by Norman Lewis
These were the small customary gifts which changed hands in exchange for any small service that might be performed.
The question of a car came up, this being essential to my work. Only five were registered in the town, but the Marshal believed he could find one. We went to a garage and I was shown a Bianchi standing on wood blocks in a corner. Besides the wheels, a number of engine parts were missing. No one so far, said the Marshal, had been able to requisition this car, but many had tried. He believed that all the missing parts could be found, and it could be made available to a friend. What he was in effect saying was, with me you swim – without me you sink. While these matters were being discussed I strolled round and picked up a tyre on a bench. This was a Dunlop cover from the walls of which the trade-name, number and size had been removed, and nearby was an electrical tool with which this operation had clearly been performed. Another tyre possessed a Dunlop tread, but with Pirelli lettering on the wall. I asked the garage man where these stolen tyres came from, and he told me he bought them. ‘Everybody does.’ He was a friend of the Marshal’s, and ready to be a friend of mine. And he, and everyone else, knows I depend on the Marshal.
It was dark by the time we returned to the office. On our way back I noticed zigzagging points of light and occasionally small showers of sparks in the sky and pointed these out to the Marshal. He explained that the boys caught bats, tied rags soaked in petrol to them, set light to the rags and then let them go. He was full of praise for the ingenuity with which they made their own small pleasures, but acknowledged with regret that the petrol had probably been stolen out of someone’s tank.
August 13
Today a begrimed and bedraggled waif calling herself Giuseppina appeared at the office. This alert twelve-year-old would tell me nothing about herself other than her age, that her parents had been killed in the great bombing, and that she lived ‘under a house’ down by the river. There are boy-orphans by the hundred like her, barefooted, ragged and hungry, but somehow managing to survive and fill the gaunt streets with their laughter, but this was the first abandoned girl I had seen. Giuseppina told me she had come for her blanket as usual.
I was astonished. Blankets are one form of currency in this Italy in ruins – but currency of a fairly high denomination, good Australian or Canadian specimens fetching the equivalent of a low-grade factory-worker’s weekly wage. I told her I had no blankets to give away, and offered her a packet of army biscuits, which she gracefully refused. ‘Isn’t this still the police station?’ she asked. I agreed that it was, and she told me that the man who had been here before – clearly my Canadian predecessor – had given her a blanket once a week.
Only at this point did I realise the tragic significance of the request, and that this skinny, undeveloped little girl was a child prostitute. The scugnizzi of Naples and Benevento are intelligent, charming and above all philosophical – notably more so than children from protected homes – and this female version of the breed was in no way different from her male counterparts. Much as she may have been disappointed by my rejection of her services, nothing but good humour showed in her face. She bobbed something like a curtsy. ‘Perhaps I’ll take the biscuits after all,’ she said. Then, with a wave, she was off.
August 15
The Marchesa mentioned on my friend’s list turned out to be the last surviving member of one of the great hereditary landowning families in the neighbourhood. She appeared to be between fifty and sixty years of age, was laden with jewellery, yellowed with fever, and smoked a pipe. She had the reputation for nymphomania, and in the files left by my predecessor it was alleged that it was her habit to bribe teenage scugnizzi to accompany her on horseback rides to a wood some miles out of town, where they were seduced and rewarded with payments of 50 lire.
I was received in the small habitable portion of her castle. There were pigeons in the rafters over our head, and the floor was thick with their droppings. She lived by supplying pigeons to the local hotel, and let out the keep and the bell-tower to pig-breeders. The floor of the banqueting hall had been covered with soil, and in this she grew vegetables. She was clearly a woman of great energy.
The Marchesa claimed to be of Swabian ancestry and told me that only French was allowed to be spoken in the castle when she was a child. Her contempt for the Italian peasantry was measureless, and she boasted of the feudal oppressions committed by her family, claiming that their vassals were even taxed (twenty-one nights a month) for sleeping with their wives. She knows everyone in the province and it is valuable to have a point of view differing dramatically from that of the Marshal. One astonishing allegation: that the harmless and effete-looking principal citizen controlled a powerful band of outlaws. These had got their hands on a damaged tank which they were rebuilding. She warned me that I would soon be approached with a request for spare parts ‘for a tractor’.
