from the distance his eyes glittered like a vulture's. Moe paced slowly back in the direction he'd come. Near the palace were stairs going down to a urinal. At the entrance to this subway an Italian boy of eighteen in dark blue shorts and a monk's-cloth shirt open at the neck was lounging. For a swift instant he looked steadfastly at Moe, then dropped his eyes. His face had the removed contemplative beauty of women beyond the moment of their spasm of love. --Let us not waste any time, the Italian boy said, looking past Moe out into the bay. Will you give me a cigarette or will you not? -I don't care for your salesmanship, Moe said, unbuttoning cis breast pocket. But you can have this whole pack. I don't smoke nyself. MOE He put another toothpick between his lips and watched how the boy took the pack into his fingers and stroked the cellophane. The boy's lips moved but nothing came out. Then his eyes veered from the bay over Moe's shoulder to Moe's face. They were black Italian eyes, calm yet full of a passion of ink when it falls into words. -You know of course, the boy said, that Neapolitan boys would do anything for this pack of cigarettes. I would or I would not, depending on how I felt toward you. I am a Lucchese, you see. -If you think that cuts any ice with me, Moe began. Then he saw no point in heightening the wall between the boy and himself. It had been flung up by the boy himself, a hasty reflex masonry of sorrow and pride and fear. Who taught you to speak such perfect English? -You Americans. . . . You Americans taught me everything I know of evil and hate. Last month you shelled our house at Viareggio. And you killed my mother, who would not leave the house because she loved it And you Americans have taught me things I never dreamed of Best of all, you taught me that hate is stronger and lasts longer than love. For all the things you Amer­ icans have done to me and wish to do to me and with me are hateful. Every time I see you or touch you, I hate you more •.. -And you hate yourself too, Moe said. We didn't teach you that ... -I don't care any longer, the boy said, accepting the flame from Moe's lighter. None of us Italians does. We've been bent this way and that.... So all we want to do now is live, just exist, however shamefully and ambiguously. We will live off you Americans. Off your food. Off your drunken spending. And we will yield to your desires, no matter how beastly they may be ... for a price, you understand.... But you should hear how we talk about you among ourselves. We sear you and we scald you. Because we hate you. To hear Italians talk about you when they are together, you would think we were discussing a pen of pigs and vipers. Because we hate you. And no matter how you degrade or possess or kill us, there is always our laughter at your vileness. Laughter so scathing your cheeks would burn up and your bowels explode to hear.... There is nothing in the world sweeter than Italian love. And nothing fiercer than Italian hate.... Don't you sense it everywhere about you? ... But I make no pretenses. I am a Lucchese from Viareggio. I do not smile and fawn on you like the Neapolitans. I tell you frankly that I hate all Americans, and Americans desire me even 323 324 THE GALLERY in my hate. That's the depth to which you all have sunk.... Razza di porci, di finocchi e di mostri ... -Your mother should hear you now, Moe said, turning away. And I guess she must have been a very beautiful lady. -Wait, please, the boy called, crushing out his cigarette and running after Moe. I have some photos of her. When may I show them to you ... signor ... mister ... lieutenant? -After the war, Moe said, increasing his pace. -But may I see you tonight? the boy begged, the coolness of his voice breaking into a whimper. -I'm afraid not, Moe said. But enjoy the cigarettes.... Tomor­ row night I may be near Viareggio. I'll think of you and your mother.... For I'm sorry, very very sorry ... believe me.... Turning back at the San Carlo, he saw that the beautiful Italian boy of eighteen was standing with his face in his fingers, weeping like no one who hates. After his chow Moe circled around the Galleria Umberto in the growing dusk. It was still hot, but a sly change had crept over the city of Naples. The roar had dropped to a whispering, but it was still asking subtly for the same thing it had been growling for all day long under the sun. Moe had eaten Spam for supper. He'd taken a slice of it from his plate and laid it between two pieces of bread. With this sandwich in his hand he walked down Via Santa Brigida. The flies of Naples followed the arc of his sandwich. He couldn't bear to hand this food out to a whole crowd of children, to see them dismember it and one another. He was seeking a lonely soul and a lonely stomach. He walked toward the gates of the port till he saw a little girl standing with her hands behind her back, regarding the MP at the gate. Moe called out to her till she came slowly. Her admiration had already been fixed on the MP. Moe held his sandwich behind his back. -Tu come chiamare? Moe asked her. -Perche? the little girl said, backing off. Vuoi mettermi in ga- lera, come tutti gli altri americani? Gently he spread his boots apart, leaned back a little, and ex­ tended the Spamwich to the little girl. She had black matted hair and a pink stuck coyly in her ear. Her feet were nude, scuffed and stained with the dung and the fruit juices of the pavements. -Mi chiamo Adalgisa, she said in a voice tinier than herself, putting out her hand to the bread and meat and drawing it back again. -Adalgisa's always hangin around here, the MP said. We stuck MOE 325 (0 i� � her mother in jail at the questura. An her pop got his in Eritrea. That's her story anyway, lieutenant ... she's always around here. -She'll continue to hang around, Moe said, as long as she's alive. Of course we'll do our best to get rid of her. It would be more convenient for us if Adalgisa had never been born. -Well, I got enough to worry about, lieutenant, the MP said, unslinging his carbine. I got a wife and kid in Sacramento. I figure it don't pay ya to look too deep into all this crap that's goin on in the world. -No, Moe said, you're right ... it don't pay ... not one cent. He