‘That could not hurt you very deeply,’ said Angelo.
‘It hurt me bitterly,’ said the Count. ‘True, I did not feel the hurt until a few days ago, when I came into Rome, a refugee. I entered with some forty or fifty companions, expelled from their houses because the Germans were going to blow them up or fortify them. – I do not know which, and it would make very little difference in the long run. – I came back to Rome, I tell you, and discovered that after the announcement of my death my property had been seized and my furniture sold. I am a homeless pauper, Angelo! And because I am dead, I cannot even complain!’
They discussed this lamentable predicament for some time, and then the Count, with a flyaway motion of his fingers and the politest affectation of a yawn, dismissed his own affairs as being of small interest, and commanded Angelo to tell his adventures. These he listened to with close attention, and having sympathized with Angelo for the hardships he had endured, congratulated him most warmly on the success with which he had survived them.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘let us go to lunch.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
LORENZO, THE Count’s butler, disliked having to serve a dead man. He held the dish of spaghetti at arm’s length, and shook his head with timorous disapproval when the Count asked for wine.
The Germans had told him that his master had been shot, and never had he dared question anything which they said. He had discussed the tragedy long and lugubriously with his friends, and then put the Count away in a cupboard of his memory that he kept for those who had met a violent end. He had watched the removal of the furniture and the formal closure of the house, and no doubt remained in his mind – such as it was – that he had finished with the Count forever. He himself suffered no inconvenience, for he had been left in possession of his own quarters, at the back of the house, as a caretaker.
When the Count appeared and demanded to know what had happened, Lorenzo had been frightened out of the few wits he possessed, and had it not been for Giulia his wife the Count would have fared poorly. But Giulia had welcomed him with tears of joy and a bustle of preparation for his comfort. She had put clean sheets on her bed and contrived a shakedown in a sort of cupboard for herself and her husband; on which Lorenzo used to lie and shiver to think of the ghostly visitor in the room beyond. The Count enjoyed whatever amenities could be provided in so humble an abode, and, as he told Angelo, he had no scruple about enjoying them; for Lorenzo, despite his stupidity, had robbed him right and left for years.
It was late in the afternoon, after the Count had slept for an hour or two, when Giulia came in to tell them that if they wanted to hear Papa they had better hurry. It was half-past five, she said, and at six o’clock the Holy Father was going to speak to his people, who were now gathering like a swarm of bees, like twenty swarms and many of them carrying banners as well, in St Peter’s Square.
Immediately the Count was in a great hurry to go, for not only was he in a fine mood for thanksgiving, he said, but the Pope would assuredly give them his blessing, and in his present state he was in urgent need of benediction. So he and Angelo became part of the multitude that was going from every direction to St Peter’s. So vast a number of people filled the roads that it seemed as if, not Rome, but all the world was on its way, and in the din of voices there was high expectancy, and the host of faces of every sort and shape and variety all wore a look of exhilaration.
‘These Romans,’ said the Count complacently, ‘are a very wicked people, as most people are, and extremely proud. But every now and then they reveal their faith with a simplicity that is pure as a child’s. You may have noticed that although they have been applauding the Americans with great good will, there has been a certain reserve in their manner? They threw flowers in plenty, but they did not throw their hearts as well. They are Romans, and Rome has seen many conquering armies and the concluding act of many well-performed historical dramas. They recognize the Americans as accomplished actors, and they give them the plaudits due to actors. But not for a moment do they believe that either the Americans or the English wrote the play. No, indeed! And that is why they have been saving their enthusiasm, and why they are going to show it now. For now they are going to shout for the author.’
They arrived at the far end of the Square as the bells began to ring, and though they were a great distance from St Peter’s still, even far from the enfolding colonnades, they could make little more progress, for in front of them was such a host of people, tightly crammed together, as they had never seen before. They were indeed carried slowly forward before the impetus of some thirty, forty, or fifty thousand late arrivals, but their further movement was involuntary. They became a little part of the crowd, and moved with it or not at all.
