The Girl on the Via Flaminia (13 page)

The images would not go away. She thought if she did not permit herself to feel anything, if she did not think at all, if she did not permit herself to hear, they would go away. The room came back, empty, cold, surgical, and the girls naked in the room. And the hands. They reached out to touch her. All her flesh crawled away with a soundless shriek from that touch.

“Were they pleasant,” Antonio said, standing there, “at the questura?”

She looked up dully at him. Yesterday he had come into the bedroom to apologize. He had apologized. Now he stood there, coldly, while the images sank back, disappeared, the hands momentarily went away.

“What?” she said.

“I asked if the police were pleasant. Were they pleasant? They have a great reputation for being pleasant to the women they arrest.”

One went up a long corridor. The walls were dirty, and the floor was dirty. The clerks sat, behind their tables. Everywhere there was the unexpressed hostility, the unacknowledged sneer. Now this one, standing, who had been wounded in Libya, and who could not forgive the wound.

“What do you want, Antonio?” she said, forcing the words heavily out of herself.

“I?” he said. “Nothing.” They were familiar words; she herself had said once exactly the same words, with almost the same intonation. “I am looking for an honest woman,” Antonio said. “Are you an honest woman, signorina?”

She turned her head. The effort to speak was too difficult.

“Go away,” she said.

“Shall I marry you?” Antonio said. “Come, tell me: I'm your countryman. I liked you. Perhaps I was even a little in love. You are very pretty. Shall I marry you now the American has finished with you?”

Dully, she looked at him.

“There are disadvantages, of course,” Antonio said. “I can't take you to a hotel like the Excelsior, or drive you to Lake Bracciano in my jeep. Nor do I have cigarettes to sell, nor can I bring genuine coffee for my nice Italian friends. What have I? A wound from a war . . .”

“Antonio,” she said, “please . . .”

“I'm stupid,” Antonio said. “Of course. What's inside an Italian's head?
La Traviata
and a bowl of spaghetti. Ask them: they know! But now the American has finished with you it's my turn. A slightly damaged bride! But I should be grateful. Even for you, signorina: that after the American, you consent to share your bed with a countryman!”

She tried to rise from the chair. She had to escape.

She could not bear any more.

He came quickly across the room. She felt his hand on her shoulder, forcing her down into the chair again.

“Wait, signorina. Stay a while. I feel eloquent tonight,” Antonio said.

“I don't want to hear any more,” she said.

“But where will you go, amore mio?” Antonio said. “Come: it's early yet. Business isn't good on the Via Veneto until it's quite dark.”

She sank back in the chair. It doesn't matter, she thought. It doesn't matter. Now there was this one. This one was inevitable, too, now, she understood.

He leaned toward her.

“Shall I tell you what I see, signorina, when I look at you?” Antonio said. “Italy's shame. My shame.”

“What do you want of me?” she said.

“I?”

“What do you want of me?”

“To be a woman who does not dishonor her country!”

“I haven't dishonored her!”

“Yes,” he said, leaning toward her. “And for what? Is it so difficult to be hungry? To be poor? What is it that the Americans give away so generously? A piece of chocolate? A pair of silk stockings? They ride you around in their cars? They can afford it. They have so much chocolate it rots in their warehouses!”

“Antonio!” she said, moving her head away from him. “Antonio, let me be!”

“And now,” he said, “the dream comes to its ugly finish. The police! What is one American? There will be dozens. They'll come to you—yes, drunk, stupid, ugly. In some room somewhere. At night. They'll drop their big boots on the floor, sprawl in your arms—the conquerors! And you? Every week to San Gallicano. Every night on the Via Veneto!”

“Antonio!” she said.

“Yes, cara mia: that's what you can look forward to. San Gallicano! That is your paradise. And what shall I say? What shall I feel? I'll see you drinking with them in the cafés. I'll see you walking with them in the park. And I'll suffer. I'll suffer for your dishonor. And I'll spit on the pavement, seeing you, I'll spit!

“No,” he said, putting his hand into her hair. “Don't look down! Don't look away! Look at me!”

Her head writhed in his grip.

“You're hurting me,” she said.

“Am I? Not much. Not enough. But one must pay a little: one must suffer a little. Is it just that the decent should have all the hurt, and you nothing? Yesterday in the bedroom I said I respected you. I believed you! You were one of the good ones who did not sell herself to the Americani, I said. I was stupid, no? I am easily deceived. Because I could not tell. One should be able to tell, isn't that true, signorina? You should not be allowed to deceive people. When you walk in the street people should know. They are also hungry, they are also poor, but they haven't sold themselves. People with wounds . . . they ought to be able to say: There's a girl who has dishonored her country. They ought to be able to know immediately! Else how is one to tell?”

