Your idea for the posters was a limited success. The people desecrated them. What they did was childish, of course, but it was also clever, in the manner of bright children everywhere.
You will recall the first poster, the one of the tall blond smiling German soldier holding out his hand and saying “Remember, the German soldier is your friend.”
Someone here has gone about painting the hand red and dripping with blood.
All of them had to be taken down.
The second shows a German officer in dress uniform stopping by the side of a road to go to the aid of an Italian street urchin who has been hurt, although clearly his uniform will be ruined by the Samaritan act.
There are no words on this one, as you recall, because the picture tells the story. Someone has gone about writing on them: “Yes, but why did you hit him in the first place?”
We took those down also.
I think our basic error is that we have been attempting to treat these people as mature responsible beings, when our approach should have been to treat them as they actually are, that is, overage children.
The last paper is a memorandum to himself, under the title “Some Thoughts on the Italian Character.”
In General: Italians act from emotion, not reason, in the manner of children.
Conclusion: Treat them as such.
Specific: Germans have a sense of cultural inferiority toward Latins. They appear quick and clever, whereas we seem dull and stolid.
Answer: Cause is not cultural superiority, but a lack of any values or beliefs. Since the Nordic functions from a firm set of values he is limited in the breadth of his movement, but not in depth.
Example: The German has an affinity for truth; the nation is a reservoir of truth.
When a German says he will be some place at six he will be there. No Italian will ever be at the appointed place on time, because he does not intend to be there. He will come late, but he will have a remarkable lie to tell as to why he failed to arrive on time. All Italians have an affinity for the lie.
Over-all conclusion: It is a mistake, then, to treat children as one would treat adults.
Persuasion and logic are a waste of time. During the occupation the leader must conduct himself as a father—stern but understanding. As the father, one can take advantage of the German virtues, of organization, of planning, of moral and physical strength.
As such, force, the usual method, is not needed except as a potential threat, such as the whip in the woodshed. We should rule by respect, as any father is respected by a child.
Such a policy should release thousands and thousands of men for active duty now tied down in occupation police duties. Police are not needed for errant children, fathers are needed.
Discuss these thoughts with Colonel Scheer.
The captain was disappointed when Colonel Scheer stamped his letter to Klaus as “Approved,” without so much as glancing at it. It was the kind of letter a junior officer might wish his senior officer to see.
“And now, shall we tune in Radio Cairo? Just to see what lies they are telling, of course,” the colonel said.
It was a standing joke, since it was accepted by all of them that the English provided the most reliable source of news. When the radio began to operate, officers from other rooms began to gather in the doorway.
The rumors had been correct. Landings had been made by the English and the Americans in a place called Salerno, south of Rome and Naples. The Italians had declared themselves out of the war and would soon, in a matter of hours, come in again on the side of the Allies.
“Oh, God, what good news,” the colonel said. “No longer do we have to lose men saving the wops.”
When the broadcast was finished the colonel turned off the radio and faced the officers in the room and at the doorway.
“There have been no official orders as yet, but you know what this means. As of this moment, Plan A is in effect. Unless I am seriously wrong, Operation Clutch will commence in a day or two.”
Plan A was a full combat alert, in which the Italians would be treated like the people in any occupied territory, as the enemy and a source of potential danger. Operation Clutch was the formal plan designed to occupy Montefalcone and the rest of the outlying area.
Captain von Prum left the headquarters and went back to the building in which his men were billeted. He went up one flight of stairs and looked into a large cluttered room.
“We don’t need formality,” he said. But the soldiers were startled by the presence of an officer in their quarters and they got to their feet in confusion.
“Come to attention,” Sergeant Traub shouted at them, and all of them, even the naked soldier, came to attention and remained that way until von Prum released them.
Along one wall of the room were buckets of glue and brushes and rolls of posters, this one showing a German soldier helping an old Italian woman across a busy street. The captain pointed to them. “You won’t need those any longer,” he said. “We are at war with Italy.”
Some of the soldiers smiled, and some waited to see what the proper action was supposed to be. The captain took this chance to examine his detachment. It was the first time he had seen them all together, and it was not a reassuring sight. There were only eight of them, and all had been seriously wounded and were now on limited duty. The senior of them, Sergeant Gottfried Traub, had been hit in the face by shell fragments, and the muscles had been severed, so that the captain found it impossible to know what the sergeant was thinking from his expression. He had reached one conclusion, which was that the sergeant appeared happier when he wasn’t smiling at which time his face became distorted.
“We’re all going to become soldiers again. No more glue pots,” the captain said. Once again the men didn’t know how to take the news.
He took out the map of this section of Italy. It was so typical and correct, von Prum thought, that the only reliable map of the whole area had been sent to him by his father from Mannheim.
“You will note,” he said, “a good German map and so we are safe. At least we will be sure to wind up in the town we have been sent to take.”
