A man was sitting on the low step of Francesca’s house across the road. It was the stranger; he was crouched forward over something that he held in his lap. Rosario shouted, ‘Buon giorno.’ The stranger looked up. He was a small man, with a pale, lean face and smooth, black hair that fell across his forehead. He stared for a moment, and answered, ‘Buon giorno,’ in a quiet voice that carried as far as Rosario’s shout.
Rosario crossed the street, feeling at once sociable and curious. When he came close he saw that the stranger was carving at a block of wood with a black-handled knife. From the wood there was beginning to emerge a figure, about six inches long, of Christ on the Cross. The head, chest and arms were carved in some detail; the legs were only roughly cut out; the cross behind was barely discernible. The stranger was completely absorbed in his task. Seen more closely, his spare body was muscular and his pallor was of the kind that hinted at strength and fanaticism. He handled the dangerous, double-edged blade deftly and, at intervals, his thin fingertips manipulated a piece of sandpaper with a sensitiveness that was fascinating to watch. Without bothering to complete the rest of the figure he was working on the chest and shoulders, bringing out the contours of ribs and muscles and polishing the surface up to a glossy smoothness.
Rosario said, ‘It is beautiful.’
The man puffed sawdust away from the block and nodded slightly, without raising his head.
‘You make these to sell?’
‘No.’ The man went on working.
‘My cousin is an artist, too. You have seen the posters in the Via Etnea, for the cinemas? It is he who paints them. All day and all night he paints. He is thin and ill. His art devours him. You are a Catanese? I have not seen you before.’
‘No.’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘The North.’
‘Where? Piedmont? Tuscany? Liguria?’
The stranger paused in his work and looked up. Rosario could feel the force and intensity of the man. ‘You are a deserter?’
Rosario answered, warily, ‘Yes.’
‘Then why ask questions?’
Rosario laughed. ‘I understand. But I cannot place your accent.’ The man spoke a melodious Italian, without the Sicilian harshness or blurring of the consonants: but he sounded his ‘r’s softly, at the back of his throat, instead of trilling them with his tongue in the familiar way.
Rosario was annoyed by the man’s reserve. This was not the way people lived together in the Via dei Martiri. He tried again. ‘The English are taking on labourers. There will be work. You will go to work for them?’
The stranger’s eyes did not waver. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I will go. I will fight for no one, but I will work for anyone. There is an English sergeant here who speaks a little Italian. A little only, but he understands. I shall speak to him, for myself. Shall I ask him for you?’
‘No.’
Francesca appeared. She was unkempt, still fastening up the neck of her black dress. Her expression was hostile and apprehensive. ‘Come inside and eat,’ she shrilled.
Without a word to Rosario the stranger heaved himself to his feet, brushed the sawdust from his knees and went indoors. Francesca made as if to shut the door.
‘Good morning, Francesca,’ said Rosario, mocking her for her discourtesy in not having greeted him.
‘Good morning, Rosario.’ She looked over his shoulder. ‘Ecco! Graziella has come out. She is waiting for you, I am sure.’
Ah, these women knew how to kick a man in the belly! He heard the door close behind him as he hurried back across the street, in a panic to see Graziella for a few seconds before she disappeared again.
§§§§
In the next two days there appeared in every window and on every clothes-line in the street such a flutter of white singlets and khaki tunics that the whole street seemed to be bedecked with flags of conquest. The soldiers had plenty of leisure time. They were mainly occupied with guard duties at dumps, headquarters and other military establishments about the town; small parties marched off every morning and returned twenty-four hours later with twenty-four hours rest to follow, so that there was always a proportion of idle men left in the billet. These employed their spare time in exploring the street and its surroundings, in making friends and – if they were enterprising enough – in installing themselves in hospitable households. A stream of women called daily at the guardroom with bundles of washing or messages; and it was already no uncommon occurrence for a soldier, coming out into the street, to be hailed by a barefoot child with a shrill cry of ‘Pappa!’