He picked up the knife from the bowl of fruit on the table.

“Is it not just, signorina? People should be able to tell.”

“Antonio!”

“There is no Antonio,” he said. “Who is Antonio? There is only a man with a wound. No, signorina, it's not Antonio who will cut your hair. It is only your country, avenging itself a little . . . and only a little . . . and only enough so that when you walk in the street with a naked head people will be able to tell!”

He held the knife, and in terror and fascination she looked at it, and the knife was between them, and she did not, or could not scream, feeling only the terror drying her throat, and waiting, and it was Mimi, coming suddenly into the room, and seeing Antonio with the knife, who at last screamed.

“Signor! Signora! Aiuto!” she heard Mimi. “Antonio is hurting the Signora Lisa!”

The little girl rushed to hold Antonio's arm.

“No!” she said. “Antonio, no!”

Antonio pushed at the girl. His dark young face was convulsed. One hand lay in Lisa's soft blonde hair, twisting it.

“Sì!” Antonio said.

Robert came almost running into the room then.

“Signor Roberto!” Mimi cried. “Help me!”

There had been first the business with the cigarettes. The passion that had helped to spoil his New Year's. He had been saving it, and he did not know what was happening, except what he could see, Antonio twisting Lisa's hair, the little girl clinging to his arm, the spectacular knife, and besides it was about time somebody in this house was hit. He hit Antonio. The boy's hand came out of the twisted hair to defend himself, and he fell backward toward the radio. Then Robert stamped on Antonio's hand and picked up the fruit knife. Behind them now, Ugo and Nina, Nina with a piece of bread in her mouth, came into the room.

“Che cosa succede?” Ugo said, frightened.

“With a knife, Signor Ugo!” Mimi cried. “Antonio wanted to cut her hair with a knife!”

“Madonna!” Nina said.

The boy picked himself up from the floor, his face convulsed, the stamped-on hand hanging limply. “Was it not just, signorina?” Antonio said, in agony. “The people should be able to tell . . .” And went out of the room.

“Poveretta!” Nina said, kneeling beside Lisa. “Did he hurt you? Did that animal hurt you?”

“We were talking,” Ugo said, bewildered, “in the kitchen . . .”

“It's all right,” Robert said. “I didn't hit him too hard. I didn't know what he was going to do with that knife.”

“Povera signora,” Mimi whispered.

“He needs a keeper, that animal!” Nina said, kneeling beside her, stroking Lisa's hands.

“He's ashamed,” Ugo said, suffering for his son.

“Ashamed!” Nina cried. “Some day he'll kill somebody with that shame of his. Go bring a glass of wine, Mimi . . .”

The little girl ran out.

“When will there be peace?” Ugo said, suffering for Antonio, suffering for himself.

“When the animals are in the zoo!” Nina said. She continued to stroke Lisa's hands. She's numb, she thought. She's breathing so quickly. How that animal frightened her!”

“Everything's changed . . . everything,” Ugo said, heavily.

The little girl came back into the room, bringing a glass of wine. She gave it to Nina. “Here, cara: drink,” Nina said. She held the glass to Lisa's mouth. She's so white, she thought. She's so exhausted. “I'd have torn his eyes out,” she said. “I'd have broken all his bones.”

“All right,” Robert said.

“What kind of men are you? Stone?” Nina said. “A woman can wait before you help her.” She chafed the girl's cold hands. “There, cara: is that better?”

Dully, out of that enormous exhaustion, that darkness, she said: “They would not believe me at the questura.”

“Shh, cara: don't talk,” Nina said.

“Why should they have believed me?” Lisa said. “It was true. I was what they said I was.”

“She doesn't have to talk about it, Nina,” Robert said. “Don't let her talk about it.”

“Then, afterwards,” Lisa said, “they put all of us into a big truck. There were so many girls.”

“Non importa, cara,” Nina said.

“When we drove through the streets,” Lisa said, “everybody looked at us sitting there in the truck. Then some of the girls shouted and some even sang and some spit at the people in the street and some cried. There were so many girls.”

“Eh . . . !” Ugo said.

“Were they all bad, Ugo?” Lisa said. “All of them?”

“Eh . . . !” the old man said again.

“Then in the hospital,” Lisa said, “they put us into a big room, and they said undress, and when we undressed they examined us. Have you ever seen, Nina, many women together naked in a big cold room?”

“I don't want to see it,” Nina said.

