Picture of Defeat

by John Harris

  Pugh studied the file. There was a sheet outlining the record of Pfc Peter C Wieden of the 141st Regiment of the American Army, but there didn’t appear to be much on it, save that, classed as absent without leave, he had been picked up in Naples by the American service police during an argument with a girl. Attached to it with a clip was a note. ‘This man admits to being Private Peter Weeden, of the 6th Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment. He’s British. Passed to you for action. Arnold H Baracca, Colonel.’ Appended to Baracca’s note was another in the green ink Colonel Tasker liked to use. ‘Our problem. Please attend to it.’

  O’Mara patted the file. ‘You’re a darlin’ man,’ he wheedled. ‘There’s no hurry, o’course.’

  ‘In that case’ – Pugh tossed the file into the pending tray – ‘it won’t do Private Weeden any harm to wait a little while. I’ve got a job at Vicinamontane.’

  O’Mara’s eyes widened. ‘Is that a fact now? ’Tis dangerous up there.’ Unlike the traditional Irishman and despite his presence in the British army, O’Mara didn’t like the thought of trouble.

  ‘Sure, Paddy,’ Pugh agreed, ‘but if the theft of thousands of pounds worth of penicillin can wait, so can Private Weeden, Colonel Tasker and Colonel Baracca.’

  In a mutinous mood, he had just pushed back his chair when he heard the howl of the sirens and became aware of the smell of smoke from the mobile smoke-screen units that covered Naples against German bombers.

  ‘Be the howly whirligig,’ O’Mara yelled, vanishing like a rat up a drain, ‘’tis an air raid!’

  Deciding he still had some time before heading for the shelter, Pugh found to his surprise that he hadn’t and ended up standing with his back to the outside wall of the building while the windows blew in to set the blackout screens flapping like huge wings, and the whole district heaved and shuddered as if caught by an earthquake. Nobody in the immediate vicinity was hurt, but the house next door collapsed across the street in a torrent of bricks, mortar and old plaster. Because of it, he was unable to get away on time, and instead found himself calming terrified Neapolitans who thought it was another of the delayed-action devices left behind by the retreating Germans. These had resulted in more than one senseless massacre of civilians, and the city was reduced to a state of nerves every time a bang was heard.

  As the smoke drifted away and the crowds dispersed, Pugh collected his motorcycle and rode to the Casa Calafati. It still had the chill of winter on it and the Contessa appeared, looking like Dracula’s daughter, to offer him a glass of wine to speed him on his way.

  ‘Attenti,’ she said. ‘Guardetavi dai tedeschi. Look out for the Germans. They robbed me of everything I possessed.’

  As he left, the old man who lived behind the Pizzoni Palace and carved things from bone appeared with a basket containing the statuettes, candlesticks and ornaments he’d made.

  ‘Where do you get the bones?’ Pugh asked.

  ‘The San Placido catacombs, Signore.’

  ‘See any Germans?’

  The old man smiled. It was an old joke. Since strange noises at night were constantly reported by householders in the vicinity of the catacombs, it had been believed for a time that a group of Germans, cut off in the retreat, were hiding there, and then that it was a hideaway for deserters. A half-hearted search had been made but nothing was found and the monks, the guardians of the catacombs, chiefly a brother called Gregorio, insisted loudly that the catacombs were a holy place and the army shouldn’t be there.

  ‘The bones don’t do much good there,’ the old man said, ‘and I don’t take many. To listen to Brother Gregorio, you’d think they were his personal property instead of just the remains of a lot of dead Neapolitans.’ He shrugged. ‘Somebody might buy what I’ve made, and good Catholics, though they might have their eyes on the hereafter, still also have to eat.’

  Pugh was glad to get away. But first he had to visit the Via Villari to see old Mori, the carter who had allowed them to use his premises to watch the tyre swindlers in the garage opposite. It was his job to deliver an envelope containing two large-denomination notes as a reward. It had to be done carefully, because there could be no indication of the old boy’s co-operation, in case relatives of the arrested man wrecked his premises and slit his throat. He had therefore arranged to meet him in a bar, where he was able to slip the reward across without being seen.

