by Robert Lowry
“We’re going to Rome!” he said to Burt suddenly, putting his hand on Burt’s arm.
“Yeah?” Burt said. “Tell me more.”
“I feel like I used to feel when I was eight years old and on my way to Coney Island.”
“You’ll think you’re in Coney Island when you see them Rome signorinas,” the towheaded staff-sergeant interrupted again. Then the staff-sergeant brought a Hershey bar from his bag, peeled it, and began biting off chunks from it.
The driver, a little corporal with a Jersey accent, stopped the truck on a street lined with modern apartment houses and got out and looked at the load of furlough-happy soldiers he’d collected along the road from Bari.
“This is far as I can take you, men. I’m turning off here and going on around the town.”
Joe and Burt picked up their luggage and jumped out with the rest of them. The little group stood on the street awkwardly, stunned from the long ride.
“Don’t forget to take a pro,” the driver yelled out of the cloud of dust his wheels kicked up.
Joe hailed an empty carriage going by, and he and Burt climbed in. He told the driver to take them to the Colosseum. “At least that ought to get us into the center of town.”
“We could go to the Red Cross and find out about rooms,” Burt suggested.
“No, let’s stay away from everything GI for these seven days,” Joe said. “Let’s make the whole thing an adventure.”
“It’ll be an adventure, all right,” Burt said. “An adventure in spending all the dough we’ve saved up for two months.”
They got out in front of the Colosseum and started walking. They took in every hotel they came to, but there was no room for them. They walked all the way to the Tiber.
“I feel like a real yokel looking at these buildings and women this way,” Joe said.
“We’re just a couple of savages from the wilds of San Cialo, pal.”
Joe talked to an MP on one of the Tiber bridges.
“Go on over there and try some of them apartment houses,” the MP told them. “Lots of guys get rooms in private apartments.”
They walked half a mile before they found a place behind the Palace of Justice where the janitor said yes, Signor Valsetti had a vacant room. He told them to wait, and came back five minutes later with an elderly fellow slopping along in bedroom slippers and squinting at them through horn-rimmed glasses.
The two GIs followed him through the courtyard and up the dark staircase to a big oak door that had his name, GIORGIO VALSETTI, on it.
“It is nice room,” he said. “You like it.”
He unlocked the door and they went in.
“My wife, Signora Valsetti.” He bowed with his palms held out.
While Signora beamed, Joe looked from her to her husband. They were an odd couple, he thought. She was perhaps thirty-eight or forty, at least twelve or fifteen years younger than he. Seeing them side by side, this weakchested, squinty-eyed old man and his buxom, brightly dressed wife, Joe felt that somehow she’d discovered the secret of draining him of all his vigor and life. But in ordinary times, Joe thought, she’d be a lot fatter and about one-tenth as good-looking.
There was much business about getting their names straight.
“You can call me Giuseppe, if that helps,” Joe said, “but there’s nothing you can do about Burt. Maybe Burto.”
“Giuseppe,” Signora Valsetti repeated, smiling at him. “Burto.”
The room was clean and large, with a big window, two single beds, a dresser, table and washbasin.
“It’s okay,” Burt said, and old Valsetti smiled and bowed, and closed the door on them.
“Let’s have a drink.” Burt brought the bottle of cherry brandy out of his bag. “Let’s start this great adventure off right.”
“It burns good on an empty stomach,” Joe said. They had another drink apiece. “The whole furlough’s getting to look better and better every minute.”
The brandy made his head warm, and Joe felt like talking.
“I’ve been dead for a year,” he said, “but there’s something stirring in me again. I feel like a kid when school’s out in the summer. The big city—Christ, anything can happen to you here.”
“Meaning you can meet goodlooking women who don’t turn and run at the sight of a soldier like our San Cialo babes.”
Joe glanced at him and laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “Meaning women. I’ve got to meet a woman again. I haven’t even talked to a woman for a year and a half.”
“Let’s have another drink.”
“What about you?” Joe asked him. “You haven’t said anything very enthusiastic yet.”
“I still feel slightly married,” Burt said. “I’m the kind of guy who’ll spend all day at the Sistine Chapel staring at the ceiling.”
Joe took another drink. “I want to do that too.” He got up and walked to the window. It was a big apartment house, six stories high, built around a courtyard. Down below Joe saw three Italians tinkering with a Fiat. From a window across the courtyard two pretty girls stared over at him.
“Yeah, I think I may still be alive after all.” He sat his overweight body down on the bed and reached for the bottle. “I’d even forgotten what it feels like to live in an apartment house with hundreds of other people all looking interesting when you see them once or twice a day—all of them leading their own private lives. I feel like running through this building knocking on doors and meeting everybody here.”
“Well, that’s one approach,” Burt said, lying back on the bed.
Joe began to wash his hands. “God, I want to know this city. I want to see the way people are after they’ve lived in a big town like Rome under Fascism for twenty-two years. I want to see what the war’s done to them.”
“Especially to the women.”
