Picture of Defeat

by John Harris

  Her face grew sad. ‘I understand,’ she said quietly. She sighed and drew a deep breath. ‘Many of these girls are hungry. They are desperate. Sometimes they have a child and their husband is dead. They do it to obtain food for the child. Sometimes not even for money, just for a tin of meat.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘And as soon as they marry and are secure they will stop. I think even they will stop as soon as the British and the Americans produce enough food. All Naples is out of work. All Naples is starving.’

  ‘I know that, too.’

  ‘With bread at 160 lire a kilogram and olive oil at 450 a litre, and wages often at 400 lire a month, I think it is not at all odd that these girls sell themselves.’ Her small face grew angry. ‘I think it is extraordinary that some of the people in Naples who have a job have the strength even to walk to work, let alone do it when they arrive. I am surprised they are not lying dead of starvation in the street, because some of them are trying to keep a family of four or five on no more money than would keep a dog alive.’

  ‘You have your figures assembled.’

  ‘It is part of my job. I work at the hospital and I talk to many of the patients. Will you investigate me, too, Sergeant Piu?’

  ‘Are you intending to marry a British soldier?’

  ‘It hadn’t occurred to me.’

  ‘No new fidanzato? No suitors?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m surprised.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think if I’d spotted you before I might have been one.’

  She stared at him, solemn-faced for a moment, then her small face cracked in an unexpected grin.

  Lunch was a threadbare affair. Once more it was British army bully beef and dark-coloured bread, with a few vegetables from the garden at the back of the house.

  ‘It’s a good job there’s wine,’ Marco said gloomily. ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘I’ll find the town major this afternoon,’ Pugh said. ‘And commandeer a lorry.’

  The rain had changed from the previous day’s downpour to a steady drizzle, and there was a raw cold in the air that permeated the house and sent shivers down the spine. Outside, there were one or two new lorries in the square but for some reason the crews looked uncertain. Pugh had talked to the military police that morning and found them all on edge and unwilling to commit one of their vehicles because of rumours that the Germans were building up their strength to the north, and looked as though they were intending to try to cut the main road through Vicinamontane from Naples to Rome.

  Ciasca’s old hearse approached slowly down the hill on its way back from the cemetery. They had seen it go up the hill not long before, complete with a coffin covered with flowers that looked remarkably like the flowers that had covered Bocco Detto Banti the day before. It was followed by three grim-faced men, all wearing hammer and sickle badges prominently displayed.

  ‘Silvio Minotti,’ Marco said. ‘He would have led the trade unions here if Mussolini had allowed trade unions. It was consumption.’

  Ciasca was on his own, a thin figure in a battered crêpe-draped top hat, his blue fingers holding the reins and trying to urge the old horse on, his ancient frock coat greener than ever in the grey rain-misty light. He had dispensed with attendants, obviously relying on the three grim-faced men and the group of silent relatives in an assortment of shabby black clothes borrowed from neighbours for the occasion. Now the hearse was returning, the mourners dispersed to take wine at the home of the dead man, and Ciasca, his job finished, was smoking a cigarette, doubtless made from butts picked up in the gutter.

  They were watching him from the window as Enrichetta appeared in the square. She seemed to be engrossed in her business and Pugh wondered what belongings of Bocco Detto Banti she was intending to sell, because she was carrying a shopping bag made of American cloth. As she passed they heard a faint high whistle in the sky that grew louder and louder. Enrichetta’s head lifted, then her eyes widened and she suddenly dropped the shopping bag and bolted. As the bag rolled across the ground a dozen silver knives and forks shot out. Pugh had guessed right about what she was up to and Marco had been correct about her stealing the silver.

  The whistle was still increasing, and as it grew louder Tamara looked at Pugh in alarm.

  ‘Porco Dio!’ Foscari yelled. ‘The Germans are shelling us!’

  Grabbing Tamara, Pugh threw her to the floor and dropped on top of her. Foscari pushed Avvocato Tassarini in a tottering run up against the wall. Marco threw himself under the table. They were hardly in position when there was a crash outside and the windows fell in and the ceiling came down.

