by Robert Lowry
She cut left around the Red Cross and down the tree-lined street, past bench after bench filled with soldiers. She walked slowly and evenly now, yet without looking around—wanting to be approached but almost afraid that someone would dare. And though dozens of hungry pairs of eyes examined her, still no one followed her or even spoke. She felt that she was offering herself and being rejected; an ugly word thrown at her could not have hurt her more. Turning left, she abandoned the main promenade and started up a street where most of the benches were empty and where one solitary couple walked with their arms around each other. She went more slowly than ever now, liking the absence of people, suddenly not caring if she ate or not tonight, not caring if no one wanted her. Her legs ached, her stomach knotted inside her, feeding on itself. Her head felt light and there was a terrible moment of dizziness: she made two hard fists of her hands and kept on walking.
Arriving at a corner, she stopped, undecided about going deeper into the park. She’d been standing there for what seemed a long time, staring into the trees, when she noticed that on a bench in the shadows only fifteen feet away two American soldiers were sitting, watching her. One of them was a short dark fellow, the other was tall and blond. She felt suddenly ashamed of herself. I hope they don’t think I’ve been waiting here for them to notice me, she thought, and hurried on. But out of the corner of her eye she saw that one had gotten up. “Wait a minute, signorina..” She kept on walking, forgetting even to smile.
When his hand touched hers, she looked up into the dark one’s broad face.
“Hello,” he said.
She smiled, shy under his curious eyes.
“May I walk with you, signorina?” He spoke a little Italian.
“If you wish.”
They walked along for a while before he took her arm and asked, “What’s your name? Maria?”
She shook her head, smiling. All Americans seemed to think your name was Maria. “Gianna,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Giuseppe.”
He took her hand and his fingers were cold—she felt that he was much shyer than he’d seemed at first. They were silent for a long time.
“Where are you going, Gianna?” he asked finally.
She stopped. “This way.” She turned him around, led him toward the park entrance. The blond fellow was still sitting on the bench as they passed. “Your friend?” Gianna asked.
“Si.”
“He’ll find a girl too?”
“Maybe.”
Now they had turned the corner and were going back along the promenade, past the same soldiers who before hadn’t spoken to Gianna. Giuseppi’s cold hand had grown warm in hers; she returned his pressure. How different it was to walk past men when you were with a man.
“You haven’t eaten this evening, have you?” he asked.
“No.”
“We’ll eat.”
“It’s late,” she said. “I don’t think we’ll find a place.”
“We’ll try.”
In the open carriage going down the hill it began to rain and Giuseppe put the top up. She was grateful for that; she was so much better hidden. What if Signora Aldini should see her like this? Or Signor? Or their son? They had no idea of what she was doing—she’d been careful to come home every evening by ten o’clock and go to her room. A smothering shame enveloped her for being here with a soldier she didn’t even know, for going with him to do what everyone who saw them knew she would do. She felt like jumping out of the carriage and running away from him—away from her life. Just to be back in her room, nobody again. Better for her to die there, to starve to death, rather than to go on like this. . . . She bent over as if she were going to be sick and covered her face with her hands.
Giuseppe put his arm across her shoulders; he tried to look into her face. “What’s wrong, Gianna? Are you ill?”
“Nothing,” she whispered through her fingers.
“Are you sad?”
“This is my neighborhood,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to see me.”
When they reached the Tiber bridge she raised her head again. She saw then how concerned he was, his big face serious, his deep eyes examining her. He looked away and took her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Soldiers are no good, are they? Excuse me for being a soldier, Gianna.”
They got out of the carriage in front of a restaurant, but though there were people eating in there, the door had already been locked.
“There’s another nearby,” Giuseppe said.
They found it finally, but it too was closed. The rain had stopped and it was growing cool. They stood close together in the purple evening; when she shivered he put his arm around her.
“Do you know a restaurant?” he asked.
“They’ll all be closed,” she said. “They all close at seven-thirty.”
“But you have to eat.”
Not knowing what else to do they began to walk. Her hunger made her faint but strangely lightfooted, and the melancholy that this time of evening always made her feel swam in on her.
They came on a sidewalk café beside the river, but all the tables were taken. They went inside—dark there, not even candles burning. Wearily they sank down side by side on a lounge against the wall.
“We don’t serve food,” the waiter answered Giuseppe. However, there were little cakes for them to nibble and tart berry juice to drink. The other patrons here seemed all to be elderly Italian couples talking in low voices—no other soldiers. She felt depressed with guilt, certain that they were all looking at her, judging her.
He clasped her hand where it lay on the couch near him. “I’m sorry we couldn’t find a place to eat,” he said.
She didn’t answer. Truly she was dead—so what difference did food or anything else in the world make? She glanced at him once, but he was busy studying the men at the bar.
“I’m sorry about everything,” he said finally in a voice so low she could hardly hear. His eyes burned, there was no smile on his face now. “It’s all rotten, all terrible, isn’t it?”
“What?” she asked.
“The city. The city and the war and what is happening to people everywhere.”
She didn’t answer but she looked into his face.
