Private Angelo

by Eric Linklater

  ‘It would be very pleasant if it were,’ said Annunziata, ‘but I do not think we should expect too much from life. – And now we must go back. My baby is very good and sleeps well, but I have left him alone for a long time.’

  As they walked towards the inn she asked him, ‘Are you married now? Your sweetheart, I remember, said that she would not marry you until the war was over. But perhaps she changed her mind?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Angelo, ‘I have now been married for nearly a year, and when I go home again I shall find more people in the house than when I left it. Our son is already two months old.’

  ‘You must be very happy. It is a good thing to have a home.’

  Every evening they walked together, or sat among the little fruit trees that grew behind the inn, and with good food to nourish her body and Angelo’s flattering attention to please her mind, Annunziata became prettier and more cheerful day by day. The innkeeper’s wife said that never in her life before had she seen a brother and a sister so devoted, but the innkeeper himself was increasingly suspicious and took to asking Annunziata certain questions that she found difficult to answer; and of which she made no mention to Angelo.

  His suspicions grew darker as their evening walks became longer, and one night when their return was late indeed he told his wife that he was going to get the truth out of Angelo if he had to squeeze it out of his gullet.

  That evening, as it happened, Angelo had accepted a great responsibility and asserted himself in a very proud and singular manner. He and Annunziata were sitting in a secluded hollow on the shoreward side of the dunes which, along that part of the coast, rise in tufted hillocks above a narrow beach. The night was starless and the sky so dark that the sea was invisible, and the earth no more than a palpable obscurity. There was no wind nor any sound to be heard except the lapse of little waves and the crumbling of the sand beneath their touch; until the silence was broken by Angelo’s inquiring voice.

  ‘Are you, by any chance,’ he asked, ‘behaving like this because you are sorry for me?’

  ‘Dear Angelo,’ she said, ‘of course I am sorry for you. How could I be hard-hearted when you have suffered so, and lost your poor hand –’

  ‘That is enough,’ he said. ‘I refuse to be an object of pity! If, like so many others, you regard your love as the bread of charity, I do not want it.’

  ‘But Angelo –’

  ‘You can do no good by argument. My mind is made up. There is, I am well aware, a widespread belief that because of the war a woman is entitled to be sorry for anyone who takes her fancy. But I do not share that belief. If it became the accepted rule, we should never have peace at all. – No, I am not going to listen. And I am not going to join the breadline for love, either yours or anyone else’s.’

  Annunziata began to cry. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘The gift of understanding is very rare,’ said Angelo coldly.

  ‘I love you because you have been so kind to me. You found me starving, and you helped me. You have been more generous to me than anyone I have ever known. I do not think that anyone has been generous to me before.’

  ‘You are now admitting,’ said Angelo, ‘that our friendship began, not because you were sorry for me, but because I was sorry for you.’

  ‘I know that! Do you not think I am grateful? But because you have been sorry for me, I do not see why you should not love me.’

  ‘But this is a very different state of affairs,’ said Angelo. ‘This alters the situation entirely. – No, wait a minute. I must see to it that the difference is quite clear in your mind. – Do you realize that if we become lovers, it will not be the result of your being sorry for me?’

  ‘That is what you have been saying.’

  ‘But it may well be the result of my being sorry for you?’

  ‘How glad I am that you were!’

  ‘Dear Annunziata! I knew that you could understand if you tried.’

  It was not until they had returned to the inn that Annunziata asked, ‘Will it make you angry if I admit that I still do not see why you had to decide which of us was sorry for the other? What difference did it make?’

  ‘It was a matter of principle,’ said Angelo.

  Before the innkeeper could make up his mind to speak openly of his suspicions, and demand from Angelo the true account of his relations with Annunziata, the military authorities announced that his wound was now healed and he must go and be fitted with a hook, as he desired, and receive his discharge from the army.

  ‘And what will happen to me?’ asked Annunziata with misery in her eyes.