Two diminished beings came out of a window high on the broad face of the Church, and hung from a balcony a large crimson carpet with a dove embroidered at the centre. With six reverberant strokes the hour was struck and the white figure of the Pope appeared on the balcony with a pair of attendant officers. Wave after wave of prodigious cheering rolled across the Square and broke upon the Church, and such was the turbulence of waving arms and shaken banners that it seemed as though a great gale had instantly burst from the sky and set all those hands to frantic motion like the leaves of a vast forest. Then, as suddenly as it had broken, the gale was stilled, the whole level of the Square subsided, and the huge crowd knelt.
Amplifiers gave the Pope’s voice a more than human power, and every phrase came clear and resonant from the mouth of a trumpet. He offered thanks for the safety of the City, and commanded the Romans to show themselves worthy of the grace they had received. ‘Shape your lives to the gravity of this hour,’ he said. ‘Cease from discord. Lift up your hearts!’
The gale of applause broke again, and roared for several minutes. The Pope returned to the balcony and waved a white-winged arm. The applause was renewed.
‘What did I tell you?’ demanded the Count. ‘Rome has been saved, and who did it? You can’t deceive the Romans!’ And cupping his hands to his lips he shouted, ‘Author! Author!’
The Pope returned, and lifted both his wings.
Nobody was in a hurry to leave the Square. The crowd made little effort to disperse, and no one tried to disperse it, but very gradually it melted. Parts of it, in the process, piled-up on other portions like ice-floes in a river when the thaw has begun. Among the many tens of thousands of people there were hundreds of vehicles, of all sorts from horse-drawn market-gardeners’ wagons to scout-cars of the Fifth Army, and when the outward movement began these were quickly boarded by pedestrians, most of them young women. Jeeps that began the afternoon with a load of four doughboys now carried in addition half a dozen well-grown girls and a couple of little brothers belonging to one or other of them. Drivers endeavoured to steer through the crowd with a girl on either knee and a prancing young man on the bonnet waving an ensign big enough for a battleship. Old men, bewildered but happy, found snug seats on the wings of a staff-car, and stout women, squawking like delighted geese, were hauled into troop-carriers. Flagstaffs were thrust into unprotesting faces, children were rescued from a thousand deaths, everybody was shouting or singing, and not an inch of soldiers’ khaki but had about it a soft foliage of printed cotton, white linen, or flowering silk.
With an arm of prodigious strength an American sergeant saved the Count from the wheels of a command-car. Angelo, tightly confined by the crowd, saw Simon’s troop some twenty yards away, their two vehicles so packed with nubile girls that they looked like haywains loaded with apple-blossom. Another American handed the Count a large cigar. Angelo kissed a girl who had just been given a drink by a corporal from Minnesota, and a moment later was embraced by another whose mouth was full of chewing-gum, the gift of an ammunition-number from Rhode Island. The Count was riding on a guntractor with a long lad from Arizona who was inviting him to come and visit the Double L Ranch near Tucson. Nobody cared if the traffic jam should last all night. Papa had said, ‘Lift
up your hearts!’ and their hearts were glad.
An hour later, walking idly in a street that was but thinly peopled, the Count said, ‘This is the temper in which all the world should live for ever.’
‘That would be most agreeable,’ said Angelo.
‘Our besetting sin, as I discovered in my darkest hour, is hardness of heart. Take off, my dear Angelo, the tough and leathery jacket, like a bull’s hide, that encloses your natural heart.’
‘I do not think it has any such covering,’ said Angelo. ‘I have often wished for some protection of that nature, but all in vain.’
‘You are fortunate,’ said the Count. ‘If your heart is tender, and naked to every pinprick and every joy, then you are truly fortunate.’
‘It is a new way of looking at things,’ said Angelo with doubt in his voice.
A little while later the Count said, ‘I should like to invite some three or four hundred of these charming Americans to my house, and give them a party.’
‘All your doors are locked,’ said Angelo.
‘We could break them open.’
‘But your rooms are unfurnished.’
‘That is true, unhappily. But would it matter?’
‘You have no food or wine to offer them.’
‘No,’ said the Count with sudden melancholy, ‘I have nothing. How miserable it is to have nothing for one’s friends.’
