The Gallery

by John Horne Burns

  I remember the Italian women, brought to situations that even the men couldn’t cope with. I remember that they still laughed and loved their men and their babies. I remember the wonderful beauty of Italian women, outside and inside. And even the whores had a certain beauty of logic in them. These Italian women were often gentle without weakness, gay without giddiness, and loving without gumdrops. These principles of conduct seemed to be rules for life which held even when life was at rock bottom. They were learned thousands of years ago. Yet we forget them through too much comfort and through bad art.

  I remember also the Italian men. There were thieves and liars and misanthropes among them, of course. There are everywhere. But I remember Italian men who moved in a sober brilliance of purpose — that nothing like this would ever happen again. They studied things outside Italy, endeavoring to discover what good had been done in the world since 1922, in what respects the outside world has surpassed Italy in science and humanism and government. I remember how much they gave me when they thought they had nothing left to give: a sense of tragedy, a sweetness, and an easiness toward little problems. All this for a few cigarettes or an occasional meal. Or for nothing. I remember their dark faces when anyone was kind to them. The gentle and noble Italians (and there are many) never envied me.

  — Caro John, ti consiglio di dire a tutti quel che hai visto in Italia . . . Perchè, sai, gl’Italiani non vi odiano, non vi odiano, voi altri americani. . . .

  Thus I walked often in the Galleria Umberto Primo, that arcade in the center of the city of Naples. Most of the modern world could be seen in ruins there in August, 1944.

  I remember that Galleria as something in me remembers my mother’s womb. I walked backwards and forwards in it. I must have spent at least nine months of my life there, watching and wondering. For I got lost in the war in Naples in August, 1944. Often from what I saw I lost the power of speech. It seemed to me that everything happening there could be happening to me. A kind of madness, I suppose. But in the twenty-eighth year of my life I learned that I too must die. Until that time the only thing evil that could be done to me would be to hurry me out of the world before my time. Or to thwart my natural capacities. If this truth held for me, it must be valid for everybody else in the world.

  This is the reason why I remember the Gallery in Naples. Italy. . . .

  NINTH PORTRAIT

  Moe

  ALTHOUGH HE WAS A SECOND LIEUTENANT, THERE WAS BOTH indolence and nervousness in the way he leaned against the wall of the PX on Via Diaz. He had a toothpick in a corner of his mouth, and he was watching the people going in and out of the PX. In brown paper packages was all their wealth for one week: seven packs of cigarettes, a cake of soap, five razor blades, and some candy bars. And they carried their packages fearfully cradled in their elbows, as though they were smuggling something. In the gutter stood Neapolitan kids who bid for the contents of these paper bags. An MP sometimes came up and chased the kids away. But just around the corner from the PX the Americans and the Neapolitans would get together again to engage in trade or barter.

  A GI with an armored force shoulder patch came sideways up and saluted him. He spat out his toothpick, straightened up, and returned the greeting. This GI wore the Purple Heart on his shirt, which didn’t prejudice the second lieutenant one way or another.

  — Lieutenant, sir, the GI said.

  — One or the other, he said. But not both.

  — Ya givin me a hard time, sir. I got mine at Salerno . . .

  — So did I, he said, and I don’t wear anything to show it. . . .

  And for the GI to see he spread out his right hand, which he’d been keeping in his pocket. He let the GI see how one finger had been bent on itself, how the flesh on the back of the hand was mottled and taut like melted rubber.

  — And I liked to bang out a tune or two on the piano, he added, when I wasn’t driving my taxi.

  — Well, that’s not all, the GI said. Last week I got nicked at Poggibonsi. I’m just gettin outa the hospital . . .

  — So am I, boy, so am I, he said, changing the cant of his legs. But I can’t show you my other wound. Not here in public on the streets of Napoli anyhow.

  — Ya givin me a hard time, sir, the GI said. I thought ya was one of these PBS commandos.

  — Tell me what you want, he said, wiping his forehead.

  — I need some shirts . . . an I didn’t sell my others either. The Ginsoes hocked em. Or some kike sold em while I was in the hospital . . .

  — I’m a kike, the second lieutenant said.

