Since the autumn Angelo had been serving in the Cremona Brigade of the new Italian army. He had been toughened and bored and drilled in the use of strange weapons during long weeks of training in the Marches, and in January his Brigade had gone into the line near Ravenna. Slowly the darkness of winter had grown lighter, April had come at last, and now, in what was to be the Eighth Army’s triumphant last battle, Angelo, a troubled particle of its fame, was fighting among the stiff-sided streams of the valley of the Po. Somewhere not far away, invisible between its tall banks, flowed the Santerno. To his right was the highway that runs from Ravenna through Alfonsine to Ferrara. And beyond the dyke that sheltered him, about two hundred yards away, was a German machine-gunner watchful in his muddy embrasure.
But Angelo, for the present, hardly gave him a thought. He had not become indifferent to danger, nor acquired any surprising degree of courage, but the irritable mysticism of discipline, in this new army, had so deeply infected him that often he did not feel afraid for several hours at a stretch; and now his mind, after travelling a little in space and briefly in time, was occupied with one person only, and she was far away.
Pasquale, stooping cautiously, came to join him and offer a crust of bread and a piece of sausage. Pasquale had done well in the Cremona Brigade and was now a sergeant.
‘I was thinking about Lucrezia,’ said Angelo with his mouth full.
‘She must be getting near her time,’ said Pasquale.
‘Very near. It may be today, it may be tomorrow, or perhaps it was yesterday. I should be with her.’
‘There’s nothing a man can do at such a time but look miserable and get in other people’s way. If it’s the first one he goes about snivelling with fear, and if it’s the fourth he grumbles because there’s no one to cook his dinner. That’s all a man can do.’
‘I could comfort her,’ said Angelo.
‘Don’t you believe it. When his wife’s lying-in, his home’s no good to any man, and he’s no good to his home.’
‘She is all alone,’ said Angelo.
‘Except for her mother, and three or four of her sisters, and every woman in the village who can think of an excuse to go along and see what’s happening,’ said Pasquale.
A few hours later they attacked again. The air was full of the wild whistling of passing shells, the earth shook and rose in black fountains. Angelo waited, and because he was no longer alone, but one of many inspired by firm intention and welded by discipline, his fear no longer entered and destroyed him, but only hovered above him like a carrion bird that dares not strike a living man. Then Pasquale spoke. ‘Andiamo!’ he said.
‘Andiamo!’ Angelo repeated, a trifle shrilly, and got up.
He climbed the flood-bank and bullets spat in his ear as they passed him. He splashed across the stream and clambered up the farther bank. Piou, piou! cried the bullets, and shells burst like lions roaring under a cliff.
Angelo ran with his elbows out and his head down. He was dimly aware of the men on either side of him – men who had become his friends – and their presence comforted him. But what he chiefly desired was to reach, as quickly as possible, some place of shelter. The smallest hillock, any meagre protuberance of mud behind which he could lie concealed, would serve his purpose. There, over there, was a little weal of earth and greenery. What bliss to reach it!
Then like a drowning man he gasped in the squall of a near explosion and something hit his left hand so hard that he spun round, facing the other way, and after a wild stumble fell flat upon his face. Fear and indignation, mingled together, poured into his mind. He had been wounded. Oh, what injustice, and ah, what misery! He looked at his hand, and was seized by an overwhelming sorrow for his poor body that had been so mutilated.
It was not long before someone came to help him, and as he returned unsteadily to the flood-banks from which the attack had started, he was surprised to find how near they were. He had been running, he thought, for a long time, but now he perceived that he had gone no more than forty yards before being hit.
He fainted when his wound was dressed, and his first anxiety when he recovered consciousness was for the safety of his wallet. He felt for it, with his good hand, and found it still in his pocket. He took great care of it on his way to hospital, and put it under his pillow as soon as he got to bed.
When he was told that his left hand would have to be amputated, he fell into a profound melancholy that was curiously charged with a feeling of guilt, and for some time he was convinced that the loss of his hand was a deliberate punishment. He could never decide, however, for what he was being punished, because the more deeply he searched his conscience the more sins he discovered, many of them grave indeed, and the innumerable little ones were so wanton that it was difficult to imagine how they had escaped correction for so long. But though justice had been tardy its penalty was severe, and night after night he wept for his cunning fingers and the fingernails that were the shape of almonds, the brown skin and the blanched knuckles, the strong palm calloused by work and scored with inscrutable lines, the sturdy thumb on its plump throne of muscle, and the adept strength by which he could hang from the branch of a tree or gently enclose a girl’s soft arm. A marvellous thing was a hand, and a fearful calamity to lose it. His sin must have been grievous indeed, but still, out of so many that lay upon his conscience, he could not see which was the blackest nor decide for which he had been condemned.
