The Girl on the Via Flaminia (4 page)

“Yes.”

“He used to sit on the dock and look out at the sea.” He remembered that from a history book. “I haven't been in Europe before,” he said. “I haven't been any place before. I grew up when Americans didn't think it was patriotic to travel to Europe. Europe was degenerate. A good American stayed home and discovered the beauties of Buffalo.”

“Buffalo?” she said. “But that is an American animal.”

“It was,” he said. “Now it's just an American city.”

“America is so rich,” she said.

“The country is,” he said.

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Rich.”

“No, I'm one of the poor ones.” He smiled. “Are you disappointed?”

“I? No. Why should I be?”

“I thought Nina might have said I was one of the rich ones.” Perhaps he should have boasted he was. The boys always said they were. The idea was to make them think you were even if you weren't. That made it easier, too, when they thought you were rich. And, of course, the point was to make it as easy as possible, and not to waste too much time talking. Just talk to them enough to make it easy.

She said: “Do you like Italy?”

It was the second time since he had entered the house he had been asked that. They obviously wanted you to like it.

“There's a lot of churches,” he said.

“America has many churches too, hasn't it?”

“Yes,” he said, “but we scatter them more.”

“St. Paul's is very beautiful,” she said. “People come from all over the world to see the cloisters at St. Paul's.”

“Well, St. Paul's . . .”

“Don't you like St. Paul's?”

“Oh, I like it,” he said. “But nothing happens to me when I see it. I mean I look at it and there it is: a church. How old are you?”

“Why?”

“I've been standing here trying to guess. Are you twenty-three?”

“It doesn't matter, does it?”

“No, it doesn't matter.” He fumbled with the straps of the musette bag. “Two things surprised me,” he said. “You're blonde and you're pretty.”

“Should I have been dark and ugly?” she said.

“No,” he said, “but I just didn't think you'd be that pretty.” Then, pretending that he was interested in the musette bag, and not looking at her, he said: “Do you know many soldiers?”

She did not answer for a while, and when she did, her voice had changed. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he said, “but there are so many soldiers in Rome.”

“Are there?” she said.

“A lot of the girls,” he said, “like the soldiers.”

“How fortunate,” she said, “for the soldiers.”

“Well,” he said, “a lot of them do.”

It was, of course, he realized, the wrong thing to have said, or at least it had been said much too soon, it was not something to have said at that particular moment or place, and he should have waited. He could feel that the hostility was back again in the room, and he was glad when the Signora Adele came back, smiling at them, and somewhat surprised to see them still there in the dining room.

“Oh,” she said, “I forgot. Nina did not show you the room.”

He realized, not knowing why, that the mention of the room only increased the look of aversion in her face, and yet, because she was here and because she was supposedly his wife there was hardly anything else she could do now except to get out of the chair finally and to follow Adele out of the dining room and into the hallway. He hefted the musette bag again, its bulky weight swinging against his hip, and went out, too, knowing something was wrong and not knowing what was wrong, or why it should be wrong. He carried the musette bag with him into the room at the end of the hallway. This was the room that had been arranged for. He could see that it was a rather large room, larger than he was accustomed to, with a high ceiling, and not too badly furnished, with a closet, a table, a fringed lamp on a small end table, and in the center of the room a big bed covered with a red smooth spread, and with red pillows propped against the headboard. It was unmistakably a room for two people, and one of them had to be a woman. And it was cold. It seemed much colder to him, as he stood there, easing the musette bag off his shoulder and on to the table, than the dining room had been. He wondered if Nina's captain had visited here, and what he had said about the coldness, and then what jokes were made about the best way to keep warm. Adele punched the pillows, and bustled around the room for a moment straightening things, and then she went out, closing the door. He was glad the musette bag was off his shoulder, because he had felt somewhat foolish carrying it about so constantly and, he imagined, so obviously.

Lisa stood in the center of the room, on the small rug, with her hands in her pockets, and looking at her he could not be certain he knew what she was thinking. He decided the thing for him to do was to ignore the hostility. He went and sat down now on the bed, thinking it was funny the spread should be that color. They could have chosen some other color. He blew on his hands. “It's cold,” he said. “I'm shivering.”

“Are your barracks warm?” she asked. She was being polite.

“Sure.”

“Yes, the Americans manage to keep themselves warm.”

He was supposed to apologize and feel guilty, too, about his warm barracks. They really weren't so goddam warm at that. “There's a big villa at Anzio,” he said. “In the pine wood. Do you know it? I guess it belongs to some duke. The duke has quite a library. Or he had. He probably doesn't have it anymore.”

“No? Why?”

“Oh, when I was there, there was a lieutenant in the library. The lieutenant was cold. He was feeding the duke's nice Latin manuscripts into a cozy fire.”

“Yes?”

“Nothing. He was feeding them into the fire. He was cold.”

“It must be wonderful,” she said, standing there.

“What?”

“To be an American,” she said, “and to be the conqueror of Europe.”

He got up from the bed and went to the table where he had placed the musette bag. He began to unbuckle the straps. “It's all right,” he said.

“Wherever you go,” she said, “flowers, and the people cheering. You are the liberatori. And drinking wine. And then the girls, every place.”

He opened the bag.

“I missed a couple of places,” he said.

“Did you know girls in Africa?” she said.

“Yes, I knew girls in Africa.”

“In Naples?”

“Yes, in Naples.”

“Where else?”

“Caserta.”

He took a can of milk out of the musette bag, and then some chocolate bars. He had talked the mess sergeant out of the can of milk, and the chocolate bars had been accumulated from his weekly rations. He had had no use for them before, except for some kids who used to come down and stand behind the barbed-wire fence, looking in, and then there were so many kids it was easier to give them the hard candy which hadn't much of a trading value anyway. He heard her, behind him, as he took the things out of the musette bag, say: “I think the Americans are liars.”