took Adalgisa by the hand and walked along with her while she tore at her.Spamwich. Her left hand lay in his like a warm robin while her right fed the food to her mouth inexorably as a machine-gun belt. -I didn't know I was going to meet you, Adalgisa, I'd have brought two. -Uno, due, tre, quattro, she said with her mouth full. They sat down on a bench in Piazza Municipio. The courtyard arch of the City Hall palace yawned in the rising moon. Behind them were the laurel trees. The urinals sent out their shrill acid. In and out of these men moved, plucking at their buttons as they emerged from or entered the iron screens. And Adalgisa, after she'd finished eating, licked her teeth and her lips and sat placidly beside him, looking at the moon. Sometimes he felt her eyes tick­ ling his face like a eat's whisker. They were round and unblinking, as though she wondered what he would do next. Finally she climbed into his lap and began to explore the colored divisional bandanna about his neck, the buttons of his opened collar. Her small skinny body smelled like a new olive. -Sei triste stasera, she said, looking up into his eyes. -Sad? Moe said. I'm always sad.... I was sad when I was push- ing up the lever on my meter so it wouldn't register during waits. I was sad when I saw fat old ladies in furs going into the Astor. I was sad when I saw the snow in Brooklyn, smutted over in the alleys.... You're sad too, Adalgisa ... but you don't know there can be anything else. She was a tiny child for one who, he guessed, must be about eleven. He didn't know whether it was because she was under­ nourished or Mediterranean. She got off his lap and walked once around the bench where he was sitting. Her feet whispered in the grass behind him. Her ragged dress crinkled as she walked. Then she seated herself beside him again. -What are you thinking about, Adalgisa? ... Cosa pensare? 'lntlll , Tmr. ana j� , We!� 326 THE GALLERY -Ehhh, she said, un bel piatto di pasta asciutta ... che bellezzal -Sure, sure, he said, taking her hand. Your world would be full if only you weren't hungry Me, I want to live I'd like to have some kids of my own three or four maybe I wonder if I could teach them anything ... how not to hurt others ... how to understand them.... I've been wondering if there's some method of hurting kids when they're a couple of months old, so that their meannesses would be burnt out of them early in life.... I guess not though.... -Ho ancora fame, sai, Adalgisa said, pressing his hand more tightly. -I know, I know. Without taking his eyes off the climbing moon, he undid his breast pocket and gave her his two remaining sticks of gum. Then he stood slowly up from the bench and pulled the bottoms of his pants down over the saddles and buckles of his boots. -Good-by, Adalgisa, he said. Remember me when you grow up.... Because I know you will grow up ... somehow.... You'll live to be eighty.... Don't sit by the fireplace with your hands folded and tell your grandchildren about the americani, how hor.. rible they were.... Try to remember that there were many of us who looked at you and loved you in your helplessness and despair. And we said: My God, how cruel. . . . If I live, I'll do something about all this ... something.... Then he walked quickly away from the little girl toward the Municipio. He was trembling. His loins vibrated with something fiercer and more durable than the excitement of love. For Moe saw that he hadn't so much time left, that the sweetness was dribbling away from him as from a broken jelly jar. Moe went to the Red Cross motor pool off Piazza Carita. There were jeeps and command cars behind the barbed wire. Through the area walked Italian soldiers in American issue uniforms dyed green and green helmet liners with MIG on their visors. Even their leggins were a washed-out emerald in the moonlight. They were sweating softly but they saluted him. He went in at the gate and was saluted also by the American GI in charge. -Listen, Joe, I've got to have a jeep for an hour or two. -No can do, lieutenant. These are Red Cross ve-hicles ... -Listen, Moe said, my brother's grave is near Caserta and tonight'S my last chance to visit it.... That's a lie, of course ... but MOE don't get chicken on me, Joe ... you hate chicken as much as I do.... Then the MP saw Moe's ruined hand, extended in supplication. He thought a little more and then he scribbled out a trip ticket and waved at a jeep at the end of one of the parked rows. -Okay. Willya promise me to have it back by 2300 hours, lieutenant? That jeep belongs to Genevieve, who I happen ta know is at Capri tonight with a colonel. ... But 2300 hours for sure, lieutenant. -Thanks, Moe said, sticking the trip ticket in a pants pocket. He unlocked the steering wheel of the jeep, started it, and drove into Piazza Carita after another wave at the MP. He saw his own hands guiding the wheel of the jeep, one with the thumb delicately dangling as it used to in his taxi, the other yellow and macerated in the moonlight. He cut sharp left into Via Roma. It was now dark, but on either sidewalk of that straight street crowds were pushing along in the blackout and the heat. Over his turned-down windshield Moe saw those thousands of faces, stuck on bodies being pushed along by the momentum of more people behind them. In the moonlight they looked like flowers and stalks being carried down to some sea, flowers dumped down from the balconies above them. There was much talking, shouting, whistling, and jerky singing. There were still in the gutters old women vendors and kids selling peanuts or love. Thus the whole August night murmured on Via Roma as the faces pushed aimlessly yet steadily in the current. Moe drove slowly till he came to the Galleria Umber to. There in the moonlight, a little detached from the crowds on the left-hand sidewalk, Maria Rocco stood. Her head turned this way and that, and she glanced at her American wrist watch, sometimes shaking it or laying it to her ear. He called out softly to her and waved that she should cross Via Roma. She got in beside him without his bringing the jeep to a full halt. She was wearing a black silk dress that buttoned from her throat to the hem of her skirt. She wore no stockings. From under her rich hair escaped the pendants of silver earrings that tinkled to her shoulders. -If you did not come, she said, I had resolved never to go with the Allies again . . . except at an enormous profit. . . . Gia mi dicono venale. -1 wasn't sure whether you were beautiful or not this afternoon, he said. Now I know.... Why do they make you put on that other smile in the PX? anam: unru� l , m,Th OIll! �I tWO, 327 328 THE GALLERY -Why? Maria Rocco asked. Because the world is now so terrible that people have to be ordered to smile. They pretend to kindness. It is something that brings in more lire. -You don't have to say those things to me, Moe said. And you're natural with me ... 