August 18
I have temporarily moved into the Hotel Vesuvio, once pride of the town, and possessing not only ten bedrooms but the only Turkish bath in the province. The hotel has been concentrated and simplified following damage suffered in the great air-raid. Now only one large room remains, a corner of which contains some twenty or thirty hatstands, as many spittoons, and a small grove of potted palms. This room, according to the hour of day, serves as café or restaurant, and punctually at midnight Japanese screens are produced, and four iron beds normally standing on end against the walls are lifted into position. I sleep on one of these, much troubled by the mosquitoes and the heat.
A problem has arisen. Although I handed in my army rations to the cook, with the intention of living on these, nobody has taken me seriously, nor believed that any human being in his right mind and able to eat pasta would refrain from doing so. Consequently at every meal a plateful of spaghetti is placed in front of me. Alberto the proprietor is a kind and generous man, and it seems hard to push this aside untouched without causing hurt feelings. The difficulty is to find some way of reciprocating this hospitality, bearing in mind the Italian belief that any Allied soldier has access to unlimited supplies of food. Yesterday, while drawing rations as arranged from the South Africans at San Giorgio, it occurred to me to ask the sergeant if there happened to be any tins of meat going begging. He readily produced a half-dozen large cans of bacon, described as terrible stuff which nobody would eat. These I took back to the hotel and handed over to Alberto, suggesting that he should invite all his friends round for supper.
The party proved a huge success. In addition to the social elite of Benevento I already knew: Marshal Altamura, the principal citizen, the Marchesa and the coffin-maker, Don Enrico – the local capitalist – who is Alberto’s sleeping partner in the business, came along. He had the sad eyes and the drooping features of a bloodhound, and the nails of his little fingers had been allowed to grow enormously long to prove – in the old-fashioned style of the South – that he did no work. Three tables were shoved together, and the potted palms arranged to screen us from the regular guests. We were served by Lina, the maid-of-all-work, scrubbed up, starched and gloved for the occasion, and quite unrecognisable as the slattern who came creeping in behind the Japanese screens most nights to bring solace to some commercial traveller for the reasonable fee of 50 lire. Her mother, a crone in black, kept the wonderful old horned gramophone going with scratched Verdi records. After some experiment it had been decided to eat the bacon raw. No one present had ever tasted bacon before, and all were ecstatic in their praise. Tumblerfuls of the sour but powerful local wine went to most heads. The Marchesa bellowed her laughter across the room, scattered ash everywhere from her pipe, and was taken with a paroxysm of coughing when Alberto went dashing round to spray the palms with Flit. Don Enrico, a copy of whose grovelling letter, written to Hitler in person, had found its way into my hands, held an American flag upside down, and kept up a monotonous cracked-voice chanting Vivono gli Alleati. At a late stage a drunken attempt to sing the National Anthem broke down into the Triumphal March from Aïda. When it w
as all over I felt that at least I had broached local reserve, and done something towards putting to rest the spectre of the whip-cracking sergeant-major.
Tonight the Bianchi was delivered to the hotel, for my use while in Benevento – on loan.
August 20
The Marshal is, or appears to be, worried. He says the town is surrounded by bandits, and he has heard that they may link up and attack it. What did I propose to do?
Nothing, I said. It’s none of my business.
‘We’re all in this together,’ he said. ‘You could catch it in the neck, too.’
I asked him what he proposed, and his suggestion was that we ought to go out for the baddies before they came after us.