He put the chocolate and the milk on the table.

“Why do you say they're liars?” he said.

“They make many promises. But they don't keep them.”

“Depends on the promise.”

“I think they are stupid, too,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, “we're a little bit of everything.” He had taken a fruit cake, wrapped in its transoceanic cellophane, out of the bag. He held the cake up. “Do you like fruit cake?” he said. “My mother keeps sending me fruit cake and I hate it.”

“What does your fiancée send you?”

She was ignoring the cake.

“My what?” he said.

“Your fiancée.”

“She neglects me,” he said.

“Does she?”

“Well,” he said, “if I had one, she'd neglect me.”

But she was refusing to look at the cake. She did not, obviously, think he was funny. He thought he was being funny, and he thought too that what he was doing was, as near as he could make it, kind. She stood there, in the raincoat, on the rug, not looking at the bed or the color of it or at anything in the room.

“I think the people despise you,” she said.

“Do they?”

“You are arrogant and loud and stupid, and they despise you.”

He put the cake down slowly. He had had great hopes about the influence of the cake.

“It's pretty hard despising a Sherman tank,” he said.

“The conquistatori!” she said.

“Baby,” he said, “it's better than being defeated.”

“Italy is not defeated,” she said.

“No? She's giving a pretty good imitation of it.” Then he tried once more with the cake. He had really depended a great deal upon the cake. He held it up again, in its cellophane wraper. “Wouldn't you like to try my mother's fruit cake?” he said.

“Italy has been invaded by barbarians before,” she said.

So it was hopeless, even with the cake.

“By what?” he said.

“Barbarians!”

“Now I'm a barbarian.” The barbarian thing annoyed him. There was no reason it should have, more than the being stupid or arrogant or untrustworthy, but it did. “Look,” he said, “you may have Leonardo da Vinci, but we've got U.S. Steel . . .”

“And it rusts,” she said.

“And Da Vinci peels . . .”

“It lasts longer than metal!”

“But it ain't so hot on a tank,” he said. He was almost angry now. He hadn't come here through the cold and the dark to have a political quarrel. But perhaps she could still be placated. He tried again. “How about some chocolate?” he said. “Wouldn't you like some chocolate?”

“Why do the Americans boast so much?” she said.

“Why do the Italians complain so much?” he answered.

“We've suffered!”

“We didn't cause it,” he said.

“You bombed our cities.”

“The Germans were in them,” he said.

“And now you,” she said.

He looked at her. He had become an enemy. And yet, he was no enemy, certainly not hers, certainly not anyone's in this house, not now, after having come this distance and through this cold. And yet she accused him, or seemed to accuse him. He had packed a bag and he had brought food and he had walked across the bridge. “Be grateful,” he said, trying not to be angry. Not now, at least. “If we hadn't walked up here from Salerno,” he said, “you'd still be doing the tedeschi's laundry . . .”

“Perhaps,” she said, “it would have been better!”

“Would it?”

“Yes!”

“I'll invite the Jerries back,” he said, being ugly about it now.

“We don't want either of you,” she said.

“No?”

“No!” she said.

“Perhaps it was easier,” he said, “sleeping with a kraut . . .”

“That's a lie!” the girl said.

“Don't tell me,” he said, “you ate bananas out of the banana trees while the Jerries were here.”

“We fought them,” she said, furiously, “we fought them!”

“Where?” he said. “In bed?”

She came across the room to where he stood, holding the bar of chocolate, and she slapped him, and not thinking, feeling the cold impact of her hand on his check, he slapped her as quickly, and as he did so he could hear his own voice saying very evenly, not like his own voice at all, “Baby, I told you: you lost this war.”

She turned and went toward the door of the bedroom. The bar of chocolate had broken in his hand. He already regretted slapping her. He tried to stop her. He did not want her to go. More than anything else now, he did not want her to go out of this room.

“Where are you going?”

He had put his back against the door.

She tried to get by him, and to open the door.

“There's nothing outside,” he said.

“Let me go, please.”

“But there's nothing outside,” he said. He did not move away from the door. “God, you Italians have a temper,” he said. “Do you always blow a fuse like that?”

The lights in the bedroom began to flicker. The lamp with the fringed shade on the small table next to the bed and the lamp on the table where he had placed his musette bag dimmed and grew bright and dimmed again. “I think,” he said to the struggling girl, “we're having powerhouse trouble again. Why don't you people get your city fixed up?”

“Ask Admiral Stone!” she said.

“You don't happen to have a candle, do you?” he said.

“No!”

“Well, we're going to need one,” he said, and the lights went down and faded out, and they were in darkness. In coldness and in darkness, like all the city.

She had moved away from him in the darkness. She was somewhere in the room. He could not tell where she was. He was afraid to abandon the door. The sense of being lost increased. He could feel the darkness changing him. Outside, in the hallway, he could hear the old man's voice. Ugo was calling, “Adele, the lights!”

“Sì, sì, I know,” Adele answered. He could hear her voice. They were all excited and confused. “I am bringing a candle. Madonna, what a life!”

“Signor Roberto!” the old man called.

He shouted back: “The lights are out here too!”

“Eh, Madonna! Scusi,” the old man said, as though he were responsible for the failure of the power. “I will bring a candle.” He could hear them in the hallway moving about looking for candles and for matches.

“Lisa,” he said, into the darkness.

There was no answer.

He could hear the sound of his own cold breathing.

“I'm sorry about the slap,” he said, into the darkness.

She did not answer.

“Lisa,” he said, “can you hear me? I'm sorry. And it's not true. About the girls, I mean.”