And then, after days of anguished inquiry, it occurred to him one morning that he had been lucky beyond all hope or expectation. There he was, with all the sins in the calendar growing out of him, a vast crop of them every year, like figs fattening in August on an ancient tree, and by some great stroke of mercy he had been punished for only one of them, while hundreds had been ignored, perhaps even forgiven. What a marvellous clemency! He was still alive, and upon the stump of his wrist he could wear a smooth steel hook. A hook flashing in the sun, with which he could hold an ox by the bridle and with a gesture frighten small boys. A hook would be a fine appendage to his arm.
He sat up in bed and declared, ‘Now I am going to get well!’
Almost immediately his health began to improve, and after a few weeks he was sent to a convalescent hospital in a village on the Adriatic coast south of Rimini. He was, he discovered, not very far from Pesaro, where in the service of the Germans, more than a year and a half before, he had helped to demolish a lot of houses. He remembered the officer who had commanded his company, the pale and earnest young man like a student, who had despised the Allies for their inefficiency; and wondered what had become of him. For by now the German army in Italy had surrendered, after its total defeat on the Po and beyond it; and the war was over and the Allies were the victors.
He was returning to hospital one evening, after walking on the pale bright beach, when he observed in the village street a girl with a baby in her arms who was trying to attract the interest of a group of soldiers. Though the soldiers wanted nothing to do with her, she was insistent. She took one of them by the sleeve, but he made an impatient movement and would not look at her. ‘Niente mangiare!’ she was saying.
Angelo, who had stepped off the pavement to avoid them, paused to glance in her direction. ‘Niente mangiare,’ she said again in a piteous voice, and suddenly he realized that he had heard her voice before.
In great confusion he spoke to her. ‘Do you remember me?’ he asked.
She was thinner than she had been, and the childish roundness of her cheeks had become a small sad oval. But her eyes were the larger by contrast, and the new fragility of her wrists was even prettier than the smooth sturdiness of her forearms when, a year and a half before, he had watched her hauling on the sea-wet rope.
She shook her head when he asked again if she remembered, and holding out her hand repeated dully, ‘Niente mangiare.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Angelo, ‘this is a dreadful state of affairs. Well, you had better come with me, for it happens that I know of a place where we can g
et something to eat, and I have plenty of money at present. But I wish you remembered me.’
For a little way she walked beside him in silence, and then she said, ‘You used to come and help us haul the nets. Your name is Angelo.’
‘Of course it is! And you are Annunziata, I recognized you immediately.’
‘You have been wounded?’ she asked.
‘At the battle of the Santerno. We of the Cremona Brigade suffered very heavily,’ said Angelo proudly.
‘Was that where the Poles were fighting?’
‘No, they took Bologna, I think. – But is it true, really quite true, that you and your baby have nothing to eat?’
‘Somebody gave us a meal yesterday, but it was only a little one.’
‘And where is your husband?’
‘He was killed. He was serving with the Tedeschi, and when he tried to escape from them, they shot him.’
‘He was with the Tedeschi when I first met you. Did you never see him again?’
‘No, not after that.’
‘I am very sorry,’ said Angelo, and looked at her and her baby, and deeply sighed. They said no more until they came to a small inn that Angelo sometimes visited when the meals at the hospital were not to his liking. The innkeeper served only those whom he knew, for he never had very much to offer, and what he had had usually been obtained in some clandestine manner. But Angelo, who was very well off with the money he had taken from the dead German, had become a favourite customer, and when he told the innkeeper and his wife that Annunziata was his sister, and the victim of evil circumstance, whom he had encountered in the nick of time, for she was starving – but before he could finish his explanation the innkeeper’s wife had taken charge of the poor girl and her baby, and was bustling to and fro to prepare a meal, while the innkeeper stood watching her, shaking his head, and commenting profoundly on the sad state to which the world had fallen.
They would give her a bed, said the innkeeper, and Angelo could be sure that she would be well looked after. Annunziata said little, for she was too tired even to be surprised by what had happened. Her baby lay in her lap and sucked a thumb. It was a large child, fatter than she, and appeared to be about three or four months old.
When the meal was ready the innkeeper’s wife took the baby and Annunziata pulled her chair to the table. She had been wearing a cotton shawl round her head, and when she took it off Angelo saw that her hair had been cut short. It was no longer than that of a young man who had neglected to go to the barber, and very ragged and untidy. Angelo did not stay much longer, but said he would return in the morning.
In his dreams that night he remembered his first meeting with Annunziata when she and the old fishermen, and their wives and their granddaughters, had been hauling their nets, and Annunziata with her skirts kilted high had leaned on the greenish rope, and little salt-water drops had fallen from it on her plump brown thighs. How pretty she had been! – And how pretty she is! he thought when he saw her in the morning.