“Yeah, maybe especially to the women. Maybe that’s the important experience I’m after again.”
“You go ahead and see the women,” Burt said. “Don’t mind me. I’m going to do some sketching. It looks like the kind of city I can get interested in.”
He isn’t kidding, Joe thought. He’s that kind of guy. He’d been an architect in civilian life, but his real interest was the sketching and painting he did in his spare time. For pleasure, not profit, Joe thought, like most of the good things in the world.
“It’s too bad we couldn’t get two rooms.” Joe began to wash his face.
“I think we’ll both have plenty of space in here to do what we want. I’ll stay out while you’re investigating the private life of the feminine side of Rome.”
Joe laughed. He could have laughed at anything. He felt free and alive again. The only thing he’d have had to do to complete the feeling was change his uniform to a pair of gabardines and a white broadcloth shirt.
“Let’s lie down for an hour,” he said, “then go walk around town.”
But he couldn’t sleep, lying there. The swarming activity of the great city seemed to be drawing him toward it. His heart beat fast. He thought about the girls he would meet, remembering the adventures other guys had told him about. He wondered what the names of the girls he would meet would be, and what they were doing now, this minute, a whole day or week in time before they would meet him.
Something is going to happen to me, Joe thought, unless I explode first.
II. MARIA CONSORTI
First thing she heard, even before she opened her eyes, was the precise metallic ticking of his watch on the dresser beside the bed. She rolled over away from him and saved the next moment deliciously. It was always a little game with her when she woke up, to find out what would be the first thing she’d see. A smile playing at the corners of her full wide mouth, she kept her eyes tight-closed for a moment, then opened them wide—and burst out laughing very loud. It was so ridiculous, what she saw: a little man, a midget capitano Americano! For his officer’s cap was on the dresser and his officer’s coat was hung over the back of the chair which stood right in front of the dresser—
and his pants, even his pants were placed on the chair so that you’d think there stood a real capitano Americano, a bambino capitano!
She looked around this room in the officers’ rest-camp hotel and compared it with her own room far across the city—a shabby, mean little cell with old, broken furniture, a worn-out rug and a slit for a window. She’d been sleeping over here every night for almost a week—had hardly slept in her own room at all since she’d rented it. How long had she been in Rome? It was over two weeks already. She remembered the ride up in the American lieutenant’s jeep. He’d driven very fast and made her laugh—it was so much fun to pass the little carts she’d had to ride in all her life, pass them fast and not care about anything. He’d treated her very nice, that lieutenant, but he had not been truthful. For one day when he’d told her to meet him in the park he hadn’t shown up, and she had waited many hours in front of this hotel without seeing him go in or come out. Finally his friend had come along and she’d hurried up to him, only to find out that her lieutenant had left town, gone back to his base. So there hadn’t been anything else for her to do but stay in Rome and do what all the other women in Rome were doing—walk in the streets and in the Villa Borghese picking up Americani and sleeping with them for a meal or sometimes money. She didn’t know anything about how much money, and she never bothered to ask for money. But many of them were decent to her, they gave her money anyhow. . . . It was odd, eighteen days ago she’d been just a girl, Maria Consorti, seventeen years old, of Ancona. She’d been hungry, what with the Tedeschi eating everything, yet she’d never even talked to a man on the street, much less slept with one. Eighteen days ago she’d been just a girl, knowing only the other girls in her neighborhood, and here she was now in Rome, knowing only men. And she had celebrated the change by dyeing her hair a bright yellow and plucking her eyebrows and wearing thick paint on her mouth. What her father would have said if he could have seen her rouged up like that and walking the streets with soldiers! But her father was far away, a prisoner in Africa. He’d never know.
It must be very late, she thought. The sun streamed through the window and the avenue was alive with the sound of army cars and girls laughing and pedlars calling out to the soldiers to buy and shoeshine boys saying: “Shine! Americano polish! Very goot!” She looked at the officer. He was young, and yet his face in sleep seemed older than her father’s. It was a long sharp face with dark patches under the eyes and deep inroads of baldness that described an M in the silky blond hair. An aviatore from somewhere near Florence—he drank very much and made love very little. Her head felt groggy—last night when she’d met him at their usual hour he’d been drunk, and he’d brought her up here and made her get drunk too, and then they’d both just gone to sleep. And now, even though she’d burst out laughing before, he still didn’t wake up.
She sat up in bed feeling restless and hungry. She had been hungry for four years and though she ate well now she just didn’t seem to be able to get filled up.
“Buon giorno, baby,” he said.
She looked at him sidewise in that naughty way that always made him laugh, and said the American words she knew: “Hel-lo, baby! I lawv you ve-ry moch!” Then she bent down and kissed him roughly on the mouth.
“No, no,” he said. “Let’s go mangiare, baby.”
She got into her silk panties that felt good against her skin and her tight brassiere that made her breasts look nice and the fire-engine-red dress that clasped her hips and the wedgies that increased her height a full three inches. He dressed very carefully, shaving, then putting on clean underwear, and brushing every speck of lint off his pants before he slipped them on. Officers were very particular about themselves.
