by Jane Smiley
The next day, they turned left. Frank didn’t know why they turned left, but thought that it was probably, once again, the scarcity of maps. And the rest had done him good. Yes, there was fighting, and Cornhill was injured again, this time shot in the shoulder, so he had to be evacuated. Frank was grazed by a fragment of a grenade; it stung his ear and dinged his helmet. But the Jerries started to evaporate for the first time that Frank had seen, and on a lovely day in June, they marched into Rome. It was very quiet that first day, but the second morning, they woke up surrounded by Italians, and Ruben was talking with them a mile a minute.
THE FIRST GENERAL Frank saw who he thought had any sense was General Devers, and part of the reason Frank liked him was that he oversaw Frank’s removal to the south of France. But first they had to gather in Corsica. Corsica was mountainous—as mountainous as Monte Cassino—but there were no Jerries trenched into the peaks and ridges, and at the foot of the mountains were beaches and blue sea. So far, in his war, Frank hadn’t cared much for water; every crossing since the one from New York had been harrowing. From Tunisia to Sicily, storms of wind and waves had had him huddling against the side of the transport, trying not to die. The rivers by Monte Cassino were the wildest he had ever seen (but, then, he had only seen the Iowa, which sometimes rose in the spring, only to spread very gently over adjacent fields). The Rapido had been bad enough; the Garigliano, he had been told by troops in the Thirty-sixth Infantry, made the Rapido look like a trout stream in Wisconsin.
The roads overlooking the beaches on Corsica were very elegant and edged by sedate palm trees, under which, in the cool of the evening, whores congregated before their night’s work.
Italian whores looked rather different from Illinois whores—younger, older, more desperate, more jaded, and more frightened—and it was a long time before Frank made up his mind to go home with one. They seemed not to live respectably in brothels, but to have rooms and work for themselves. As always, the whores liked him. He was tall, he had put on muscle, and maybe he didn’t look twenty-four. Maybe he looked older than that now. He could see in the mirror when he shaved that his eyes were more deeply sunk and bluer, and his cheekbones were more prominent. His nose, too, had changed—had beaked a little. When he walked down the street under the palms, some of the whores shouted, “Hey! Signor Flynn, Look this way! Hey, hey!” He hadn’t thought he looked like Errol Flynn—Minnie had said Joel McCrae (and Eunice had said the devil himself). You weren’t supposed to be flattered by whores, but he was.
Still, he didn’t get around to taking up with one until a few days before they were to set out for Saint-Tropez. Why this girl and not any of the others, why tonight and not any of the previous nights—well, there was no reason for any of it. He had money in his pocket, and an unopened pack of cigarettes, and there was a tall dark-haired girl lounging on the parapet by herself, and he just went over to her and made a gesture with his fingers to his lips, as if he were looking for a smoke. She shook her head, then shrugged and made a sad face. She said, “No, don’t got. Sorry.”
Frank put his hand inside his jacket and brought out the fags. She smiled and nodded, so he ripped off the cellophane and handed her the packet. She tapped its edge on the parapet, took one for herself, and offered him one. He said, “No, don’t smoke,” and made a face. “You keep them.” Now she laughed. Cigarettes were worth money. She put her arm in his and led him down the promenade. Looking at her face against the background of the bright water and the fading sky, he guessed she was his age. At the end of the promenade, she turned down a side street and then led him to a door. When she opened it, he held back, and she said, “No, you come. You come, Signor Flynn.”
Her room was hardly a closet—maybe it wasn’t the room she actually lived in. There was only a sink, a bed, a very small window, and a coat rack. She took his hand and drew him through the doorway, then closed the door. She said, “Parli italiano? Parlez-vous français?”
Frank shook his head.
She said, “Okay. Okay!” Then she patted his pocket. He pulled out his wallet and threw some money on the bed. She looked at it for a moment, then extracted the ten-dollar bill. She said, “Okay?” Frank nodded, and picked up the rest of the money. When he put his wallet back in his pocket, she put her hand on his cock, which had not yet hardened, but at her touch it began to. She rubbed it a couple of times, and it swelled some more. Frank felt his face get hot. He couldn’t help thinking of Eunice. Eunice was the last girl he’d fucked. At the end of the Africa campaign, they’d had leave in Tunis, but they had been sternly warned to stay away from the women in Tunis—the whores, they were told, all had the clap, and the other women all had male relatives, “which is worse than the clap.” Since Sicily, there had been no opportunities, and hardly any days off. Once again, for the millionth time, he ordered Eunice out of his head. He looked out the tiny window, and sure enough, there was no room for Eunice against the stone walls or athwart the strip of sky, sea, and mountain that was visible. He let out the breath he had been holding in.
He said, “Nome?” He knew that was the word for “name.”
“Ah,” she said, “Missss Joan!” She pronounced the “J” like “ch.” Frank said, “Joan Fontaine?” and the whore nodded. Frank said, “Rebecca?”
“Non.”
“Gunga Din?”
“Sì!”
“So—we are Errol Flynn and Joan Fontaine?”
The whore nodded eagerly. Frank laughed and said, “Well, let’s make a movie.” Then she did something Frank knew that whores never did: she traced his lips with her fingertip, and kissed him. It was a kind gesture, and made his cock go limp at once.
