The Sound of the Hours

by Karen Campbell

  Papà didn’t answer. He relit his pipe, humming to himself. It sounded desperate, not happy. ‘Su fratelli e su compagni’ – the old Socialist anthem. They used to sing it to annoy Mamma, then when she stopped being annoyed and started getting furious, they would only sing it when alone.

  He’d been a teacher of English, once. Before Cesca was born, in the days when their house was filled with people talking. Vita could remember lots of feet and trousers. Mamma sparkling. Coloured liquids and clinking glass. Nicer clothes. It was the days when you could choose if you went to Party meetings or not, and Papà chose not to, and they chose not to let him keep his job.

  ‘Papà,’ she said quietly. He needed to stop humming. ‘Is the King really going to fight against Il Duce?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Whose side will we be on?’

  ‘Good question. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She finished her drink. The limonata was weak and bitter. ‘It was the King who ran away.’

  Papà lowered his voice. ‘Wouldn’t you if you could? It’s meant to be so simple. All of us following the leader. But look at their squadristi, their book burnings. The fascisti are blunt and dull. And they dull us too.’

  ‘What about Mamma?’ Nobody could call her mother dull.

  ‘Faith and obedience, that’s what your mamma knows.’ He stared at his pipe. ‘Your mamma believes in many things. People like to do what they’re told. They think it makes them good.’

  Yet they were all obedient to Mamma. She was the hub around which their house ran, the arbiter to whom each decision was passed for approval. The voice you dreaded, the presence you felt.

  ‘I’ve disappointed her. She thought she was marrying an adventure.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I’m the one time she was disobedient – and look where it got her. Never marry a disappointment, cara. Ah, speak of the devil.’

  Mamma was standing over them. ‘Limonata? Oh, to have time and money for limonata, Mario, when we’ve lemons aplenty at the house.’

  ‘Light of my life.’ Papà knocked his pipe on the table edge. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Yes, actually. Excellent news. Vittoria, I’ve found you a job.’

  ‘But I don’t have time. Not this term; I’ll have too much studying.’

  ‘You’re not going back to the Conservatorio.’

  An odd, flat feeling in Vita’s stomach.

  ‘Elena. What job is this?’

  ‘It’s a good one. With the Monsignor. He’s in urgent need of a housekeeper. Where is Francesca?’

  ‘Housekeeper? In Barga? Every day, trek down here?’

  ‘Sì. If you like it so much. I said – oh, there you are, Cesca. Right, let’s go. I’ve work to do. Overalls to sew and a letter to write to Il Duce. Francesca, you may write one too. He likes it when children—’

  ‘To come every day to Barga, but not to the Conservatorio?’ Vita’s limbs felt unconnected to her body. ‘But I need to finish school. How else can I be a teacher?’

  ‘There’s a war on.’

  ‘I know there’s a bloody war on!’

  ‘Don’t speak to your mother like that.’

  ‘It’s a good job, Vita. And with all this turmoil. . . and Papà not working. . .’ Mamma’s voice came from far away. Everything was receding. Vita gone flat, transparent, as if some great weight had rolled over and over her. ‘We need the money. The Monsignor is very respected. You’ll be safe there. You can stay at the Canonica if need be. Cesca too. . .’ Mamma kept clipping and unclipping her handbag. ‘Now. Enough on the subject. We are in public. Come.’

  Not be a teacher? Skivvy for a priest? Not just any priest: the Monsignor, an austere presence who would float sporadically through the Conservatorio, to whom you must not speak unless spoken to. To whom the nuns virtually bowed. Ensconced in the Duomo, he was detached from the crushed-up living of real folk. The Monsignor wore long black gowns and strange hats. He was not fat or merry like a village priest, did not drink, play cards. Vita wasn’t sure what he did, only that he presided over greater matters. A bit like God.

  ‘Safe from what?’

  Papà got to his feet. ‘Your mamma means safe from the madness. The madness that’s going to unfold if her beloved Duce doesn’t do the right thing.’

  ‘He is doing the right thing. More Germans are arriving, I’ve heard. They’ll push back the enemy. And rescue the King.’

