Chapter Ten
ALL day long the black flocks of aircraft swung across the sky, and the nights trembled with their roar. Phosphorescent gun-flashes made the mountain peaks leap in and out of the darkness. Lorries rumbled northward, and ambulances came lurching back along the deep-worn roads. Ragged mobs of prisoners swarmed into the compounds. Then, one day, the last echo died among the hills. The last stains of shell smoke drifted away from over the straits and left the sky serene. The last Germans slipped aboard their ferries and Messina was empty and silent, a desert of white ruins. There were no more aircraft in the sky and no more convoys on the roads. The war was gone from Sicily. This was on the seventeenth day of August.
In the Via dei Martiri, the days were tranquil, and human life flourished like a garden. Every mind was closed to the carnage that continued across the face of the earth; soldiers and civilians alike told each other, ‘La guerra è finita.’ They nourished themselves on this illusion, ‘The war is over,’ disowning, as is the way of men, all the world outside themselves, all time but the present.
The aspect of the street had changed. At one end, outside the billet, the road and pavements were spotlessly dean, and even the rest of the street, by force of example, was tidier, the rubbish being piled in a few great heaps against the walls of the air-raid shelter. It was unusual, now, to see groups of soldiers hanging about outside their habitation, for most of the men had found homes for themselves. Only a minority had women of their own, but many more had been adopted into families and spent their spare time helping the old folk or playing with the children. The street might have been a village, leading a life of its own in the midst of the greater life of the town. The children were all looking well after two weeks of feeding on British rations, and many of them were neatly dressed in clothes whose material bore a suspicious resemblance to khaki drill or army blankets. There were fewer of them playing in the street, for the priest – with money given to him by some Catholic soldiers – had bought pencils and paper and had started a little school. The company’s medical corporal had established an unofficial dispensary to which women and children streamed every day to have their ailments treated. Curtains, never seen before in the street, had appeared in a few windows, and one domesticated soldier had even knocked up a window-box. A new language had come into being, which not only served for intercourse between English and Sicilians, but which was in common use within each group. Thus a soldier complaining at the cookhouse would grumble, ‘This munjah-ree’s no bloody bonna,’ to which the cooks would probably reply, ‘Fangola!’ – while a Sicilian housewife, expressing approval of a neighbour’s latest purchase, would tell her that it was ‘jus’-the-bloody-job’.
Captain Rumbold, helpless in the face of this process, did not know whether to laugh or to be angry. He was having a good time himself; in the Mess, he described the girl he had picked up as ‘a fiery little bitch’. It was not greatly displeasing, when he walked down the street, to see his men sitting quietly at the street doors, passing their time soberly, often singing quietly and harmoniously with their women and their friends the songs of the moment, ‘Piccola Santa’, ‘Amo Pola’, or the banal and heartbreaking ‘Lili Marlene’. He had laughed loud and long on the Sunday morning when Ling had come to him for a pass out of billets ‘to take the kids to church’. ‘Why?’ he had asked. ‘You’re not a Catholic, are you?’ Ling had stood for a moment frantically corrugating his bald head in search of an answer before he had replied, ‘No, but you got to bring ’em up decent, like, ’aven’t you, sir?’ The captain had granted the pass. But he had been furious when a Sicilian woman had called out to Sergeant Craddock, in his presence, ‘Ciao, Pippo!’ ‘Pippo?’ queried the captain. ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Me,’ admitted Sergeant Craddock, a little unhappily. ‘Well!’ exclaimed the captain, staring at the solid, ruddy face of his favourite sergeant. ‘If you’re going native that’s the bloody limit!’
§§§§
On the day after the fighting ended Craddock drew three months’ back pay, went to the market and bought an old portable gramophone, some records, a bottle of good wine and a Spanish comb.
‘What are these things for?’ asked Graziella as he unloaded his gifts on to her table.
‘The comb is to wear, the wine is to drink, and the gramophone is to play.’
‘But for me?’ She wrung her hands, in a harassed way, and smiled wonderingly. ‘Why?’
