The Gallery
Page 19
—Attenzione, cara. . . .
—Perchè? Momma cried, but he was gone.
Nettled and distracted, she settled herself behind the cash register and folded her hands. Where were they? All behind schedule tonight. 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 clean the glass, the wine, everything! Momma cried cheerily. 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 yourself 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, glaring 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.
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 of 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 greeting from another, he’d reply and recede into himself. Momma wondered if at Tobruk or El Alamein someone in the desert night had cut his soul to pieces. He’d loved once—perfectly—someone, somewhere. 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 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 carried 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 pain, as though her guests jabbered at one another to get their minds off themselves, to convince themselves of the reality of something 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 joi
nt. 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 sergeants 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 bottomless, 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.
—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 uniform—the neat tie, the coat, the stripes on the sleeve, the skirt that didn’t call attention to the fact that it was a skirt. Under her overseas 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 something. 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 insisting on equality with the men. To Momma, thinking of her girlhood 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 gospel 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 Umberto 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. . . .
—Oh 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 expecting 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 sergeant 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 stinking 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 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 h
is 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 Caracciolo. 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. Vittorio 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 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 debarking operations. The name of this sergente maggiore was Giulio. His eyes darted warily about, and once in a while he’d call out something in a barking voice, to show that he was accustomed to command. He insisted on wearing his smart fascist peaked cap, the visor of which he would nervously tug when he got an unexpected answer.