Her eyes were bright again, and she had washed her hair and brushed it tidily. The innkeeper’s wife had lent her a clean blouse and a skirt that was too big for her, and her legs were also well washed. She had recovered something of her spirit, and she began to thank Angelo so warmly for his kindness that he had to caution her, when the innkeeper and his wife were out of hearing, against showing too much gratitude. ‘For you are supposed to be my sister,’ he said, ‘and a sister takes a great deal for granted.’
He gave her some money to buy new clothes, and two or three days later they went for a walk together. She tied a kerchief round her head, and said, ‘You will not be ashamed to be seen with me now.’
‘I shall be very proud,’ said Angelo, ‘for though I searched from Rimini to Ancona I do not think I could find a lovelier companion.’
‘If I look well,’ she said, ‘it is due to your kindness. I have never had such nice clothes before.’
She took his wounded arm and said, ‘Oh, your poor hand! It makes me sad to think how you have suffered.’
‘Very soon,’ said Angelo, ‘I shall be wearing a fine steel hook. That will be very distinguished.’
They sat on the beach and looked in silence at the placid sea. Presently Annunziata said, ‘When I asked you if there were any Polish soldiers fighting beside you, in the battle where you were wounded, I was hoping that you might be able to tell me about someone of whom I am very fond. I thought you might have met him. His first name is Stanislas, but I cannot tell you his other name. It was too difficult to say. He is very good-looking, with grey eyes and a dimple in his chin.’
‘No,’ said Angelo, a little sadly. ‘I have never met him.’
‘It is a long time since I have heard from him,’ said Annunziata, ‘and perhaps he has been shot. Then my poor baby will be an orphan.’
‘It is Stanislas who is the father of your baby?’
‘Oh yes, he is already very like Stanislas. If you knew him you would have no doubt about it. And I am not a bad girl, you must not think that. I have never gone with any other man. But when I heard that my husband had been killed my heart was quite broken for a long time, and I became very lonely. And then I met Stanislas, and he also was lonely.’
‘And you were sorry for him,’ said Angelo.
‘Very, very sorry. But how did you know?’
‘It is nearly always so. Women are constantly being sorry for foreign soldiers.’
‘But no one could help being sorry for Stanislas, because he had no home to go to. He came from a city called Lwow – it is very hard to pronounce it – but Lwow is no longer in Poland, for the Russians have taken it, and Stanislas did not want to become a Russian. And I cannot understand why Russia should behave in such a way, for I thought that Poland and Russia were both fighting against Germany.’
‘They were indeed.’
‘And therefore they were on the same side, and surely it is very wicked to rob one’s neighbours.’
‘Hush, hush! You must not say such a thing, Annunziata, not even as a joke. Russia is a very dignified and important nation. She is, moreover, extremely sensitive about her reputation in the world, and any Russian who heard you suggesting that she was capable of robbery would be extremely hurt. You do not understand these things.’
‘Do you?’
‘It is quite certain that the Russians had some good reason for taking Lwow, though it is possible that no one in our position could fully comprehend it. Perhaps they thought they could look after it better than the Poles, and took it away from them, not because they wanted it, but because they felt it to be their duty.’
‘And Stanislas, in consequence, has no home to go to.’
‘We ordinary people always suffer when a great nation develops a sense of duty,’ said Angelo.
‘Even though he may be dead by now,’ said Annunziata, ‘I continue to be sorry for Stanislas. We were so happy together for a little time. He had a very deep voice and a way of saying things, even the most ordinary things, that made you quite sure he had some strong emotion about them. Everything he said sounded impressive, and it was most moving to listen to him. But often, of course, he was extremely unhappy, and then I also had to weep. I suffered in other ways because of my friendship with him. That was why they cut off my hair.’
‘Because of Stanislas?’
‘There were some young men at home who had been Fascists, as everybody knew, but when the situation changed they became Patriots. So naturally they wanted to do something to show that they were now Patriots, and prove their enthusiasm. They told me that it was wrong for an Italian girl to go out with a foreigner, and I must stop it. But by then I knew that I was going to have a baby, so it was too late to stop. And because I was in love with Stanislas I told them to mind their own business. So then they cut off my hair.’
Angelo took her hands and pressed them fiercely. ‘What cruelty! I do not want to think about it.’
‘They were rough with me,’ said Annunziata. ‘We are not all
so good-humoured, we Italians, as we pretend to be.’
‘I am certainly not good-humoured when I think of such hooligans! But how anyone could ever fail to treat you well, I do not understand. Everybody, it seems to me, should want to be kind and tender to you.’
‘Life has by no means been like that,’ said Annunziata.
‘But it should be!’ cried Angelo. ‘I know it should. And why is it not so?’
Private Angelo Page 25