1 think.... -I shall not be natural much longer.... Have you got a stick of gum for me? -I did have, but 1 gave the last to Adalgisa. -Adalgisa? Maria Rocco's eyes began to glitter. Vergogna. Adalgisa! . . . And I spent an hour making myself pretty for you. Although my sister Bruna said that no American was worth it ... Moe reached over, lifted her left earring, and let it fall to her shoulder. -Adalgisa is the name of a hungry child .•• -I'm sorry, Maria Rocco said. I'm sorry. And she tilted back in the stiff seat of the jeep and raised her chin to the moon. He drove dreamily along Via Carocciolo. The August moon was one-quarter way up now; the Bay of Naples was slit with streaks of light that broke where the islands reached up from the water. Moe and Maria in their jeep passed the Aquarium. Then he turned by Soldiers' Park and steered up towards the Vomero. The jeep twisted and turned. Moe chose streets that were steepest because he liked the way her head jerked back when they began to climb. -I think 1 know most Americans, Maria Rocco said. They are for the moment.... What moment? ... I worked for them at the QM. They ordered me to be cheerful, so I smiled as 1 counted out smelly drawers of officers' laundry. And 1 smiled as I handed out dry cleaning to your GI's.... Then I went to work at the Red Cross. With an ice-cream scoop in my hand. Here too I was ordered to smile. . . . I shall go on smiling for the Americans till my teeth drop out.... The Americans like smiling people. Why? A smile is hideous unless it means something.... For five years now none of my smiles has had any meaning..•• When they'd got to the top of the city of Naples, Moe found a little park backboarded with mimosa and scrub pine and a few olive trees. It was really a small balcony between two palazzi, and it looked down over the moonlit city, which stretched beneath them like a dihedral angle filled with towers and terraces. After he'd run the jeep up to the railing of the balcony, he parked and they sat for a while in their stiff metal seats looking at the town below them and the black or silvery bay. Then he put his hand :J� MOE into his pocket, took out a little hinged box, and gave it to Maria Rocco. She opened it to find a cameo pendant on a gold chain. He fastened it around her neck. As he clasped it, her hair fell on his hands, both the whole one and the scorched one. Maria Rocco's eyes became moist; she ran her fingers down the chain of the pendant and held the medallion of the cameo up to the moonlight and looked at it. -It was my mother's, Moe said. She said I should give it to some nice Jewish girl I was going to marry. Don't waste it on just anyone, she said. -And now you're wasting it on me, Maria Rocco said. I wonder what your mother would think of me. -Oh, he said, finally snapping the clasp of the locket, you serve your purpose just as well as that nice Jewish girl my mother had in mind. -What purpose? she asked, drying her eyes. -Being something ... very ... necessary to her son.... Maria Rocco took up Moe's right hand, the mangled one, and laid her mouth against it. Then he, by maneuvering his boots and his position on the seat of the jeep, laid his head down in her lap. Looking up at her, he saw the flange of her chin, her nostrils, her eyelashes, and the dangling ornaments of her earrings. It seemed to him that lying in her lap he lay at the roots of a living tree. He sighed and rolled his head about so that the buttons on her dress dented his hot cheeks. He smelled the dark warmth of her lap, of earth and silk and flesh. -Did you ever look up into somebody's face from below? he asked. Then all the things you like about people's faces are upside down. She laughed and chafed his hair. -You are stronger than I, even though now you lie in the position of a little boy who runs to his mother's lap when he is afraid ... for comfort from the world that has frightened him..•• What comfort can I give you? ... Tell you that everything in this world seems mean and ugly to me, except you? ... For there is a shadow over all the earth, with no promise that it will ever lift by the cloud's passing away from the sun.... Only from you have I ever sensed what hope could mean. And soon you too must leave me.... It has always been so.... When I was a little girl, I used to watch the others being merry. And I would run off and cry...• Now I know why.... The Iight on the Bay of Naples ... the laughter that I heard in the streets at night ... the mandoline and 329 330 THE GALLERY serenate ... all seemed to me such a mockery, as though people were deluding themselves that they were happy, that anything could last. -You were just waiting for something, holding yourself in readiness, Moe said, smiling up at her. -"Vaiting, Maria Rocco said. What is a woman waiting for? Listening and hoping.... Why must a man like you die? Why can't they just take the rotten Italians and the rotten Americans and the rotten of the world and take them out and shoot them? ... Then the decent ones could make another start and try to make a go of it.... Aren't you afraid? -Not very much, Moe said, taking her hand, that lay upon his chest. But I have been afraid.... I was afraid when I was a kid and Ma said to go down to the delicatessen and see if there were any leftover sausages.... And I was afraid when I first started to drive a taxi. ... And I was afraid that first day on the line.... You never really get over being afraid, until you're not alive, and then you've found out there isn't much to be afraid over.... Now I know that a lot of all this doesn't matter. What does matter is my Ma in Brooklyn and my friend Irving and a girl like you.