  The old man’s jaw dropped when he realised what the envelope contained. ‘Madonna mia,’ he said. ‘I am a wealthy man! If ever I can help again, let me know. If you need anything moving! If you wish to store things! I have a loft. It has a few mice, of course, but not many.’

  Pugh finally drove north in a downpour; as he climbed into the hills, it became a snowstorm. He was in a sullen frame of mind, certain by this time that Tasker was after the Detto Bantis for himself. All the best loot in Naples had already been picked over and here was a chance of acquiring something that could easily be transported – certainly more easily than grand pianos or marble effigies, for instance. He wondered if he could somehow manage to fail in his quest.

  It hadn’t been hard to acquire a car. He had approached Baron Viglionni, who lived in a vast decaying palace in San Pietro Pinnacolo near Caserta and could be relied on to fix anything that needed fixing. He had made fixing things his way of life, and the fact that he accepted money wasn’t a matter of great concern because everybody did it, even the police. With inflation as it was, they were so shockingly short of money it was a wonder they managed to keep the law alive at all. For the most part, they didn’t try very hard and merely concentrated on keeping the small fry from over-running the place. When Pugh had first arrived he had even been given a list setting out exactly what each individual expected as a hand-out for services rendered, from a mere carabiniere to an inspector who preferred to keep his dignity by accepting not cash but a bottle of strega, a mozzarella cheese, even a packet of Keating’s insect powder – because diseases were rampant and typhus, which hadn’t arrived but was expected to, was carried by lice.

  Viglionni, who preferred plain cash, knew where there was an old Fiat – much cannibalised for spare parts, he admitted – propped up in a garage without tyres and with some of its innards missing. Within twenty-four hours of Pugh turning up at his crumbling palace, which was empty of furniture but echoing with the cries of the people to whom he rented the multitudinous rooms, the spare parts appeared – doubtless stolen from another Fiat – and the tyres were on the wheels.

  As Pugh climbed into the driving seat, Viglionni laid a finger alongside his aristocratic nose. ‘Attenti, Signor Sergente,’ he said. ‘Remember where you’re going.’

  Pugh nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘The Zona di Camorra – bandit country.’

  The area north and east of Naples was a sort of no man’s land where the peasants had once worked in conditions of near-slavery for the ancient families who owned the great estates. Nowadays, if anyone ruled it was the organised gangs, the Camorra. What had started as a secret society, evolved over generations to protect them against sweat shops and tax-collectors had developed beyond the law and now knew only one set of rules: its own. The police were tolerated simply because, by keeping down the small-time crooks, they made life easier for the big ones. The gangs preyed on travellers, the army and the black market alike, and the present undisputed king of the area was a man by the name of Corneliano Romandi. Because he was said to be young, good-looking, affected gallant manners to women, was brave and above all took from the rich and gave to the poor – something which Pugh doubted very much – Romandi had created a sort of hero-worship for himself among the Italians, who, after the corruption of Mussolini’s régime, were desperate for someone to admire.

  The road north was noisy with the roar of military traffic, both British and American. Every vehicle in the world seemed to be rumbling up and down it and every soldier in the world seemed to be riding in them – those going up, if not eager, at least clean; those coming down filthy, their eyes empt
y, their faces blurred by a fuzz of beard. If they hadn’t been up before, the ones going up were singing. Those coming down always rode in silence.

  The army’s advance up Italy had been likened to that of a frustrated bull, weary but willing, butting its way head-down into assault after assault, street by street, house by house, so that men coming down weren’t interested in where they were going, just that they were going there, and that ahead of them, away from the cold and the wet and the mud, there was a hot bath, clean clothes, sleep, and women – not necessarily for sex, but just to talk to, joke with, even merely to look at.