“Who are you, Gianna?” he asked.
She didn’t understand.
“A Rome girl? Nobody?”
“I’m from Livorno,” Gianna said defensively. “I’ve been in Rome for nearly a year.” But his interested face made her want to talk more. She leaned toward him. “I hate this city,” she blurted out. “When will the war be over?”
“Are you going back to Livorno then?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m going back.” She stared past him. “I have a fidanzato there.” She didn’t think for the moment how foolish it was to call Leo her fidanzato—instead she pictured him now as he’d stood, cap in hand, in her mother’s kitchen four years ago, looking embarrassed and awkward and young. That memory was the sweetest and most precious thing in her whole life.
“I hope you get there,” Giuseppe said. “I hope you escape from here. I hope you are as beautiful then as you are now.”
“No,” she murmured, “I’m not beautiful. I’m ugly.”
“You are beautiful.” He said it with finality, as if it were something she could have no opinion on.
They listened to the clop-clop of a carriage going by outside; to a girl laughing somewhere on the street.
“Excuse me for being a soldier,” Giuseppe said. “Excuse me for being someone to make you ashamed. . . . I wish I could tell you my feelings about you and this city. When I arrived five days ago I was happy, mad, in love with the city; I ran up one street and down another. It’s been a whole year since I’ve seen a great city—where people seemed alive, where girls were beautiful and where you could speak to them.” He surprised her by a sudden short laugh. “But tonight I know the city,” he said. “I know how rotten it is. The saddest city in the world. At first it seem
ed a paradise—all of Rome’s beautiful women walking the streets, giving themselves for the price of a meal. It was good to be a soldier hungry for women and for love and to come to Rome on furlough. That goodness would continue if you didn’t begin to know and understand each girl—each girl herself, what she is. A person, lost in the war. Do you understand?”
He spoke brokenly, hesitantly, pronouncing many of the words wrong, but she understood. Yet she neither nodded nor answered; she only stared at him.
“The rotten things it’s necessary to see,” he said. “Today in the park I saw a woman with a small baby. Three soldiers came along and she went with them.”
“With a small baby?”
“Si. . . . Maybe she went because of the baby. For food.”
They were staring into each other’s eyes, and all the melancholy of Rome seemed to rush in on them. A great lump had grown in Gianna’s throat.
He leaned closer to her, his face enormous now. “This is a mad thing to say,” he said, “and you won’t believe me.”
“What?”
“I think you are very beautiful, Gianna. I love you very much tonight.”
Two hot tears crept down her cheeks and she tried to look away, to hide them from him. But finally she had to fumble in her purse for her handkerchief.
They sat without speaking, their hands clutched together. The café had emptied out, and somehow the terrible mood that had possessed her was disappearing. A sweet, listless sadness pervaded her body. Now she didn’t resent anything that had ever happened to her. Sitting here with him she didn’t mind being a girl in Rome who walked the streets for her meals—somehow she’d been dignified by his words, made part of a tragedy greater than herself. He’d given her a picture of Gianna Aragno that didn’t damn her as she’d always damned that person, but that involved her intimately, almost heroically, in the whole drama of the city tonight. She felt grateful, yet could not speak. Could only sit here, gazing into his eyes.
He turned a spoon over and over between his fingers. At last he released her eyes and looked down at the table.
“Giuseppe,” she said, “it’s getting late. I can only stay with you till nine-thirty.”
Without looking up he answered, “If you don’t want to come to my room it isn’t necessary.”
The waiter brought his change—three hundred-lira notes and some smaller ones. He didn’t count it, he folded it into a little package and holding it under the table, slipped it into her hand.
“Eat tomorrow,” he said without looking at her, as if he were ashamed to give it to her.
She held it a moment, confused at all he said and did, before she put it in her bag.
“We’ll sit here and talk,” he said, “and then I’ll take you to your house.”
“But I want to go with you,” she said.
He seemed not to have heard; he went on looking at the tablecloth.
“I want to go to your room with you,” she repeated.
He looked up now and he was smiling, as if her words had made all his melancholy evaporate. Kissing her lightly on the mouth he stood up, drawing her up with him. “Then let’s go quickly, Gianna.”
It was dark in the street; they hurried. Walking, Gianna felt that something miraculous had happened since night had fallen. The city out there beyond the river had grown huge in the night, a self-willed monster, brutal and powerful, ready to swallow her up if she let go his hand. She walked closer to him and he looked at her, smiling, and kissed her cheek, leaving the cool shape of his lips there.
“Look at the moon,” she said suddenly, pointing. They both laughed at the moon—it was almost as if it belonged to them, a personal moon. Her own laugh sounded strange to her. How long had it been since she’d laughed? The earth had become intimate, as in her childhood. Now everything seemed meaningful; her life was really involved with the world. Were some people always as happy as this?
They went through the entrance of an apartment house, across a courtyard and up dark steps, feeling their way. He stopped to strike a match. GIORGIO VALSETTI, the nameplate said. The match went out and he knocked. No sound. He knocked again. He tried the door.
“They’ve never been out before,” he said. “Maybe they’re sleeping.”
