Outside: perfumed herbs. Inside: animal smells. Twilight or mirrored dark? Whichever way would be wrong. Frank told himself this was an initiation no different from your first combat, your first kill. That it was no more or less important than cleaning your rifle. And the dirtiness of it, the unasked-for immediacy that it was here, now, waiting for him when he thought he’d be eating crap out a tin and hunkering in the mud; that beyond this door or that, a woman might spread her legs and welcome him in, and he had the money in his pocket to do it, was making his blood pump hard the way it did in dreams. Buzzing in his stomach. Another dance starting. And, through the buzz, Frank felt an abrupt, gut-busting urge to cry, because if this was it, if this was life flooding into him just so it could all flood out tomorrow, then that was truly, truly sad. For all of them; if this was it, it was as dirty a death as those poor fucks got by the River Arno. But the dance kept pulling him, pulling him in and making him be that other person who did not want more, who’d never thought of kindred spirits, of the first-time talk and touching and warmth that might lead to love, and they were forming an orderly queue, only half a dozen of them, only two closed doors by the looks of it but Frank was tall, athletic. Good cheekbones, looked real clean; he was a boy to make his momma proud, and there he was, before he knew it (Liar. He fucking knew it), in a room full of candles, on a bed made of silk.
Except the bed was bales of straw, with a slippery coverlet on top. Sharp tips of straw poked through, stabbing him in the back as a woman leaned over, onto him. Businesslike, unbuttoning his flies. She was pretty. Older than him, with fine lines around her eyes and mouth. Mouth pouting, lips in a flower-bud shape as she rambled foreign words. His dick was bursting. As she leaned over the side of the bed, her breast fell out of her dress. Frank shut his eyes. The image of the thin white tit, hanging like a dog ear, the yellow sprigs of fabric nursing it, was like a cold shower across his back. He could feel a condom being rolled down his dick, even as it was shrinking.
‘Hey.’ He put his hand over hers. ‘Hey, signora. What’s your name? Tuo nome?’
She shook her head.
‘I’m Frank. Francis.’ He shimmied upright. ‘Like Assisi?’
She looked confused. Took a breath, then she bent her head towards his dick.
‘No!’
He caught the woman’s hair in his hands. It felt greasy. ‘Ma’am. No. No.’ Whispered in her ear. ‘It’s OK. Please.’ From his pocket in his pants, which were halfway down his legs, he took a fistful of notes, pressed them on her same way he’d given the priest those cans of beef. Guilt money.
‘Come on, signora. Up.’ She shrank from his grip on her hair. ‘Please. Scusi, ma’am. I don’t want. . . Here. Just take the money, yeah?’
Sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him. Frank did up his pants.
‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’
What his momma would say, a polite apology when folks were angry or in pain. Could there be a less appropriate phrase to offer in a whorehouse? But whores don’t wear yellow-sprigged dresses, nor have a band of untanned skin where a wedding ring should be.
He stood. ‘I’m just gonna go.’
Now it was her turn to grab him. ‘Momento.’ She held up five fingers. Beyond the door, Frank could hear a babble of kite-high voices; it must have been going on all the time they were in here, but he’d been oblivious. Outside was a queue.
‘Cinque minuti.’
There was a thump at the door. ‘C’mon, mo-fo. Hurry it up in there.’
‘Hey!’ said Frank. ‘We’re busy. Half an hour at least – I’m on a roll.’
Catcalls and whistles. Another thump. ‘Fuckin’ roll on and roll off, boy.’
‘Trenta?’ he said. ‘How much for trenta?’
The woman smiled at him. ‘No trenta. Non ci crederebbero mai.’
He thought a moment. ‘Credere? Believe? You saying no one will believe that?’
She lay back on her bed. ‘Dieci,’ she said quietly.
They stayed like that, Frank hunched, the woman resting her eyes, for maybe a quarter hour, until the banging got too insistent and she swung her legs round. ‘Grazie.’ Her eyes were still closed. Frank could have been anyone. He picked up his jacket, edged from the room as Luiz’s pudgy mate eased himself in.
‘’Bout fucking time, deadwood.’