  Nevertheless, telling the GI to wait outside, he went into the PX. It was hot and crowded inside the glass doors. Some officers were fighting over the last wicks and flints left on a counter. Others were knocking one another down to get at the shoe counter, where three pairs of low oxfords waited for the victor. Others sat at card tables spread with brown paper, drinking cokes and coffee or eating sugar doughnuts. He looked at them all for a minute. Then he went upstairs to the officers’ clothing store. It hurt him a little to climb. His combat boots scraped on the marble stairs.

  The Neapolitan girl behind the clothing counter was pressing her temples and squeezing tears out of her eyes. She looked at him as though he were the newest rat come to gnaw at her.

  — Say, maybe you need an aspirin, he said. What did they do to you?

  — O Dio, she said. It’s this rush rush rush . . . the Americans are always in a hurry . . . they yell at me . . . Maria, Maria, Maria . . . I’m their servant . . . and they are driving me crazy. . . .

  He took his right hand out of his pocket and laid it on the counter as he leaned toward her. She saw his proud flesh and his twisted fingers. Then she took a handkerchief from between her breasts and started to dry her eyes.

  — Your servant, lieutenant.

  — Have you got a size fifteen suntan shirt?

  She got him one from a dwindling pile on the almost empty shelves. While she was wrapping it, he signed the old business on the yellow sales ticket:

  — I certify that this clothing was bought by me for my personal use; Moses Shulman, and Lt, Inf. . . .

  And while she was making change from his thousand-lira note, he went downstairs and bought a wax-paper cup of coffee and two sugar doughnuts. These he carried back to the girl Maria.

  — They never let us buy these, you know, she said.

  Then she stepped into a recess and drank the coffee and ate the two doughnuts. He watched her shiny black smock, which all the Neapolitan PX girls wore over their print dresses. He saw the glint of the earrings under her profuse hair. He watched her throat swallowing. Then she came back to the counter, wiping her mouth and looking at him dubiously.

  — I want you to smile for me, Moe said, picking up his package. I got a feeling there’s something you haven’t showed me of yourself.

  — I have no reason to smile, she said, staring at the brown paper on the counter.

  — Neither do I.

  So she wiped her lips once more. Her mouth widened. He saw her teeth and the tongue behind them like a frightened polyp.

  — But that’s no smile, Moe said.

  And suddenly he tweaked her lightly in the ribs. Again her lips parted and she laughed. And he felt his heart sicken and flower all at once.

  — Maria what?

  — Maria Rocco, she said, of Naples, Italy. Di una razza vinta e inferiore.

  — Ah, said Moe, and what conquered and inferior race do you think I come from?

  — But you’re an American, she said, glancing at his frightful right hand. You should be the happiest man on earth. The world is at your feet . . .

  — Do you think so? he said, putting his hand back into his pocket. Look, Maria Rocco, will you meet me tonight at eight? At the Via Roma side of the Galleria Umberto?

  — Well, why not? You’re the first man today who treated me like a human being.

  — Take a look at my nose and my dark skin, Moe said. I might almost be a Neapolitan.

/>   — At eight at the Galleria, then, Maria Rocco said.

  He looked at her for a second, then with his package under his arm he went downstairs and out of the PX. The August sun in Naples was broiling. The GI was waiting for him and took a roll of lire from his pocket.

  — Gee, lieutenant, thanks. Ya gimme a hard time there at first. How much?

  — I won’t be needing money for quite some time, Moe said.

  The GI saluted him and took off down Via Diaz toward the questura. Moe looked after him, put a toothpick in his teeth, and slowly turned onto Via Roma.

  He turned into the Galleria Umberto. In the heat of August, 1944, he felt the cauterized lips of his new wound murmuring like the gratings of a thirsty mouth. A tremor ran up his side along his ribs. He thought maybe the medic had left a wick inside him. He walked till he was in the very center of the Galleria, under the dome. Slowly he spun round in his boots as though he were the needle of a compass orienting itself on the grid lines of a map. Thus he was the very center of that afternoon crowd in the Galleria. He was the nub of hundreds of persons, American, British, French, Polish, Moroccan, and Neapolitan. He smiled and said to himself that this was the first and last time he’d be the center of the world.