  When they lifted their heads, through the whirling dust they saw a house opposite collapsing as though in slow motion into a heap of floors that lay one on top of another like a mille-feuille cake. People started to run, and they saw Ciasca’s horse break into a canter. The army lorries were already circling the square, heading for the road south. Almost immediately there was another shriek and a crash that shook the house and set the battered chandeliers clinking.

  More shells fell. They were coming thick and fast now and Pugh could feel Tamara Detto Banti shuddering beneath him. Outside, one of the trees fell slowly to block the road, then another flash and a crash removed one of the pillars that held up the porch over the front door so that it became lopsided. With the pillar went what was left of the windows.

  A second salvo of shells hit the Palazzo Municipale. It had been evacuated seconds before, everybody running bent double for the air raid shelters, and it seemed almost as if the shells went through the windows and exploded inside. Pugh happened to raise his head just as they went off and he saw the walls bulge, then the lot came down like the collapsed brick-house built by a child. A vast cloud of dust, plaster and pulverised stone, deadened by the drizzle, lifted to the sky.

  Ciasca, the undertaker, had fallen off his seat, and the horse was careering in a wild gallop down the hill with him after it. Then another salvo of shells fell and, deciding discretion was the better part of valour, Ciasca changed direction, losing his hat as he did so, and began to head for the open fields. By this time men in khaki were appearing from all directions, and cars and lorries appeared from the north and started to head south. Half a dozen of them came tearing through the village at full speed, rolling and swaying on their springs, the drivers hunched over the wheels, their eyes wild.

  Then, abruptly, as if cut off with a knife, the shelling stopped. The silence seemed thick and impenetrable. Pugh lifted his head slowly. Tamara sat up with him. Her face was grey and her hair was covered with plaster dust. Tassinari was still standing bolt upright against the wall as though frozen. He was untouched but the clouds of plaster from the fallen ceiling had coated him so that he looked like a ghost.

  As Pugh rose to his feet, he caught a glimpse of more cars hurtling through the village. One of them he recognised at once as Colonel Da Sangalla’s. The Colonel was minus his hat and clearly had no intention of staying. A second car drew up across the square and the Mayor, Sansovino, with his henchmen, appeared from one of the streets behind the ruins of the town hall. As they hurried to the car, another shell landed in the square and they all flung themselves flat. The smoke drifted away, their heads lifted and there was a great deal of arm-waving, then, tyres screaming, the car started with a jerk and set off in a wide circle round the piazza and towards the road to the south. As it vanished, Pugh drew a deep breath. If nothing else, Sansovino’s departure meant that he could relax for a while and wouldn’t need to be constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure that the Detto Bantis were safe.

  The hearse had finally come to a stop. The panic-stricken horse had crashed through the hedge into the garden of the Ca’ di Leone, where a branch catching under one of the weeping chrome angels jammed the hearse. Since it could move no further, the horse clearly considered there was no point in worrying any more, and its head was down, munching on the grass. Of the owner the only sign was his
top hat lying in the road.

  Just as everyone in the little town turned out to study the damage, the bombardment started again. It was an old trick of the Germans to catch soldiers making repairs, and everybody disappeared again like leaves before a high wind. On and off for the rest of the afternoon the shells continued to fall in salvoes and all the time they could hear the thudding of guns to the north.

  ‘Vicinamontane sari destruita!’ Tamara gasped. ‘They’ll destroy the town.’

  Eventually lorries began to crash and rattle past, carrying khaki-clad men or dragging bouncing guns.

  ‘They’re pulling out, Signor Sergente,’ Foscari said. ‘I think it is time for us to go, too.’

  They ran to the front of the house but, as they appeared in the street to find out what was happening, another salvo of shells drove them indoors again, to lie flat on their faces close to the wall. It was obvious what the Germans were up to. They were trying to cut the road in the hope of trapping the Allied troops.

  When the shells finally stopped, they went out into the street again. There was no sign of the army, just a stream of civilians in carts, on mules and on foot, heading south.

