Private Angelo

by Eric Linklater

  His hands were swollen with the heat. He knelt and cooled them in the goldfish pond, then rising, shook the water from his fingers and squaring his shoulders walked briskly back to the castle.

  In the small garden below the Countess’s drawing-room he stopped, hearing above him voices raised in anger or distress. From the open window, fluttering in its descent, a book flew out, and with it an angry scream. Another book came tumbling through the air, and Schlemmer perceived that both were bound handsomely in white leather. He listened for a moment or two, and then with a pleased smile went in.

  Lieutenant Hofmeister rose from his chair, and the Countess, who had entirely lost her usual composure and was struggling in the grasp of two German soldiers, greeted Schlemmer with the strangest demand. ‘My Ouidas, my Ouidas!’ she exclaimed. ‘For God’s sake, save my Ouidas!’

  ‘I should explain,’ said Hofmeister, ‘that I came in to choose a few books to take with me, and as I read a little English and wanted something light –’

  ‘Light!’ said the Countess. ‘She is a great writer!’

  ‘– I chose these novels by the woman who called herself Ouida. They are very prettily bound.’

  ‘They are my dearest possession,’ said the Countess.

  ‘That interests me very much,’ said Schlemmer. ‘But why,’ he asked Hofmeister, ‘why did you throw some of them out of the window?’

  ‘That was after she had refused to make me a present of them,’ said Hofmeister. ‘She had the impertinence to snatch one from my hands –’

  ‘I slapped your face!’ said the Countess.

  ‘– so I had her put under restraint, and informed her that as a German officer I had the right to dispose of her property in any way I chose.’

  ‘But naturally,’ said Schlemmer. ‘If, for example, you decided they were subversive, and should be destroyed –’

  ‘Like this,’ said Hormeister, and grasping one of the volumes by its elegant boards, he tore out the pages.

  The Countess whimpered like a child, and tears ran down her cheeks to her quivering mouth. Schlemmer laughed softly and said, ‘I disapprove of female writers. They are an evil influence in the world, they set a bad example, for women should bear children, not books. You had better destroy them all.’

  ‘Let me keep one,’ said Hofmeister, and put Moths in his pocket.

  The small drawing-room was in a state of extreme dishevelment when they left it, but the village piazza, to which they walked together, presented an even stranger appearance; for it was littered with bedclothes, mattresses, and furniture that the soldiers had gathered from the houses of Pontefiore, and were now throwing into a large untidy heap. At nightfall they set fire to the heap, and many of the villagers, beside themselves with rage and despair, came rushing out of their houses in a vain attempt to save their precious goods from the flames. They were quickly driven back, however, when the Germans opened fire on them.

  After the main body had marched away, Lieutenant Peiss remained with a rearguard to blow up the bridge. This he did an hour before sunrise, and was very well pleased with the demolition.

  On the outskirts of the village he noticed, in a small orchard, half a dozen straw beehives. ‘Why should they have honey to eat, when we are going into battle?’ he asked.

  A sergeant grinned, and took from his pocket a box of matches and some old letters. The straw was dry, and the beehives burnt fiercely.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘COME TRISTE LA VITA!’ sighed Lucia, and lifted and stretched her plump brown arms, and opened her wide red mouth in a desolate yawn. The day was hot, and little yellow feathers clung to her fingers and stuck to her wrists. ‘Nothing ever happens,’ she said. ‘Life goes by and leaves us here, alone and idle, without our men and therefore without pleasure or purpose in our existence. Oh, I am so dissatisfied, Lucrezia!’

  She and Lucrezia, her younger sister, had been plucking a pair of hens in the green shade of a great vine that half-covered the wall and overhung the back door of a farmhouse. Beyond the farmyard the ground fell steeply to a narrow glen, and rose again to a round hill like a pudding-basin, but patched with trees and circled by a climbing path that here and there showed white among them. On the other side of the farmhouse was the large, squarely-built mansion of the Noble Lady of Rocca Pipirozzi.