•.• It all seems so sweet, even if it has to end like an ice-cream soda at the end of a straw. -N0, it all seems so ghastly, Maria Rocco said; and she shook her head with such vehemence that his head bounced in her lap. There's nothing fair or decent from the beginning to the end.... If you have too little, you pass your life in envy and aspiration. All your energies go up in smoke, simply trying to convince your neighbors that you exist.. , . Or if you have too much, you become like a crazy squirrel laying away nuts for a future that will never materialize.... 0 Dio mio, we have all lost the way. One loves too much and breaks his heart. One loves too little and lives in his own petty world, respected for what he has and dying unwept. And each is a fool. ... We have all lost the way. -I don't think I've lost the way, Moe said. Just being alive now is good to me.... And you're not lost either. And most of the people in the world are like us. We just have to find what not to put our faith in. Most of the people who try to tell us what to do are wrong. . . . Look, you and I are together tonight. We're happier than most of the others. Because we know one another. We've confessed to one another that we're frightened and puzzled. But the point is, we have confessed. We don't pretend to know the answers. MOE 331 Maria Rocco began to cry again. Her tears fell on his up-turned face. He put out his spoiled fingers to catch a few of the drops. -I am a whore, she said. You are not the first man 1 have been with. . . . Your mother would hate me. . .. Thank God she is five thousand miles away and cannot see you with me. -Why, you don't know yourself, Moe said, taking both her hands in his and imprisoning them, for they were fluttering above him. You're kind ... and sweet.... 1 don't know what else there is to be.... To me you're like a light in a dark noisy passageway . I've seen plenty of faces of dead Americans and dead Krauts . Their eyes were wanting something. In death they looked surprised and hurt. ... But when I watch your eyes, I see the difference. She ran one of her fingers across his lips as he lay looking up at her. When she bent over him in their cramped quarters on the seats of the jeep, the cameo swung out into the air above his face. He threaded the path of buttons, hummocking out over her breasts. -Don't you go north tomorrow, Maria Rocco said quietly but eagerly. I know a place where I can hide you. I'll bring food to you. · .. Don't worry. I will save you. This war must soon be over.... Let them kill off the others. But men like you must not die in it. Stay with me. Rather than give you up, I would shoot all the MP's in Naples who came looking for you. I would fight for you And humanity, if it still exists, will end by being grateful to me . Women have preserved great and good men before. Moe laughed softly in her lap. The moon was laced through her hair. -Thank you, my darling.... But the funny thing is, I wouldn't be happy in our hideaway. Can you understand why? ... My place is up north of here. Fighting.... It doesn't matter what the war means or who wins it. But I'm tied up in a set of crcumstances I've got to follow through.... I'm going back to the line tomorrow. I don't have any ideas that the world will be any better for me living or dying.... It's just the way things have panned out for me. There's been a logic in my life. A crazy logic. And this is part of the logic.... People spent most of their lives saying: This can't be happening to me. Even on their deathbeds they say it. They're surprised to find themselves dying on account of they could never quite accept the fact that they were aliv�.... I accept. e�erything. · .. This is me lying here and above me IS. you ThIS I� Napl�s. · .. This is August 14, 1944.•.. My name IS Moe your IS Mana. · . . And 1 love you. -Maria does not understand Moe at all, she said. 332 THE GALLERY She bent down and laid her mouth against his temple, passing down to his lips. There was no pressure in her kiss, but it sealed a wild peace he'd been feeling with her all evening. Her kiss made him hers more than any passionate one ever could have. Her hair fell into his closed eyes. He raised his arms and twined them about her shoulders, where the black silk soothed his fingers-the good ones and the bad ones. -You understand me very well, Moe said against her cheek. -Something keeps looking over our shoulders at us.... We have so little time and we need so much of it. -Okay, he said. He raised himself out of her lap, keeping one arm round her neck. He looked out over the Bay of Naples. By Ischia he saw a motorboat turning on the water. He looked at her body rising and falling on the seat beside him. Then he began to unbutton her dress, beginning at her neck. She wore nothing underneath the tight black silk; so as it was released by the parting fabric, her skin gushed to his hand like a living sponge. At last her dress was open from neck to skirt. She lay with her eyes closed. Her breathing was inaudible. In the open shell of black silk, her naked beauty seemed to have burst from a ruptured pea pod. She seized his hands and brought them down on her breasts, beehives in the moonlight. -Baciami ... abbracciami, amorel Maria Rocco cried. At her cry he trembled with recognition. It was something he'd been listening for all his life. There'd been no firing since dawn. Moe and his platoon were crawling along a country road in Tuscany. They were looking for some protected trees where they could sit down and eat their K-ration. This countryside was hilly and brown. Ahead of them on a cliff a castle with spires looked down into the valley. Nobody knew where they were. The cultivated terraces all looked alike, alternating bands of green and umber. With it the platoon had three Krauts, captured at dawn. One had chest and arm wounds and never stopped groaning. The platoon wanted to do away with this Kurt. He, staggered along in bandages and doped wi h sulfa, saying over and over again that Roosevelt was a Jude. The other two Krauts walked with him, but didn't help Kurt or pay him any attention. Moe never took his