Of all the men none had become more domesticated than Private Ling. The little man had taken up with a mountainous Sicilian woman. In the evenings, when his friends walked by the house, they could hear the woman’s voice everlastingly raised in shrill abuse while Ling sat on a kitchen chair in the doorway, his head averted from her, puffing his pipe stubbornly, wearing the same remote and unhappy expression behind which years of henpecking in civilian life had no doubt taught him to shelter. Yet, sitting there with the woman’s half a dozen brats clustering and clambering about him, he looked strangely content at her nagging, and when his comrades questioned him he would assert his fondness for her with a peevish, ‘Gah way! Leave us alone, can’t yer? She’s all right!’
Captain Rumbold was perplexed by all this. He could not confine his men to their billet. He was not the kind of man to curtail their spare time by ordering parades or other extra duties out of spite or as a deterrent. He was a wise enough leader to know that further warnings would have no effect and would only lower his authority. He recognized that there was a process at work which he could not check, and he did nothing.
To Piggott, however, who was his confidant as well as his clerk, he was indignantly eloquent. ‘Would you have believed it? Chaps out of decent homes! You’d have thought wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them into the kind of pigsties these people live in. Dark, dirty, smelly, bloody holes – that’s all they are – holes in the wall – full of flies and bugs and fleas. People in rags, scratching themselves day and night, look as if they’ve never had a bath in their lives! I can’t imagine what’s got into the chaps.’
Piggott grinned. ‘Can’t you? They’re a long way from home, you know. It’s not the old front parlour they remember nowadays, it’s those holes in the ground they slept in out there on the plains. This ol’ street may niff a bit, but it don’t smell as bad as the water out of polluted wells or those unburied dead rottin’ out there in the sun. Besides, from what I’ve seen, our fellers are makin’ a bit of a change already. Quite a bit of spring-cleanin’ goin’ on in a quiet sort of way, you know. I saw ol’ Fooksy across the road beating hell out of a mattress on the pavement. And little Sparrow scrubbing the floor in his place with that big tart of his screaming at him all the time. You can smell the carbolic as you walk down the street.’
‘Yes,’ said the captain bitterly, ‘and it all comes out of the stores!’
‘Anyway, it’s all in a good cause. Some of these judies aren’t bad lookers.’
‘What!’ exclaimed the captain. ‘And you a Salvationist! I’m ashamed of you! Don’t tell me you’ve got one, too?’
Piggott simpered. ‘Not what you’d call exclusive. Name of Paloma. Lives across the road. What a dame! It’s like a kick from a carthorse when she just slaps you on the back.’
‘Sounds like my kind of gal,’ said the captain.
Piggott looked ingratiating. ‘Want to make an appointment?’
‘Away, you little ponce! Back to your typewriter! Do I look as if I need your leavings?’
It was not, the captain thought, as he went off to inspect the billet, that he objected to the men having a bit of relaxation. He just didn’t like the way they were taking a nose-dive over the whole thing, and getting so thoroughly mixed up with this crowd of foreigners. There was no need to make such a business of it. Take your fun and forget it, that was the soldier’s way. After all, a soldier had to keep
in condition; and to keep in condition he needed plenty of good food, when he could get it, plenty of sleep, when he could get it, and – when he could get it – a little bit of cuddle to loosen him up. But no strings. Anyway, it was about time he looked around for himself. He’d been busy up to now, getting the company settled in, seeing that they made a decent home of their billet, scrounging a little bit more than their allotted rations for them and seeing that the cooks turned it into something tasty. He could do with a bit of a bender now, to keep in trim. He’d have to see about it. He was not a man for beating about the bush. There was no time like the present. He’d have a look-see in the next couple of nights. Of course, he could do what a lot of the officers at HQ were doing, and go visiting among the local bigwigs, in search of a nice contessa or a bonny baroness. This island was lousy with titles. But that might take time, and while the tedious pursuit was going on among the coffee-cups and the small-talk, the battalion might be whisked off. No, there was time for the social whirl later. To start with he’d take what was going nearer home. Not too near, for his men were vigilant; and nothing would entice him into one of those verminous beds. No, he knew the drill: the utility truck, a nice girl, and a nice, quiet lane somewhere outside the town. The old civvie technique, that had enlivened his insurance round. He found a cobweb behind a door, roared an angry command and grinned indulgently as men scuttled to obey.