  As he stood poised, a young Italian in a white linen suit came up. He limped on a cane. Out of his handsome head stuck an unlighted cigarette.

  — Please, the Italian said. I’m not asking for a cigarette, you notice. Just a little fire for my own . . .

  — Why certainly, Joe.

  He put out his zippo lighter so suddenly that the Italian ducked and fell to the pavement of the Galleria. In helping him up Moe saw that one white linen trouser, disordered by the fall, bared an aluminum leg.

  — You’re too used to getting hit, Moe said.

  — In Ethiopia I was a tenente pilota. I used to strafe the Ethiopians in the fields. According to orders, you understand. One day my plane was forced down. The neri started to cut me up. You see what they did to my leg . . .

  — That’s enough, Moe said. Walk along with me.

  The handsome Italian took his arm and they cut diagonally into the Galleria, away from its center under the dome. Moe had to walk at half his usual pace. The Italian helped himself puntingly along on his cane. One white linen shoulder hunched up and down.

  — I have always wanted to know an American. How did you know my name is Joe? It is; Giuseppe Brasi from Taranto. . . . For one week now I have been standing by myself every afternoon in the Galleria, waiting for an American to whom I would feel costretto to speak. One whole week I waited, with the excuse of the unlit cigarette in my lips. And then today I saw you. . . . I don’t want anything of you; cigarettes, black market. I am rich, as Italians go nowadays. But I wanted to talk to an American. The right American. . . . What is there in your face that I find so simpatico?

  — Damned if I know, Moe said, feeling the Italian’s weight rising and falling on his arm. But Hitler probably would.

  — Well, the Italian said, you Americans have some secret we Italians have missed. So you will pardon me if I make you my friend. At once.

  — Not at all, Moe said. Let’s sit down at this table and have a vermouth.

  — First, the Italian said, laying a hand on Moe’s arm. I must do something for you. I cannot stop giving presents to those I like. . . . Do you love women? I know an actress from Gorizia here in Napoli. I never kiss her on the mouth. But I buy her food when she meets me on the street and says, Ehhh, Pinuccio, I am hungry, cousin. . . . Or can I take you to the casini? I go often there for pleasure. The girls give me special attention because of my leg. They cannot tire me out. . . . At fifteen I was mad for ballerine. I went every night to the rivista to look at one Wanda. In those days I didn’t have much money from my father, so I bored Wanda. Over her I used to cry myself to sleep. At fifteen. . . . Now I am in Napoli from Taranto on business. Marriage business. I am affiancing myself to a dottoressa of a good family. A serious girl. We fight every day. I leave her in tears and walk into the streets of Napoli. I amuse myself. . . . Mi piace tutto. . . . For you I will do anything.

  — Thank you, Moe said, ordering two vermouths. Thank you very much, Joe.

  — But, the handsome Italian said, laying his cane across his lap, you must tell me what you know that I do not. I must learn your secret. Is it just that you are an American? . . . I think not. I find many of them offensive. . . . Look, caro, I have an apartment on Via dei Mille. You must come and live with me for a week. As my guest. We will have cene and pranzi such as you have never eaten. We will have women in the moonlight. I will fight with my fidanzata for one solid week in order that I may be always with you.

  — But this time tomorrow night, Moe said, I’ll be north of Napoli. I’ll be seeing the houses of the farmers up in Tuscany. Walls spattered with holes, I’ll be running with my carbine. . . . Think of me up there if the sun is as bright as it is this afternoon. . . . You see why I can’t accept your hospitality.

  — Beh, caro mio, the handsome Italian said, shrugging a shoulder as though he were still limping, you mean you are going back to fight?

  — I’m only an infantry platoon leader, Moe said. Lean and mean . . . maybe you’d like to fly me up in your plane?

  — But the Duce told us, the Italian said, ordering two more vermouths, that Jews did no fighting in the American Army . . .

  Then he checked himself and added:

  — Of course you will agree with me that your Roosevelt started this war?