But she was good-natured, if not terribly pretty, and he was beginning to feel comfortable. He took off his shoes and sat down on the bed, then leaned back against the wall, which was painted a blue color that coordinated with the sky, and put his hands behind his head. He took another deep breath. The whore pulled out the pack of cigarettes, counted them, took out a second one, and lit it. She sat down on the end of the bed. Frank watched her smoke the cigarette—she seemed to enjoy it very much, taking the smoke deep into her lungs, and then breathing it out through her nose. Yes, she was thin. Her blouse hung on her shoulders, and the waist of her skirt gapped, but her breasts were full, and her calves, too. She wasn’t wearing hose; she had drawn seams up the backs of her legs. Frank wondered how many cigarettes equaled a meal. She took another drag. It was a pleasure to watch her. He wiggled his toes, and then she put her hand around his left foot and began stroking the instep with her thumb. Frank had never felt such a thing before. Her thumb moved forward to the ball of his foot, then to the toes. It was relaxing. It almost made him forget what he was there for. His eyes closed.
He felt her weight on the end of the bed shift, and he heard her stub out her cigarette. Only then did her hand begin to move up his ankle, underneath the cuff of his pants. She pushed down the ribbing of his sock, and tickled his ankle, then moved upward to the base of his calf for a minute or two, until his pant leg prevented her from going further. Then she started on the other foot, but she took his sock off first. Frank kept his eyes closed. His cock lay quiet, uninterested. As soon as he noticed his cock, he ordered Eunice to get away from him. He kept his eyes closed. His right leg was now as relaxed as his left. The bed was small. The room was small, the building was small. The town was small. The island was small, and divided from the torture of Europe and the pillage of Africa by a deep sea. In American schools, in Iowa schools, they didn’t study Corsica. He knew nothing about Corsica except what he had seen, and that wasn’t much. He was Errol Flynn. She was Joan Fontaine. That was maybe the essence of his relaxation.
Frank didn’t know that he had fallen asleep until he woke up suddenly. The sun was gone from the window, meaning that hours had passed. The room was cool, too. The first thing he did, in something of a panic, was reach for his wallet. It wasn’t there. He opened his eyes with a groan, only to see the whore sittin
g on the bed beside him. She held out his wallet. He took it and opened it. All the money was there. Frank licked his lips, a little ashamed of his suspicions, and the girl smiled, and then lay down next to him. She stretched her body along his, foot to foot, hip to hip, torso to torso. The top of her head came to about his nose, and she rested it on his chest. She undid his fly. There it was again, so unresponsive, his cock. And yet it was. She tickled it and then stroked it, and it popped, and the moment he realized that he wanted her, she knelt up beside him, slipped a condom over his erection, lifted her skirt, and sat down on him. Her hands were on his shoulders. She began to move, and then she began to undo the buttons of her blouse.
Some things were not comfortable—he could feel a broken bedspring in the small of his back, and his head hit the wall two or three times—but his cock, in the center of things, was utterly alive, reaching here and there inside her, feeling something like a wall and something like an edge, and something like a hollow—the whole anatomy of her. She squeezed him; he had never felt that before; it was like an embrace. Once she had her bra off, she brought her hands back to his chest, and then, just as he sensed he was about to come, she reached behind herself and tickled his balls. He arched his back and shot into her. He could feel the condom fill and his own semen ooze around the head of his dick. He might have cried out.
It was only now that he recognized how experienced she was—she tilted to the side and rolled him on top of her without letting him come out, then eased off of him so that the condom remained in place. She was good at it. Finally, she got up, disposed of the condom, and washed her hands. The last thing she did was lean over him and smooth his hair off his forehead. No one had done that since he was sick in bed with a virus and his mother was feeling his head for a fever. She handed him a wet towel. It looked clean enough.
Frank wasn’t very graceful about leaving her at the same spot where he’d found her. It was late now, after ten. They’d been together for six hours or more, which Frank knew was bad business for a whore, or, yes, a puttana—that’s what they were called in Italy. He actually tried to kiss her, which some other whores standing around laughed at. She put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him away, though gently. After that, he turned right around and walked away, so as not to see other men approaching her. He had never felt jealous before.
He came back the next day and the next, but she wasn’t there. The fourth day, they embarked for Saint-Tropez. On the boat, he listened to Ruben, Hernandez, and Sergeant Koch talk about the whores they had done in Corsica—they expected better ones in France, though Ruben had enjoyed one of his four especially, he called her “the Laugher.” She had let him tie her up, and giggled the whole time. One of Hernandez’s whores had seen his cock and asked him if he was “un nègre.”
When they got to France, he also didn’t know where the Germans were, but there were plenty of Yanks and plenty of Frenchmen. The day was sunny. Cruisers and destroyers were everywhere, and Frank counted seven aircraft carriers. The planes made patterns as if they were in air shows. The commando raiders had done their jobs. The paratroopers fell from the sky, and even the gliders came floating in. Frank and his squad marched down the ramps of the transports and into the warm, calm water, which hit them about mid-thigh. They splashed onto the beach and spread out. And then they ran inland, and a day later they were all the way to Le Muy.