“I was so afraid,” Lisa said, “of touching anything. I was so afraid of the disease . . .”

She stared so, sitting in that chair.

The old man touched his own forehead, not knowing what one could possibly say.

“Eh . . . but they released you . . .”

“Yes,” Lisa said.

“Why should they hold her?” Nina said, indignantly. “She's innocent.”

“Yes,” Lisa said. “They released me.”

“Thank God,” Ugo said. And thought: in this darkness, and emptiness, does He exist? Nothing existed: only the darkness and the sound of human suffering. There was a great emptiness, in which all were alone.

She had turned to Robert.

Was she smiling? Ugo had a painful expression of something that was not a smile.

“It will be so much easier now,” Lisa said.

“What?” Robert said, not understanding.

“It will be so much easier now that I am what the others are.”

“Lisa!” the old man said.

“What others?” Robert said, harshly.

“The women standing on the bridges,” Lisa said.

“Now she is being stupid again!” Nina said, with that simple indignation of hers.

“What do you mean?” Robert said. “They let you go, didn't they?”

“For a while . . .”

“But—”

“It was my first time,” Lisa said, “and I wasn't sick.” Her hands in her lap clenched. “Why didn't you go to the girls on the Via Veneto!” she cried. “Why did you have to come here!”

Ugo again had that overwhelming sense of emptiness: as though they were all lost in a great and hollow space, and there was nothing in that space but the sounds of suffering, and the small gestures of despair.

“No, no . . .” Nina said, caressing her. “It's my fault. Cara, it's my fault . . .”

“Ugo,” Robert said, thickly.

“Yes?”

“Take Nina and go out. Please . . .”

“It's my fault, all of it,” Nina said.

The gestures—of hope, of comfort, of despair. They were all abandoned in such a space. I'm old, Ugo thought: and I'm tired. We were not made to be happy. Happiness is a condition we have permanently lost. He fumbled in his vest pocket: there was a cigarette there. “Come, Nina . . . let them alone,” he said. He took Nina's arm.

I'm sweating, Robert thought. My hands are sweating.

 

 

 

 

O
utside, in the wineshops, Robert thought, they are sitting at the small tables with the stone tops. The wine was drawn from the spigots in the barrels. There were no women in the shops. Only the men of the neighborhood playing cards, and the soldiers, drinking. They talked about cards and sometimes about the war. Vermouth was the best and cheapest thing to get drunk on, and it was pleasant. He could have been there, in one of the wineshops, drinking vermouth, listening to the card game.

“Lisa,” he said.

He could have been there, pouring vermouth into a tumbler. The wineshop would be small, not too clean, and full of bottles lined up on the shelves.

“If there was anything I could have done,” he said, “I would have done it.”

“Would you?” the girl said.

“But Adele and Ugo said I shouldn't go to the police. It would be worse if I went to the police, too.”

The wine in the tumbler would catch the reflection of the light. There would be only men there, in the shop, and what they would talk about: some particular incident in some particular battle, or the chances of going home and what home would possibly be like, and occasionally a woman known somewhere, in Naples or in Africa, to whom one felt, now, somewhat grateful, and whose memory was pleasant. “I didn't make the war,” he said, as though that was the only possible final excuse. “I didn't make the police.”

He stopped now, ashamed of having said it. But it did not, he saw, really matter. Nothing he had said penetrated that envelope of numbness she seemed to sit in, or that cold and almost emptied mask.

“There were so many girls,” Lisa said. “But where were the soldiers? There must have been soldiers.”

“They don't arrest the soldiers,” he said.

“Why?” she said. “Shouldn't they arrest the soldiers too?”

“They don't.”

“No,” she said, “only the girls.”

Awkwardly, he came closer to her, and put his hand out, and awkwardly tried to explain, although there was nothing to explain, nothing that could be really explanatory. “Lisa,” he said. “Anything you want, ask me. I'll do it.”

“Why should you do anything?” she said.

“Because.”

“Because of pity?”

“Call it what you want,” he said.

He watched then as she drew slowly a card out of her pocket. It must have been kept there all the time. It was yellow and square. The police would have given it to her, very formally.

“And this?” she said. “Can you do anything about this?”

On which her name was written. On which some official had stamped his own designation.

“Put it away,” Robert said.

“Why?” she said. “They gave it to me to show.”

“Lisa,” he said.

“To my customers,” she said. “In case there is a doubt.”

“Give it to me,” Robert said, holding his hand out.

“No.”

“Give it to me,” he said violently.

“As a souvenir?” she said. “To take home with your German pistol?”

Abruptly, he drew his hand back.

