She sat up, wild and trembling. ‘Then stay with me!’
He shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. ‘What use is it for me to talk? Again and again you say the same thing. You tell me that you are not a child, but you refuse to think, you say the same thing, again and again, like a child.’
‘Why like a child? Other men have done it.’
‘Deserters!’ he said with loathing.
‘Deserters, yes! Whom are you going to desert, your comrades or me? If you knew what love meant, there would not be any doubt!’
Craddock could bear no longer to be hounded both by her and by his own unhappiness. ‘For the love of God!’ he said violently. ‘You talk like a crazy woman! Doubt? There is no doubt! I am a soldier. You have known that all the time.’
‘I know one thing now,’ she jeered, ‘that I did not know before. You are afraid! You are afraid to be hunted! You are afraid to be shot! You are afraid of your comrades! You are afraid of love! You are a coward!’
He strode across to the bed and seized her roughly by the shoulders. She threw her head back and glared up at him in defiance. He shouted, ‘Mad one! Listen! I am not afraid. It is not out of fear that I fight. You! – You pretend to understand! You do not even begin to understand a man!’ He threw her back on the bed. ‘I am a man. You cannot expect me to be otherwise.’
‘Rosario is a man. He did it!’
‘Rosario! That – thing – a man!’
‘And the German?’ she shrilled, utterly beside herself now. ‘He is not a man? He is not a soldier? They are soldiers, they are better soldiers than all the others, they are better soldiers than the English!’
‘What German?’
‘Francesca’s German!’ She was showing her teeth like a cat, crouching on the bed, spitting the words up at him. ‘Ha! The big man knows everything! The woman knows nothing! Well, there is something you did not know. Even a German soldier will desert for the woman he loves, he deserts because he is a man, a real man!’
‘Francesca’s German,’ echoed Craddock, hesitating, remembering. He turned on her again, ‘You fool! He is no deserter! There are hundreds of Germans on this island, who were left behind in the retreat. They wait, in civilian clothes, for the chance to escape. Every day, in our battalion, we are warned about them, told to watch for them. Deserter! Even now he is preparing to leave his darling Francesca and to escape to the mainland. You see,’ he said, leaning over her and speaking with great bitterness, ‘they are soldiers, too. They fight to the end. They are men.’
She was coiled on the bed, not moving, but panting quickly and following him with her eyes like a trapped animal. ‘By God,’ he thought, in the midst of his anger. ‘she’s lovely!’ He said, ‘But he will not escape. In five minutes he will be behind bars.’ He turned towards the door. ‘Graziella, I shall come back soon. Try, for the two of us, to calm yourself. Force yourself to think, and you will see reason.’
She let him take a couple of paces, watching him in disbelief; then, with a hoarse cry of protest, she flew after him and flung herself upon him. ‘No!’ she cried, ‘You must not betray him. You will break Francesca’s heart. Leave them in peace.’
He tried to pull her arms from about his neck, but her fingers were locked behind his head and the whole weight of her body lay upon him. If he had broken free she would have crashed in a heap at his feet. He said, ‘Let me go!’
She moaned, ‘I will kill myself if I have betrayed her!’ She thrust her body up against his and tightened her arms about him in a feverish embrace. ‘Afterwards, do what you like afterwards, but stay with me now.’ She was crying again. Big tears fell quickly and silently and splashed, scalding, on the backs of his hands. Her face was close to his, imploring, and she smothered him with kisses. He muttered, ‘Let me go!’ – his voice scarcely audible. His legs were weak as if the bones were going soft, and the blood raced through his veins like molten metal. ‘Afterwards, afterwards!’ she panted. She was fastened upon him like a beast upon its prey. He was overwhelmed by the yielding pressure of her body. He could see nothing but her great eyes close against him. He could hear nothing but her heartbeats and his own. Resolution, anger, all thought, melted away in the blaze that enveloped him. She bore him backwards, her will irresistible. She wept and babbled over him as they sank upon the bed, and in the gasping laughter that came from her throat, there was compassion and triumph.