  Caserta was its usual shabby self, muddy streets full of beggars surrounding the magnificent palace built by the Bourbons. In Posta, the centre of the town seemed to be full of British, Canadian and French service policemen, together with carabinieri armed with their ancient Carcano rifles. The military police looked worried and as Pugh waited to move through the traffic, one of them explained.

  ‘The bloody Frog colonial troops went berserk at Cavaltino,’ he said. ‘There’s a wholesale assault every time the bastards pass through anywhere.’

  The French troops, known to the Allies as goumiers, were hawk-faced Moroccans whose speciality was mountain fighting. They wore the Arab burnous and, though they carried rifles, like the Gurkhas they were also expert with their knives. They were not organised into normal military formations but into groups called goums officered by Frenchmen, and had an uncanny gift for moving silently through the mountains and hills, their methods similar to that of an incoming tide on a series of sand castles. They disposed of opposition and pushed on regardless of what was happening to their right or left, and they had a habit of bringing back evidence of their victims in the shape of ears, noses, even heads. Unfortunately they were feared not only by the Germans but also by their own side. Known to the Italians as marocchini, they were noted for their indifference to death and their lust for women. Coming from the hills of French North Africa, they seemed totally unresponsive to discipline and had been a menace ever since they landed in Italy. Whenever they were in the vicinity, women locked their doors and went out only if accompanied by a man.

  ‘There’ve been thirty-nine women raped,’ the policeman said. ‘It’s bloody disgusting the way the sods behave! Some of the women have had to be taken to hospital and the rest are in bed. The sindaco’s saying that if we don’t sort the buggers out they’ll sort them out themselves. And you know what that means: probably more people killed. So watch out for yourself.’

  As he left, Pugh kept to the main roads for safety, but they were all noisy with military traffic. There was no difference between the British trucks and the American trucks except that the Americans drove faster. The British kept the regulation distance and moved at a sedate pace. The American vehicles, driven largely by black men, usually with a cigar as long as a torpedo stuck in their teeth, went flat out all the time. It seemed to work just as well.

  As Pugh had expected, Vicinamontane gave the appearance of having only recently passed through the front line. In fact, it was not long since the Germans had been pushed out, and there were plenty of rumours that they were expected back at any moment. Jagged walls and deserted buildings loomed. Houses had been wrecked, their beams, doors, and window frames carried away to make fires, and the ground churned to a morass by tanks and lorries. To the north the fields were all pocked by shell craters. A few broken buildings carried a Red Cross flag or the insignia of a headquarters, with here and there a scrawled slogan written by some Italian indignant at seeing his country taken over by strangers – ‘Italia per gli Italiani!’

  Even before the war, the buildings in Italy had been either not quite finished or not quite falling down, and the war had only made it more so. In the square there was a statue of Garibaldi, but signallers had used it as a post from which to hang their telephone lines and wires were looped round the Liberator’s head. The hand that had once held the sword of freedom now held nothing more aggressive than a notice: ‘Ahead of here are minefields. Move carefully.’ On the plinth someone had chalked ‘Dust brings shells. Drive slowly.’

  On the whole, though, Vicinamontane had not come off too badly. There had been no street fighting and the roads were not choked with rubble. Most of the damage was on the south side of the town and had been done by the Allied guns moving north. Now that the Germans had left, their gunners were having difficulty dropping their shells into the town because of the intervening hills.

  It didn’t take long to discover the Ca’ di Leone, the Detto Banti house. It was in the main square opposite the shabby Palazzo Municipale. It was a square, ugly place, almost as big as the town hall and, like most buildings in the war zone, had lost part of its roof and one or two windows and tiles, but there was a garden and an orchard and there were trees outside the door, so that the place still retained a sort of dilapidated dignity.

  The people of Vicinamontane, who had fled to the hills as the Allies moved north and the fighting swayed around the town, had returned now, and at least the place looked alive. The damage was nothing like as bad as in some towns, and there were even a few girls – in dresses made from old curtains and coats made from stolen army blankets, but girls nevertheless – talking to the American soldiers waiting in the square by their trucks.

