‘Does he?’
‘Not here. It is not a thing that a priest should do. But in our church, ours does it. I think he likes a pretty girl. Well,’ she said, angry again as she saw him grin, ‘why not? When I was a young girl, in our village, I was very shocked because the priest used to push a pram about in the street with his two children. They were twins, and we all knew the mother. She was not a bad woman. Everybody used to stop, and talk to him, and tell him how beautiful the twins were, and he was proud. I cried to my mother, “How can you go to a priest who has bastards?” My mother looked puzzled, and she said, “But if the priest may not marry, he must have bastards.” I was very young, and my blood was not yet hot, and so I said again, “But it is bad, bad!” And my mother laid her hand on mine, and she said, “He is good to us. Why should not a woman be good to him?”’
Craddock said, ‘I think you do not really believe in God. You women choose to deceive yourselves. It is foolish. There is no need. There is a better way.’
‘Whether I am foolish or not I do not know,’ Graziella cried. ‘I am only a poor woman. But I need God, and I will not give Him up. It is all mystery for us, all sin, all suffering, all misery. Si sbaglia sempre nella vita. What is our life but one blunder after another? What do we know? Where can we go? Who will guide us? What else is there?’
He did not answer, and she repeated, ‘What else is there?’
He made a furtive gesture towards the procession of children that was bobbing across the street, and looked away, as if ashamed to have betrayed himself. Graziella was silent, then she smiled and touched his arm, ‘You see, you, too, need a dream. Let us go.’
He followed her down the steps, keeping at a little distance. He said, ‘Let us not go straight back. Let us walk for a while. The sun is good.’
She smiled at him over her shoulder. It was the first time he had seen her look so youthful and coquettish. She smiled with her lips parted wide, and there was no care in her face. They walked to the left, through an arch into a park. The trees were tired and their leaves dusty, but their shadows dappled the golden pathway with changing patterns that shifted and trembled like the surface of water. Here there was sunlight, and coolness, too. Children squealed and chattered. It was peace. Craddock and Graziella strolled, still apart, not speaking, but both utterly happy and utterly absorbed in each other. They came out into a street behind the dock gates and turned homewards.
A convoy of ambulances was drawn up in the kerb, and wounded were being taken through the dock gates to a hospital ship. Craddock paid no attention; he was habituated to not noticing such sights. Graziella was wrapped in her own happiness. They paused to let a squad of stretcher-bearers go by. The stretcher-bearers, too, showed no concern for their burdens. They were sweating and disgruntled, and as they passed they talked loudly to each other of their hardships.
The door of an ambulance opened, and two attendants led a man down the steps on to the pavement before Craddock and Graziella could pass. The man had a huge, splendid body and a fine head. He wore an officer’s uniform. He stood on the pavement as if unaware of his own actions, without will or intelligence. His body seemed strangely collapsed, without tension, with no nerves to command or muscles to obey. The attendants tried to lead him, like a shambling bear, across the pavement, but after a couple of paces he halted and would not budge, uttering senseless grunts with his mouth wide and slavering. His arms dangled at his sides, his legs sagged as if at any moment they might cave in under the body’s weight. His head was sunk into stooped shoulders, his cheeks were cavernous and his eyes were lost in deep, black pits, so that he looked like some monster uninhabited by a human soul.
Craddock felt a sickness in his stomach. To him the sight was a reminder of something that he tried always not to see. Graziella looked at the madman, and then she looked up with horror into Craddock’s face, as if comparing the two. Craddock said huskily, ‘Come, quickly,’ and hurried her past.
She pressed herself to his side. Her face was set and, heedless any longer of her good name, she gripped his arm fiercely all the way home.
§§§§
A bathing party – the first, for the beach was only now being cleared of mines – was spending the afternoon by the sea.
Pink bodies, brown bodies, sprawled on the beach, scattered like the dead, arms and legs rigidly outflung, eyes closed, faces frowning against the glare that clenched eyelids could not keep out; bodies inert, each sunk in a white mould of hot sand, the sunlight prickling like sleet at every inch of exposed skin; drugged with sunshine.