eyes off his platoon this morning. They were more than lean and mean riflemen. They were ugly. He watched especially his medical aid pfc, Dimplepuss, who occasionally prodded the moaning Kraut named Kurt. MOE 333 -Dimplepuss, listen to me, Moe said. All you're here for is tt. get that Kraut to battalion aid ... if we ever find it. -I ain't supposed to do anything for the bastard, Dimplepuss said. -Oh shut up! Moe yelled. You're goddam triggerhappy for a medic. Tonight I'm turning you in for an NP. Thus they drooped and stumbled along in the dust till noon. Throughout the uneven and smoking landscape there wasn't a sign of regiment or battalion or company or any other platoon. They passed an overturned Kraut tank under a laurel tree. And in some bushes a mortar and three Krauts, kaput beside it. Moe's section sergeant edged up from his place in the demoralized march. -Listen, lieutenant. You can see they're pretty pissed off. Not at you. They better eat chow. But fast. -Wait till the next turn of this road, Moe said. We're really lost. So they plowed on farther in the heat and the yellow smoke that arose from the vegetation and from their own boots. Around a bend in the road they came upon a tiny village. Every house but one had at least a wall and roof off. A cat poked around in the one street, the main one. -That's what the artillery done las night, one of the men said. All that poppin too.... Git off the pot, Mister Dupont. The jagged glass windows of a store still sustained a swinging hinged sign: Vino. Onto the pavement in front of the shop was a settled pool of red around a blasted wine cask. -Vino with our chow, Moe said. That cat has been licking it up all morning. The platoon carried out of the shop bottles of red and white vino, some flasks of cognac. Then most sat down under the bowl of a stone foun tain in the piazza. It gave a shade for their heads. Others possessed themselves of the church at the other end of the tiny square. The bell tower and three walls were standing. They threw off their packs and disposed themselves round the splintered baptismal font or at the feet of a fresco of Christ feeding the multi­ tude with loaves and fishes. This fresco too was cracked and missing sections, like a ruined billboard advertising tires. As the platoon opened their K-rations, two of the Krauts began to whimper. The one named Kurt started yelling Roosevelt and Jude in a splitting howl. -Shut your lousy mouths! a corporal bawled, clanking his helmet and carbine down. Ya interferin with my digestion. -0 my aching back, the section sergeant said, grinding out of tnln� �\ , 334 THE GALLERY his pack and sitting down next to Moe. Lieutenant, it would be so goddam simple to dispose of those three supermen ... -Ah, forget it, Moe said. The divisional cages must be some­ where around here. Those Krauts have got to be questioned. They won't bother us much longer. But Moe stood up again and walked over to where the three Germans were blubbering by a watering trough. Kurt, the wounded one, lay face down on the pavement near the spilled wine, moaning and jabbering Roosevelt. His chest wound had now put a wheeze into his noise. Moe took another carton of K-ration out of his musette bag and set it down near the three. Then he walked back across the piazza to his noncom, without watching to see what the Kriegies would do. He ate his canned ham and egg and his biscuits and washed them down with water. All around the stone fountain and in the battered church the rest of the platoon were silently finishing off the liberated vino and cognac. Moe watched their throats as they swallowed one bottle after another. From his K­ ration carton Moe gave the three cigarettes to his section sergeant, who lit one, stowing away his own. And Moe settled back and stuck a toothpick between his lips. -Lieutenant, the section sergeant said, accepting a light for his cigarette, ya look beatup since ya got back from the hospital in Naples. Ya ain't ate out nobody's arse except Dimplepuss. Ya ain't give none of us a bad time. Didya get all the shackin ya wanted? -Only once, Moe said. And it wasn't really shacking. It was in the open air. In the moonlight in a jeep. Looking down at the bay.... The section sergeant sighed. He blew out a puff from a lesser­ known brand of cigarette, such as came in K-rations. He looked at the dust of the road, at the checkered hillsides of Tuscany, at the platoon, which was still drinking or lying down in the piazza with their heads resting on their packs. Their M-l'S were beside them like dwarf stiff bedfellows. -When we git to Florence, the section sergeant said, I'm gonna git me a signorina an I'm gonna sweep her off her feet. I hear that :wl the signorinas in Florence are different from the ones in Naples. :1( Who knows, I might marry her? . . . �u Moe took the little cans that now were empty, stuffed them into :lo the rent carton, and shied the whole package over the fountain. �l It flew into the doorway of the battered vino shop. Then he spied "A a public urinal just off the piazza. II�G -I'm taking a little walk, he said to his sergeant. Keep your eye .. N ..N MOE 335 on Dimplepuss and the three J erries. It's just like you said. I don't like my boys much today. With his thumbs in his pistol belt he walked slowly through his sprawling platoon. His boots clacked on the stone flags. Dimplepuss was nursing a cognac bottle and watching the Krauts tear into the box of K-ration. Kurt, the wounded one, had turned on his side, groaning Roosevelt. -Characters like you should only drink on pass, Moe said. Dim­ plepuss looked at him around the bottle, which had its neck in his mouth. He winked at Moe like a cat. -I ain't feedin these bastards. -I don't expect you to. Moe walked leisurely out of the piazza and around the corner. It was hemmed with low slant-roofed Tuscan houses. All the win­ dows had been blown out by the barrage. Washing was still hanging in one courtyard. In one house he saw a dinner sitting cold on the table. Through a window he saw a mussed bed and a colored picture of a blond girl. All the inhabitants, Moe knew, were in the hills. He wondered if they'd start coming back this afternoon, now that all was so quiet. He expected to meet a child