He knocked louder.
“Wait here, I’m going down to see the janitor. Maybe he has a key.”
But the moment he’d gone she began to feel the evil emptiness of herself reclaiming her; her old guilt for the life she led reappeared. Prostituta! she thought. Filthy one! . . . But he was coming back up the stairs—what if he hadn’t gotten the key? He had to have the key, she wanted to go with him.
“The janitor has no key. He says the Valsettis ought to return soon.”
With locked hands they waited in a timeless world of darkness. After a while she couldn’t tell whether they’d been standing there for half an hour or only ten minutes, but the hunger she’d known in the park came back more acute than ever. If she didn’t eat immediately she thought she’d die—just a sausage to devour, one of those hated American sausages back in her room!
“Giuseppe.”
He tightened his arm about her.
“Giuseppe, I’m very hungry.”
“I have something inside,” he said. “Not much, but something. And maybe Signora Valsetti will sell me some food.”
“I must eat now, Giuseppe. Right away. I could be back in forty-live minutes. I could go home and eat and come back to you.”
He was silent for a moment. “Will you come back?”
“I’ll come back. I swear I will.”
She kissed him very hard. She listened while he whispered the house-number in her ear, and then repeated it, telling him she wouldn’t forget. Kissing him for the last time, she started down the stairs, but at the bottom turned and looked back up into the darkness.
“I’ll come back.”
Rain splashed on her face as she went across the courtyard and out into the street. She began to walk faster, yet the faster she walked the harder the rain seemed to come. Her dress clung to her body and her feet in the soaked sandals made a queer squashing sound.
She ran across the Tiber bridge, paused for a moment under a fruitseller’s umbrella on the other side, then dashed into the rain again. Signora Aldini cried out when she opened the door.
“But you’ve got to change your clothes right away, Gianna!” Signora Aldini clasped her hands before her, her two round eyes stared out of her head. “This is weather to catch a terrible cold in.”
“Yes, I’ll change them right away,” Gianna said, and hurried into her room—stripped quickly and wiped her body with a towel. Her teeth chattered and her hands were blue with cold. She sneezed; a great pulse beat in her head and she saw that goose-pimples covered her legs.
Yet she wasn’t hungry now. She felt that the sight of the sausages would make her vomit. Blowing out the candle, she climbed into bed—and lay there shivering, her bones aching. Bright reds and yellows flared before her eyes. The chill changed into a scalding fire that swept through her body, making her throw all the covers on the floor. But after she’d lain in nakedness for an eternity, her coughing finally forced her to get up and drink some water. She tried to cool herself by washing her face, then climbed back into bed and spread the washrag on her forehead.
This room had become detached from the house; it was rocking and bouncing as it floated out over the great evil city of Rome. Now she saw what that city really was: an oozing swamp of filth and decay, crocodile snouts poking out everywhere. “Help me!” Soldiers were around her bed, they were pulling at her limbs, snorting and panting, scorching her face with their stinking breath. Despoiled, choked, torn apart—she flung out her arms and legs and screamed: “Go away! Go away!”
The door opened and a candle came into the room. “Is anything the matter, Gianna?” With all her will she held herself quiet as Signora Aldini’s kind hands tucked the blankets under her chin. There was a moment of relief after the door had close
d and she was alone again.
Then her stomach wrenched up out of her and flung her to the side of the bed. She felt that blood, not perspiration, bathed her face. Blood! Her ears banged with blood, her throat choked. “Leo!” she said. He held his cap in his hand, looking down—but no, it was an American soldier’s cap. Giuseppe’s face looked up at her. “Then it was you all the time . . . and to think I didn’t know!”
VII. PFC JOE HAMMOND
Piazza Cavour was blacked out, but standing by their apartment-house entrance they could vaguely make out people going by, hurrying before the rain started again. They couldn’t distinguish features, they could only hear the low voices and smell the perfume women left in their wake.
“It was locked when you got here with the girl?” Burt asked.
“Yeah.”
“And you been waiting all this time—two hours?”
“I don’t want to talk about it Let’s walk.”
They passed through the little park, where everything was fresh from the rain. They took the street alongside the Palace of Justice, then crossed the Tiber bridge to buy a white flower apiece from a man with a cartful.
“Flowers are all I want to remember about Rome,” Joe said, sticking his in his pocket buttonhole.
Burt looked at him, curious. “Fed up with it, eh? I’m beginning to think you and that signorina didn’t get along so well.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. What did you do?”
“I walked down to Via Tritone. Damn near got crushed by all the GIs doing everything but screwing the girls on the street. Went into a bar and had an anisetta.” He thought a minute. “Say, I did see something interesting. There was a blonde in this bar—very neat number, well-dressed. She was drinking alone, obviously out to pick something up. Even looked a little amused at what she was doing—you got the feeling that she was a pretty good kid, you know? Too bad you weren’t there: you seem to get along so well with that type. Anyhow, right out of the blue some drunken infantryman came in and marched over to her table with the well-chosen words: ‘Hello, blondie, you wanta figgy-fig?’ ”