Within the head each felt the numbing pressure of heat; the mind spurned thought. Before the eyes, shifting veils of blood-red and black, and fantastic patterns in every colour. The world was vast, all sea, all sky, with only a fringe of white sand and drunken red-roofed houses heaped on a hillside to soak in the sun. The heat imposed a vast silence in which all sounds remained as tiny and isolated as the insects that crawled in the rippled whiteness of the sand. Voices filtered into the consciousness without awakening the intelligence.
‘You should never of led diamonds…’
‘…not a stitch on, under her dress…’
‘…take a tram from the Elephant and get off at Hawthorn Street, by the chapel…’
‘The trouble with vermouth, it’s too sweet.’
From far away, the hollow thump of men somersaulting off the breakwater into the sea; curtains of brilliant spray upflung against the sun; a hubbub of boyish shouting. The voices murmured.
‘…you don’t want to stuff your garden up with bushes or fruit if you want to grow good vegetables…’
‘… a lovely voice but she wouldn’t look after it…’
‘Do all my own repairs. I wouldn’t let a builder into the house if he paid me for it.’
Beyond the mutter of voices, the nervous buzz of insects, and beyond that, a deeper drone impregnated the air; the insects flitted like little specks of light as their transparent wings caught the sun; and beyond, again, high up in the blue, moved more specks of light, always in orderly patterns, always going northwards, cluster after cluster, without end. The mind did not associate the sight with the sound, was not conscious of the carnage beyond the distant hills, was shut tight against words like ‘bombs’, ‘friend’, ‘foe’, ‘retreat’, ‘evacuation’. It was open only to immediate sensation and to the bludgeoning heat.
‘…we was teaching the kiddies musical chairs. They nearly went mad laughing. I was having a good time myself…’
Lazy eyes admired the sea and sky, passed over the ugly and irrelevant litter that disfigured the beach; for instance, the anti-aircraft gun on the sea wall; for instance, the mines stacked below the wall; for instance, the ripped-up tangle of barbed wire; for instance, the two soldiers’ graves in the sand.
Sprawled in the sand were the naked bodies of men. Whose were the uniforms that hung like scarecrows on the barbed wire?
‘…her skin is as soft as milk, and when she kisses me…’
Thought and memory were stilled. There was no past, no future, no war; only the sun, the sand, and the sea, all fused in one white glare.
‘It’s tea-time, lads. Dress yourselves and get fell in.’
Movement was a burden. The vision was still obscured, the mind stupid, the limbs leaden. Why not have stayed for ever in this trance.
A voice, ‘No kidding, Fred, I’ve never had a holiday like this before. Have you?’
§§§§
Doors and shutters were closed against the sun. Everyone slept but the children, who wandered, undaunted, in the streets.
Ten days ago Ciccio Martinelli had looked like a little brown-skinned old man, with a flat, small-peaked workman’s cap pushing the ragged hair down over his puckered face, a pair of long trousers rolled up at the ankles above unshod, dirty feet, and a torn black jacket to cover his bare chest. Now his hair was cropped, and he wore a British soldier’s fore-and-aft cap with the flaps buttoned under his chin, a British battle b
louse, and on his feet a pair of soldiers’ canvas slippers. He was squatting on his haunches, on the scorching pavement, playing cards with Aldo Buonocorso. Aldo also had cropped hair, with a straight fringe. He wore a man’s collarless striped shirt, which he had cut down and washed himself, and a pair of shorts that barely reached below his thighs. The dog Vittorio sat behind him, studying the cards over his shoulder. Both the boys smoked cigarettes, like grave old men.
Aldo said, ‘Nella,’ – Nella was leaning against the wall, with her hands behind her back, dreaming up at the sun – ‘tomorrow I am going with my father into the country. Would you like to come?’
Nella did not answer.
‘We are going to San Martino. Many friends of my father are there, from the village, to gather the grapes. There will be much to eat, and dancing. It will be good. I am going to bring back a lizard in a box. Nella?’
‘Leave me alone, child!’
‘My father once told me that one can tame lizards, and play with them. Graziella will let you come.’