§§§§
Craddock and Graziella spent both evenings together. Neither of them referred to the incident in her house, and both treated their friendship as a matter of course. Graziella accepted Craddock’s presence as a protection from the attentions of other men, and because he was the source of the food which was already bringing life into her baby’s eyes. She was grateful, too, for the company of a man, even though this incomplete relationship sometimes stirred her painfully, after months of loneliness. Craddock was also feeling the strain. She behaved without reserve in his presence, leaning towards him and placing her hot hand on his when she became excited in conversation, or letting her thick hair brush close against his face so that soon, even when he was apart from her, he felt himself alive in response to the warmth that she radiated. Nevertheless the time passed pleasantly with her. It was fascinating to grapple with the language, and somehow easier to talk with a woman. Fluency seemed to come as much by listening as by talking and his confidence increased almost hourly. Her personality, too, puzzled and attracted him; he watched her intently, pondering about her, all the time they were together. She was illiterate, but she often displayed an instinctive wisdom. There was pride in her every attitude, and at the same time submission. She had, like all these women, no apparent interests of her own in life; her whole being seemed designed to complement that of a man; yet there was always something secret and independent in her manner. While he was talking Craddock would suddenly notice her and the other women listening, as still as a group of statuary, their heads inclined to one side, no trace of comment in their eyes or in the set of their dark faces. They would sit or stand thus, utterly without motion, for minutes on end. Then the moment and the mood would break up, like light on water, and they were all movement, violence, laughter and shrill voices again.
For the sake of propriety the two of them remained outdoors, on the pavement. A noisy group of neighbours would gather to join in the conversation, always around the same nucleus; at the centre, seated, Craddock and Graziella; nearby, lounging in his doorway and occasionally addressing Craddock with great familiarity, Rosario, who had already accosted Craddock in the street, elicited a promise of any odd jobs that might occur about the billet, and in general laid the foundations of what might become a very profitable and interesting friendship; cowering at Craddock’s elbow, Old Buonocorso, peering at Craddock out of the wreck of a once-intelligent face and chain-smoking the sergeant’s cigarettes; and behind the old man, his ten-year-old son Aldo, standing with an arm round the neck of the huge Sicilian mastiff that always accompanied him.
‘That old man,’ said Graziella – the boy was out of the way at the time, but she spoke quite brutally in front of the father – ‘how old do you think he is?’
Craddock was embarrassed, but Old Buonocorso only grinned waterily at him and mumbled, ‘Una sigaretta, signor sergente? Craddock gave him a cigarette and answered, ‘I don’t know. In his sixties, perhaps.’
‘Forty-four,’ said Graziella, ‘eh, old man?’
Buonocorso showed his broken teeth in a grin of confirmation.
‘Three years ago,’ she said, ‘he lived among us. A fine man, a lion. Others were frightened, of the militia, of the secret police, but never he. He brought secret newspapers, he read to us the truth. Everywhere in the town today you will meet men who say they were always anti-fascists inside. This one was an anti-fascist outside. He fought against our misery.’ She laughed. ‘See what happens to those who fight against our misery. They took him away, and a few weeks ago, after the fascist government had fallen and the prisons were opened, this,’ – she indicated the old man – ‘came back to us. He crawls, he whines, he begs, he is not a man any more.’
Rosario said, ‘The spirit is dead. He is like the rest of us now.’
‘Worse,’ said a woman who stood behind Graziella’s chair, ‘he is humiliated. Better to be dead and buried than living and dead.’
Craddock asked, ‘How does he live?’