  ‘Would you listen?’ Papà put his head close, like they were about to kiss. ‘The King is gone. He’s not been kidnapped. He’s under Allied protection. The King and the generals have left us to our fate.’

  ‘Rubbish. We’ve thousands of troops to defend us. Oh—’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Mario, you’ll need to speak to Orlando. The situation wth Giuseppe. It can’t continue. Him being here, or. . .’ She looked at Vita.

  ‘Make your mind up, woman. Last month you and Orlando were scheming—’

  ‘Well, not now. He can’t stay here.’

  ‘And where would you suggest he go?’

  ‘I don’t know. Il Duce will—’

  ‘Elena, Il Duce is nowhere in the equation. He’s a puppet. Don’t you understand, our troops are deserting?’ In his agitation, Papà struck the café table. Glasses falling, showering the chair leg, the wall. People staring. A German soldier watched them, drawing on his cigarette. Vita prayed he didn’t speak Italian. She should stop them, go to Cesca; she could see her sister pressed against the terrace wall. She should lead her away from this embarassment. But her eyes were smarting. The sunlight blurred, tilting the sky to the ground.

  Be a housekeeper?

  ‘Traitors,’ Mamma was saying. ‘Not our boys. Il Duce will not allow us to be slaughtered by americani.’

  ‘Gesù, it’s not the Americans you should be worrying about. Nazis are fighting our soldiers in Rome right now.’

  ‘Lies! That’s your Radio Propaganda for you. I have told you and told you, I forbid it in the house!’

  ‘And I forbid Vittoria to leave school!’

  Jaunty music blared from the café radio, some woman crooning ‘Faccetta Nera’, before a shout went up to show respect.

  ‘You forbid?’

  ‘She’s going to be a teacher. Like her father.’

  It felt as if all of Barga was looking down on them. Vita knelt to clean up the mess. Wanting to melt into the dust, and dissolve up into the light. Away, from them. From this.

  ‘Where? What teacher? I don’t see a teacher. I see one lazy, foolish man. And one lazy, disrespectful girl – who is finally going to do some work.’

  The glass, sparkly on her hands. They mean you.

  Summer 1944

  Chapter Four

  Italy. Land of Michelangelo and Galileo. The troops had been convinced, on their voyage across the Atlantic, that they were headed for Africa – and they did stop in Algeria, but only to load more cargo and men, then on, baking below deck as your throat dried, more puking over the side of the ship, more ocean, and playing cards and endless ocean before they landed. In Naples.

  Nothing had prepared Frank for the filth and poverty of that wrecked city. A harbour filled with sunken ships, skyline busted like rows of shattered teeth. Rat-folks living by the docks; girls as young as Willis, selling themselves for a cigarette or soap. Old men and women, begging by the roadside as the US Army passed in a roar of trucks and the clip-clipping of horse wagons, pulling guns and boxes of ammo, and crate upon crate of corned beef. Some of the soldiers threw what they had – gum or hard biscuits – but plenty kept their eyes front and their minds on keeping out the smell.

  Frank had become part of the 370th Infantry Regiment, which was part of the 370th Regimental Combat Team, which was part of the 92nd Division, which was part of the US Fifth Army, which was part of the Allied effort to run the Krauts out of town. Even before they’d disembarked from the ship, the 370th were making waves. They were a rarity, this plume of black men in white men’s garb, given white men’s guns and sta
tus. No commission though. No engineer school. Frank had remained a private.

  Months of training, then the ASTP got disbanded. Smart, sharp, dumb, slow; didn’t matter. If you was black, you was a Buffalo, damn. Frank’s brain was no longer required, merely his body. No point asking why. The war machine needed fodder – though that had to be segregated too. Frank was learning one perfect truth, over and over. Do not question. Obey. Like sinking into quicksand: if you struggled, it got worse. You were in the army now. When you surrendered, there was a kind of calm. He was sure it was deliberate, the deadening, the marching, the drilling, the dumbing: a way of grinding down all the disparate souls before rebuilding them into a single unit. At least the Buffaloes had been deemed men enough to fight.

  Plenty of other black faces had waited at Naples docks, but these were service troops: guys who fuelled the trucks and unloaded crates. They had hollered and whooped, then fallen silent as the Buffaloes marched past. It made Frank chill, right there in the foetid heat of the Naples docks. All that after-cheering quietness. Had the Buffs been put on a pedestal – or a scaffold, waiting for the drop?