  The Noble Lady had been obliged to give hospitality, some weeks before, to a prolific niece and her seven children who had fled from their own house near Chiusi when the Germans entrenched in its grounds. As the Noble Lady lived in straitened circumstances, the Countess of Pontefiore had come to her help, and to augment her small domestic staff had sent her Lucia and Lucrezia Donati. They had come willingly enough, pleased by the offer of a change of scene, but soon had grown weary of a house duller than they had been accustomed to, and dominated now by a woman with a grievance and her numerous unattractive family. In memory, even so short a memory, Pontefiore and their own overcrowded home acquired a charm and a gaiety they had never, or never fully, appreciated till now. They longed to return, and with a desire sharpened by ennui they yearned for the company of their lovers.

  ‘It is no life at all,’ Lucrezia agreed, and holding up a naked hen she plucked from its loose skin a few remaining pin-feathers. Lucia clasped the other bird in her hands, and leaning forward, stared with mournful eyes at a daydream of her lost husband.

  ‘It is more than a year since Enrico was taken,’ she said, ‘and who knows now whether he is alive or dead?’

  ‘It is ten months since Angelo came home and went away again,’ said Lucrezia, ‘and I do not know whether he – he, my Angelo – is alive or dead.’

  ‘You were not married,’ said Lucia. ‘It is not so bad for you.’

  ‘It is worse for me,’ said Lucrezia, ‘because my nature is more affectionate than yours.’

  ‘You have not so much self-control: that is what you mean, and we know that already.’

  ‘I have so much self-control that often I am astonished at myself.’

  ‘I remember one occasion when you astonished every body.’

  ‘That is the sort of occasion you would remember. But there are other occasions, which may be very numerous indeed, to which no one pays any attention; and they are the very important occasions on which a person conducts herself with virtue and restraint. All that goes quite unnoticed, but if for a moment or two a person is ill-advised in her behaviour, then everybody stares.’

  ‘Enrico’s absence has made no difference at all in my behaviour. I have been strictly faithful to him.’

  ‘Your nature is comparatively cold, Lucia.’

  ‘Well, that is a new discovery! Nobody ever said that before. Enrico never said so, and if anyone should know, it was Enrico.’

  ‘Enrico, it may be, was easily contented.’

  ‘Enrico was a husband that any woman might be proud of. Enrico was a true man –’

  ‘Oh, do not tell me about Enrico! Be quiet, Lucia. I want to think about my Angelo, and how can I do that while you are shouting Enrico, Enrico, Enrico?’

  ‘If I thought he could hear me, I would shout till my throat split in two!’

  They were silent for a little while, and then Lucia cried, ‘I must talk about him to someone! You are so selfish, Lucrezia, that a conversation with you is no pleasure at all. I shall go and talk to Emilia Bigi. She will listen to me, and be glad to listen.’

  ‘Emilia Bigi has never had the chance to learn about men for herself, but only from women who have been deserted or betrayed, and go to her to confide their troubles.’

  ‘She is truly sympathetic!’ Lucia shouted, and without waiting for an answer threw down the hen she had plucked and set off with indignant speed, her short skirt in a flurry above her bare legs and her arms swinging to and fro like a soldier’s. Quickly she disappeared from sight in the narrow glen, then reappeared a few minutes later on the path that girdled the round hill beyond it. Lucrezia watched her – intermittently in view among the farther t
rees – without much interest, and listened with no interest at all to the distant sounds of battle. Somewhere to the east and somewhere to the west the foreign armies were fighting each other. Field-guns were firing, but the explosion of their shells was muffled by intervening hills. Sometimes a machine-gun fired and was answered, as it seemed, by a boy rattling his stick along iron railings. Lucrezia sat in the very midst of war, but the war was not near enough to be frightening, and presently, with her hands folded in her lap and her head drooping, she fell into a light and pleasant sleep.