Frank returned to the main street, where the impromptu café was doing a roaring trade. He wasn’t thirsty. Wasn’t anything, really. Sure wasn’t that woman’s hero. They weren’t supposed to head back to camp alone, so he sat on a wall, beside a cluster of grandmas, who took little notice of him, in the way a wary animal takes little notice, when all its fur is on end and it is quivering with the insistence that you are not there. A crowd of kids were kicking a soccer ball on wasteland at the end of the village; a few of the Buffaloes had joined them. He could see Comanche at the goal. Frank ran over, caught the ball, deft, with the side of his boot, weaving through two of the soldiers to kick it hard past Comanche.
‘Goal!’ he shouted.
‘Hey! Piss off and find your own game, Chap.’ Luiz again, squaring for another fight.
Nobody cheered. The kids stood and watched him, watched the other Buffaloes for a response. Underneath their exuberance, they were as wary as the old women: clued-up for body language, coiled to flee.
Comanche swung his jacket up off the dirt. ‘We’re done here anyway.’
They fell into step beside each other, leaving the others to carry on their game.
‘Man. You supposed to ask their permission first or something?’
Comanche ignored the question. His prowling amble ate up the ground, but effortlessly, like he was gliding over water. Apparently, they were headed back to camp. Fine by Frank.
‘Pointless, ain’t it?’
‘What?’ said Frank. Wanting to justify himself, and wondering why it mattered.
‘Time off, when you got nowhere to go and no one to see. You have a good time?’
‘Not really. Gave a woman a bunch of money and watched her sleep.’
‘Shit. You bored her that much?’
‘Guess so. You got a girl, Com?’
‘I got me a wife,’ Comanche said proudly. ‘Jilla.’ He slipped a small snapshot out of his billfold. It was creased and grubby, but the face staring back was lovely. Long dark hair in a plait, real pretty eyes.
‘Jilla. She’s a looker.’
‘Yup.’
‘Kids?’
‘Nope. Not yet.’
After they left the perimeter of the village, they didn’t speak. By silent consent, one kept watch up front while the other periodically checked behind. All quiet. Tonight, the moon was faint, and the darkness was a quicksand; a soft, thick swallow that might eat you unawares. The heavy night-scent of. . . what was it? Rosemary? Olives? Whatever; the smell filled you up. They were almost back at camp. Frank could see the sentry, shifting from foot to foot. The line of his gun, propped against the wall that partitioned the villa’s garden from the surrounding countryside. You could tell the guy needed a piss.
‘Don’t say to anyone, will you?’ said Frank.
‘What? That you went to a whorehouse, spent all your money and didn’t get screwed? That what you don’t want me to tell?’
‘Nope.’
‘You got someone, Chap?’
‘Just my momma. Shit, man. Why do they do that? Those women. You could tell she hated being there.’
‘Like us, you mean? We don’t got so many options either.’
‘Yeah, but that.’
‘Fuck, man. What they teach you at college? This is a war, Chapel. War makes good men do bad things. Least this way, the woman gets paid first.’
‘Halt! Who goes—’
‘Piss off, Ginger. It’s us.’
Fact the sentry’s Christian name was Roger was just too much of a gift. ‘Here’s your gun by the way.’ Comanche handed him the rifle.
‘I knows it was there. Is jus too damn heavy to
keep holding it.’
‘Well, you better. ’Cos if Jerry shoot you first, then they come shoot us. Which would make me very mad indeed.’
They went inside the cordon, past the jeeps.
‘Asshole. People just waiting for us niggers to fuck up.’
Frank flinched at that word, same as he did when folks said motherfucker. Both words were common here, flung as hard as any grenade, in the belief that constant exposure inured you.
‘Ever thought of going for promotion, Comanche? You’d make a good corp.’
‘Nope.’
They found Bear and the rest of the squad, sitting round a pile of boots and rifles in lieu of a campfire.
‘Evening, children. You play nice?’
‘We did, sarge.’
‘Mama don’t need to know. Come. Join us. We been telling bedtime stories.’
‘Ain’t no story, sarge,’ said a skinny kid named George. ‘Is history. Was Buffs all way back to the Civil War. The Injun Wars. We was cavalry, man.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Ivan. Always with his hood up. No matter how hot it was, he wore a hooded jerkin under his uniform. Said it kept the flies away. Fact he sweated like a hog probably attracted more bugs than the hood kept at bay.