§§§§
Rosario heard it all.
He moved away from the wall, trembling. He felt sick and soiled.
He waited for a moment, irresolute, and in that moment he felt that his opportunity had passed. How could he break in on them now? Even if he killed the Englishman; even if he killed them both, thrusting his knife down and down and down again into his own defeat, into his own shame, into his own uselessness, he would not look less the fool; the cuckold who had never even been a husband!
There were still sounds coming through the thin wall; the creak of the bed and – for Rosario it was the breaking-point – a low, throaty laugh from Graziella. His legs nearly buckled under him, and the pain leaped and bit inside him like a fox sewn up in his vitals. He strode out into the street, stood for a moment blinking in the sunlight and swaying in front of her door like a drunkard. The hilt of the knife burned in his hand. His mind became clear; a great, obsessed emptiness. He turned away from her door and went lurching across the street.
He was half-blind with the sweat in his eyes when he halted outside the door of Francesca’s house. He kicked the door open. Francesca and her man were sitting at the table, eating. Francesca looked up, her face blank with surprise. The man looked at Rosario, saw his swaying stance, his lowered face. Without panic the German reached for the short, black-handled knife which was plunged into a loaf on the table. He did not take his eyes from Rosario’s face as he rose, and, with a shove of his foot, sent the chair scraping back from beneath him.
Francesca screamed.
With the back of his free hand Rosario wiped the sweat and the shame out of his eyes. He jeered, ‘Ciao, tedesco!’ and advanced into the room.
§§§§
Across the road, Craddock heard Francesca’s scream. A few moments later there was another scream, even more high-pitched. It echoed somewhere in the back of his consciousness, and he recognized it, as apathetically as if it were a note of music, as a man’s death-scream. But Graziella was holding him, and he was lost in a fiery haze.
Graziella lay beside him, supine and slack like a gorged animal, staring up at the ceiling with unseeing, triumphant eyes. Her hand was moist and soft in his. Her breast rose and fell, slow and powerful as the sea. A distant clamour came to him from the street, shouts, screams, running footsteps, sounds without meaning that were lost in the shadowed room. He felt drugged.
He rose. His legs were unsteady for a moment; then the strength returned to them. He wandered aimlessly up and down as he tidied his clothes, frowning and silent.
Graziella did not move; the heaving of her breast quickened and her eyes followed him as he walked to and fro. He went slowly to the door. The set of her face did not change, but the points of light shifted and flickered in her eyes, and a dozen different women looked out in succession from their depths.
He said, ‘Goodbye, Graziella.’
She turned her head slightly. Her dark eyes were flecked with a yellow fire of contempt. She stared at him as if she were pronouncing a silent curse upon all men. He went out.
In the street, he felt stunned. He was not aware of the pavement beneath his feet. The clamour around him still did not reach him, and the growing crowd on the opposite pavement had no significance. Only dimly aware of his mission he walked across the road. He pushed through the crowd, reached the two soldiers who barred Francesca’s doorway with their rifles, looked over their shoulders, and discovered that he was too late.
Chapter Twenty-One
WHEN the soldiers awoke the next morning and opened the outward windows of their billet to enjoy the co
ol, fresh air, there was something about the view across the sea that mystified them. More men came to the windows; then they realized; the harbour was empty of landing-craft.
They went downstairs for breakfast, where two pieces of news awaited them; the first, that at four-thirty a.m. British troops had landed on the coast of Southern Italy; the second, that their own battalion was under twenty-four hours’ notice to move and was confined to billets.
The great machine was rolling again. Aircraft roared overhead, ships crawled northward against the skyline, columns of lorries rumbled through the town. The machine was rolling. When would they be fed into it?