  ‘It is going to be difficult,’ said Angelo, ‘but I dare say I can make her see reason.’

  ‘Whom do you mean?’

  ‘Lucrezia, of course. I shall tell her that as many young women have given hospitality, during the last few years, to lonely soldiers, I feel entitled to give similar hospitality to you, who are certainly as lonely as any soldier I have ever known.’

  ‘I am entirely alone, except for my baby,’ said Annunziata.

  ‘Another baby or two will make very little difference in the house; if, indeed, I have a house to go to, about which I am still in doubt.’

  ‘You are going to take me with you?’

  ‘Had I allowed you to be sorry for me,’ said Angelo, ‘I might have deserted you without compunction. But when I insisted on being sorry for you, I accepted the responsibility for what has passed between us. I can do nothing else. Nor indeed – dear Annunziata! – do I wish to.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  STOOPING TO LOOK into the cradle, Angelo gave a gasp of horror, and turned to Lucrezia a face of consternation and dismay. ‘But he is black!’ he exclaimed. ‘You never told me he was black!’

  ‘Black indeed! Oh, how unfair! He is nothing of the sort. A little dark, I admit –’

  ‘He is a Moor, there is no doubt of it.’

  ‘He is my baby! I suffered a misfortune, you know that as well as I do, and such a thing often leaves an effect. But to say that he is a Moor is too much.’

  ‘Why did you not tell me?’

  ‘Until he was born, how should I know what his complexion was going to be? And after he was born, what could I do to change it?’

  ‘I thought it was my child that you were carrying,’ said Angelo.

  ‘You do not think he resembles you, even a little?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Lucrezia. ‘I should be very happy if he looked like you. But during the war there were very few of us who had the chance to order our lives as we would have liked them to be. We were little better than sheep, and it was only by good fortune that we escaped the butcher. If my baby is too dark for your liking –‘

  ‘He is.’

  ‘That is a vexation, of course, but only one of many that we have suffered. He is one of an infinity of vexations, and it is very sad for him as well as for us.’

  ‘This is not the home-coming that I had looked forward to,’ said Angelo.

  ‘It is not precisely the home-coming that I had expected,’ said Lucrezia, staring with no friendliness in her eyes at Annunziata and her baby.

  ‘His name is Stanislas,’ said Annunziata. ‘His father came from Poland. He had no longer any home to go to, and he was very lonely.’

  ‘So she took pity on him,’ said Angelo.

  Little Tommaso fell off the kitchen table and began to cry; but no one paid much attention except little Stanislas, who made it a duet.

  ‘Oh, I cannot bear it!’ shouted Angelo. ‘What am I but a poor Italian soldier, who has done nothing wrong, unless under orders, and now I am expected to settle down as a married man with three children to care for, one of whom is an Englishman, another a Pole, and the third a Moor! It is too much, I say, and I cannot bear it!’

  He ran out of the house and through the nearby fields in a kind of panic, and did not stop until he had climbed nearly to the crest of the hill opposite Pontefiore, where for about
half an hour he lay exhausted, flat on the ground and staring at the sky. High clouds in the tideless blue were sailing slowly to the east. He watched them until he grew slightly giddy with a sensation that the earth was spinning westward, and then sat up, and with his right hand violently rubbed his face and head, and spoke aloud: ‘But one does not run away. There was a time when I thought that I could always improve my position by leaving it; but that is not so. Even when we are outnumbered it is necessary to stay and return the enemy’s fire. As a man grows older, moreover, the world appears to become smaller, so that every year there are fewer places available for refuge. No, I cannot run away.’

  He let his mind accustom itself to this decision, and then he began to think: I have served in three armies, the Italian, the British, and the German, without wishing to serve in any, and now I have three children, none of which I desired. That is only a coincidence, of course, but coincidences are very interesting and should be useful. They should help to remind us that there are patterns in life, and design in the world, and a purpose in the universe; though God only knows if it is the sort of purpose we should be glad to know about. Even accidents, it may be, are not wholly accidental. – But how I wish that the youngest of my family had not been black! I shall have to call him Otello.