“Oh,” she said, “How wonderfully we had it arranged, didn't we, Roberto? How conveniently! You didn't want to stand on the Via Veneto. It was too ugly under the trees . . . and you were too sensitive! It was to be so comfortable for you . . . so accommodating . . . like home!”

“I wanted a girl,” he said again, as he said before, stubbornly.

“A girl you didn't love.”

“A girl!” he said.

“To bring food to in a little bag. To wait conveniently in bed!”

“Maybe I did,” he said.

“And it was so exciting,” she said, looking at him, “wasn't it, Roberto? An Italian girl . . . different ways, a different language. Then you could always say—see? I slept with an Italian one, too. Along with the English one, and the Greek one, and the French one!”

“No,” he said.

“Don't lie,” she said. “Don't lie to me now. It's what you thought. It's what a soldier thinks. And at camp, did you talk about me? Did you compare me? You boasted a little, didn't you? How passionate this one was . . . !”

“But you weren't,” he said.

“No: I wasn't, was I?” she said. “I was a disappointment. It was so difficult for me . . .”

“It wasn't easy for me,” he said.

“No?”

“No,” he said.

“Was it harder,” she said, “than it was in Naples? Or in Caserta?”

He did not answer.

“Why should it matter,” she said, “what mouth you kiss? Today a Lisa's . . . tomorrow a Maria's . . . they are all mouths . . . waiting for the soldier.” She looked up, with that false brightness, that unnatural flush. “And how generous you are! What is it they pay now, the Americani? Three thousand lire a night?”

“I don't know,” he said.

“Three thousand lire!” she said. “Think how much bread that is! How much oil! And for what? A night. One night out of so many. Pay me that, Roberto.”

“Will you stop?” he said.

“Why?” she said. “I have the card now. All the technicalities are taken care of. Pay me three thousand lire. It's so much simpler when one pays, and then goes away the next morning.”

“You're just talking,” he said. “You couldn't do it—”

“Couldn't I?” she said.

“No.”

“Then I'll learn,” she said. “Antonio says I'll learn.”

“Lisa,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Tell me what you want.” He said it quietly. He stood there, beside her, near the table, controlling himself now, saying to himself he would only say now what was necessary, and no more than was necessary.

“I?” she said.

“Tell me what you want.”

“Go home!” she said.

“Christ,” he said, “I'd like to!”

“Go home!” she said. “Take your tanks, take your money, take the coffee and the sugar and all your generous gifts and go home!”

“It's seven thousand miles away,” he said.

“We don't want you anymore,” she said. “The dancing in the streets is over. The celebration's finished. Go home!”

She was trembling. She was standing now, trembling, and he thought: her too. Antonio, her. Underneath, there's this, the actual thing, how they really feel. And we don't, or don't want to, see it.

He waited.

Then he said, quietly: “Do you remember, Lisa, what you said about the Americans the first time I met you? When I came to the house the first night, and the lights blew out?”

“What did I say?” she said, dully.

“You said they were stupid.”

“Yes,” she said.

“They were too rich.”

“Yes.”

“They were liars.”

“Yes.”

“What did I say?” he asked. “Do you remember what I said? I said we were a little bit of everything. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You hate us now,” Robert said, standing there. “And maybe you're right. You, Antonio, the kids who throw rocks at our jeeps. Maybe we ought to be hated. I don't know. I'm not much of an American anyway.”

He paused. She looked so exhausted.

“It doesn't matter anymore,” she said, in that dull and exhausted voice.

“Except it might have been different,” he said. “Who knows? Perhaps if I had met you where there was no war . . .”

“We wouldn't have met,” she said.

“We might have,” he said.

“It wouldn't have been different,” she said.

“Why?”

“Oh, Roberto,” she said, “it wouldn't . . .”

“Why not?” he said. “All I ever saw of Italy was war.” He came closer to her, almost touching her. “But it was different once.”

“You wouldn't have come to Italy if not for the war.”

She had turned her head away.

“But say I did,” he said, urgently, “I always wanted to see Europe.”

“You wouldn't have noticed me.”

He touched her now. “I always notice blondes,” he said. “And I'd have asked the American ambassador to introduce us.”

“He would not.”

“He would. He'd be that kind of an ambassador. What did you do before the war?”

He never had asked. The bombing in the train at La Spezia he knew, and that she had been hungry, and about the French captain in the hotel on the Corso. Her hair again fell softly across her face, shadowing it. “Did you go to the opera?”

“Please . . .”

“We'd go to the opera,” he said. “Which opera do you like best?”

“Oh, Roberto . . .”