Angelo was silent, and the Count said, ‘You are not very sympathetic tonight.’
‘I am thinking of Lucrezia,’ said Angelo. ‘If she were here to share our happiness, I should be happy indeed, and I might be tolerably happy if only I could forget her. There was a girl in the crowd who pleased me very much, and I was getting on well with her till I remembered Lucrezia. And then I let her go.’
‘To be in love,’ said the Count, ‘is to suffer a perpetual torment for the sake of relieving it, from time to time, with a dab of delicious ointment. It is a ridiculous state of affairs, and the only cure for it is to grow old. But you have to grow very old.’
On the next day Rome had returned to its normal mood, and to some approximation of its normal conditions. The shops were open, a few tramcars were running, and the Army of Liberation had become merely the latest of the many armies which, in the long course of its history, had entered the city for some purpose of their own. Those who had anything for sale, be it a fountain-pen or their person, were still attentive to the foreign soldiers, but clearly regarded them as heaven-sent customers rather than divinely inspired liberators. The solid citizens went about their business, intent upon their own affairs, and charming girls in summer frocks rode their bicycles uphill and down with never a glance for the perspiring soldiers who had come to their rescue. Only the Count was still faithful to them.
All morning he and Angelo walked in the principal streets for no other purpose than to enjoy the spectacle of the relieving soldiery in holiday temper. Nine out of ten were Americans, but here and there was a little group of English or Scots from the bridgehead in Anzio. The Count was disappointed in the British, who went to and fro without displaying any emotion at all. They looked at the Colosseum and agreed that a lot of work must have gone into the building of it. They stared dubiously at the well-supplied shop-windows, and said that Rome couldn’t have known there was a war on. They said that St Peter’s reminded them of St Paul’s.
The Count wasted little time on the British, but courted American society with ever-growing pleasure. Britannic phlegm and Roman indifference had no diminishing effect on the exuberance of the Americans, who paraded the streets with boisterous enthusiasm or sat upon the pavements with endearing familiarity and offered conversation to everyone who passed, but especially to young females.
‘They are all so friendly,’ declared the Count, as two lieutenants stopped their jeep beside a couple of girls and invited them to come for a ride. ‘And what boundless hospitality they offer!’
‘See how confidently they make themselves at home,’ he said, a little while later, and pointed to three privates who, with their backs to a shop-window, were sitting comfortably on a pavement in the Piazza Barberini. ‘Truly they are citizens of the world who can make themselves at home wherever they go. And how full of fun they are,’ he added as the nearest soldier seized the ankle of a young matron who was rash enough to pass within arm’s reach. ‘What did he say to her, Angelo?’
‘He said, “Hiya, toots”.’
‘Hiya, toots,’ repeated the Count. ‘I like that. It is the felicitous expression of a young people who are making their own language, and making poetry of it. It is brisk as a challenge, yet genial and democratic. Yes, I like it.’
An acquaintance of his own walked by: a tall lady in black with a long grey face and heavy eyelids. ‘Hiya, toots,’ said the Count.
‘But look at him!’ he went on, pointing to a thickset doughboy with a truculent expression who stood upon the edge of the pavement. On his left breast he wore several ribbons and some brooches, and from each of his hip-pockets protruded a bottle of wine. ‘Now he,’ said the Count, ‘is quite obviously a man of sterling character and wide experience. To carry one bottle shows forethought, to carry two indicates hospitality. One for himself and one for his friend: yes, you can say with certainty that he is both provident and generous.’
An impudent little boy approached the doughboy with outstretched hand. ‘Niente sigaretti!’ shouted the doughboy. ‘Niente caramelli, niente biscotti! Via!’
‘Oh, the poor fellow!’ said the Count, ‘he has given away everything he possessed.’ And with a smile of understanding he offered a packet of cigarettes that he himself had recently acquired.
‘Aw, nuts,’ said the doughboy, and pushed him on to the road, where he narrowly escaped being run over by an amphibious jeep that came at great speed round the corner from the Via Vittorio Veneto. It was driven by an enormous negro who wore a pair of white-rimmed sunspectacles and was smoking a cigar. He drove his curious vehicle twice round the square, and then, still at high speed, disappeared down the Via Tritone.