  He looked about him and was enraptured, as so often before, by the rich and mannerly beauty of his country. – Oh, those Englishmen! he thought, remembering a conversation with Simon and two young officers in a wintry village near Alfedena. They loved the desert because it was empty! How incomprehensible they are. For I who adore this land of mine, this Tuscany of the green candles and the terraced hills that are crowned with men’s houses, adore because it is complete. As the little grapes in the valley are sweet already and coloured with their ripeness, so Tuscany wears its bloom and is plump as a young grape with sweetness.

  He said aloud: ‘The land is very ancient, yet summer comes to it with the colour of a new invention. When Rome was but an angry thought, we were civilized and had our arts, and when the world was in its dark despair we woke it with our painting and our poetry and quarrelling. And still our olive trees are silver and green, and the olives grow fat. All the countries have come to us, either to conquer or to learn, in love or envy, and we are still Tuscany, and the grapes are ripening again, and in a little while from now my family – the Englishman, the Marocchino, and the Pole – will drink the vintage and be the better of it.’

  He stood up, and walked to and fro, and declared: ‘It is possible, it even seems probable, that I have a mission. I must demonstrate that all the peoples of the world – or four of them, at least – can make their home together in civilization. I shall bring up these children in such a way that they will have no obsession about their nationality, and that will be a very good thing indeed. For even the best of nations may have a bad influence on its subjects, and human nature being what it is, the majority of its subjects are likely to prefer that to anything else it can offer. But my family will merely retain a sentimental regard for the places where their fathers were born, and sentimentality, which can relieve itself in a song or two and an occasional tear, is an excellent thing.’

  He stopped, and looking towards Pontefiore with a frown, thought: But I must not say anything of this to Lucrezia. If she were to suspect that I have discovered a mission in life, or a theory, let us call it, she would never let me forget it. She would refer to it at the most inconvenient times, and taunt me with it whenever the children happened to spill a bowl of soup on the dinner-table. For women do not approve of theories, but are jealous of them because they take up a man’s attention. Nor do I blame them for that, because when a man’s theory goes wrong it is a woman, of course, who must dry the table and wipe up the soup. – But that does not alter the facts of the case, and so I must remember to be discreet. I must also be firm.

  He sat down again, a little worried by the thought, and exclaimed: ‘This is a time – though the war is over – when I should be very glad of the dono di coraggio. I know exactly what I am going to say to Lucrezia, in the matter of Annunziata, but I do not relish the prospect of saying it. I have a good logical argument, but she has great strength of character and a formidable tongue: can logic prevail against such a combination? Not without courage, I fear. Or shall I use the little blackamoor to support my case? It will be unfair to Lucrezia, poor girl, but the whole situation is unfair to me and we must come to terms in some way. I had better consider our little Otello as part of the bargain.’

  He contemplated his task with some reluctance still, and when a fly stung him on the ankle slapped thoughtlessly at it with his hook and deeply pricked himself. ‘Well, that is a lesson,’ he said. ‘What strength I possess, when a mere gesture can draw blood! I had forgotten how much I have changed since going to the war again. Why should I be frightened of words – even a woman’s words – when I have learnt to endure the screaming of shells and the extraordinary repetition of machine-guns? A moment in which to muster my arguments – and then, andiamo!’

  He rose once more, and shaking his hook at another buzzing fly, set off at a steady pace for the ruined farm where Lucrezia had set up house. The previous tenants, an elderly man and his wife, had both been killed in the bombing of Pontefiore, their sons were either dead or prisoners of war, and their daughters had been carried off by various misfortune. The Countess had given Lucrezia permission to use what remained of the house – the kitchen and one other room were habitable – and promised the farm to Angelo if, on his return, he should want it. It was small and the ground was thin, but it was pleasantly situated.

