A Bell for Adano (14 page)

At the moment, General Marvin was playing mumblete-peg with Lieutenant Byrd, his aide. They had found that a certain magohany table took the knife beautifully. The General had just reached the double flip off the forehead.

Colonel Middleton walked in just as the General let the knife go off his forehead. The surprise of Colonel Middleton’s entrance was just enough to throw the General off his aim, and the knife clattered on the table and did not stick in. This annoyed the General. “Goddamit, haven’t I told you to knock, Middleton?” “Yes, sir. There’s an old Italian here wants to see you.” “Middleton, what’s the matter with you? Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want to see any more Italians?”

“Yes, sir. But this one seems to be above the average. He was sent to you by one of our people. He says he has some information you would want.”

“Well, dammit, show him in. What are you standing there for? Show him in.”

And so Cacopardo was finally brought into the pres-ence of the General. By this time he was just as angry as the General, and being some twenty years the General’s senior, he considered it his privilege to vent his anger first.

He found perfect expression for his anger in what he saw on the surface of the mahogany table.

“You are a barbarian,” he said.

This was not a very good way for old Cacopardo to begin with General Marvin, especially since he had two strikes against him to begin with: he had caught the General in a bad mood, and he was Italian.

“A what?” the General bellowed in his famous voice. “I said, you are a barbarian. How dare you chop and pick at the surface of my friend Salatiello’s table?”

For the sake of argument, it would have made no difference whatsoever if General Marvin had known that Salatiello had been thirteen years dead. The General could not possibly have been more outraged. “Jesus Christ,” he bellowed at the walls, “who is this wop, anyhow?”

“That table was made circa 1775, when your country had not even begun to existed, barbarian. It was carved by Vincenzio Bianchi of Parma. I cannot calculate the values of that table. You are a pig to chop and pick at it.” The General shouted: “Take this crazy wop out of here.”

Colonel Middleton and Lieutenant Byrd rushed into the room. They grabbed old Cacopardo, and started to push him out.

“Wait!” the General roared. “Who sent that idiot here, Middleton?”

“I don’t know, sir, it was some Major.”

“You don’t know? Goddamit, it’s your business to know.”

Colonel Middleton asked Cacopardo: “Who was it who sent you here?”

“My friend Major Joppolo, who is not a barbarian.” Colonel Middleton said: “What unit is this Major from?”

“Adano, from Adano,” old Cacopardo said. “From my home, Adano.”

“Adano,” the General shouted. “There’s something about that place. What is it about Adano, Middleton? Goddamit, what is it?”

“The cart, General,” Colonel Middleton said. Colonel Middleton would never forget Adano as long as he lived. “The cart? What cart? Goddamit, don’t talk in riddles, Middleton. What cart?”

“The cart that we threw off the road, sir. The mule we shot, sir.”

General Marvin remembered, and the memory turned his face a shade darker. “So that’s the Major who sent you,” he roared. “What was that name again? I want to remember that name.”

“Joppolo,” Middleton said.

General Marvin shouted: “Joppolo. Write that down, Middleton, remember that name. That goddam Major’s a wop, too. I remember now, he’s a goddam wop himself, isn’t he, Middleton?”

In the interests of justice, Colonel Middleton said: “I don’t remember, sir.”

General Marvin shouted: “Well, I do. Now throw this crazy Italian sonofabitch out of here, and if you let any more Italians in here, Middleton, I’ll break you back to a goddam second lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” Colonel Middleton said.

As they started to run him out, Cacopardo said: “But I have informations. I can tell you where are the Germans. It is important. The Germans, the Germans.”

But the General was much too far gone in rage. Cacopardo was taken out and sent home. He couldn’t get anyone, not even the sentry at the front gate, to listen to a description of the German positions before Pinnaro.

Chapter
14

BEHIND Major Joppolo’s back, Captain Purvis was very critical of him. To his face, the Captain was cordial, even friendly.

The two men now had, besides their mere community of tongue, another thing to draw them together: they both knew the same girls. In a foreign land, that is enough to make Damon and Pythias out of two sworn enemies.

One day at lunch they talked about the girls. They talked as American men do talk about girls when they are abroad.