His slender finger touched the city of Montefalcone. “We are here.” The soldiers, who were timid about doing it at first, began to gather around the map. “We eventually will be here.” He began to move his finger down the line from Montefalcone and out to the Mad River and along the red line on the map which marked the River Road. It was dark by then, and the noise of tanks and half-tracks from the streets and piazzas outside was so loud that he had to shout to make himself heard. They were wasting no time.
“It’s on the mountain, as you can see.”
The soldier who had been naked, Corporal Heinsick, had put on clothes and was leaning over the map. His thick, stubby finger touched the city and then crossed the map to the road.
“There’s no line to it. There’s no road.”
“There’s a road. It is a track, really. For oxen and carts. Our equipment will be equal to it. Are there other questions?”
The soldiers were silent because they were not accustomed to asking their officers questions. It bothered some of them and made them nervous. But one thing had been troubling them from the beginning and they looked at Sergeant Traub, and so he finally said it.
“Sir? There seem to be only eight of us, not counting yourself.”
“That is correct.”
Again there was an embarrassed silence and the man kept looking at Traub.
“Captain Pfalz has fifty in his command. They feel they need fifty to take and hold their town, sir.”
“We need only eight.”
They knew that it was the end to the questions, and they made a show of gathering around the map again to exhibit interest. Traub touched the name on the map.
“Sanda Viddoria,” he said.
“Yes. Santa Vittoria,” the captain said.
“Ah, yes. Sanda Viddoria,” the sergeant said.
LONG BEFORE Fabio r
eached Montefalcone it had grown dark. Walking the River Road in the dark is hard, but the darkness had brought the traffic out, hundreds of cars and trucks and half-tracks moving by the little light of hooded parking lights, all heading south and he could see by them. He was forced to the side of the road, but he could see. A few soldiers riding the trucks shouted at him and made gestures at him and one or two actually aimed their rifles at him, but Fabio failed to respond. He was no fun for them.
At the gate into the city, still guarded by an Italian and a German, Fabio felt they would arrest him, but he didn’t really care about that.
“You’re not going to learn much at the academy,” the Italian guard told him. “It’s closed.”
He only shrugged and they passed him through.
“Make Goddamn sure you check in with the prefect of police in the morning,” the guard told him, and Fabio gave no sign of even having heard. Every foot of the city seemed to be filled with trucks and armored vehicles, pressed up alongside the walls of the houses for protection, some of them with men in them, sleeping under camouflage nets. A few of them said things to Fabio in German, but he didn’t really hear them. He went to the pensione where he had shared a room with two other students, and he found that Germans were in it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” the woman who ran the house shouted at him. “Don’t you know about the curfew? Don’t you know what’s going on. You better get off the streets and out of here and stay out.”
“What happened to my books?”
“They burned them. They used them to heat food. Page by page.”
“Couldn’t you stop them?”
She laughed at him. “Then they would have used my furniture. I told them to do it. You read too many books anyway.”
He didn’t know where he was going. He decided to try to reach the house of Galbiati, an instructor he had been fond of and who had been fond of him. He went down the Corso directly into the Piazza Frossimbone. Soldiers sitting in the darkness of doorways said things to him, but he walked on at his own pace. It is hard to frighten anyone who has no more use for life. At one side of the piazza a large sign had been put up and it was lit by a light that was shielded from the sky. A group of German officers and noncoms were gathered about the sign discussing what it said and taking notes and Fabio walked across to it.
The sign was a large, carefully drawn map of the Montefalcone region and on it, broken down into ten areas and twenty subareas, were the names of all the towns and villages that would be occupied within the next several days. The information included the names of the occupying units, the day they would take the town and the hour in which they would arrive. Fabio, even in the condition he was in, could appreciate the thoroughness of the work.
San Pietro would be occupied tomorrow morning. Garafano Maggiori tomorrow afternoon, San Rocco del Lago the next evening. Santa Vittoria and Scarafaggio were listed as being in Area R, Subareas 5 and 6. The Germans would come on Wednesday, at 1700 hours.
Three days. Not quite three days. At five o’clock in the afternoon. The bad time. How often things seemed to happen at the bad time, the seventeenth hour, Fabio thought.
“It’s enough time for them,” Fabio told himself. He wasn’t sure if he said the words aloud. “They can ring their cork bell when they come.”
He went through the little dark park in the center of the piazza and as he did he heard a girl struggling with a man.
“Don’t do that to me,” she said. “You promised. You gave your word to my mother.”
“You little bitch,” the man said—in good Italian, although he was German—and Fabio heard him hit her and then he heard her fall back through the underbrush and strike the ground and by the sounds he knew the German had run.
“You had better stop that crying,” Fabio told her. He didn’t know where she was, but the crying stopped and when he went to find her she had already gone. Girls who went with German soldiers deserved what they got, he thought, although as he said it he knew the soldiers sometimes went to the girls’ houses and made it impossible for the families to refuse. All they could do was hope the German proved to be decent.