someplace in this shambles. It had always been so-at Formia, at Cisterna, at Velletri. In empty Italian villages they'd always come upon at least one child, playing unconcernedly as though it had been born out of the rubble. But here there was no life except the cat that had got drunk from licking spilled red wine. Moe went to the urinal. From under its porcelain bowl were heraldic streaks like the corona of the sun, violet and yellow; the stains of generations who'd here done their business after leaving the vino shop at midnight. Moe reflected on the relation between your personality and the color of your urine. Thoughtfully he began to button his trousers. Then he heard his men shouting and the crack of a M-I. And he heard the words Nein, nein! He took off on the run, still buttoning his fly. He got his revolver into his fist. Back in the piazza all his platoon were on their feet, in a cluster. Some were holding the arms of the two Kriegies. Dim­ plepuss was standing straddle over Kurt, the wounded one. Moe saw him fire another round into the belly of the outstretched PjW, who kicked up his legs in an answering spasm. -Are ya dead yet? Dimplepuss asked calmly. Tot? Tot? Tot? •.. Say ja and be damned! -Nein, nein, the German choked. Nein.... Gottl Gottl -Not yet, huh? Dimplepuss said in a cold scream. 336 TH E GAllERY And he fired again from the rifle he'd got somewhere. The Kraut's legs kicked again and he spun over on his belly. He was still lying between Dimplepuss' legs. His wounded arm flailed like the wing of a thrush, and he lay still. As Moe came racing in, cocking his revolver, the rest of the platoon shambled back to their places with their eyes down and sat again on their packs. -You're all gone! Moe cried sobbingly. And I hoped and prayed you weren't! Jesus Christ Almightyl -This bastard was groanin an I lost my appetite, Dimplepuss said calmly to Moe. He moved the muzzle of the M-I away from the Kraut's belly. Moe hit him three times in the face, and Dimplepuss went down on the corpse, whose blood welled leisurely forth from three holes in his coveralls. -You can go back to the States as an NP! Moe screamed. You're under arrest. ... And when you get to New York start shooting off your face to reporters about the sorrows of combat infantrymen! Dimplepuss laughed like ripping steel. Two of his buddies lifted him off the body and took charge of him. The three sat together in the nave of the ruined church. His guards lit a cigarette for Dimplepuss, made him put on his helmet to ward off the sun of Tuscany. -Lie down and shut up! Moe yelled again at his platoon. See if you can remember that you're still alive and human beings! ... Twenty more minutes and then we take off. He went back and sat beside his section sergeant, who was scratch- ing the stubble on his chin. -That's the way it is, lieutenant, the sergeant said. -Is? Moe said. Are you sure all this is? And he noticed that his chest was heaving stabbingly, as though he'd run miles. It was panting from some windedness outside him­ self. Four of the platoon made up a burying party and proceeded to shovel the dead Kraut under in a sandy space off the piazza. The other two Germans sat glumly down and ate the K-ration. They murmured to one another. Then there was the sound of the en­ trenching tools clawing up the brown sand. One of the platoon took two two-by-fours out of the lumber debris of a smashed kiosk with a fallen sign that read Corriere della Sera. Out of these planks he fashioned a cross which he thrust into the hummock of the new grave. Moe watched for a while. They knew what to do and were .;�- � GAlUI --...:: rhere, on n�M; Indtd 4lml MOE doing it like dolls wound up. Then he took a wrinkled and dirty V-mail form and a bitten pencil from his pocket. He proceeded to write a letter to his friend Irving in Brooklyn. It was automatic writing:" ili� ttli � IT �.� ij�ll. Somewhere in Italy 27 August, 1944 Hullo, boy: Your little chum is in that state like in nightmares where you're sur­ prised to find yourself doing things-and yet you do-you think that nothing more terrible can happen to you but it always does-but you don't mind because you know that pretty soon you'll wake up--I know the censors will never let you get this letter-but I'm writing it anyhow­ gotta talk to somebody who's outside all this-does that other world exist?­ I can't remember the time when I was a part of it-what I just saw now seems sorta natural-so I'm scared that I'm accepting it-I wonder if I really exist at all-last night the colonel of our battalion turned an Eyetie family out of their farmhouse-he hadda use it for an OP-but the family didn't take to the hills like sensible Ginsoes--they just moved into the chicken house-the woman was far gone and she gave birth to her kid at midnight out there among the manure and feed-the kid died and the woman did the same three hours later-then the Ginso father blew his top and spat on our colonel's feet, which is what I've always wanted to do myself-then he ran away into the night crying and cursing-but there was still tha t dead G inso woman and her dead kid in the chicken house-: nil �bt�:: :l!nan ��� Then Moe found another sheet of V-mail stationery in his musette bag and continued to write the second sheet. The letters formed under his tigh t fingers wi thou t his thinking: #2 Because I'm crazy I can make a distinction in my mind between killing Krauts, of which I've done plenty, and doing a lot of the other things that go on in a war-l can't see this crap about war criminals-we do all right at the game too once we get started-the only thing that's safe from us is the women-because they play safe and take to the hills as soon as their town becomes a combat zone-so what do we do?-we loot­ we call it liberating material-Irv, I'm so sick of signing my John Hancock on the lower left-hand corner of packages that are being mailed home--our officers and GI's take anything they've a mind to out of the houses and mail it home as a souvenir to their folks-pictures-jewelry­ money-blankets-anything they can lay their hands on-how in the name of God are these Eyeties supposed to live after we Liberators have passed through?-have we no mercy whatever on these people?