  ‘We such fine soldiers they can’t wait to get us in the field,’ a soldier next to him had said. ‘Show them dead boys what they been doing wrong.’

  Theirs was a strange caravan. Bunched in open-top trucks, clouds of steam rising like an aura as the sweat pooled. Each day shimmered forward as they crossed an Italy of ruined smoke and heartbreaking beauty. But no combat in sight. Not yet. At times, it felt like a cross between a vacation and a movie playing past his eyes. Since they’d landed here, Frank had sailed past Vesuvius and swum in the Tyrrhenian Sea. He had driven past the wreckage of Anzio Annie – the huge German gun that had hammered beachhead landings all the way from Rome – and seen a flock of C-47s massing to invade the South of France.

  The closer they moved towards the front, the more surreal the world became. They would bivouac in little communities untouched by war, where locals joined the chowline for leftovers; next day stay in ruined villas, abandoned by their bombed-out owners. Some of the country boys would catch rabbits, or chickens left behind, cook them up in grease so they could all have a feast. Made a change from K-rations. Frank found it weird, this mix of men. Bundled together purely by reason of the colour of their skin, not intellect or ability. So far, big slow Claude the pig-herd was way smarter than Frank when it came to keeping them fed.

  There were Allied command posts studded in a chain across the country, places where battalions could muster, be relieved, redirected. Other soldiers they encountered, battle scarred and cynical, would break into sudden smiles as they realised the men of the 370th were green as grass. The all-white veterans delighted in sharing stories and advice – none of it meant to shock or impress that Frank could see. Without these soldiers, who were generous with their maps and overlays of positions, their timely reminders to stay silent and always watch the hills, the fragmented vision Frank had of his purpose in this war would have remained chaotic.

  Though it made no difference to the outcome, Frank would like some idea of whatever the fuck it was he was meant to be doing.

  The US Army was experimenting. The entire fighting force of the 92nd was to be Negro. That was the official term, anyway. And while plenty of folks were rooting for them back home, just as many were waiting for them to fail. When the command had come to head overseas, word was even General Almond questioned their readiness to fight – and it was his goddam show. Still, the army’s lack of faith gave the Buffs something to bond over.

  ‘You hear the latest?’

  Night-shifting two abreast, through reeds in open countryside. Quite literally in the dark.

  ‘Know what Almond say now? “No white man wants to be accused of leaving the battle line. But the Negro don’t care.”’

  ‘Hail to our great white chief.’

  ‘Where the fuck are the battle lines anyways? I’m sicka this. . .’

  ‘We’ll find ’em soon enough,’ whispered the guy alongside Frank. ‘My brother’s out in France. He say they going through boys like bam-bam-bam. Just mow ’em down like corn in a field. Be same here—’

  ‘Almond’s a dick, man. We just gotta suck it up.’

  ‘I gonna get me some sucking soon. You seen some of those Italian mamas?’

  ‘Suck on your tongue, soldier,’ said a lieutenant up front. ‘If I hear General Almond’s name being taken in vain one more time, I will put you on a charge. After I fried me up your balls for breakfast. You got me?’

  Lieutenant Garfield. You did not eyeball that man; he was one long, lean streak of tight-coiled fury. He’d more reason to hate Almond than most. Garfield had been a captain when they started out. But, hell, the natural order had been upset plenty. Black men with guns? Then it followed that their overseers must be white. Some black officers got reclassified, others transferred, so no white officer ever had to answer to a black one. Garfield’s demotion cleared the way for their new white captain to lead. From behind or in the middle, wherever was safest at the time. A pasty bank manager named Dedeaux, who would never walk with his men, Frank had barely seen his captain, far less spoken to him.

  ‘Now, when I give the signal, you get on your bellies and crawl to the river’s edge.’

  Dog-hunched on the dirt, the Buffaloes were south of the River Arno. 1st Armoured was pushing up from newly liberated Rome; its men weary, its tanks no good for the mountainous terrain to come. The Buffaloes had been tasked with relieving them. Cross the river, then head north to break through the German line. Simple.