  When he arrived he found the kitchen full of women. Two of Lucrezia’s sisters were living with her – Lucia, who still had no news of her husband, and a plump noisy girl of sixteen called Simonetta – and several neighbours had already come to make the acquaintance of Annunziata. She and the infant Stanislas were, indeed, the centre of the group.

  Angelo from the doorway spoke coldly. ‘Lucrezia! I have something to say to you.’

  ‘In a little while,’ Lucrezia answered. ‘I am busy at present.’

  ‘No,’ said Angelo, ‘I want to speak to you now.’

  She looked at him again, surprised by the tone of his voice, and for a moment appeared to be on the point of making a brusque refusal. But then she thought better of it, and with tightened lips and an added colour in her cheeks came to the door. The other women, all silent now, watched her with a lively interest.

  ‘Let us go for a little walk,’ said Angelo. ‘Gentle exercise calms the mind, and what I have to say must be considered without prejudice or heat. The fact is, my dear Lucrezia –’

  ‘The fact is,’ interrupted Lucrezia, ‘that you have come home in very strange circumstances, and now are making matters worse by treating me without respect in the presence of my sisters and several of my friends. The fact is that I want to know, immediately and without beating about the bush, what your relations are with Annunziata.’

  ‘Annunziata,’ said Angelo, annoyed that he had been forced into explanation so early, ‘is the daughter of a fisherman, and her husband was killed by the Germans –’

  ‘All that I know. She has already told me her entire history, including her compassion for a Polish soldier named Stanislas, so far as her meeting with you when you were in hospital.’

  ‘That was quite a remarkable coincidence,’ said Angelo.

  ‘Are you her lover?’ demanded Lucrezia.

  ‘I will not be questioned in this way –’

  ‘My God!’ said Lucrezia, ‘if I have not the right to question you on such a matter, I who am your wife, then who has? Here is this woman whom you bring home with you, who has already had a baby by a Polish soldier on whom she took pity, and what I ask is whether you have succeeded the Pole. Has she been sorry for you also?’

  ‘No!’ shouted Angelo. ‘There you are wrong indeed. There you show how little you understand me. It was I who was sorry for her!’

  ‘What!
’ said Lucrezia.

  ‘Sauce for the goose,’ said Angelo, ‘is sauce for the gander. You, some time ago, were sorry for Corporal Trivet, with a result that is likely to be with us for a long time –’

  ‘So you would reproach me, now when we are married, with something that happened when I was a mere girl! I do not call that generous, or even kind of you.’

  ‘I am not reproaching you,’ said Angelo. ‘I am simply stating a fact. And if you were sorry for Corporal Trivet, surely I have an equal right to be sorry for Annunziata?’

  ‘No, no!’ cried Lucrezia. ‘A man cannot be trusted to be reasonable in these matters. A man has no sense of proportion, he is too self-indulgent. But a woman, because of her nature, has a proper responsibility, and I who have once been sorry for a man shall take good care never to be sorry for another.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Angelo, ‘I come home and find that you are the mother, not merely of little Tommaso, but also of a little blackamoor –’

  ‘Was it my fault? Am I to be blamed for that? Oh, but that is truly unfair!’

  ‘It is very unfair indeed,’ said Angelo, ‘but the whole world is grossly unfair and we have to put up with it. Many husbands, perhaps a majority of husbands, would deeply resent the appearance of two little foreigners in their home, whatever might have been the manner of their arrival, and if I take a lenient view of the situation it is not because I like it, but because, whether I like it or not, I love you.’

  ‘That I can well believe!’ said Lucrezia bitterly. ‘To browbeat a woman, to bully and humiliate her, is a well-known sign of love.’

  ‘It may well be,’ said Angelo sadly. ‘For I have loved you so long that my love has become very stubborn, and neither of us, I think, will ever escape from it.’

  ‘But now your love also includes Annunziata.’

  ‘I have already explained my position with regard to her.’

  ‘And if you expect me to be satisfied with that, you are going to be very much disappointed!’