Craddock set out two tumblers and filled them with wine. ‘No more questions. Drink.’
She emptied the glass, looked at him shyly, and laughed. He refilled her glass. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘all of it.’
‘Ah, no, you will make me drunk.’
‘A little. Come!’ He sat beside her, with one arm round her shoulders, and with his free hand raised the glass to her lips. She sipped obediently, like a child, looked at him again in inquiry and broke into uncontrollable laughter. He squeezed her shoulders and said, ‘There, that’s better.’
She calmed herself and asked, still gasping a little with laughter, ‘What are you doing, madman?’
Craddock left her and began to wind up the gramophone. He placed a record on the turntable. ‘Your cheeks are flushed and your smile is without a shadow. I have waited a long time to see that.’ He pressed the switch. ‘Do you know this waltz? “The Blue Danube”. Now we shall dance.’
Graziella made a noise of derision. ‘I do not dance. I am a married woman with a child. My time for dancing is finished.’
‘When it was your time for dancing, did you dance?’
‘No.’
‘Then you will learn now.’
‘It is too difficult.’
‘No, it is easy. Let me confess. I have only danced three times since my wedding, and rarely before. But I will teach you. I have watched you. You will learn easily.’
She rose to her feet, but hesitated, holding the back of the chair.
‘Come. To please me.’
‘Do I not please you now?’
‘You please me much. But I am not satisfied.’
‘Why?’ Her hesitance was a sham; she was excited and pouting already.
‘You are too wise. And all your wisdom is a bitter wisdom. You are like a woman older than me, but you are only young. I want to be able to see that you are young. You must learn to be young, and to laugh more.’
‘It is not easy to laugh in this life,’ – but she was laughing again. She came into his arms, and he guided her round the table in a waltz step. Their movement was clumsy, and they faltered, and laughed, and clung to each other. Craddock broke off and gave her some more wine. She giggled and shook her hair free. She moved lightly, humming the tune against his ear. Soon it was Craddock who felt clumsy and she at ease, and when she glided into the turns it was he who was the burden. The record shrieked to a stop, and she clapped her hands and cried. ‘Make it play again!’ They played the waltz twice more, and at the second playing she cast him off, snatched up the baby from the cot and whirled round the room holding the child high, laughing and singing. Craddock sat on the edge of the table by the gramophone, glorying to see her so wild and youthful. ‘Tomorrow I shall ask my friend, the Corporal Honeycombe, to come and dance with you. He dances well. He is good for all things with women. You deserve a good partner.’
She came and sat beside him, with the baby on her lap, giving the child sips of wine from her glass. ‘You are not serious?’
‘Yes, I am serious. Why not?’
‘But I must not dance with another man. It is not decent.’
‘Why?’
‘It is not permitted. He is not my man.’
‘No one permits. You are a free woman. You may do what pleases you. You must learn that.’
‘Perhaps you want me to kiss him, too? Her voice was hostile and she looked sulky, but he saw the tell-tale gleam of laughter in her eyes.
‘If you kiss him I shall break your neck. But not if you wish to dance with him.’
‘I am a free woman. I may
do what pleases me. Perhaps it will please me to kiss him!’
‘Perhaps. But, speaking purely as a friend, I advise you not to.’
‘Ah!’ She buried her face exultantly in the child’s neck, and her body shook with laughter. ‘Englishmen are jealous, too!’
They danced and drank, and played the other records. When the bottle was empty Graziella ran out, not troubling to arrange her disordered hair, and came back with a jug of cheap wine. She could not stop talking. ‘When I said that I had never danced, it was not true. When I was a child I always danced. The day I came back from my first Communion, I was wearing a beautiful white dress, and I was walking so nicely in the street, and I heard an old man playing the violin. I danced and danced, and the old man saw me and played always more, always faster, and I danced always faster. I forgot my good behaviour and I danced until I was hot, and my beautiful dress was all disarranged and covered with dust from the street, and still I danced. My uncle saw me, and shouted to my mother. He was angry, for the sake of the family. My mother came and dragged me into the house, and scolded me, but when we were inside the house she embraced me, and she wept over me and told me that when I was dancing I was as beautiful as a bird, and that I reminded her of her own childhood. She cried, “Oh, that you might always remain my child and never become a woman!” My mother was good.’ She rested her head tipsily on his shoulder. ‘But if I had never become a woman I would never have been with you.’ She looked solemnly at him, and went off suddenly into a volley of laughter, leaning across his lap. ‘Ecco! Now I laugh even without knowing why.’