  The first batch must be crossing already; Frank could hear the gentle plash of water. He waited, knees sore. Second row moved forward. Then the third. His row waited, the firm, poised squat of athletic men become a droop. It was still warm, even in the dark, Frank could smell the sweat of his comrades; could feel his own, dripping down his neck, into the cracks of his elbows, his groin. Thighs tense. In action. What they shout at the start of a movie. As if you’d not been moving before, just hanging in air, waiting for life to be snapped on, for a jolt to make you real.

  ‘COVER! Fucking down, you showera shit.’

  Bright

  white

  flaring.

  The slow-mo splash of a drip hitting water; except this was dirt, black dirt, and shards of rock and tree flying up; the stony ground before Frank’s boots tearing open, an upside-down fountain of crap; and all the black and white light was shot with red as he rolled himself hard, wide, tumbling downhill away from the crater. Two almighty bangs, more dirt spattering his mouth, filling up nostrils and ears and lungs. He was eating dirt, leastways his teeth were crunching it, jittering down on themselves like they were alive.

  Of course his teeth were alive. Was he?

  Flat on his back, the moon bleaching his eyes. Only dark stars and sunspots. Could feel the rim of a foxhole under him. In the distance, he could hear bells, and an unearthly voice from way across the riverbank. A woman.

  ‘You ready to stop yet, boys?’

  Bells and yells and more bangs, but it could all have been underwater, yawning and booming like it had nothing to do with him.

  ‘Fuck me.’ Least that’s what he tried to say, but the ringing in his ears sent the words down some echoey well. He waited for something to bounce back. Turned to the guy next to him. The moon lit up half a jaw, the wild spinning eyes of a spooked animal, the most God-awful, goddam gurgling, scratching, sputtering on his face, gore of some other man all across Frank’s face and he wanted to run from this horror, but he couldn’t find his legs, fuck: his legs. . . no, hands. . . were his hands his or this half-faced guy’s? His, his. . . patting down, he had legs: Bend your legs. Get up, fuck, no, roll! Which way was up? They were on a riverbank, in an avalanche of shelling: stay down till the shooting stops, but this guy, this poor fuck, was trying to scream.

  Frank held on to his arm. ‘Hey, buddy. Hey. Hold still. It’s OK. It’s fine. We’ll get you out of here.’

&nbs
p; The kid was jerking like he’d been given a shot of electricity. Choking, he was choking on what was left of his face. ‘Medic!’ yelled Frank, disregarding the command to Stay quiet. Don’t even let your helmet clink against your rifle. Hell, Jerry had seen them clear enough. ‘Medic! Can we get some help over here? Hey! In the foxhole!’

  Or maybe the words never came out of him, maybe they were just spinning like the sky above, but this poor kid was spinning faster, writhing to escape himself, and Frank tried to remember what he was supposed to do. It was a suh. There was a thing called a ‘suh’, you gotta get the suh on, and he remembered what the medics had told them. There was a green pouch on his belt, a green pouch with a red tin. Sulpha powder.

  ‘Hold up, buddy.’ Frank curled sidey-ways, tore the white paper open with his teeth. You’d to sprinkle it on an open wound, to prevent infection. But this was an open face. Did it stop pain as well as germs? He flung it over the guy’s jaw. Nothing was going to stop him bucking. Jesus.

  ‘Medic! Medic!’ he bawled, louder and louder. Fuck this. The kid needed morphine.

  ‘Stay with me, buddy. I’m gonna lift you up, OK?’

  Frank knelt up in the foxhole. Either he was stone deaf now, or the shelling and the gunfire had stopped.

  ‘Stay with me, kid. What’s your—’

  Stupid. Stupid. Frank heaved the boy’s arms up, tried to straighten him, facing, so he could drape him in a fireman’s carry, while they were both still on their knees. Half dragging, half carrying, he began to move forward.

  ‘Medic!’

  Moon was dipping behind dark-folded sky. In the half-light, it was hard to see where the rest of the troops had ended up. But the line, those Krauts – they weren’t supposed to be here. A recce had been done of the river, this point deemed safe. All the way to Lugnano was supposed to be fucking clear; the reconnaissance patrol had sent up a flare. Green for fucking go.