Nobody knew where they were going. Even Captain Rumbold was puzzled, for they were not travelling northward, in the stream of the invasion, but south, by rail, to Syracuse, where they were to go aboard ship. Where to? He shrugged his shoulders and told his questioners to get on with their duties. Some said that they would go to Italy, to reinforce the invasion. Some pointed out that they had been practising beach landings for weeks, and that they might very well be headed for some fresh assault at a new point on the Italian coast. Some spoke, with dread, of the possibility that they might be bound for the jungles of the Far East, and recalled recent rumours of mysterious bales of equipment locked up at battalion headquarters. Some optimists ventured the old, evergreen guess – they were going home. Men can cope mentally with the grimmest of prospects if they know, at least, what awaits them. Soldiers, in their journeyings, are denied this consolation. To the men in the billet that day, all ahead was dark. They busied themselves with their preparations and the building echoed with their merriment.
§§§§
Craddock received permission from the captain to visit Rosario, who was in hospital with a shallow knife wound across the stomach.
He walked past the closed door of Graziella’s house, feeling numbed and indifferent. He did not want to see her. He would have been embarrassed if she had appeared suddenly to confront him. They had nothing more to say to each other.
He reached the hospital and found Rosario. After they had exchanged greetings, Rosario said, ‘Have you come to have a look at the fool?’
‘Are you not glad that you killed him?’
‘Yes, I am pleased. It is a paradox. I am pleased because I showed myself a man. But it is the thought of a child, to content oneself thus. When we do the greatest and the most terrible things in life, we are children.’
‘But it was a good thing to do. He was a German.’
‘German, Italian, Englishman, what is the difference? If you seize a man by the shoulder and say, “Look, there is the enemy,” he will go, no matter at whom you point. “The enemy”, that is what he always needs. Perhaps he is seeking someone on whom to inflict his own misery.’
‘That does not make sense to me.’
‘It does not make sense when a drum beats. But what do you feel inside when you hear it?’
‘That is not why we hate the Germans. We know why we fight them. Do you not feel angry when you think of what they did to poor little Aldo?’
‘They alone did not do it!’
‘It was their bomb. It was their minds that planned it, and we do not want such minds to rule the world. What they did to Aldo they would do to the world. What future has the child, without hands, because of them?
‘As good a future as any of his countrymen. He will make a good beggar.’
‘Many of your countrymen do not think like you. In the North, there are already Italians fighting the Germans. I have heard it on the radio. There are entire brigades of Italian partisans, and heavy battles are being fought between them and the Germans. Are they not right to fight?’
‘Ask them. They know. I do not know.’
Craddock insisted, ‘Will you not fight again?’
Rosario opened his mouth to answer, pondered, and grinned a little. ‘I do not know… Perhaps… It was futile for me to run away from the war. Each of us is at war all the time. In the big war, all the little wars are fought. Is that why you came to see me, to ask me all this?’
‘No, idiot. I came with these things.’ Craddock gave him cigarettes and chocolates. ‘Is there anything else you want?’
‘Yes.’ Rosario turned his face away. ‘Graziella.’
Craddock rose to his feet.
‘You see,’ said Rosario hoarsely, ‘I am not proud, eh?’
‘I’m going now. Get better quickly.’
‘Why?’
Craddock said, ‘You ask too many questions. And because you cannot find the answers, you decide that nothing is of any use. I know a lot of people like you. They hide from life behind words. It will do you good to fight.’ He held out his hand. ‘Well, so long!’
Rosario took his hand and said, ‘Goodbye!’
§§§§
Harry Jobling rose to his feet and stood respectfully to attention when Captain Rumbold entered his cell.
‘All right,’ said the captain, ‘sit down. How’s your head?’
‘It doesn’t bother me, sir. They took the stitches out yesterday.’
The captain passed him a cigarette. ‘It’s all right, you can smoke while I’m here. They treating you all right here?’
Jobling grinned ruefully. ‘I’m not grumbling.’
The captain lit his own cigarette. ‘Well, you did a silly thing there, lad.’
‘I know.’
‘Feeling better?’
Jobling grimaced. ‘No use cryin’ over spilt milk.’ He reflected. ‘I don’t know what come over me.’
The captain said, ‘Well, it’s over and done with. Did you know the battalion was shoving off?’