  She began to dream about a harvest field, and herself cutting with a steady sickle the dry varnished stems of the wheat. Then, quite suddenly, panic took her, for another reaper had seized her hair in mistake for a handful of corn, and was pulling it towards him, ready to cut. She woke with a gasp of fear, and felt indeed the tug of a strong hand. Her head was jerked back, her eyes that were still half-full of the dream saw a familiar face come swiftly down, and her lips that were opening to scream were closed by an imperative warm kiss. The back of the wooden chair on which she was sitting broke with a crack, she tumbled to the pavement, and Angelo came down with her. Brown feathers that had been gathered tidily on a sheet of newspaper were scattered here and there as they lay for a minute in a commotion of mutual embraces. But then they sat up, and Lucrezia stared at Angelo, and cried, ‘No, be still! I want to look at you, I want to be sure it is you. Dear Angelo, in my dream you were going to cut my head off!’

  ‘I like it very well where it is,’ said Angelo. ‘Even in your dreams you should be aware of that. You must be getting morbid, darling Lucrezia, and the only cure for that is to be married. When shall we be married?’

  ‘Oh, soon, quite soon, I think. But first of all tell me how you are, and what you have been doing, and how you came here. Listen! The guns are firing again. Oh, my dear, it must have been dangerous for you to come. Where did you sleep last night?’

  ‘In a cave in the woods not far from Pontefiore. Some men I knew were also sleeping there, and it was from them that I learnt you were here. But if you want to know everything I have done since I last saw you, you will have to listen for a long time, because I have had many adventures.’

  ‘Do not tell me about the adventures, tell me about yourself. Do you still love me, Angelo?’

  Several minutes passed before he was allowed to explain his presence. He had come through the German lines, he said, on a perilous and important mission. No, he had not been alone. An English officer, a Captain Telfer, had come with him, and the manner in which he had first met Captain Telfer, many months before, was extremely interesting. To make his story comprehensible, he suggested, he should really begin at the very beginning –

  ‘There will be time in plenty for that,’ said Lucrezia. ‘We have all our lives before us.’

  ‘Indeed, I hope so,’ said Angelo, ‘though in times like these a long life is by no means certain.’

  ‘Oh, do not be so gloomy when I am full of happiness to see you again. Was it not wonderful, Angelo, that I should be dreaming of you at the very moment when you arrived? Tell me about yourself, tell me everything!’

  ‘That is what I am trying to do, dear Lucrezia.’

  ‘Did you ever dream about me when you were away?’

  ‘Yes, often.’

  Lucrezia moved nearer to him, sighed, and leaned her head against his shoulder. ‘Tell me more,’ she whispered.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Angelo. ‘As I was saying, Captain Telfer and I broke through the German lines in what was undoubtedly a very hazardous enterprise; though I do not wish to boast about it, for we’ – Angelo cleared his throat – ‘we of the Eighth Army do not find it either necessary or seemly to boast about ourselves.’

  Lucrezia disappointingly made no comment, and Angelo continued: ‘I was chosen for this duty because, of course, I know all the country here quite intimately. But I did not know the German dispositions, so we were met by a young Englishman called Corporal Trivet, who escaped from the Germans a long time ago and has been living in Pontefiore. I saw him when I went there last year.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lucrezia.

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Everybody knew him.’

  ‘Was he well liked?’

  ‘By some, yes. There are always certain people who will make much of a stranger.’

  ‘I found him very friendly and agreeable,’ said Angelo.

  ‘By those who came to know him quite well, however, it was agreed that he was shallow and deceitful and incapable of true feeling; as all the English are.’

  ‘Did you, then, meet a lot of Englishmen while I was away?’ asked Angelo.

  But Lucrezia was no longer listening. She was sitting upright and staring with dilated eyes at two figures that had appeared, in a gap among the trees, on the basin-shaped hill in front of them. They were a considerable distance away, but the light fell sharply on them and their costume was distinctive. They wore long hooded cloaks of grey wool.

  ‘Marocchini!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘They are Goums,’ said Angelo. ‘They advance very quickly, and often they arrive in parts of the country where nobody expects them. But you need not be alarmed, they are on our side.’