The Captain said: “That younger one, that Francesca, she sure has a nice pair.”

Major Joppolo said: “I think the blonde one is more mature.”

“Brother,” the Captain said, “I’ll trade you a nice pair for maturity any day in the week.”

“Just a matter of taste,” the Major said.

“Yeah,” the Captain said, “I’ll take a taste of the younger one, thanks. Just thinking about her makes me sharp. What do you say we go up there tonight and see ‘em?”

“Let’s do that,” the Major said. “That would be fun.” Then he wondered why he had reacted so quickly and so happily to the Captain’s suggestion. The Captain’s attitude toward these girls disgusted the Major. The Captain regarded the girls as trash; he seemed to think of them as something to buy and sell, like Italian watermelon and grapes and red wine. The Major refused to believe that he was falling into this way of thinking.

And yet he had jumped at the Captain’s invitation. He thought back on the crazy evening at Tomasino’s house. He thought of the sticky candy, of Tina’s frankness about her unnaturally blonde hair; he thought of his own chattering about his life, and about his wife; and he thought about his loneliness late into the night. He thought the whole thing was very strange.

But it was not strange. It was very simple, really. It was typical of the way most honest Americans feel when they are abroad, and probably most Britons, and yes, probably most Germans and Japanese, too. It was a typical pattern of loneliness. Major Joppolo loved his wife. He missed her terribly. When, after many months, he found himself near a moderately pretty girl who was sympathetic to him, he found himself first excited by her prettiness; then he grew sad, and talked about the one he loved back home; then he was blackly lonely; then he caught himself thinking more and more often about the pretty one who was close by, and he was a little ashamed of thinking about her, and tried not to, but couldn’t help it.

Major Joppolo’s case was not as unique as he thought. He was just terribly lonely, and he was just behaving the way most men do in the face of such loneliness. (And Captain Purvis, who also had someone he loved back in the States, was behaving exactly like Major Joppolo: the only difference was the difference of his personality.)

And so it happened that the two dissimilar men went that evening to the house at 9 Via Vittorio Emanuele with very similar feelings of excitement and anticipation.

Major Joppolo and Captain Purvis caught the family of Tomasino by surprise that evening. The fat Rosa was sitting on the living room floor plucking a chicken, and there were feathers all over the room. The radio was on, and the two little daughters of the sister who was in Rome were sitting by it, also on the floor. Francesca and Tina were in brightly colored pajamas, lying on the floor side by side, reading together a cheap Italian romance called Un Cuore in Tre. Tomasino, who opened the front door, grimly led the two Americans into the room without any advance notice.

Everyone jumped up, the little girls squealing, fat Rosa calling the name of the Lord in English, and the big girls shouting greetings to the Americans.

Captain Purvis had not had a drop to drink, and was determined to be on his best behavior just to show the Major, but he couldn’t help saying, when he saw the girls in their pajamas: “All ready for bed, eh, girls? Well, let’s go, what are we waiting for?”

The family of Tomasino and their guests spent the next five minutes on their hands and knees picking up the chicken feathers. When that was done Rosa said to Tomasino: “Sad one, put the girls to bed.” Tomasino led the little ones out without gentleness. Rosa retired to the kitchen with the feathers and the bird, to finish her job.

As soon as the two officers and the two girls in pajamas were left alone, Tina said: “Mister Major, I want to talk with you,” and she stretched out her hand for his and led him into her bedroom. Captain Purvis’s sober shouts followed them this time: “Hey, don’t desert me. I can’t talk to this lovely thing. Where you going?” And he subsided with: “Oh-oh, you lucky bastard,” and settled down for an evening of desperate sign language.

Tina sat down on her bed and the Major sat down on a chair by a wooden dressing table.

“I want to ask you something, Mister Major,” Tina said.

“Yes?” the Major said. He did not know what to expect, but he expected it would please him, whatever it was.

“How long do you think the war will last? Here on Italian soil, I mean.”

The Major found that he was not pleased. “That’s a very serious question,” he said. “Let’s not talk about war. That’s all I have all day long, war, war, war.”