Nella snapped, ‘It is no affair of Graziella’s.’
‘Ciccio, you come!’
‘I am at work.’ Ciccio was employed in the officer’s mess at a British stores depot, as a waiter and handyman. ‘Besides, I do not like the country.’
‘I like the country. I would like to live in the country. In the country there is much to do.’
‘Crazy! One can earn more in a day here than in a month in the country. I go for ice cream for the officers, they give me fifty lire. A colonel, he asked for a signorina. I brought a girl to him. He gave me a hundred lire. And after, I told the girl he had given me nothing, and she gave me another fifty lire.’
‘That which you do, it is not work. It is not good. Is it, Nella?’
Nella said, ‘You are too young to know.’
‘I am not too young. My father has told me. My father has said that we need to work, for ourselves and for our country. My father has said that the evil years have corrupted us, and that we must work to change our life.’
Ciccio uttered a screeching laugh and slapped his knee. ‘Your father! Your fine father! And when did he tell you that?’
‘A long time ago.’ There were tears and defiance in Aldo’s voice. ‘But I have remembered!’
‘Your father does not remember.’
‘He remembers. He is sick. He will be well again.’
‘Your father is a beggar.’
‘No!’
‘Your father creeps about like a filthy old dog. He is weak and cowardly, and he should die, like a filthy old dog.’
Aldo screamed, ‘No!’ He said, his voice trembling, ‘I tell you he is not well. He will be better. In the country he will begin to feel better. You will see, after tomorrow!’
A British soldier came towards them. Vittorio turned his head and bared his teeth in a growl of welcome. Ciccio cried, ‘Ciao.’ It was the soldier called Tiger.
Tiger stooped over them, with his hands on his knees, looking down at the game like a grown-up.
Ciccio was anxious to show off to his friends the English that he had acquired. He held up his hand of cards. ‘Carrd-ass, yess?’
‘Cards,’ said Tiger, in a voice like the schoolteacher’s.
‘Speak-a good, yess? One two free carrd-ass. Win all caramelle from Aldo.’
Tiger asked him something in English.
‘Game-a si chiama scopa. Play scopa. Not inglese. Game-a italiana.’
Tiger pointed to himself. ‘Noi different. No play scopa. Cards molto different.’ He pointed at the gaily coloured medieval playing cards. ‘Nostro cards – different.’
Ciccio nodded proudly. ‘Si, si. Play Nap-a, Brag-a, Solo, huh?’
‘Not for caramelle. For money – dinaro.’
‘Si chiama gamble, yess? Noi gamble, polizia come. Capisc’ polizia?’
‘Police?’
‘Pollis, yess. Pollis stop gamble. Take to calaboso. Prison. Gamble al-aways in house.’ He mimed concealment. ‘I know all house. Bad house. Know Piazza Stesicoro? Market?’
Tiger nodded. ‘Piazza Stesicoro bad. All streets there out of bounds. Military polizia – capeesh? – stop soldati.’
‘Si, si! Red-a-cahps! Ciccio know house. Many house for men. Carrd-ass. Vino. Bigliardo. Signorinas. You want go? Ciccio take.’
‘No. Houses no buono.’
‘Mi, all-a soldati go. Ciccio take all-a. You go, only see. No go house, only street, see. Red-a-cahps no see.’
Tiger hesitated, and said, ‘Okay.’
‘Okay, Okay.’ To Aldo Ciccio said, ‘You can come, too. And you, Nella.’
Nella answered sullenly, ‘No. I shall not come.’
The boys went off with the soldier. Nella was left alone in the street. She looked around her, and seemed to feel her loneliness. She stood with her head lowered for a moment. Vittorio shook himself, looked back at her and trotted after the boys. Nella cried, ‘I am coming,’ and ran after them.
§§§§
Tiger sought out Sergeant Craddock that evening in a state of great excitement. ‘Here, sarge,’ he gasped, ‘guess what?’
‘You aren’t half in a state. Where you been? Robbin’ a bank?’
Tiger brushed white streaks of plaster from his shirt and wiped his sweating face. ‘Here, guess who I saw?’
‘Who?’