“Oh, God,” he said aloud. Angela. They would do it to Angela. He knew at once, the same way he had known when he had seen Bombolini on top of the water tower, that he would have to go to Santa Vittoria and be the one to warn them. Now that he cared he found his heart was beginning to beat hard. He was excited, but his mind was clear and he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He got the rest of the way across the piazza without being seen and up into a dark narrow lane, and from this lane off into a series of lanes that kept him away from the Corso and the piazza but moving deeper into the city where the workingmen lived. He found the house he was looking for, and when his knock was not answered he tapped on the window, and when that went unanswered he was about to go away, when the shutter was opened by a young woman who did not seem to be wearing any clothes. Fabio looked down.
“Oh,” he said. “I wanted Gambo. I was expecting Gambo.”
“He isn’t here, he’s in the hospital. A rock fell on him in the quarry.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Fabio cleared his throat. “Is his bike here? He said I could use it whenever I needed it.” She said nothing, but tried to make him out in the darkness. “I need it.”
“Stand over here. Let me see you.” She made him come near to the window and she held his head up. “Wait here,” she said, and in a moment he could hear the chain coming down from the door. “Now come in.”
When he went in he could see the bicycle chained to an iron ring in the stone staircase, and when he looked further into the room he could see the girl and was surprised to find that she was wearing only a shirt, one of Gambo’s shirts. He was startled by her legs, because he had never actually seen a woman’s legs before, and even more startled when he found he could see almost all of her breasts, because the shirt was not buttoned all of the way to the top. He turned back to the bike.
“A nice bicycle,” he said. “Gambo always took good care of his bicycles.”
The woman laughed and asked him who he was.
“Fabio. Just call me Fabio.”
“Just Fabio? I can’t loan a bike to someone called ‘just Fabio,’ eh?”
“Bombolini. Fabio Bombolini,” he said. “From the Resistance.”
She motioned him to come away from the door and into the room, and he looked at her quickly, because he had never seen anything like her, but when she sat down on the bed and turned back toward him he looked away again. The shirt was almost completely open.
“How long have you known Gambo?”
“Oh, for years and years and years,” Fabio said. “How long has he been in the hospital?” She leaned back on the bed, and Fabio could feel his heart pumping.
“Oh, for weeks and weeks and weeks,” she said, and he blushed. They talked about Gambo for a while, and Fabio found that the woman barely knew him.
“Why don’t you ever look at me?” she said.
“I’m looking at you.”
“No you’re not. What am I doing now?” She was swinging a small key chain around and around. Her breasts were bare. “Why do you look away?”
“I’m not looking away. I’m looking at you. It’s just that I was interested in the bike. I came for the bike.”
“The bike is more interesting than me?”
“It’s a beautiful bike,” Fabio said. The nature of the silence, the coldness behind it, informed Fabio that he would have to say more. “You seem beautiful, too,” he said.
“Then look at me for God’s sake.”
He took his eyes away from the bike and looked at her, as calmly he could, determined to examine her in all objectivity, as if she were in anatomy class or was a new shirt. But he felt that the pounding of his heart must be making a sound in the room, and then he found that his right leg was shaking so that anyone could see it.
“The key to the bike. See?” She held up the key ch
ain. “If you want it you can come and get it.”
He had heard about things such as this. There would be a game to get the key. Sex games, his father had called them. He realized he would have to play, but he didn’t know how to begin and he didn’t know the rules. She ended this by bringing his hand to her neck so that he could feel the chain.
“It’s thin, you see, but very strong,” she said.
The game went swiftly enough after that, although it was a one-sided game. She was expert at it.
“Why are you trembling?” she said, and he told her it was cold, although he was sweating, and she pulled back the sheet and pulled it over them, which made it somewhat better.
“What’s this?” It was his holy medal.
“St. Anthony of Padua.”
“Take it off,” she told him. “I can’t make love with a saint in between us. Your first time, eh?”
“Oh, no,” Fabio said; but she laughed, nicely, at him.
“You’ll have a good teacher,” she said. “That’s very important. You’re awfully old to be beginning.”
I will think only of Angela while I do this, Fabio promised himself. No, no, no. I will think only of the bicycle. I will remember that I am doing this as a duty in order to get the bicycle.
He was conscious of the woman but he did not allow himself to enjoy the consciousness. In a way, he was performing a patriotic act in the line of duty.
“Well,” she said at last. “Fabio, you’re a good student.”
He wished she hadn’t said it, because it implied somehow that he had invested himself beyond the point of duty.
“Someday you’ll make some woman a good lover.” He turned red, of course, and yet he found that he wasn’t displeased. “And I’ll tell you this, Fabio—Fabio what?”
“Della Romagna.”
“I will tell you this, Fabio della Romagna: You may not be the best I’ve ever had, but you’re the prettiest.”
Despite himself, he found that he was smiling and could only hope that she hadn’t seen him smiling.
“And one of the strangest. I think you are in love with bikes.”
The Secret of Santa Vittoria Page 12