  ‘What about the pictures?’ Tassinari asked.

  ‘We’d better hide them,’ Pugh said. ‘There’s enough rubbish in the cellars to cover a house.’

  Without argument, without question, they headed in a body for the cellar, where the paintings were still waiting, crated up ready to leave for Naples. At one side of the cellar was a pantry and beyond it a cold room. Enrichetta’s huge kitchen cupboard stood alongside the door.

  ‘In there,’ Pugh said.

  Between them, they carried the paintings into the cold room, then they dragged the huge cupboard into place across the door so that it was completely hidden. Staring at it, they decided there was no sign of anything beyond the pantry.

  ‘They’re all right there for a while,’ Pugh said. ‘We’ll come back for them when the Germans have gone.’

  As they dusted their hands, Marco indicated the back of the house. ‘I think one dropped round there somewhere,’ he said. ‘I’d better go and see what happened.’

  Those inhabitants of the town who hadn’t already left seemed to be standing in the battered piazza staring at the ruins of their town hall. It had been a square, ugly building with a flattish roof minus a lot of tiles, its walls chipped and broken, whole areas where the plaster had fallen away showing the bricks underneath like patches of disease. There were notices on the wall dating back to the days of the Fascists, but the fasces and other insignia had all been removed with the busts and portraits on the downfall of Mussolini. The stones had also been layered with black-edged notices giving the names of the newly-dead, and under the old notices of Evviva Mussolini new ones of Abasso Mussolini had been added. It hadn’t been a very impressive edifice but it had been the town hall and now there was nothing, and what was left of the population was standing mourning it.

  As Pugh turned away, he realised that Ciasca’s hearse was still in the orchard of the Ca’ di Leone with the horse, so they disentangled it from the tree, put Ciasca’s top hat inside and unharnessed the horse. It had clearly decided that it was on to a good thing, with far better eating than in its normal pasturage, and showed no inclination to move. They were still discussing what to do with it when Marco returned.

  ‘They hit your car,’ he said cheerfully.

  The shell seemed to have landed inside the vehicle, and the garage, made out of the stables, was pockmarked with splinters, while the door hung off its hinges in slivers of wood. Where the Fiat had stood was a small crater, still smoking, and the car lay scattered across the courtyard and orchard in a hundred and one pieces. A wheel rested against a tree, a wing reposed among the branches, a tyre, flickering with flame, lay in the grass.

  Pugh stared at it blankly.

  ‘It could be put together,’ Foscari said cheerfully.

  ‘How long would it take?’

  ‘A year or two perhaps.’

  Pugh looked about him. ‘I think we ought to be on our way,’ he said. ‘Those shells didn’t fall on Vicinamontane for nothing. The Germans will be here soon, I reckon.’

  He wasn’t far wrong.

  Eight

  The first indication that the Germans were coming was the noise of engines and, turning to gaze up the hill, Pugh was the first to realise what was happening. For a moment, he stared, then he looked down at himself and remembered he was wearing a British uniform.

  ‘Holy Jesus Christ!’ he said and bolted for the house.

  Tamara was just behind him. ‘What is it, Piu? It is only the Germans. They have been before and they will soon go.’

  He gestured at his uniform. ‘In this, I’m heading straight for a prison camp.’

  ‘Mamma mia!’ She caught on at once and shouted for the others to come inside.

  ‘La giacchetta!’ she snapped at Marco, and almost dragged the old dinner jacket from his back. ‘Find clothes!’

  ‘There aren’t any clothes!’

  ‘There must be!’

  As everybody scuttled off, the Germans began to fill the square. First of all it was a lorry carrying infantrymen armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and grenades, hard-faced men whose eyes were shadowed by steel helmets, their bodies laden with equipment. As the lorry pulled to a stop, other vehicles arrived and men hurried off to set up strong points in the places where they had been established during the previous occupation. A car halted with a squeal of brakes, and officers began to climb out, hung about with map cases, binoculars and weapons.

  Foscari took one look at them and, a true opera lover, fell back on Pagliacci. ‘La commedia,’ he wailed, ‘è finita!’

