— Puritan, he said. By God, you’ll be both wife and mistress, Giulia.
— We must be getting back, she said in joy and terror.
In the next days Her Captain seemed to have sloughed off most of his marvelous peace. He chafed at the politics and meanness of base section life. He said he hadn’t been happy since he left his tank outfit. Each day he told her of friends killed a few hundred kilometers to the north of them. Then he began to lecture her on her adjustment to American life. He told her sadly that to be happy as his wife in America she must convert her personality. He said she was too utterly dependent on him. That an American wife was something quite different from an Italian wife, shut up in the house with her children. His words hurt her, though she never told him so.
— And it’s this paradox that saddens me, he said. I fell in love with you, Giulia, because you’re something apart from all cheapness. You’re everything that women have always insisted that they were, yet rarely succeeded in being. I wonder if in America you could stay that way.
— You think I’m not real? she said hotly. You think me incapable of being myself anywhere?
— I know, I know . . . but the noblest Italian life doesn’t belong in the twentieth century at all. . . . There seems to be no more room for flowers in this world.
— I may be a flower, said Giulia, 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 proud 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, controlling 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?
— 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. Giulia 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.
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 dominate my living. When this happens, Things become more important 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 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 temptation to turn a dollar or two at the expense of people who were 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 admit 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 Neapolitan shop, junk jewelry, worthless art — all for the joy of spending. 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 incorruptible Americans. Instead we entrusted it to Italians who, nine times out of ten, were grafters of the regime we claimed to be destroying.
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 fortune out of the deal. This was inexcusable on any grounds whatever. 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 Neapolitans 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 her a meal. . . . But first I make it clear to her Eyetie mind that I’m interested in somethin 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 pfc 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 attention 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 Neapolitans 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 to 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 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 solution 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 pay even to the crooks: when I answered them in Italian, they’d Baugh and shake my hand and say they were going to try someone else who didn’t know their lan
guage 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 Neapolitans 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 kindness 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 Americans 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 love life and love. I don’t know what else there is, after all. Even in their frankness the Italians 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.
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