‘Jobling.’ Tiger tried to steady his breath.
‘Who?’
‘Harry Jobling.’
The sergeant looked round and signed him to go into the empty guardroom. ‘Now, sit down and get your breath, and take it easy. Now then, where you been?’
Tiger sat for a few seconds until the trembling in his legs had stopped. ‘Up the Casbah.’ This was the name that the men had given to the honeycomb of streets and alleys behind the Piazzo Stesicoro. The quarter was out of bounds, because of its bad reputation, and was always surrounded by military police.
‘Bright little feller, aren’t you? How’d you get in there’
‘Well, like, I was with my tart – you know, that kid Nella. She’s not a bad-looker, is she? I think she’s a bit sweet on me. Well, like, we was going for a bit of a walk round, a couple of kids out o’ the street come with us, and we went down that way. Just for a look, sarge. I only wanted to see what it was like. They don’t half know their way around, these kids. We went into a house, an’ through back yards, and up stairs, and over the roofs. Dead easy. We didn’t have to go past the redcaps at all, an’ we come out right in the middle of it. Here, sarge, what a gaff! You ought to see! Bloody streets so narrow, you can touch both sides at once. Just a drain down the middle, runnin’ with I don’t know what. Smells like a public lavatory, no kidding! Stinkin’ fish, rubbish everywhere. You can’t see for the washing hangin’ out. Dark doorways, courtyards, it wouldn’t take you long to get lost there, I can tell you.’
‘Get on with it!’
‘I am. Well, there’s all tarts everywhere. In the windows, on balconies. They aren’ half cheeky. I mean, I was with a girl, an’ they didn’t care. Smilin’ at me, they were, and waving, and calling out. There was one up on a balcony, she held her dressing-gown open. You oughta seen! Right in front of Nella.’
‘Where did you see him?’
‘Well, like, I was looking up at the windows…’
‘I bet you were!’
‘…and all of a sudden there was Harry Jobling looking down at me.’
‘Where was it?’
‘I don’t know. It was one of them high houses, all yellowy and peeling, with like all curly iron bars in front of the windows. Proper gaff, it was.’
‘I said, where was it?’
‘How do I know?’ said Tiger desperately. ‘I took another look and he was gone.’
‘Didn’t you go in?
‘How could I? The door was shut. They wouldn’t let me.’
‘Who wouldn’t let you?’
‘Well, I mean, I had a tart with me. Look, sarge, I couldn’t make them understand.
I tried to explain, and they jabbered away, and they were all laughing at me, and then the dog started barking, and they said, come on, there was a redcap coming, and we all run like muck.’
‘Ah, you little nit. Why didn’t you get the address?’
‘They got no addresses there. The streets got no names. No numbers on the houses. They all look the same. It’s all twisted up, like.’ Tiger was in a panic. He confessed, ‘I tell you, sarge, I was all in a doo-dah.’
‘Was he in uniform?’
‘How do I know? I only see him a second.’
‘Sure it was him?’
‘Well, I…’
‘All right. Thanks for telling me. You go in and get washed now. And don’t go up the Casbah again, or I’ll pulverize you.’
‘Okay, sarge.’
‘And, Tiger?’
‘Yes, sarge.’
‘Remember, mum’s the word.’
Chapter Nine
THE plain was vast, so vast that the whole of Catania, lying behind Aldo and his father, was only a spatter of white in a corner of the picture; but the plain itself was as tiny as a doormat at the foot of the infinite sky. Sky and plain met in an endless line so far away that even the thrusting hills scarcely spoiled its flatness. In the soft, milky light of early morning, when they had started out on their sixteen-kilometre journey, it had been frightening enough to emerge from the sheltering streets into this limitlessness, but now that the sun had risen and filled the world with its glare, the unbounded became twice as big and doubly terrifying.
A giant had unrolled a ribbon of white road across the plain, and it stretched before them like a lifetime. Aldo had often watched ants toiling for hours to cross a pavement, and now he felt as if he and his father had been bewitched into two tiny ants, black specks crawling across the face of the earth. The giant was Etna, towering out of its foothills to half the height of the sky.
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