A Bell for Adano (13 page)

“Where is Florida?”

“It’s in the south, I wasn’t there at all. That was the second time I lied to get a job. Since then I’ve tried never to lie, the truth is much better and much safer. So they gave me a job in the Sanitation Department. Later I took my examinations for advancement to Third Class Clerk, and afterwards I got to be a Second Class Clerk. I was earning forty-two dollars a week when I went into the Army.” Major Joppolo was getting a little boastful about his non-existent riches. “That was four thousand two hundred lira a week.”

Tina said: “The wife, is she pretty?”

Major Joppolo said: “Yes, she is very pretty, at least she seems so to me. I miss her very much. She has a mole on the left side of her chin, but otherwise she is very pretty. She is of Italian parentage, so she has dark skin like yours. In some ways you remind me of her.”

Tina had been looking up at the stars. But now she suddenly looked down into the dark valley of the street and said: “Let’s go in and dance.” And she opened up the shutter doors and went inside. Major Joppolo went in after her.

Captain Purvis had gone to work on Tomasino’s wine, and he was making a decided nuisance of himself, so Major Joppolo persuaded him to go home. He and Giuseppe led the Captain home.

When he got back to his own villa, and was undressed and in bed, Major Joppolo felt miserable. It wasn’t until nearly three o’clock that he realized why. Giuseppe was right. It made a man feel very unhappy to be as far from home as the Bronx, New York, is from Adano, Italy.

Chapter
12

THE NEXT morning Captain Purvis sat with his feet up on his desk. He was in a bad humor.

Sergeant Trapani was out of the office. The Captain spoke to Corporal Chuck Schultz, who was on guard. “That Major Joppolo,” he said. “I was beginning to like him, but he’s a wet blanket. God, I was just getting a wonderful buzz on last night, and he descended on me, sober as a whitefish, and he made me go home.”

Corporal Schultz said: “Was you getting buzzed on that Dago red?”

The Captain said: “Yeah, there’s an old fish-hound down here. Giuseppe took me to his house because, he’s got a couple of nice quail, he gave me some red stuff.”

The Corporal said: “That vino’s murder, Captain, it’ll give you the G.I. trots every time. “

Captain Purvis said: “Yeah, I got ‘em this morning. I feel terrible. But there’s no excuse for that Major doing me the way he did.”

Corporal Schultz said: “That vino’s bad stuff, sir, you don’t want to get mixed up with that vino no more ‘n you can help. Had some myself last night, and I been having to go every ten minutes this morning.”

Captain Purvis said: “Yeah, I’ve made about six trips myself. I’m still sore at that Major.”

Corporal Schultz was not a gold mine of conversation, and pretty soon the two fell silent. Captain Purvis yawned, stretched, stared out of the door into the bright street for a few minutes, yawned again, got up, walked around the room, sat down, yawned and said: “Christ, I’m bored. Wish I had something to do.”

He leaned back in his chair, and put his feet up on his desk again. As he did so, he knocked some papers on the floor.

“Oh, hell,” he said, “I suppose I might as well clean up my goddam desk. Got to do it sooner or later.”

He reached down on the floor and picked up the stray papers. He began to sort and arrange papers in piles, and he threw some away, and he got up and put some away in his files. He read some of them aloud to Corporal Schultz, who was not in the least interested.

In due course he picked up a purple slip, and he said: “Hell’s bells, what’s this?” And he read: “On July 19, orders were received from General Marvin, Forty-Ninth Division, to keep all mule carts out of the town of Adano. Guards were posted at bridge over Rosso River and at Cacopardo Sulphur Refinery. Order carried out. On July 20, guards were removed on order of Major Victor Joppolo...”

Captain Purvis banged the flat of a hand down on the table. “Goddamit!” he shouted.

“Hey, Schultz,” he said. “Where’s Trapani?”

“Said he was just stepping out for a couple of minutes, sir, said he’d be right back. Anything I can do, sir?” “No, goddamit. Wait till I get that Trapani “ Trapani came in in a few minutes.

“Hey, you, come over here,” Captain Purvis said as soon as he arrived.

“Yes, sir,” Trapani said.

“What’s this?” the Captain said, and he held out the purple slip.

Trapani took it and looked at it. “That’s the report on the mule cart situation, sir,” Trapani said coolly. “You told me to make out a report, remember?”