‘No, Ivan, the boy’s right.’ Bear was rolling a thin cigarette, leather tobacco pouch balanced on his chest. He was clean out of cigars. ‘Your people named us, Comanche. The injuns.’
‘They ain’t my people.’
Bear chuntered on, licking the edge of the paper. ‘On account of our curly hair. Black men been fighting for this nation longer than the Stars and Stripes themselves.’
‘How come, sarge?’
‘The Brits had us battling away for them when we was still their slaves.’
‘Thought you was a Brit, sarge?’
‘Me?’ He spat a piece of tobacco out. ‘Uh-uh. I ain’t no Brit.’
‘Who’s your people then, sarge? What kinda name is McClung?’
‘Ain’t never hearda the Black Irish?’ He struck a match, shielded it with his hand.
‘Irish? Where’s that?’ said Claude.
‘It’s in England. And you don’t get no black faces in England.’
‘Wrong and wrong.’ Bear got his cigarette lit. Puffed on it a few times, made them wait till he was ready. ‘Ireland is in Ireland. The auld country, my grampy called it. Galway, I think. Where his great-great-grandpappy came from.’
‘Ireland, huh?’ Comanche lay back in the dirt, one hand behind his head. ‘So you’re a mongrel too then, sarge?’
‘Sure am.’ He closed the snaps on his tobacco pouch. ‘Yup. We be the healthiest stock, us mongrels.’ The sergeant winked at Comanche. ‘Bedtime now, children. Gotta two-hour snooze before the big boys arrive.’
Several companies had assembled overnight. Tanks and trucks, jeeps and foot soldiers, moving off in the pink glow of daybreak. Some of the infantrymen hitched a ride on the tanks. The whole Italian front flamed into action that day, so the papers said. Frank’s momma told him so in a letter. It was reported they punched a twenty-mile hole through enemy lines. When threatened with encirclement, the Germans had ‘hastily evacuated Pisa’. Neat as that. Shooing the bastards away. Momma sent him the whole clipping, as if she were telling him what really happened:
Negro troops of the 92nd, making their first appearance in battle, stormed up the slopes of Monte Pisano, from whose heights the enemy had lobbed shells into U.S. lines during the long stalemate.
Didn’t feel much like storming to Frank. Felt like crawling naked through glass up a wall of molten rock. Heavy artillery began almost the moment they moved onto Monte Pisano. Shells they’d heard hammering all along their front line, in the background. Blunted. Now they were alive. Tanks only took you so far, then you were on your own. Ordered lines at first, until the thunder started. Thunder louder than the loudest roaring wave, the loudest freight train, a constant barrage of thunder that spewed up the ground as you tried to stand and climb and keep your balance, think tactics, dodge the bullets, the fine line of tracer fire, the mortars, the burp guns – which meant Jerry was close. Those things could burp five hundred rounds a minute at you and you realised that there were, in fact, no tactics, no fear, no sense that made sense except the up and up, slip-scrambling up into the face of the mountain, into where it would hurt the most.
Tramping and stumbling, boots crushing the herbs till they were bitter. A whizz of lighting by his left temple, sweep of bluish-grey; a nest, an arm and flung-back grenade. He steadied himself. One leg anchored high. Took aim as the Jerry’s head poked up from the low ridge above his own head and he pulled the trigger, sweet-sweet-slow. The man’s head snapped back, a look of pure amazement as the skull split red, Frank ducking, the grenade going off in the hand in which it was still being held. Turned to blink the smarting smoke, to yell a joke to George, to stop from upchucking, and there was George, on his back and his leg, and his leg was away, apart and spilling, great gouts of his blood, showering his face.
And the on and the up. The shrilling. The drops.
Frank stopped seeing the men on either side of him; the ones that fell away screaming, the ones that fell quiet. They ceased being comrades; they were shields, targets that saved him every time. And with each brittle step, a little piece of him fell too.
Just the up and the up. Reaction not thought, left and right and up and down, movement, what colour? Who is where and what and up. The smell of burning. Cloaking clouds of dirt and smoke. Screamed orders: UP. And the roar of the thunder and up and the up. That woman’s voice again, mocking them. Offering hot coffee and strudel and the up and the up. An angel voice. Perhaps he was dead? She floated again on crackling air:
‘Your country doesn’t want you, boys. Come here. Lay down your arms and come over where it’s safe.’