‘Be careful with the baby,’ said Craddock, ‘and do not give him any more to drink, or you will make him drunk, too.’ He added, after a little pause, ‘How long before he is asleep?
Graziella raised her eyes. ‘That is why I am giving him wine,’ she said.
§§§§
It was night, and Graziella was alone, except for the baby sleeping in its cot. She moved about the room barefoot, humming to herself, still flushed with wine and pleasure. Half the room was weakly lit by a paraffin lamp, the rest in shadow. She looked at her mirror, twirled across the room, softly singing ‘The Blue Danube’, and came waltzing back to the mirror with the lamp in her hand. She stooped in front of the glass and held her hair back with both hands. ‘I must have it thus,’ she said aloud, ‘and I must brush it more so that it will shine like Paloma’s hair. And I will put the comb in,’ – she reached for the Spanish comb – ‘thus.’ She blushed at the image that confronted her. ‘I did not look as young as this, or as beautiful, on my wedding day!’
The words were a reminder. She drew back from the mirror and looked with dismay at the photograph on the shelf, from which Vincenzo’s face, square and strong and framed in black hair, stared at her sullenly. She looked at the photograph, and at the Madonna above her bed, and again at the photograph.
‘Oh, Madonna,’ she cried to the image. ‘Oh, darling Mary! You understand. I know you understand. What can I do?’ Her face softened, and she smiled again. ‘You are a mother. That is why all the women pray first of all to you. You are a woman,’ she said tenderly. ‘Do you think I believe that story about you? You will not be harsh. I know you will forgive!’
She took the comb from her hair, and turned down the lamp. She was still humming the song to herself as she climbed into bed.
Chapter Eleven
THESE were dream days, a time of sunlight and languor, lived under a glass bell of unreality.
It took a fragment of a second, on a quiet Sunday morning, to shatter the peaceful dream.
At a little after ten o’clock Craddock threw back the blanket and heaved himself reluctantly up from the warmth of his palliasse. The tiled floor was cool to his feet. The window was open and the room was pleasant with fresh air and sunlight. He drained the last drop of tea from his mug – Honeycombe had brought his breakfast to him in bed – and dressed. There was a bowl of water on a chair, and he washed and shaved, enjoying the touch of the cold water against his skin.
There were no voices of command to be heard from the courtyard; only the unhurried footsteps and the idle murmur of a day without a timetable. Men lounged on the landings, sat in the sun writing letters, or strolled into the latrines with newspapers under their arms. A party clattered away to church parade. A few civilians appeared in the street neatly dressed for church, but most of the doors were still shut. Even the children who played around the air-raid shelter were quieter than usual.
Craddock stretched his arms and wondered what to –
The explosion made him flinch. It was loud and sharp, not blurred by distance. The whiplashing echoes died away into a profound silence.
He was stunned. A woman uttered a fearful, penetrating scream. He went to the window. All along the street doors were crashing open. There was a stampeding convergence of bodies, and the white roadway disappeared as the mass of people heaved and spread like a dark flood in every direction. A deafening clamour ascended, agitated voices, the bestial screaming of women, the shouts and the clattering boots of soldiers who poured out of the billet. The crowd flowed and swirled, and broke up into mad patterns of light and dark as little groups formed, coalesced and dissolved in a bellowing, gesticulating frenzy.