“But I have a special reason for wanting to know,” Tina said. “How long do you think it will last?”

“How should I know?” the Major asked. His voice was a little testy. “If I knew that, I would have to know a lot more about our plans for the campaign, and if I knew the plans, I would know military secrets, and I couldn’t tell you secrets if I knew them.”

“But you can guess, Mister Major.” “All right, I guess two more months.”

“And how long do you think it will be after those two months before our Italian prisoners of war are released?” Major Joppolo got the point very quickly, and it did not please him in the least. “You have a sweetheart who has been captured?”

“I don’t know whether he has been captured or killed or what. That is the bad part. That is why I wanted to talk with you, Mister Major. Giorgio and I were going to be married.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“Can you find out for me whether he is a prisoner, Mister Major?”

"What do you expect me to do, go through all our prison camps and ask all the men if they are the sweetheart of Tina in Adano?"

"You must have some lists, don’t you?"

"That is none of my business. I am civil affairs officer of Adano."

"Please help me, Mister Major. Not knowing is worse than having him dead."

"A hundred people come in my office every day asking me this. I tell you it is none of my business. The war is still going on, can’t you understand that? We have a campaign to fight. We can’t just stop in the middle of battle and open up a question-and-answer service for forlorn lovers."

"Oh don’t, Mister Major, don’t. You had been so nice to me. I thought - "

"Is this why you were cordial to me? Is this why you sent your father to invite me to your house? So that I could track down your lover?" Major Joppolo stood up. "I’m sorry that you have a mistaken idea of how I work. If you have business to do with me, do not invite me to your home and feed me candy. Come to my office. I will give you equal treatment with all the others."

And he turned and went into the living room, where Captain Purvis was shaping a heart with his two thumbs and forefingers and then pointing first at himself, then at Francesca.

"I’m going home, Captain."

"What for? Hell, the evening’s just getting warm." "Oh, I’m fed up with this, I’m going home."

"Well, you’ll excuse me if I don’t come. Goddam, I never thought I’d ever get anywhere talking with my fingers, but this isn’t bad. See you tomorrow, Major."

The Major left. Captain Purvis tried to pick up where he left off, but pretty soon Tina came in with tears in her eyes and told Francesca in Italian what had happened, and Rosa came in and asked where the Major was, and Tomasino came back from putting the little ones to bed, and Captain Purvis ran out of finger talk, which parents can understand as well as daughters. And so he got up and left too.

Later Major Joppolo was angry with himself for his childish petulance with Tina. He told himself that he had no right to expect anything else. He reminded himself that he had done a little talking the first evening about his wife, and Tina hadn’t flown off the way he did. But he couldn’t bring himself to apologize to her, and for several days and nights he did not see her.

He had no way of knowing that Tina was just as lonely as he was, and he did not realize that female loneliness sometimes takes exactly the same forms as male loneliness.

Chapter
15

CORPORAL CHUCK SCHULTZ of the M.P.’s used to talk a lot about how much he hated red wine, but it nevertheless had a certain fascination for him. Chuck’s two best friends, Bill and Polack, also found the stuff interesting. The three of them drank it together quite often.

They used to buy it from Carmelina the wife of the lazy Fatta for a dollar a bottle. One night they bought three bottles for three dollars, and then they went to their billets to drink it.

It is very rare for an M.P. to drink anything, even vino, to excess, but Corporal Chuck Schultz was a rare M.P. His two friends, Bill and Polack, were in the Engineer Battalion which was working around Adano. They were billeted in the same house with Chuck and some other M.P.’s.

Chuck and Bill and Polack did not drink vino in order to savor it on their tongues. They did not drink it to compare it with other wines which they had had on other occasions. They did not drink it to complement food. They drank it to get drunk.

Therefore it was not surprising that on the night when they bought three bottles for three dollars, they began quite early in the evening to tell dirty jokes, then sang some songs, then argued a little, then got restless and decided to go for a walk. Nor was it surprising that the walk was rather noisy. It was really not surprising, either, that when they found that their walk was not taking them anywhere except round and round the same block, they should have decided to go back to their billet. This was not surprising, but it was the thing which got them in trouble.