  Inside the house everyone was turning out clothes. A checked shirt smeared with paint was discovered among the rubbish in the studio; an old scarf was contributed by Avvocato Tassinari; then Marco came down with an armful of worn and faded garments.

  ‘Bocco’s,’ he said.

  Within minutes Pugh and Foscari looked like Italian civilians, and Tamara had stuffed their uniforms into the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. They were still admiring themselves when the door rattled to heavy knocking.

  Tamara opened it. She showed no sign of nervousness and even acted with considerable aplomb. On the step outside was a German officer. He was clearly not a fighting soldier because he wore thick spectacles and his weaponry consisted only of a notebook and a pen.

  ‘Klemper,’ he announced. ‘Hauptmann Hermann Klemper, Sonderauftrag Linz.’

  They looked at him blankly and he explained.

  ‘Sonderauftrag Linz is the special mission set up to appreciate and safeguard works of art. The Führer was born at Linz and it is his ambition to make it the artistic Mecca of the new Europe.’

  Tassinari’s eyebrows lifted. ‘The new Europe?’ he said. ‘I think, Signor Capitano, that by the time he has finished there will not be much Europe left at all.’ He smiled. ‘And perhaps even the Führer will not be around to administer it.’

  Klemper frowned because even to him it was becoming obvious that what Tassinari said was true. ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘The fact that things are happening in Russia of which we do not speak is of no importance. I have my instructions and I must obey them. Naturally, the Führer’s vision has to be placed in cold storage until the war is over, but there is no reason why the preparations should not proceed methodically.’

  Tassinari’s mouth twisted in a small smile. Pugh knew what he was thinking. It was typical of the Germans to create even their dreams in painstaking fashion.

  Klemper was standing with his hands behind his back now, studying his surroundings.

  ‘I need accommodation for myself and my party,’ he said, ‘and this house seems to be one of the few undamaged with enough rooms. I have a report here from the Colonel of the 179th Regiment, who was billeted in the town recently. We will board up the windows. You have three floors, each with several large rooms,
together with a set of basement rooms used by the staff.’

  ‘The staff,’ Marco said bitterly, ‘was one old woman who has since left.’

  ‘Never mind. Who is the owner?’

  Avvocato Tassinari happened to be standing at the front of the group facing him and, as Tamara opened her mouth to answer, he stepped forward and spoke with an alacrity and alertness that startled Pugh.

  ‘I am Tassinari, Filippo,’ he said. ‘The house belonged to the painter, Boccaccio Detto Banti. I am his cousin. I think perhaps it now belongs to me.’

  Standing in the background, feeling that he stood out like a sore thumb – a British sore thumb at that – Pugh held his breath.

  The German was smiling. ‘Boccaccio Detto Banti, eh?’ he said. ‘That is very convenient and of great interest to me.’ He gestured. ‘Who are these people?’

  Tassinari indicated Marco. ‘My cousin, Marcopolo Detto Banti. He came with me.’

  ‘How did he get here? Is there a car?’

  ‘There was. Your shells have just destroyed it.’

  Klemper frowned. ‘A pity. Vehicles are at a premium these days. And these others?’

  Tassinari bowed. ‘Cousins also.’ He gestured at Foscari, who was standing rigid with horror at the thought of being taken off and shot for not reporting to the Germans as he’d been ordered. ‘Toscari, Enzio. He is not very bright. He says little.’ Tassinari touched his head, and turned to Pugh. ‘Another cousin, Cavalcassella, Ettore.’

  Klemper smiled at Tamara, who stared back at him hostilely.

  ‘His wife?’

  Tamara’s startled eyes met Pugh’s. Pugh nodded, moved closer and put his arm round her shoulders. She gave a little twitch as though to shake it off, then changed her mind and put her arm round his waist.

  ‘How did they get here? The car?’

  ‘They came by bus. A very old bus. It was very tiring.’

  Pugh’s mind was working fast but Tassinari was doing very well, because Hauptmann Klemper seemed to be accepting without question everything he said.