With what? I asked him. What could we produce in the way of men and weapons? I mentioned that I had a 38 Webley with five rounds only of ammunition – the same gun and the same ammunition with which I landed at Salerno a year ago. The Marshal, who packs a Beretta automatic, could call on the support of three Carabinieri, but as they only had two pairs of military boots between them, only two men were available at a time for any active duty. They were armed with Carcano rifles dating from about 1912 – the weapon which helped the Italians to lose this war. There were two Pubblica Sicurezza men who, he says, would run away as soon as the first shot was fired. Finally a detachment of two British Military Police was stationed in the town, and might agree to give a hand.
I objected that the bandits, who in the main were Italians and American army deserters, were known to be armed with Breda heavy machine-guns. Not only that, he agreed, but all the latest American equipment. He understood that this had been secretly supplied by OSS agents. He claimed to know that the ultimate intention was to form these irregulars into a Separatist army in support of the secret movement to detach the whole of the South of Italy from the North. From this it seemed that Lattarullo’s Separatist friends, improbable collection as they might be, could be gaining ground here, as we know that they are in Sicily.
‘We have to do something,’ he says. ‘The longer we leave it the worse it’ll get.’ I then remembered that a signal had just come in to say that reinforcements were on their way, composed of two Canadian half-sections, totalling two officers, two sergeant-majors, and eight sergeants. I decided to keep this piece of information to myself.
At this point I brought up the fact that today the principal citizen asked me to get him parts for his tractor. ‘Are these actually for a tank?’ I asked.
The Marshal shrugged his shoulders. ‘You shouldn’t believe all you hear,’ he said. ‘I suppose they could be.’
August 21
Discussed the problem of the bandits with Don Ubaldo, the schoolmaster, who said they have always been there in times of trouble. He remembered them in his childhood before and after the 1914 war, and could recall no period of history when Southern Italy and Sicily had been free from this nuisance for any length of time. I told him that although little mention is made of them in the newspapers I have learned through our section in Sicily that up to thirty bands were in operation there at this time, many of them believed to be led by common criminals who had succeeded in escaping from gaol during the fighting.
Don Ubaldo said that by tradition, when law and order had collapsed, many of these attached themselves to the great landowners, who gave them shelter and a little food in exchange for their services in keeping the peasantry in order. At this moment in Sicily they were raiding police stations and Allied dumps for arms, and occasionally they attacked isolated villages. Don Ubaldo had never heard of an attack on a town the size of Benevento; however – as there were no Allied troops in the vicinity – he was afraid they might be tempted. This schoolmaster, who is officially inscribed in one of the innumerable left-wing political parties, said that most people were now beginning to see the era of Fascism as a golden interlude of security and firm government.
He related an anecdote of the extermination of the last of the nineteenth-century brigands in a small town nearby. They were surrounded in a house, and the police couldn’t get them out. Every time they tried to break in someone was shot. In the end the priest was called in to act as a go-between. He got the police to agree that if the brigands surrendered, there would be no more bloodshed. The brigands gave in, and it was decided to kill them all the same, but as the police captain was not prepared to break his word about shedding blood, they were smothered one by one in a bed.
August 25
Peters, the MP sergeant, had a lucky escape in an encounter with the bandits on the Nola road only a mile out of town. They tossed a grenade into his jeep, but this fortunately fell in the space behind the back seat, and the seat’s metal back protected him from the blast and the fragments. He came out of it with only a damaged eardrum.
Conference to decide what is to be done. The Town Major, a pure cypher, suggested appeal to the nearest infantry unit for loan of a company. The first objection was we’d never get one, and the second, that they’d be useless in this situation if we did. The bandits have their own intelligence system and as soon as any body of soldiers moved in their direction they’d simply pull back into the hills. Peters turned out to be a marvellous old regimental sweat with a Palestinian campaign-ribbon, white-Blancoed to the eyes, and as expressionless as a trained butler. Said that the bandits, who were now fully motorised, were driving an ex-German army lorry.
Decision: to wait for the arrival of the FS sections, and then perhaps take action.