WHEN THEY GOT TO the Rhine, three months after Saint-Tropez, Frank was a little surprised at how narrow it was. There were rivers and streams all around Strasbourg, and plenty to look at in the town, even though the Allies had bombed it over and over, and the Germans had burned what they could, but the Rhine itself was narrow and flat, neatly confined between built-up banks on both sides, and with quaint old bridges that ran across it. The Germans on the other side were quiet, and Frank suspected typical Jerry treachery—they would be as quiet as rabbits until they had the GIs in their sights, and then they would open fire with everything they had. But Ruben was ready, and Cornhill, who was back in the unit, was, too. They got to the bridge at midnight—an elaborate stone construction—and, step by nervous step, they made their way across. It didn’t take long, and there seemed to be no sentries in the German pillboxes they could easily see—even more suspicious. Private Ruben was practically capering by the time he set foot on German soil, but he was short and hard to shoot; Frank didn’t know if his immunity was due to quickness, small size, or nothing at all. Frank and Private Cornhill were more cautious, but there continued to be no response. Private Cornhill whispered, “Think they’re all passed out, Corporal?”
“We’re lucky if they are, Private.”
They caught up with Private Ruben, and the three of them squatted down and duck-walked toward the first pillbox, taking cover in darkness, frozen weeds, and a line of leafless trees. When they got right up to it, Private Ruben took out two grenades, but he didn’t pull the pins.
Which was a good thing, because the pillbox was empty and cold. It looked like there hadn’t been a soul in there for weeks, if ever. There wasn’t even a shell casing or a piece of paper lying around. The Jerries had certainly cleaned up after themselves when they left.
An hour later, they had gone to the next one, which was a hundred yards up the river. No one and nothing there, either. When they walked back toward the bridge, they just strolled along, standing upright, sometimes trotting because of the cold, but never taking precautions—it was the ultimate test. They would get shot if there were anyone at all around to shoot them.
All the patrols reported the same thing—no one. And as the artillery and the engineers and the rest of the Seventh Army massed behind them, Frank began to get excited—Germany tomorrow, Berlin soon after that. It was the end of November. Three years of war was plenty.
By midmorning, when Frank woke up from his snooze, the invasion was ready; the Rhine was theirs. General Devers, inspecting their formations, looked eager. Frank didn’t know why the general had been assigned to take his army into the Riviera, and then march it up the Rhone, with only enough action (at least compared with Italy) to keep them sharp. They waited.
The next afternoon, when all the men had found out that they were not going, that Eisenhower himself had refused to let them go, they had several explanations. Cornhill’s was that Ike must know that there was a big force of Germans awaiting them in the backcountry across the river—it would be like the Kasserine Pass; maybe Rommel himself was there.
“Rommel is dead,” said Frank.
“Do you really believe that?” said Cornhill. “I don’t. That’s obviously a trick. Ike is being cautious, and he should be.”
Ruben took another view, that Ike was so shit-scared of the Germans that he couldn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes. They weren’t there, but they had been there so often that they had to be there. Ruben didn’t like Ike at all—he’d seen his type before, always saying what if, what if. “Is that the kind of guy you want in a fight?” Frank could see that Ruben and Cornhill didn’t actually disagree.
Frank simply put it down to another map problem—the army almost never knew where it was going, and they were always surprised when they found what was there. Three years of superior officers had made him 100 percent suspicious of everything superior officers had to say. He trusted only Devers, and why was that? Devers said, “We’re going here,” and they went there. Devers said, “Expect this and that,” and this and that came to pass. But the rumor was that Ike didn’t like Devers, and Frank figured this was the reason—Devers didn’t have his head up his ass, and everyone else did.
1945
ALL ROSANNA KNEW was that Frank was in France and that nothing in France was good. Did he write? Was he allowed to write? He had written two letters in the summer, from Corsica, and then two more in the fall, one written in a town called Besançon, which was a kind of lace, as she remembered, and another from Lyons. In Lyons, he wrote about some Roman ruins. His letters were masterpieces of saying nothing. That he was alive wa
s her business, what he was doing was not her business. She didn’t even know if he was involved in what they called the Battle of the Bulge (though what “the bulge” was, Rosanna could not figure out). She hoped he wasn’t, because the Battle of the Bulge was very terrible, and apparently, when the Germans found Americans or other Allies, they just shot them, didn’t even take them prisoner. They said they were going to take them prisoner in order to have them put down their weapons, and then they mowed them down. It was a good thing that Rosanna didn’t leave the farm much, because every time she went into town, people asked her how Frankie was and where he was, and Rosanna had to say that she didn’t know. Yes, her brother had stopped writing for a while after he got over there, but then he had started again, and now he wrote every week, nice long letters about this and that, some of it pretty gruesome. Angela, who had taken to her bed, was up and about now, and was typing the letters for a book. She thought it would be a best-seller, and maybe they would make it into a movie. “That’ll be the day,” thought Rosanna, but she kept this thought to herself. Every time Angela or, for that matter, her own mother speculated about who would play Gus, Rosanna just said, “That would be good.”