‘Yes, the sentry told me.’ He said, timidly, ‘I suppose there’s no chance of my coming with, I mean, under escort or something?’
‘Not a chance. You’re booked for a court-martial.’
‘I mean, couldn’t the colonel fix it up? You know.’
The captain shook his head.
‘I’m not whinin’,’ Jobling said. ‘I’m not worried about what’s coming to me. It’s the thought of staying here when the battalion’s moving. The battalion, well, I mean, it’s like your home, isn’t it?’
‘We’ve been doing what we can,’ said the captain, ‘that’s what I came to tell you. I thought you’d like to know. I’ve left behind a long statement of evidence that I collected from the chaps at the billet. Between you and me and the old doorknob, it’s quite a work of art. Anyway, it ought to do you a bit of good. And the colonel’s put in a deposition about your character that makes you sound like Saint John the Baptist. You won’t recognize yourself when you hear it.’
Jobling said, ‘Thanks. What d’you reckon I’ll get?’
‘No idea,’ said the captain. ‘It depends on who they appoint to conduct the court-martial. That’s something no one’ll know till after we’re gone. Anyway, we’ve asked for you to get a quick trial. If you box clever and keep your mouth shut, and put yourself across as a good boy, you ought to be able to count on a suspended sentence.’
‘That means I’ll come back to the battalion.’
‘Yes, straight from the courtroom. Then, as long as you kept your nose clean, you wouldn’t hear any more about it. But the moment you stepped out of line, even for the most trivial offence, back you’d go to clink, to serve out your term.’
‘You wouldn’t have to worry about that, sir.’
‘Well,’ said the captain, ‘that’s the way it is. Don’t count your chickens. You never know what might happen. But with a bit of luck, that’s how it’ll work out.’ He grinned. ‘So I hope to be seeing you soon. In the meantime, keep your chin up.’
‘Thank you, sir. And…’
‘Well?’
‘Good luck to you and the lads, sir.’
‘Uh! Uh!’ said the captain. ‘Don’t you know it’s bad luck to say that? Cheerio!’
§§§§
Nella had spent her two thousand lire. For a week she had carried the money about with her, until
the notes were soggy and crushed. Whenever she saw her mother, haggard and bent, creeping about in rags in the dirt and gloom of their home, she wanted to give it to her, but she was afraid. For days she gazed into shop windows, where already the profiteers were displaying handbags, dresses, shoes and underclothes for sale at inflated prices. She was tantalized but scared. At last she plucked up the courage to spend all her money on something of which she had dreamed for years – a pair of high-heeled shoes. She came wobbling out of the shop tremulous with joy and fear; joy because she would share with Paloma the admiration and envy of all the other women; fear because she still had to face her mother. However, she consoled herself, her mother, who never ventured more than a few hundred yards from their own street door, would never know how much the shoes had cost, and any silly story would satisfy her.
It gave Nella an unsteady, exalted feeling to walk in these shoes. She had to be careful of her balance, and the backs of her calves were strained. It seemed to her that the shoes had made her twice as tall. She was filled with an unreal, up-in-the-air sensation. She was still lonely, but after a week the dumb shock had worn off. No deadlier, comprehending grief had taken its place, but a perverse pride in her adventure. Imagination had falsified her memory, suppressing the things that she did not want to recall and weaving over them a concealing garment of fantasy. She walked in pride at the secret knowledge of her womanhood, looking down at the swarming children who seemed as remote from her as her own childhood, and dreaming in the sunshine.
A little fearful because she would have to account for the shoes, but bursting with gossip and self-importance, she called on her cousin. Graziella lay like a dead woman on her bed; Nella tried to arouse her, at first with chatter, then with apprehensive questioning, but Graziella, her face as still as a mask, only looked at her indifferently. Nella came away, frightened.
Wandering disconsolately on the waterfront, she met Ciccio. She tried to assume a scornful, grown-up air, but he looked at her like a knowing old man and said, ‘Where did you get those shoes?’
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