Frank fired and fired, randomly towards the voice, which echoed round the mountain. Saw a German gun, swivelling. Tore a grenade from the cluster at his waist and lobbed it. Count of one, count of two, scrunching down as the bodies fly and the on and the up and the stumble, slip, crash, up and the whizz and the zip and the thunder, the fucking thunder but the fucking dame had stopped her yakking and the up, lob, fire, duck and the up, scree, slip, up and duck and the up and the splatter and the up.
And then it was over. The order came to cease firing. They had taken Pisano.
Frank’s legs had no feeling left, his shoulders on fire. The kickback of his rifle had stopped hurting eventually; it had become another pistoning limb, but now he was limp, and aching. Ears singing. He closed his eyes for a minute, the way that woman had done in the whorehouse. But he couldn’t close out the pictures. Of the blood, and the limbs and that split, shocked face.
‘Woo-ee!’ hollered Bear, thumping him on the back. ‘You enjoy that, boy? Alright! Buffs is on a roll. All aboard for Lucca. Lovely Lucca, HERE WE FUCKING COME!’
Chapter Nine
Vita locked the cellar door. If tedeschi came to the Canonica, she’d say she’d lost it. She climbed the back stairs, and a sickening, muffled crunch fell somewhere to earth. Her body gave, that involuntary shrinking small and hard, distancing yourself from rattling stone. Through the back door in time to see plates and bowls on the dresser dance, like you’d chanced on an enchantment.
After a moment, the shaking stopped. Vita spat dust from her mouth, waited for the fluttering in her throat to stop. La Spezia’s distant guns, that drumbeat of daily life, were now accompanied by these crumps and high-pitched whines. Firepower, not aimed at Barga, but – if Mrs Pieri’s sister who laundered shirts for General Kesselring himself was correct – at the Allies, who had broken through, past Pisa. Allied planes were making sieves of the buildings along the railway embankment. From today, the Comune said it was suspending all trains. Buses, delivery vans too. No food supplies, no post, no outside world. No escape. Tough luck if you didn’t want to be in Barga.
The Germans were definitely more jumpy. Groups would mass, drill, then m
ove off; then another squad would go through the same rigmarole; then the first lot would march back and start doing drill again. Their efficiency appeared less oiled. They spent hours in the shadow of the Duomo, singing marching songs, and practising lifting stretchers of grapes into trucks, while kids pointed and laughed. All that waste, fretted Nico, as the grapes tumbled out. She wondered if Joe carried on like that, away in some secret place, with his ambulance pals. Since they’d fought, she hadn’t seen him; nobody had. At least he’d got away in time. Ironic, that, how they’d parted at a crossroads. But it was for the best: each would be better without the other. The drift would happen slowly, like water cooling. They’d become friendly cousins once more, free to suit themselves. Was there such a feeling as happy-sad? Vita’s brain was rusted.
She put the key inside her blouse. Divine providence, for the door knocking began almost immediately. Yesterday, the Germans had taken the last of Mamma’s chickens, and most of Papà’s tools. They were supposed to pay, or give you coupons to take to Lucca. In your imaginary automobile. When you managed to translate them, the coupons said things like ‘Many thanks. Mussolini will pay.’
Damned tedeschi, folk muttered under their breaths, as they smiled and acquiesced. What was the alternative? Ach, the tedeschi weren’t so bad, Mamma said. Yes, they strutted and pilfered, but they were harmless. God, that Hans was addicted to Mamma’s necci, he kept mooching round La Limonaia. Papà said she shouldn’t encourage him and Mamma said he was just a boy, and if people saw boys instead of soldiers, then maybe there would be less hurt in the world, and Papà went quiet.
The Brigate Nere frightened Vita more than the Nazis. There was a vicious zeal about them when they demanded papers, a sense they were sizing you up. Plus, they were Italian boys, so they knew the things to say, the comment that would make you blush, stumble. She tried to ignore them, donning a headscarf, slipping down narrow staircases rather than passing them in the street.
The barghigiani were to carry on ‘as normal’ – that was an order, if normal meant being locked indoors at night, challenged on your way to work. Or having no electricity for days, or the constant, low drone of aircraft, the unremitting flow of military vehicles and more soldiers and more refugees; vast crowds of strangers, sifting and settling.
The Sound of the Hours Page 11
