The Gallery

by John Horne Burns

  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 GI’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 promotions. For the PBS officers were quite different from the combat 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’è, dov’è? 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 flank.

  — 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, pretending 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 cosi bene italiano! Wilma squealed graciously.

  For a few minutes they all three spoke in Italian. Wilma and Giulia’s Captain outdid one another in gallantries and compliments. 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 conversation 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.

  Then Her Captain took Giulia’s arm ever so lightly, as though a feather had insinuated itself into the crook of her elbow. And he observed to Wilma in English:

  — I’ve been thinking of my girl all day long.

  — You are making no mistake, said Wilma, whose English was slow and stately.

  There was a pause, seemingly contrived by Wilma, in which Giulia and Her Captain looked at each other. Their eyes interlaced in hunger and questioning, and Giulia’s small doubts were again put at rest. There came to her again that odd mad peace, that sense of being pulled out of the tempest and the dark, of flying upward into the sun. Giulia felt giddy, and she heard Wilma laugh at Her Captain:

  — Carina la nostra bimba, eh?

  — Ma si, said the captain. Ma si. Un tesoro. . . .

  — Ciao, Giulia, the captain said.

  — Ciao, capitano, Giulia answered. The words came from deep within her.

  — I invite you both to tea, the captain said.

  He placed himself in the middle, took both their arms, and they walked out into Naples. For Giulia the sun had never been so warm, the browns and grays of Napoli so rich. She looked at the thousands of Neapolitans scurrying on Via Roma, screaming and gesticulating and worrying; and she found herself blessing them all: the weary widows, the frenetic scugnizz’, the anxious studenti and studentesse burbling about their examinations and the spleen of their professori. All the while during their walk Her Captain and Wilma chattered of tiny nothings and amenities. Giulia didn’t feel as though she were left out of the conversation, but rather that with their words they were making a garland for her. They were both aware of her.

  The three entered the Galleria Umberto and made for a café. The bars were just opening. In the center of the Galleria, the focus of the cross that was its floor plan, a Neapolitan in the middle of a crowd talked against Russia and Il Comunismo. A trio of Italian soldiers hissed and made scissors motions toward the hair of a girl in conference with American GI’s. Children scooted along the walls selling cameos and carrying trays of fried fish and dough. And through the Galleria ran a rumble as though they were all underground. For the first time in a year Giulia could look at all these human faces and feel that maybe there weren’t too many people in the world after all.

  They sat down at the wicker table of a café 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 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 thei
r 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, knowing Italian and the Italians, saw clearly what was going on behind the scenes and grinned within 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 Americans 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 him change from something adored and gilded into a bitter and handsome 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 encounter 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 exhortation and had said in his brand-new business Americanese:

  — Captain, you know my sister is strictly a ragazza per bene?

  — 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 captain 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 followed 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 Americans 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 apartment 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 éclairs and sandwiches made of Spam. These were all set formally on silver trays of Mamma’s dowry.

  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 chin and moles propped over her black silk gown, her fingers queenly with rings. She didn’t look at the captain till he was presented to her. At Mamma’s right hunched the grandmother in mauve lace, muttering to herself the part she was to play and peering about with bleary Cassandra eyes. Papa paced up and down the salotto with a thick bitten cigar in his hand. He wore his gold watch chain. Giulia sat demurely by herself on a leather ottoman. She must pretend that she had nothing at all to do with the ceremonies, that she was a timid and nubile slave girl about to be sold to the highest bidder. She’d known this role since she was a tiny girl. But she’d never imagined that some day it would come her turn to play it.

  The introductory sallies and pleasantries took five minutes. Papa 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 occasionally 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.

  Next it was Mamma’s turn. She folded her delicate hands in her great lap. In her wheezy voice she confessed that Giulia had been engaged to a Neapolitan sottotenente called Pasquale. But that person was to be considered dead because he was an unrepentant Fascist and a prisoner of war at Oran. Pasquale’s family had released Giulia from her bond. Then Mamma launched into Giulia and Giulia’s upbringing. She gave a picture of Giulia’s faults and virtues. But since Giulia was a ragazza seria, her virtues outweighed her faults. The captain was invited to form the opinion that whoever wed Giulia was getting a treasure.

  To all this Giulia’s Captain smiled and nodded whenever Mamma gasped for breath:

  — Ehhhhh, sì, gentile signora. . . .

  Then there was the third and grim act before the refreshments could be served. The paternal grandmother talked for twenty minutes, with gestures, on vice among young women. After its initial hoarseness her voice was as great as Duse’s, falling in periods and strophes through the dingy apartment. She sniffed at Neapolitan trash that walked Via Roma, but discounted these girls as having always been cattive. Then she mentioned a higher percentage of girls who had once been good, but now prostituted themselves 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 strazî, 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 gran
dmother, in reaching greedily for her ninth éclair, 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, angina and all, turned up as the captain’s guest in a box for Rigoletto at the San Carlo. But O Dio mio, Giulia could go neither alone nor in company to Her Captain’s apartment on Via Santa Brigida. In point of fact she shouldn’t be alone with him anywhere anytime. But Wilma was an indulgent and winking chaperone. 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 moonlight 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 landing craft for infantry, sharp metal wedges that rode low on the tide, the sulking hospital ships.

  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 happy. . . .

  They were leaning by a little altar to Neptune in a niche with sculpted conch shells. Below them the fishermen had beached their boats on a mole, wooden-bellied crescents of tar piled along one 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 presentiment of dying with delight. Her breath choked up in her throat; she felt that she was being crushed. Something red and beaconlike flickered in her mind, crying Not Yet, Not Yet. With a violence, not of revulsion, but to keep her mind intact, she released herself.