“You’re damn right I remember, and where did I tell you to send it?”

“It was to go to G-one of the Division, sir.”

“Well goddamit, why didn’t you send it?”

“I put it on your desk for approval, sir.”

Captain Purvis huffed and puffed. He knew very well he didn’t pay as much attention to his desk as he ought to. “Well, damn it to hell, let’s send it out of here. I want to personally see you put that thing in the pouch for Division.”

Sergeant Trapani sat right down and addressed an envelope, and put the slip in it, and put the envelope in the pouch which was to leave the next afternoon by courier for Division headquarters. He addressed the envelope to the wrong person at Division, but then, Captain Purvis didn’t notice that.

Chapter
13

A PERSPIRING courier brought a note to Major Joppolo’s office.

It said in English: “I got to seen you in the immediate.” And it was signed M. Cacopardo.

Not five minutes behind the courier, Cacopardo himself showed up, all dressed for traveling. He had leather gauntlets on, and goggles up on his forehead, and he carried a green parasol in his right hand.

The eighty-two-year-old man trotted the length of Major Joppolo’s office, leaned forward over his desk, looked over his shoulder at Giuseppe and Zito, then looked at the Major and said in a loud whisper: “I got to talk alone.”

Major Joppolo asked his interpreter and usher to step outside.

“I have received a secret messages from the Mafia,” the old man said, still whispering loudly. “I have the military secrets of where are the German troops. You must send your soldiers, Mister Major.”

Major Joppolo said: “I have no soldiers, I’m just the administrator of Adano.”

Cacopardo said: “I got to go to the General. I am ready. “

Major Joppolo said: “Just a minute, Mister Cacopardo, I can’t send every Tom, Dick and Harry to see General Marvin. You’ll have to give me some evidence that your information is good.”

Old Cacopardo reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of tissue paper. He unfolded it on Major Joppolo’s desk. “See,” he said, “here is Pinnaro, here is the hills before Pinnaro, here is the Germans. Element here of Forty-Third Panzers, something here out of Hermann Goring. I have all the details.”

Major Jop olo decided at once that the chances of the old man’s information being right were good enough so that he ought to send him forward to the Division.

“I will send you to the General, Mister Cacopardo,” he said, “but I want to warn you. The General is a very impatient man. If your dope isn’t straight, he’ll be very angry. I don’t know what he’ll do to you, but it won’t be nice. Also, old man, I’ve got to ask you not to get me in trouble with him. I’m already in Dutch with General Marvin. Promise me that you will be careful, will you?”

“I will be careful,” Cacopardo said, “but the informations is important.”

Major Joppolo made out a pass for Cacopardo and sent for a jeep from the motor pool.

Cacopardo stepped back, and raised his hand in a Fascist salute. Then, as his aged memory functioned, the hand wavered over to his forehead, and the salute became military. And he said: “Cacopardo is sulphur and sulphur is Cacopardo.” He turned on his heel, as militarily as he could, and marched out.

Between the Palazzo in Adano and the headquarters of the Forty-Ninth Division, in a villa beyond Vicinamare, old Cacopardo did not say a word to the jeep driver. He sat leaning forward against the wind, his goggles down over his eyes and his parasol straining over his head. The jeep’s windshield was down on the hood, with the canvas cover over it, as all jeep windshields should be where there is possibility of enemy strafing attacks, and so the wind was very strong. After a while old Cacopardo decided that sun was preferable to wind, and he moved the parasol down and held it in front of him, to fend off the wind.

The villa in which the Forty-Ninth Division was dug in for the time being had belonged to a friend of Cacopardo’s. Cacopardo and this friend had shared an interest in Italian furniture, and the old man knew the value of the things in this villa. The friend was dead now, but Cacopardo had a hard time remembering which of his friends had died and which were still living; he therefore thought of them all as living. It was easier that way.

Because he was entering the villa of his friend, whom he considered to be living, Cacopardo approached the gate in the spirit of a cordial visit, and he expected to be received cordially. He was in for a surprise.

Anyone who has never tried to see a general could not possibly know what Cacopardo’s reception was like. A sentry stopped him at the gate.

“Good morning,” said Cacopardo, as if addressing a butler at his friend’s door, “is my friend Salatiello here?” The sentry said: “Ain’t nobody here of that name as I know of. What is he, an M.P.?”