‘I told you,’ said Graziella, ‘he begs. Everyone gives. I do not know how, but everyone finds something to give. And the boy looks after him. The boy looks for work. He is a fine boy. The father brought him up in his own image, and now the boy is what the father was. For three years the child waited to see his father again. His father was a hero. Aldo boasted to the other boys about his father, and sang to them the “Bandiera Rossa”, and he said, “see, that is the forbidden song. People fear to sing it, but my father taught it to me.” Now the father has come back and the son is broken-hearted. But he is loyal. He is a good boy.’
The old man was nodding incessantly and grinning up at Craddock with a wild, horrible eagerness. ‘It is true. I am finished. You cannot imagine what it is like in those places. They degrade, they defile. They make a man insult his own soul. They make him trample on others. After that it is useless. But my boy is good.’ He extended a shaky hand, ‘Ancora una sigaretta, eh, signor sergente?’
Aldo had come back, and he tugged at his father’s sleeve and said in agony, ‘Not from the sergeant, pappa, the sergeant is our friend.’
Craddock said, ‘Here, take a packet and be quiet.’ To the boy he said, ‘What is your dog’s name, Aldo?’
‘Vittorio.’
‘He’s a fine dog. Bring him here.’ He patted the dog, and drew Aldo down to sit on his knee. ‘Do you like to listen to the radio? You can come into our billet and listen to the radio if you want. Bring Vittorio. The soldiers will like him. They will give him plenty to eat. I think he needs plenty, eh?’
‘You have a radio?’ asked the woman behind Graziella. ‘What is the news?’
‘The fighting on this island will soon be over. The Germans are going back to Messina. You see our bombers going over all day, hundreds of them, all the time. Noise, brrr, brrr, all the time, eh? They go to bomb the German evacuation beaches.’
‘Good,’ said Rosario, ‘magnificent. The Allied aviation is magnificent. It is enormous. It is incredible. Your soldiers are all heroes. They have liberated our Sicily. Tell me, sergeant, what then?’
‘Then, Italy.’
‘Ah, magnificent. What courage! You will follow the Germans to Italy. You will fight them from one end of Italy to the other? Your bombs, your shells will fall on every metre of Italy to defeat the Germans, yes? You will destroy them and every house that shelters them, even if they shelter in every house in Italy, yes?’
‘Yes.’
Graziella whispered, ‘Ah, poor Italy!’
Craddock said stolidly, ‘Already the Germans are coming into Italy. Many new troops, from France, from Aus
tria. You do not want that.’
Rosario cried, ‘No, no! What could be worse? We want to be liberated. And already, your airmen are starting to liberate us. The last three nights, they have bombed the Germans in Northern Italy. I, too, listen to the radio. In Milan they have destroyed the Brera Art Gallery, the Fata Bene Fratelli Hospital, the Sforza Castle, the Natural Science Museum, the Church of Santa Croce, and they have damaged the Scala. In Turin are destroyed the Carignano Palace, many churches, the Balo Theatre, the City Library and many dwellings in the workers’ quarters. In Genoa are destroyed the Palazzo della Rinascente, the Church of San Stefano and the Palazzo Rosso. Everywhere in Italy they are bombarding the Germans. It is magnificent!’
‘It is war. In nineteen-forty the finest cities in England were bombed. In one week, all the workers’ quarters around the docks in London. In one night, all the ancient churches in London. In one night a whole town, Coventry. Italian airmen came, too.’
‘For the love of God!’ Graziella cried. ‘I am frightened by you men. There is war even in your voices!’
‘But what have I said?’ Rosario protested. ‘I am a friend of the English. I am full of admiration. I am admiring them now. I am the friend of the sergeant. You have all seen me walking in the street with him. I am going to work for the English. The sergeant has promised me. Is it not true, sergeant? Are we not friends?’
‘Sure,’ said Sergeant Craddock.
Chapter Six
PALOMA is a word that comes across the water from Spain. It means ‘dove’. It was a nickname. She had been christened Teresa; and the newcomer to the street who protested that the nickname seemed as demure – and therefore as inappropriate – as her baptismal name would be referred, in reply, not only to her dove-like sleekness and to the shape of the bosom which strained at her black dress, but to the throaty cooing with which she was in the habit of announcing her amorous triumphs.
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