They went down the steps, past the negro MP at the door and out into the sunshine. Along the street before the string of American officers’ hotels, girls stood waiting for pick-ups. They walked to the little restaurant they ate at every morning and ordered eggs, two each, bread and wine. Maria laughed at everything and rolled her eyes at her capitano. But he wasn’t feeling good, he stared out the window a lot. He paid the check, six hundred lire, and gave her the change from the thousand-lira note. Out on the street they parted, just as they did every morning, and he told her he’d see her in front of the hotel at five o’clock. She watched him as he walked off: an enlisted man saluted, and he saluted back. That made her laugh. She didn’t understand her capitano. She couldn’t comprehend why he didn’t laugh more and think life funny like she did.
A jeep passed with all the GIs shouting and waving at her, but she paid no attention. A tall Polish soldier, his eyes scary behind thick glasses, nudged her and said something, but she hurried on down the street. Now it was eleven o’clock, six hours to go till she’d see the capitano again. She would shop. Maybe she would buy a pretty handkerchief.
It was September, 1944—the war had gone through Rome and on, leaving the city crowded with soldiers on pass: Americans, English, French, Poles and God knew what else. Everywhere she went they were after her—begging her to come with them, offering her money, telling her she was pretty, taking her arm. But she only laughed and dodged into stores to escape. Still, it made her feel wonderful to have them all so interested. She felt like the one desirable signorina in all Rome, the prettiest.
She walked around for two hours without buying anything. One o’clock now, and very hot—what would she do? She felt hungry, yet somehow she didn’t want to spend any part of her three thousand lire on food. Without thinking she began to head toward the Villa Borghese, where the casino had been converted to an American enlisted men’s club. She thought fleetingly of her capitano as she passed under the arch of the old Roman wall, but then she was walking down the promenade in front of the soldiers sitting on the benches, and she thought of him no more. Some of them whistled at her, some of them said “Vieni qua,” but she only smiled. If they wanted her they’d have to try harder than that.
On the other side of the street she saw two GIs, one of them a thin blond fellow, the other a chunky dark boy. They sat on a bench with their feet out before them, looking boredly off into space. That lackadaisical way about them excited her—would they notice her, Maria Consorti, seventeen years old, of Anacona, if she passed close by in her red dress? Deliberately she crossed the street. The blond soldier glanced at his friend and both drew in their feet—they were looking at her, all right. Now the blond fellow had turned to his friend, chiding him, and the dark one was staring at her.
“Buon giorno,” the dark one said, and Maria smiled, neither slowing her step nor glancing their way as she passed.
But his foot scraped behind her: he was right at her elbow. “Hello,” he said, and then in Italian, “Where are you going?”
“I’m walking,” she said. “I’m always walking.”
“May I walk with you?”
She glanced at him and smiled. She noticed the eager look in his eyes, and she felt how nervous he was. She began to feel nervous too.
After they’d turned the corner, he reached down and took her hand.
“You’re very beautiful,” he said.
“All the soldiers say that.”
“I know,” he said, “but you are very beautiful.”
They walked on, down the tree-lined avenue, deeper into the park. She made no effort to talk; she was waiting for him. And finally he took her arm and made her stop—turned her toward him.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Maria. Maria Consorti.”
“My name is Joe. Giuseppe.”
“Giuseppe.”
There was a strange quiet between them, and he was looking into her face as if he were trying to remember it from somewhere. She knew that he would ask her, but she’d do no more to help him with the asking than to let her mouth smile and her eyebrows rise a little.
“Come to my house with me,” he said at last.
She turned, made him walk on with her. It was done. “I’m hungry,” she said. “I want to eat now.”
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br /> “Sure we’ll eat.” He was forgetting himself, speaking in English. “I’m hungry too.”
“We’ll eat. And then I’ll go to your house with you.”
At the park entrance they got into a carriage and rode down the hill past the string of officers’ hotels (she looked the other way so her capitano wouldn’t see her) to a restaurant. She found out there how really hungry she was, for she put away a big plate of green noodles, four fried eggs, a small beefsteak, bread and wine. All the while she felt his eyes on her, and between bites she smiled up at him. With the coffee she held his hand under the table and looked around at the other people here—a sailor sitting with a pale girl who was eating a Baby Ruth bar for dessert; two civilian men hunched over in conversation; four soldiers side by side at a big table in the corner, all of them with many stripes on their arms. She looked at her soldier’s arm. No stripes at all.
One of the four soldiers said something to Giuseppe and Giuseppe laughed and turned to her. “They told me they brought four girls in here to eat last night,” he said in slow painstaking Italian. “The girls ate fifteen dollars’ worth of food and were very nice to them while the meal was going on. Then the girls said goodbye and left them. They said did I know you, because you would probably do the same thing. I said, no, you’re not that kind of a girl. You’re my friend.”
“Those girls were no good,” Maria said. “I’m not like those girls.”