  — Look, Joe, Moe said. Let’s talk like two friends, huh? It’s too late in my life for arguing. . . . I argued for twenty-five years. I saw that somebody had to be the grist for the mill instead of just talking about it. . . . So here I am . . . I have a hand that looks like a claw, and a rip in my chest. I’m no good to any one any longer. All those fine dreams I once had are gone. . . . The world will never be what I thought it could be. I used to dream at the wheel of my taxi while I waited for a stop light to change. I listened to what people were talking about in back of my meter. . . . Nothing they said made any sense to me. . . . So here I am in Naples, Italy, in August, 1944. It makes a little more sense to me than a drunken dowager in an evening gown. . . . Anyway I’m almost happy and almost calm . . . I’m seeing the world, like you do in that last look around before you go blind. What more can I ask?

  — Mi dica un po’, the handsome Italian asked. Are you such a strange man because you are a Jew or in spite of it?

  — I’ve hungered and I’ve thirsted after something, Moe said. And it took a war to show me what that something is. . . . I’ve lived all my life in insecurity. I feared it and I fought it. I saw what it did to my father. I saw how it embittered my sisters Audrey and Rebecca and Elaine, even as they sat at their typewriters. I saw how only the sweetness of my mother was able to hold out against it. . . . But now that I accept insecurity I find a weight has been lifted from me . . . It means that in this year I must die.

  — You are a perfectly just man, the handsome Italian said, and tears came into his eyes. You are a good man in 1944 . . .

  — No, not good, Moe said; and he smiled to counteract the Italian’s tears. But I see that it’s nothing to give up my life. It’s easier to do than be slowly smothered.

  — Spend the rest of today with me, the Italian said, wiping his eyes and smoothing his white lapels. I shall give you a night in which no pleasure will be lacking.

  — No thanks, Joe. It would be forcing the issue. I’ve never been able to do that. And everything now is so natural to me. Like one of those dreams in which you want something and it happens . . . without any effort on your part.

  The handsome Italian put the toe of his cane on the pavement of the Galleria. He stood up and wiped his eyes again.

  — Ah, he said, I too have a good heart, even though I strafed the Ethiopian contadini. Under orders of the Duce, of course. . . . I had also an amante, a Libyan black girl. I had two children by her. It broke my heart to leave my cugi
na di guerra and my bambini. . . . But I feel that I shall see you again. Otherwise . . . morirei di dolore. . . .

  — Well, take care, Joe, Moe said, putting out his hand.

  He watched the Italian go along the Galleria on his cane. He limped through the crowds, one white shoulder rising and falling as his weight hit his aluminum leg. Then Moe took out two sheets of V-mail stationery and a pencil and began to think what he would write to his friend Irving, driving his taxi in Brooklyn. He bit on the pencil. The sun was dropping outside the Galleria Umberto. A ray of it smote his chest, and he seemed no longer to be in August, 1944, and the Italian campaign called Rome-Arno like a soccer match. There was just himself close to the Mediterranean Sea. Something specific in himself had come from this sea long ago. He didn’t quite know why he felt so at home.

  Somewhere in Italy

  14 Aug. 1944

  Hullo Irv,

  This is that matzoth man talking to you again — I’m writing to you because I could always tell you nearly any ole gunk that came into my head — you just happen to be it, that’s all — right now I’m sitting on my fanny in a city in southern Italy and you know dam well I’m not allowed to tell you what the name of it — doesn’t matter anyhow — I got out of the horsepital this morning and tomorrow I’m going back to the line — I have been away too long from my boys — I keep wondering what they are doing up north of me and how many of them are still with us — right now I’m drinking vermouth — it’s late afternoon — anyhoo I’m glad you aren’t sitting across from me at Hymie Hamilburg’s because then I couldn’t tell you what’s on my mind — you’d keep butting in with your corny humor (?) like you always do — everybody says this life is unreal — the executive officer of our battalion told me that in the middle of a war everybody contracted a bad case of irrelevance — did I spell that right? — I dunno and I don’t much care — what I started out to tell you is that this life, I mean me being a platoon leader in the infantry, is as close to anything real as anybody ever gets — you suddenly see how simple and terrible everything is — and beautiful like a bolt of lightning —