“What is these M.P.?” Cacopardo asked his jeep driver.

“Military Police,” the driver said.

“Military Police, indeed. He is prefect of Vicinamare and a collector of wooden curiosities. He is my friend. This is his house. Is he here?”

“Say, Buck!” the sentry shouted to a man lounging inside the gate. “Ever hear of a fellow round here named - what was that name again, Bud?”

“Signor Salatiello, he is my friend.” “Saladullo?”

“Hell, no,” Buck shouted back. “No one round here with a name like of that.”

“No one here that name,” the sentry repeated. Cacopardo said: “Then where is General Marvin?” M.P.’s are trained to be mysterious with strangers.

“Jeez, I can’t tell you that, Bud,” the sentry said.

“I have a paper to see General Marvin,” Cacopardo said, pulling out his pass.

“Oh, hell,” said the sentry, “why didn’t you say you had a pass? Sure, the General’s here.” And he shouted: “The Old Man’s in, ain’t he, Buck?”

“Yeah, I think His Nibs came in about half an hour »

ago.

“Yeah, he’s in,” the sentry said. “What you want to see him about?”

Cacopardo pulled out the tissue paper. “I can tell you where are the Germans,” he said.

“Right up there,” the sentry said, pointing up the driveway to the main door of the villa. “Right in that there door.”

The jeep drove up to the main door. There was another sentry there. When Cacopardo tried to go in, the sentry put his bayoneted rifle across the path. Cacopardo jumped back, alarmed. “I am no enemies,” he said. “I have the paper to see General Marvin,” and he stretched out the pass. Cacopardo learned quickly, for a man his age.

The sentry took the pass. “Brother, I doubt if you can see the General right now,” he said. “He don’t like to see no one in the mornings. You stand here a minute.” The sentry called the corporal of the guard.

The corporal of the guard came right back. “This way, brother,” he said.

He led Cacopardo to a man at a desk. “Name,” the man said gloomily. “Cacopardo. “

“Is that a first name, for godsake, or a last name?” the sour man said.

“That is the name of my family,” Cacopardo said. “How you spell that?”

Cacopardo spelled it out. The man wrote laboriously: Cacaporato.

“First name,” the unhappy man said. “Matteo. “

“Goddamit, you got to spell those Dago names.” Cacopardo spelled it and the man misspelled it. “Who you want to see?”

“General Marvin.”

“You haven’t got a chance of seeing him,” the man said. “Hell, there’s a war going on, Dago. What you want to see the General about?”

Cacopardo reached in his pocket for the tissue paper. “I can show you where are the Germans,” he said. “You’ll have to talk with G-two about that,” the man said, and he pointed with his pencil. “First door on the right, where it says Colonel Henderson.”

Cacopardo went to the door marked Colonel Henderson, and he knocked.

“Walk in, damn it,” a voice shouted. “General Marvin?” Cacopardo asked.

“Upstairs, upstairs,” the impatient voice, which belonged to a full colonel, said. Cacopardo started out. “Say, wait a minute.”

Cacopardo turned around. The Colonel said: “Who are you, anyway?”

“Cacopardo Matteo, I was sent to see General Marvin.”

“General Marvin doesn’t like Italians,” the Colonel said. “What do you want to see him about? You better not ask him for any favors, he’ll kick you out, personally, himself.”

Cacopardo reached in his pocket for the tissue paper. “I can show you where are the Germans,” he said. “You’ve got no business taking that kind of thing to General Marvin. What do you think we have a G-two section for around here? You can just show that to me.” “I was sent to see General Marvin. That is the one I am going to see.”

After an argument with Colonel Henderson, Cacopardo was sent upstairs under guard, was stopped and questioned by a sentry at the head of the stairs, was sent downstairs because he did not have a proper Division pass, was given a pass, was taken upstairs again, was questioned as to age, religion, political beliefs and sex by a sergeant, was interviewed by a staff officer who doubted whether the General would be free to see him, was referred to Colonel Middleton, the General’s Chief of Staff, was questioned by Colonel Middleton’s secretary, who thought the Colonel was busy, was finally admitted to Colonel Middleton, who, after an argument, agreed to see whether the General would see Cacopardo, which he doubted.