“Which opera do you like best?”

“
La Traviata
,” she said.

“We'd have gone to
La Traviata
,” he said. “Then we'd travel.”

“Roberto, please!”

“We'd have seen all of Italy,” he said. He urged her into that imagined journey. He drew her closer to him. “Both of us. What town do you like best?”

“Roberto,” she said, “stop!”

“Come on: what town do you like best? I'm a stranger here.”

“Portofino,” she said.

“Portofino? Where is it?”

“In the north. By the sea.”

“All right,” he said. “We'd go to Portofino. In the north by the sea. Why do you like Portofino?”

Despairingly, she said: “I was happy there once.”

“Once?”

“When I was seventeen.”

“Would I be happy in Portofino?” he said.

“Roberto!” she said. “Oh, please . . .”

But he held her now firmly, urging her to go with him, to go to Portofino, in the north by the sea, now when it was all dark here, and the city cold, and there was nothing but that great solitariness. “Would I be happy in Portofino?”

“I don't know!” she said, as though she could not bear that journey, or that possibility of happiness.

“I'd be in love,” he said. “You're supposed to be happy when you're in love. Would I be happy?”

“Yes!” she said, at last.

“You'd be happy too, wouldn't you? The way you were when you were seventeen?”

“Yes, yes!” she said.

“Then, after Portofino, and after being in love, we'd go to the States, wouldn't we? To America. Just to show them how pretty an Italian girl can be . . .” Close, so that finally a warmth was between them, so that the cold went away, the solitariness, the lostness. “I always take my wives home. You'd go, wouldn't you?”

“Perhaps . . .”

“You'd go, wouldn't you?”

“Oh, Roberto!”

“You'd go.”

“Yes, yes . . . I'd go!”

“Besides,” he said, “I'd have to show my mother who ate her fruit cake. Tell me what kind of a wife you'd have made. A good one? Would you have made a good wife?”

“Yes.”

“How good?”

“Very good.”

“All the Italians make good ones, they tell me. But you'd have been one of the best, wouldn't you?”

“Yes . . .”

“Guaranteed?”

“Yes, yes!”

And then it went away: the exultation, the journey of words, the imagined joy. He stroked her hair. “I've brought you nothing but bad luck, haven't I, baby?”

He could not see her face. Against him, he heard her say, brokenly: “Bad, bad luck . . .”

“We turned out to be great liberatori, all right,” he said. He reached down now, and took the police card gently out of her hand.

“No, Roberto—give it to me,” she said.

“Give you what?”

“The card!”

“What card?” he said, tearing it up. “I don't know of any card.”

“Roberto!” she said. “You mustn't do this to me, you mustn't!”

“Do what?”

“This! . . .”

“Why not?” Robert said. He had torn up the card. “Blondie loves Dagwood, doesn't she? Everything happens to them, but she loves him.” She was struggling not to listen. “Doesn't Biondie love him?”

He caught her shoulders.

“Doesn't Blondie love him?”

“Roberto!” she said, in a final despair.

“Doesn't she?”

“Yes!”

“Say it.”

“She loves him.”

“Then kiss him,” Robert said. “He just came home from a hard day in the office. Kiss him.”

She kissed him at last, crying, she was crying, her mouth against his mouth, hard and despairing, when the door from the garden opened again, admitting the night and the cold, and Adele, her head wrapped in a shawl, carrying a market bag, came into the room, and seeing them, in that fierce and despairing embrace, cried: “Ecco . . .” and Robert took his mouth away from the girl's, and said: “Hello, Adele . . .”

“Dio,” the woman said, unwrapping the shawl, “she's still crying?”

“No,” Robert said, “she's not crying now. You're not crying now, are you, baby?”

“No,” the girl said, crying.

“How did it go at the questura?” Adele asked. She put the market bag down.

“All right,” Robert said.

“No trouble? She's free?”

“Yes,” Robert said, “she's free.”

Adele looked pleased. “What did I say? I said it would go all right. You always imagine things are worse than they are. A little courage, that's all one needs. Where is Ugo?”

“In the kitchen,” he said. “Nina's here.”

“Nina? Dio, so quickly? But good—we'll make a fine festa. I promised her a festa yesterday . . . wine and macaroni! The Americans like macaroni, no, Roberto?”

“They love it.”

“We'll make a festa,” Adele said. “But remember: no more tears!”

“No,” Robert said. “No more tears.”

The old woman picked up the bag. She's good too, Robert thought, in spite of that hatchet face.

“Music,” Adele said, going to the hallway, “a little wine, macaroni . . . and no more tears . . .”