‘Their vitality is amazing,’ said the Count. ‘Quite, quite amazing.’
They walked slowly on, up the tree-lined curving street, but turned to the left before they reached the Pincio gate. Outside an hotel were some twenty military cars, of various kinds, and in the doorway stood a group of officers, talking. They were British, and Angelo, suddenly exclaiming, ran across the street and with a delighted smile saluted one of them with the characteristic high-handed gesture he had learnt in Force 69.
‘And where have you been?’ asked Simon. ‘Did the cow give you a good ride?’
‘It was an ox,’ said Angelo, ‘and quite uncontrollable. I had to ride it for many miles in the most horrible discomfort. I am still a mass of bruises.’
‘Well,’ said Simon, ‘you’ve turned up at the proper time. We are going south again tomorrow, and you can come with me if you like. I found a jeep that had no visible owner, and I am using it.’
‘I should like to introduce,’ said Angelo, ‘the Count Piccologrando of Pontefiore.’
For a few minutes the Count and Simon exchanged small talk and compliments, but their conversation developed no warmth, and the Count’s attention visibly wandered when a large car went by filled to overflowing with American soldiers and self-assured young women of the town. In his festival mood the British were no good to him. He still desired American company, and declining Simon’s invitation to lunch he walked briskly down the Via Francesco Crispi towards more populous streets where he would be certain of meeting, in large numbers, the New World’s uninhibited defenders.
Angelo came running after him. ‘You understand,’ he said, ‘that I am bound to go with Captain Telfer? I am in British service now.’
‘Have no qualms,’ said the Count. ‘You can leave me here in the assurance that I shall fare well and find a sufficiency of friends.’
‘I dare say the Marchesa Dolce will soon be returning.’
‘She is in
Rome now. She came back a month ago, but she is indisposed. In her rustic exile she put on a little weight, and until her masseuse has restored her to her customary proportions she does not care to be seen.’
Standing in front of a jeweller’s shop two khaki-clad girls were seriously inspecting the display in the window. ‘Look!’ said the Count in sudden excitement. ‘They are Americans! American women!’
‘I think they are nurses,’ said Angelo.
One of them walked slowly on, the other lingered. With a quick handclasp the Count said good-bye to Angelo, and approached her. He bowed with the grace of an older world. ‘Hiya, toots,’ he said.
Angelo sighed and went to look for a sergeant of Simon’s troop whom he had been told to find. He tried to console his loneliness by thinking of Lucrezia, but with indifferent success.
In the morning he and Simon drove out of Rome by the Via Appia and they soon began to overtake the slow traffic of returning refugees. Nearly all carried heavy loads and were bent beneath their burdens; but some were remarkably cheerful. They were going home, and few of them yet knew what had happened to their homes.
The pleasant little towns along the Appian Way had suffered, quite suddenly, such a change in their appearance as could only have been effected – without the help of science – by long eras of disaster. Our age of steel and explosives had shown itself very like the Ice Age in its ability to alter the face of a landscape, create lacunae, and remove excrescences. Wedding-chamber and warm kitchen, the smithy and the grocer’s shop and the notary’s office had been reduced to rags and dusty rubble by a stick of bombs that caught the sunlight as they fell. With a huff and a puff the metallurgist and the chemist had blown away the long toil of many simple masons, and whole families who had spent their arduous and patient years in the growing of corn and wine had vanished in a little acrid smoke. A bridge that had served a thousand needs, and many thousand brisk and busy people, and filled its valley with arcs of beauty and proud columns, had been demolished with boisterous success by a cartload of guncotton … Of all the triumphs that had marched the Appian Way none had so spaciously shown the enormity of human power as this great spectacle of destruction; and the pity was that the refugees could not appreciate it as it deserved. The refugees were unimpressed by the march and the majesty of science. They were thinking only about their homes. Tired as they were, and stumbling under their burdens, they hurried on towards their abandoned villages with hope in their straining muscles, hope in their bright eyes. And when they came to their villages they sat down and wept.
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