  ‘Not if you are a woman,’ said Lucrezia; and in fierce words related the legend that these wild irregulars from the Atlas had created for themselves in their swift advance from Ausonia to the bare downs of Siena. They were devils incarnate, she said. Even the Tedeschi dreaded them, and to women they were the personification of all the terrors that walk by night. Her own cheeks grew pale as she spoke, and Angelo was infected by her fear. But he tried to reassure her, and himself as well, by calling attention to the deep shade in which they sat, that would make it difficult if not impossible for the Goums to see them. ‘And look!’ he said, ‘they are moving now, they are going in the opposite direction.’

  ‘Towards the house of Emilia Bigi,’ exclaimed Lucrezia, ‘where Lucia went an hour ago to talk about Enrico her husband.’

  ‘That will do her no harm.’

  ‘It will do her harm enough if she encounters two Marocchini on the way back. Angelo, you must go and warn her!’

  ‘I see no necessity for that.’

  ‘It is my own sister of whom we are talking! Lucia, my sister, is about to be raped, and you do not see the necessity to warn her!’

  ‘You are becoming excited, Lucrezia.’

  ‘In the circumstances that is not unnatural. Would you remain calm and unperturbed if your sister were in immediate danger of being assaulted, outraged, and assassinated?’

  ‘I should first of all ask myself if the danger were real or imaginary.’

  ‘And while you were arguing on this side and that, and never reaching any conclusion, your sister would have been waylaid and maltreated, undone and destroyed!’

  ‘The situation is unlikely to occur,’ said Angelo stiffly, ‘because, as you are well aware, I have no sister.’

  ‘But I have, and already she may be in the clutches of the Marocchini. You must go and rescue her, Angelo!’

  She rose and dragged him to his feet, and as he felt in the strength of her grasp the intensity of her emotion, Angelo’s heart began to beat with uncomfortable speed. Nervously he exclaimed, ‘But you do not understand! The Goums are, it is true, our allies, and they have many good qualities. But they are sensitive people, they are easily offended. If I were to interfere with two men who are merely taking a quiet walk in the country, they would of course feel insulted.’

  ‘You are afraid of them,’ said Lucrezia.

  ‘That is not the point.’

  ‘You who belong to the Ottawa Armata, who boast about your Eighth Army, are afraid of two poor ignorant Marocchini.’

  ‘They are very redoubtable, everybody knows that.’

  ‘You carry a revolver at your belt, and yet you are afraid. You are no use to me, Angelo.’

  ‘If it were possible to gather a party, a fairly large party –’
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  ‘There is no one here but old women and children. The men have all gone.’

  With a pitiable expression and a stammer beyond control, Angelo said, ‘You know that I have a certain weakness. I have never tried to conceal or deny it, and all my friends are well aware of it. Many people possess the dono di coraggio in great measure, and never pause to think how fortunate they are. But I, who was born without it, know that life can be very miserable to those who lack it.’

  ‘I am not thinking about your misery, but about Lucia’s,’ cried Lucrezia. ‘If you want to stay here and pity yourself while Lucia is being ravished and strangled, you can do so. But do not ask me to stay beside you, and never ask me again to listen to your adventures, which I should not have believed in any case. – I give you a last chance: will you go and rescue her?’

  Angelo hung his head and whispered, ‘What you said is quite true. I am afraid.’

  ‘Then give me your revolver,’ said Lucrezia, and beating down his protesting hands she seized him by the belt, unfastened the holster, and took out the pistol. ‘If you will not go, I must,’ she exclaimed, and ran across the farmyard and down into the narrow glen.

  Angelo followed her, crying breathlessly, ‘No, no, you must not! You must not, Lucrezia. Those men are dangerous, you do not realize how dangerous they are!’

  Lucrezia made no reply, but roughly pushed him away when he tried to hold her, and with swift steps climbed out of the glen and strode resolutely over the rising ground beyond it. They passed through a belt of woodland, Angelo at her heels still begging her to return, and came out on the path that ran upward round the side of the basin-shaped hill.

  Now Lucrezia’s pace grew a little slower, and when Angelo pleaded with her yet again to think of the danger she was inviting, she answered not unkindly, ‘It may be dangerous for you also. I thought you were too much afraid to come.’