-last week we captured a Kraut dump-we looted that too-millions of dollars' worth of stuff-Liigers-silk stockings--cameras-radio5--t:ognac-they took all that 337 338 THE GALLERY -and the higher the officer's rank, the bigger his cut-is the world so rich that we can take everything, even though it's our enemies'?-and my GI's expected me to sign my name in the lower left-hand corner of the package -meaning that I'd censored it and it was OK to mail back to the States­ we've all lost our souls-we're just like everybody else in the world-worse, because we have everything we need-how can we ever get our hands clean again?-how can we ever look anybody in the eye and brag about being Americans?-there's a rifleman in my platoon that reads and writes poetry -he says: To the pit with us. To the pit with us all-we're there already­ you may get this letter after the war. Moe In the late afternoon Moe and his platoon were still walking through the countryside of Tuscany. Ahead of them the shelling had resumed. They walked with their heads down, in single files on both shoulders of the road. They could see umbrellas of brown spray opening on the horizon ahead of them. The two remaining Kriegies trudged by themselves. Dimplepuss shuffled along laughing between his guards. They'd passed another of the castles on a hillside like those Moe remembered in the sunny background of Italian paintings. Ahead of them on another hill was another castle. The August sunlight cast some of its towers into shadow. Moe looked at it, then lowered his eyes to the dust his boots were kicking up. He shifted his carbine to the other shoulder. He looked down at his mottled right hand nestling in the carbine sling. His life now appeared to him as a stagger through one Tuscan valley after another, with sunny castles looking down at him from their hilltops with the pity of history. In this same Tuscany there had been beauty and laughter. Once. Moe felt someone in the rear file edging up on him. So he turned with a wariness he hadn't always had. He found one of his corporals dose behind his shoulder staring at him with the penetration that people use when they will someone to turn and look at them. This corporal was a blond kid from Wisconsin who used to work in a cheese factory. Moe dropped back so that he was walking to the right of the corporal, both of them on the left side of the road. -Maybe ya can explain somethin to me, lieutenant I ... keep thinkin of myself like I'm a was ... not a is See what I mean, lieutenant? ... I think about myself an I say: He did this or he thought this way. . . . Right now in fact 1 can see myself walkin alongside a you like we was both in a movie.... See what I mean? Why is that? -I guess ... the present doesn't exist for us, Moe said. His tongue MOE was pricked by the toothpick in his lips. Or we don't want to think about it. -Well, that would be all right too, the corporal said. Except I can't think of the future either.... It's all past. Past tense like in grammar in school. Like an old man. An I'm just twenty one.... Christ, lieutenant, I don't wanna have any memories yet ... or be one. -And I, Moe said slowly, keep thinking of when I was in N apoli two weeks ago. . .. I see it all so clear cut and finished-as though I was reading ancient history. -Gee, maybe this is the end for us, lieutenant? the corporal asked almost hopefully. Maybe the war is over and we don't know it yet? -I guess we're just bogged down in today, Moe said. You know how it is, boy.... The moment just seems there, that's all.... You don't feel you ever lived at any other time but now ... not yester.. day ... not tomorrow.... -Well, I don't understand ya, lieutenant. But I see what ya mean . . . . Say, lieutenant, I keep havin cravins ... cravins for simple things. But if I could satisfy em, I'd think I was in heaven.... Just a bite of a cold apple again ... or to take an cut a piece a yeller cheese with a sharp knife an watch the peelins ... or to see my steady lookin at me after I've kissed her. -I think I understand, Moe said. And I think I see what you mean.... Moe peered over his shoulder at his platoon and the two Kriegies. He signaled them all to slow down. For they were approaching another curve in the yellow and green Tuscan road. They spread out and scattered and he went on ahead with the section sergeant following at his heels. Ahead was a hamlet of six houses, a demure concentration such as they'd seen a thousand times in Italy from Salerno on up. Smoke was snaking from a chimney in one of the yellow farmhouses. Moe and his sergeant dropped behind a tree. -Pretty damn peaceful, the sergeant said. Like Indiana.... After half an hour of noiseless observation of these six houses, Moe sent a scout ahead, who loped and dropped from tree to tree. The way he held his M-1 as he alterna tely trotted and took cover made him look like a scissors. Later he came back, calmly walking upright. -Hell, lieutenant, they's nothin but Ginso farmers there. All cookin supper. -Too perfect, Moe said. I don't believe a word of it. And I'm not calling you a liar. Wait here. 339 340 THE GALLERY PODERE DI ANACLETO SPADINI Himself approached the six houses, running and dropping, as the scou t had gone the first time. There were seven trees between the turn of the road and the nearest dwelling. Over- its door was the sign: With his carbine across his chest in both his hands, Moe stood for a long time before the low oak door. His shadow fell across its threshold. Finally he kicked with his boot three times at the lintel. He heard a voice inside cry out, Avanti. Then the door swung inward. All he saw of the house was the wide main room and fireplace. In front of this sat an old woman sewing. She stared straight at him with unblinking eyes. -Buona sera, signora, Moe said politely, himself and his carbine bowing. 