Craddock was already on the landing when the mob of men in the courtyard parted and the guard commander came bounding up the staircase. In his arms, pressed tightly against his body, was a big bundle, shapeless and darkly sodden. He plunged past Craddock without a word and hurried to the medical room along the corridor. Craddock was still staring at the thick splashes of bright red that bespattered the staircase when another soldier came racing up towards him, with a screaming child flung over his shoulder; and then, with long, thundering strides, Captain Rumbold, his face dark with fury and his uniform soaked with blood, bearing a silent and stupefied Aldo. Aldo stared without recognition at Craddock as he was carried past, and looked helplessly at the horrible, bloodied masses of meat where his hands had been.
The captain shouted, as he went by, ‘Get the truck out!’ He vanished into the medical room and reappeared, without his burden but still dripping with blood, before Craddock had reached the foot of the stairs. ‘Sergeant!’ Craddock paused. ‘It was up by the shelter. Get along there and find out what happened.’
The brilliant light in the courtyard confused the sergeant and deepened the sense of nightmare that oppressed him. He was enraged by the gaping indecision of the men who pressed around him.
‘Corporal Honeycombe, stand by with six men and stretchers! Larkin, get that bloody truck started up! No, I don’t know what’s happened. Don’t stand there yawping. You, you and you, come with me!’
Civilians thronged into the porchway. ‘Corporal of the guard,’ the sergeant shouted, ‘clear this lot back!’ The crowd retreated. Rosario stood his ground, supporting a frantic, howling woman. ‘Chi è? La madre? Let this one in, corporal, it’s one of the mothers. Don’t let her in to the medical room till the captain tells you.’
Craddock pushed through the crowd, with his three men following him. The women were making hideous demonstrations of grief, puffing their hair down over their faces, beating their breasts, blubbering, shrieking themselves hoarse, or, with glazed eyes, bobbing and mumbling ave marias. Voices gabbled questions and explanations at the sergeant, and hands reached out to detain him. He found himself face to face with Graziella. Her cheeks were smudged with tears, puffed and ugly. She clutched at him, and cried, ‘Pippo, what is it? What has happened? He put her angrily aside, without answering, and went on his way. He reached the shelter, and his men began to press the crowd back. The clamour increased as the people were squeezed back towards the pavement. Craddock ignored the noise and turned to his task.
One of the rubbish heaps had been disrupted into an uneven litter of rags, waste paper, chickens’ guts, dirt and decaying fruit skins. Amid the scattered filth lay the body of Aldo’s dog, stretched in a hideous neatness, its entrails spilled in a fluid,
many-coloured heap between its crossed paws. He could not recognize in this limp heap of bedraggled fur, from which arose a hot, horrible smell, and upon whose wounds buzzed a black crust of flies, the strong and living creature whose muscular beauty he had admired.
He ignored the stench and went on with his search. The shelter above the rubbish heap was scarred by the explosion and splashed with blood. There was more blood among the refuse. He stooped over the nauseating heap, probing gently with his fingers. He searched patiently among the rubbish until, close to the wall, he came on a blackened end of wire. He groped along the wire to a staple in the wall. The crowd was subdued now; the hysteria had petered out and there was a low chatter of comment, broken by sudden shrillnesses, as the people watched Craddock at work. He called two more soldiers out of the crowd and told them to search the pavement for metal fragments. He went on working through the rubbish heap.
A low, human moan attracted his attention. He looked up. The dog’s flank was rising and falling feebly, and its eyes were moving above the shattered muzzle. He called to one of the soldiers, ‘Go and get a rifle.’
‘It’s all right, sergeant.’ Captain Rumbold appeared. He took his pistol from his holster. ‘Poor old feller,’ he said gently, and pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed deafeningly between the shelter and the houses. There was a fresh swirl of movement from the people, as if the shot had been fired among them. Craddock felt that he was losing his grip on reality. He became aware of the smell. The sunlight bewildered him, increasing his nausea and unsteadying his vision. His head was still ringing with the reverberations of the shot, and the voices around him only came to him faintly. Into what dream world had he descended, with the trail of blood along the white pavement, the captain standing tall and terrible in a blood-soaked uniform at his side? He heard the captain saying, ‘What was it?’
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