August 28
The news is that Benevento is now officially suffering from two epidemics: smallpox and typhoid. Ninety cases of typhoid have been reported, but there are no figures for smallpox. Nor are there any figures for the cases of typhus – from which there have been a number of deaths – including that of the Carabinieri captain who was the Marshal’s predecessor. In speaking of this some days ago, the Marshal mentioned with perhaps a touch of relish that this officer was from Rome. ‘These Roman gentlemen don’t seem to take root down here,’ he said. ‘They arrive so full of energy and enthusiasm, but they can’t get used to the conditions. They take pills all the time and cover themselves with all sorts of powder, but they go out like candles.’ Having said this, I felt his speculative gaze fall on me. ‘To be able to put up with a place like this,’ the Marshal said, ‘your blood has to be like mine – too strong for the mosquitoes, fleas and lice.’
For myself the chief worry was the possibility of another bout of malaria. I took double doses of mepacrine – which was slowly turning my skin and the whites of my eyes yellow – slept under a mosquito net, and rubbed stinking mosquito repellent into all the exposed parts of my skin, but I got bitten all the same. People accept malaria as a matter of course in this town.
Here, to all intents and purposes, we were living in the Middle Ages. Only the buildings had changed – and most of these were in ruins. Epidemics, robbers, funerals followed by shrieking women, deformed and mutilated beggars, legless cripples dragging themselves about on wheeled platforms – even raving lunatics they’d no room for in the asylum. People walked the streets with handkerchiefs pressed over their mouths and noses as they probably did in the days of the plagues of old. This morning I actually found myself in a little square tucked away among the ruins where women were dancing to drive the sickness away.
August 30
Went to the Hotel Vesuvio for lunch where one of Don Ubaldo’s friends arrived with the news that he has been taken ill. He had a prescription for medicine urgently required, but – although one can buy every kind of fancy cake or sweet in Benevento – there is no medicine. Could I help in any way?
I was due to go into Naples with my weekly report, so I left immediately in the Bianchi, covering the distance, including all the detours where the bridges were down, in a couple of hours, and took the prescription to my contact in the pharmaceutical world. There was no problem. My friend had every drug known to modern medicine, and I knew where his abundant supplies had come from. While waiting for the prescrip
tion to be made up I wandered round the counter to inspect the activities of a small boy who was busily soaking off English labels before sticking on Italian ones. It was no business of mine to interfere, and it would have made no difference had I done so. All I should have done was lose a friend, and Don Ubaldo’s medicine into the bargain. I am gradually becoming drawn into the system!
August 31
Back to Benevento where I delivered the medicine for Don Ubaldo, who now appeared to be gravely ill, though I was not told with what. Saw a funeral with a professional mourner who tore at her cheeks with her fingernails, and drew blood. Also an Italian sanitary team chasing peasants to spray them with anti-typhus powder. The peasants did not know what was happening to them, and some were hooting with fear.
This afternoon the promised Canadians arrived in two splendid Dodge lorries, and proved to be the wildest of real-life gun-slinging cowboys, straight from the prairies. They have everything that any soldier can possibly want: an assortment of guns, hip-flasks, poker-dice, signed photos of Rita Hayworth, pocketfuls of french letters and occupation money. One sergeant has a diamond as big as my thumbnail taken in exchange for the bundles of thousand-lire notes acquired somewhere along the line. The diamond, he explained, is wealth in its most portable form. There are twelve Canadians: two captains, two sergeant-majors and eight sergeants, and the atmosphere is democratic. Nobody salutes anybody and the captains are called by their first names. On hearing of the possibility of a clash with bandits there were whoops of enthusiasm. The enthusiasm flagged this evening over the pre-dinner drinks when one of them spotted a guest of the Vesuvio sitting quietly in his corner being sick into a bag and was told that the man might be in the first stages of a highly infectious and usually fatal sickness. They have a wholly American and New World terror of poor hygiene, and are appalled by the dirtiness of Italy, a prejudice which did not prevent two of them from making their arrangements for tonight with the maid-of-all-work, whose general appearance is unhealthy to say the least.