10 tenente americano ... avere molti soldati ... un po' di vino? -Si, sl, sl, the old lady said, laying down her work and rising slowly. Noi abbiamo molto vino per americani liberatori. -Ma ... niente tedeschi? Moe asked cautiously after a pause, peering abou t the shadowy room. For there were places where the afternoon sunlight didn't hit. Chairs in shade. A curtained closet. A door leading somewhere. The old lady spread her hands out calmly and supplely and smiled again. -No, signor tenente ... abbia fiducia ... niente tedeschi. But still her eyes looked through him. Her glance was the well­ wishing of the dead toward the living. Moe, still holding his carbine across his chest, walked silently and quickly up to her. He passed his hand over her face. Those gray gentle eyes didn't blink. -Oh, he said in a gush of relief and pity, you're blind.... You know, you look something like my mother in Brooklyn. . . . Oh excuse me ... la mia mamma ... she's a Jewish lady and you're Italian ... same difference, I guess. He laughed. He put his hand on her shoulder and gently made her sit down in her place. There was no terror in her eyes, only a shining kindness as though she wished she might focus her blind.. ness on him. But again she bounded up with something of a hospitable bustle. She put out her hands and made to go out of the room. Then she turned and made Moe a low curtsy. -Ora vi porto il vi no, she said. Quanti soldati avete, signor tenente? -There are thirty-seven of us, he said. Trenta e sette, . . . But don't hurry, ma'am. :]11111 to :i�!�li :eyrua. ��!�un :�nrer Jftni! I :ine DoWI��eJj of ·�ery r1e �m ne Ijrrtnan��e41tnJ al� n� or � willi Jlea noW! ,'! �arrel. �ru!! � maMoe .�n of 51 icriul me �1 r1uck{ !ewuld 1 �a Rocc( �1 10 Ion me Germ MOE 341 Then she turned from the door and came toward Moe without hesitation, as though she smelled or felt where he stood in front of the settle. She put her arms about his shoulders and kissed him lightly. Her cheek smelled of eggs and linen dried in the Tuscan sun. -Figlio mio, she said. Figlio mio...• -Why, I'd just as soon be your son, he said, sitting in the other chair by the fireplace. Then she left him and went into the next room, which, he saw as the door opened under her sure pressure, was the kitchen. He watched her cut the light of the kitchen window, which opened onto a little garden of her own. He watched her take down from a shelf a decanter of ruby wine. He began to relax in his chair and smile to himself; for somehow he felt that he was at home here. He looked down at the dust on his boots, coating even the buckles. At this moment there was a burst of firing all around the house. He recognized the splitting bark of American M-I'S. And another sound. In the kitchen as he leaped to his feet he saw the old Tuscan lady fall to the stone floor. The decanter of red wine she was still holding splintered in her hand and hit the pavement before her body did. Moe spun around. A Kraut lieutenant was standing behind him in the fireplace. There was a Luger in his hand. Under his low helmet his lips drew back into a smile of something like welcome. And he bowed to Moe as though he desired to continue the gra­ ciousness of the old Italian lady. Moe returned the bow. -Very pleased to meet you, Moe said. Then he knew he was lying on the floor by the fireplace, hit harder than he'd ever been hit before. He looked into the ashes on the hearth, and he looked at the boots of the Kraut officer, towering up by his broken right hand. The German was still looking down at him with that smile, not bitter, not sweet. The Luger now pointed down along the jerry's thigh, a twirl of smoke coming out of its barrel. -Gruss Gott, the German said. Heil Hitler.... And Moe realized that he was fading fast, as one does on the margin of sleep. Himself was ebbing away from himself with a powerful melancholy, with no hope of recall. For a moment an agony plucked at his brain. He sensed a longing and a regret such as he could never have imagined. But then he saw his mother and Maria Rocco, and he knew he'd come a long long way. It wasn't really so long. But it was farther than most. So Moe smiled back at the German, and he felt his face dropping toward the floor. Exit THERE'S AN ARCADE IN NAPLES THAT THEY CALL THE GALLERIA Umberto. It's in the center of the city. In August, 1944, every­ one in Naples sooner or later found his way into this place and became like a picture on the wall of a museum. The Neapolitans came to the Galleria to watch the Americans, to pity them, and to prey upon them. The Americans came there to get drunk or to pick up something or to wrestle with the riddle. Everyone was aware of this riddle. It was the riddle of war, of human dignity, of love, of life itself. Some came closer than others to solving it. But all the people in the Galleria were human beings in the middle of a war. They struck attitudes. Some loved. Some tried to love. But they were all in the Galleria Umberto in August, 1944. They were all in Naples, where something in them got shaken up. They'd never be the same again--either dead or changed somehow. And these people who became living portraits in this Gallery were synecdoches for most of the people anywhere in the world. Outside the Galleria Umberto is the city of Naples. And Naples is on the bay, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, on the Mediterranean. This sea is a center of human life and thought. Wonderful and sad things have come out of Italy. And they came back there in August, 1944. For they were dots in a circle that never stops. Naples Caserta Florence Leghorn Milan Boston, Massachusetts Windsor, Connecticut 18 June 1945-23 April 1946 HARPER COLOPHON BOOKS cN/l THE ART OF LOVING by Erich Fromm $1.25 CN/2 OUT OF OUR PAST by Carl N. Degler $2.45 cN/3 EXCELLENGE by John W. Gardner $1.35 CN/4 IN HAZARD by Richard Hughes $1.50 CN/5 THE NEW POLITICS by Edmund Stillman and William Pfaff $1.35 CN/6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND by E. L. Woodward $1.35 CN/7 THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION and( HEAVEN AND HELL by Aldous Huxley $1.35 CN/8 FROM VIENNA TO VERSAILLES by L. C. B. Seaman $1.35 CN/9 THE GALLERY by John Horne Burns $1.75 CN/I0 THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND by Stuart Chase $1.85 CN/ll PROTRACTED CONFLICT by Robert Strausz-Hup« et al. $1.50 CN/12 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR by Hugh Thomas $2.95 romm l: Hurll} I (Jm�n I. Burn! 1 HEC INDE &xJlId. I Je Dame \ \11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\1 11111 11111 1111111111 11111111111111111111111 a 0000 022 063 101