  Pugh drove up to the front door of the Ca’ di Leone, which was situated under a portico held up by pillars that had been pockmarked by bullets. The house seemed to be silent, even empty, so he pushed his way in cautiously. In the distance, just over the next line of hills, he could hear the rumble of guns and decided it might be a good idea to finish the job and get out again as fast as possible, before that counter-attack everybody expected finally arrived. Suddenly, Naples seemed amazingly cosy by comparison.

  The hall was empty. There were no curtains at the windows, no carpet on the floor, no furniture – just a broken chandelier with most of its glass drops missing. The faded wallpaper was marked with squares where pictures had once hung.

  He was still staring about him when a face appeared at the top of the stairs. It belonged to a small, plump woman dressed in black. Her hair was iron grey and dragged back so tightly it seemed to put a strain on her ears. Her eyes were like raisins and she had a solid growth of moustache on her upper lip.

  ‘Qui vedo?’

  Pugh explained who he was and why he was there, and the old woman came down to meet him. As she did so, two men appeared from a room on the right. One was a short, square man with heavy eyebrows and restless black eyes, who wore what looked like an evening dress jacket over a British army pullover, an American army shirt and a pair of mountaineer’s green knickerbockers. There was mud on his shoes and a smear of white paint on his sleeve. The other was a thickset youth with a startlingly red face and fierce black eyes. He was carrying a long gun.

  Without seeing Pugh, the red-faced youngster turned abruptly and disappeared towards the back of the house. As the other man approached, the woman shuffled off in the direction of what Pugh assumed was the kitchen.

  ‘I’m looking for Marcopolo Detto Banti,’ Pugh said.

  The Italian nodded. ‘I am Marco Detto Banti.’

  ‘So you speak English?’

  ‘I lived many years in Chelsea.’

  ‘Which do you prefer? English, or Italian? I can offer both.’

  Detto Banti stared back at him shrewdly. ‘It doesn’t matter much, does it?’

  Pugh acknowledged the fact and gestured in the direction in which the red-faced youngster had disappeared.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Vittorio della Croce. He’s the butcher’s assistant. At least, that’s what he is at the moment. He’s actually a student, but the universities aren’t functioning just now so he got a job working at the butcher’s. But there’s no meat either, so he doesn’t know what to do with himself.’

  ‘Why does he have a gun?’

  ‘He wants to shoot Germans. He’s a Communist. Most of the students are Commun
ists these days. It’s a reaction after Mussolini.’ Detto Banti shrugged. ‘It’s no good, anyway, so I let him have it. It’s ancient. You have to fill it with powder and make your own shot out of lead.’

  ‘Italian civilians are forbidden to carry arms.’

  Detto Banti shrugged again. ‘He’s trying to join the partisans. He thinks he’s a hero, and the hills are alive with partisans. When the armistice was declared, the Germans issued an order that all Italian soldiers had to report in uniform to the nearest German headquarters. None of them did, of course. They disappeared into the hills. Della Croce’s trying to raise arms so they’ll accept him.’

  ‘With a smooth-bore muzzle-loader?’

  ‘You should see some of the weapons they’ve got.’

  ‘Will they be of any use?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘I’m interested in your brother’s paintings.’

  Detto Banti pulled a face. ‘Everybody’s interested in my brother’s possessions. His car’s gone. It wasn’t much, but it vanished the day he died. Books have disappeared from his library. Some of the silver’s gone.’ He gestured in the direction where the old woman had vanished. ‘I think Enrichetta’s got that. What about the pictures? Are you hoping to buy them?’

  ‘I’m not. But I think I’ve got a buyer for them.’ I hope, Pugh thought, and so long as Tasker isn’t expecting simply to help himself.

  Detto Banti looked interested. ‘Who?’

  ‘I gather the British Government’s interested. To be exact, the Commission for the Protection of Arts and Monuments.’