The Girl on the Via Flaminia Read online

It was a big room, full of pipes, nakedness and steam. A squat middle-aged man, wearing ski shoes, took care of the water pressure and swamped out the showers afterward. Robert said “Buon giorno” to him.

  “Buon giorno, sergente,” the attendant in the ski boots said, because they were all sergeants to him. “How’s the acqua today?”

  “Hot.”

  “It looks hot all right.”

  He undressed at a bench, hanging his pants over the back of the bench, and the odors of steam and sweat were everywhere. Under the iron nozzles, the men stood, soaping themselves, and naked there was a difference about the way they looked, as though the military thing went away completely with the uniform, and naked they all looked somewhat pathetic and very vulnerable, even though they sang because of the heat and the steam and the hissing water. He stood, soaping himself too, under the shower, listening.

  “Hey, now!” the soldier shouted. He was doing a very active sort of dance on the drainboards. “Hey, now! Ain’t this a bitch? Ain’t this something?”

  “Hey, now!” the soldier said. “Hey, Mac!”

  “Yeah?”

  “You have an accident?”

  “An accident?”

  “Something’s hanging out, boy. Hey, now!”

  The water hissed and poured, and the shower room echoed, and later, dry again, dressed, he went back down the corridor, his hair damp and combed against his scalp. They were clearing the long wooden tables in the big kitchen where the laborers ate, and the tin plates were stacked high, and only the cups of salt and pepper remained looking very abandoned on the long wooden tables. He hesitated in front of the orderly room, because he was not sure of what he was going to do, or the wisdom of doing it; then he knocked and entered the orderly room, and saluted Captain White who was sitting behind the first sergeant’s desk still, and still reading the old copy of Time.

  “If I had a girl picked up by the police, captain,” he said to Captain White, standing in front of the first sergeant’s desk, “is there any chance of getting her out of it?”

  “What police?” Captain White said. “Ours?”

  “No,” he said. “Carabinieri.”

  “Who’s the girl?” Captain White said. “Dago?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they pick her up for?”

  “For being with me.”

  Captain White looked at him and flipped over the pages of the old issue of Time. “What do you want me to do? Go down to the clink and bail her out?”

  “No.”

  “Who is she?” Captain White said. “What do you know about her?”

  “Not much.”

  “Then stay out of it,” Captain White said, “and next time you get laid pick up somebody the police don’t want.”

  “She’s not a bum.”

  “How do you know?” Captain White said. “Stay out of it. Let the civilian police handle it. Those dago cops don’t have anything else to do anyway.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He saluted again, and went out of the orderly room, knowing that it was a mistake and that he should not have gone in at all, and then as he went back into the long room he slammed the door loudly, and left it open, and somebody said for Christ’s sake close the goddam door and they were still shooting crap. He put his soap dish and his towel and his comb back into the closet and began to dress. While he was putting his shirt on, the door opened again, loudly, and somebody said: “For Christ’s sake.”

  He looked up.

  A soldier was standing in the doorway, a big soldier named Jessup, who was a farmer with a small farm up in Vermont, and he had survived an artillery observation outfit, and now he was loaded and he had an owl on his shoulder. The owl was sitting on his shoulder.

  “For Christ’s sake,” somebody said. “Where did you get the owl?”

  “In the woods,” Jessup said, grinning. He stroked the owl’s feathers.

  “What are you going to do with a goddam owl?”

  “Keep him.”

  “Keep him? For Christ’s sake.”

  “I’ll make him a pet.”

  “How do you like that. Now we got a goddam owl.”

  “Hey, Jess, let the goddam owl fly away. I don’t want owl shit all over my stuff. Let him fly away.”

  “Can’t,” Jessup said.

  “Why do you mean, can’t?”

  “I broke his legs,” Jessup said. He went out of the door again, grinning, the owl with the broken legs sitting on his shoulder.

  “Come on,” the dice player said. “Who shoots?”

  Robert dressed, and went out of the room, and when he got out of the building through the same door the Italians had used to depart after they had been searched and out of the gate guarded by the two M.P.s, he began to run.

  12.

  Now in the late afternoon, Robert waited again in the dining room, feeling the grayness of the day. He was irritable and restless. Ugo Pulcini sat at the table, peeling an apple with a long knife. The old man glanced up at the soldier. The house was quiet and clean. Outside, the late light faded slowly.

  “This Papalino,” Ugo said, “was extraordinary. Seven languages he spoke . . . and in those days there were always tourists in the city.” It was before the war. He peeled the apple and talked. “One day,” the old man said, “Papalino was guiding one of your countrymen, a rich American, about the city. And everything he saw, this rich American, he wanted to buy.”

  At the window, looking out into the withered garden, Robert said, “What time is it, Ugo?”

  “Five . . . a little after.”

  “It gets dark so early,” the soldier said.

  Ugo continued to peel the apple. “You know in the Piazza del Popolo the great obelisk? Three thousand years old! The Emperor Augustus himself brought it back from Egypt. There it stands, older than memory, and when Papalino’s American sees it he insists on buying it. Of course, Papalino is at first reluctant. He is not sure, he says, he can arrange with the government to have it removed. However, for a slight gratuity and a commission, he will contact the proper authorities. This sounds perfectly reasonable to your millionaire. After all, what is it? An obelisk! So he pays Papalino five thousand dollars down, and on the following day he is in the Piazza del Popolo with workmen ready to remove the monument! We laughed in Rome for a whole week . . .”

  The light faded. Nothing was visible but the gray fronts of houses, and the cold sky. He said to the old man, “You don’t think she’d do anything crazy, do you, Ugo?”

  “Who knows?”

  “I should have gone with her,” Robert said.

  “All you could have done was confess she lived with you,” Ugo said. “And perhaps the police would have used that as proof. No: alone, there is a possibility.”

  “What time did you say it was?” Robert asked.

  “Five . . . a little after.”

  “It’s dark already,” Robert said, staring out of the window.

  She had gone off. She had cried in bed. He did not touch her. The last punishment would have been his touching her. He could hear her crying in the dark, separated from him. He lay in the dark, thinking. Nothing would happen. He told himself nothing would happen to her. If nothing happened to her, then he could go away. It had simply not worked out. It should have been easy but it had not worked out easy at all.

  “Roberto,” Ugo said.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you love Lisa?”

  He looked out at the fading light. The lamps would be coming on now in a city at home. Here no street lamps came on. The encroachment of the darkness was not pleasant.

  “It’s not a question of love,” he said.

  “Excuse me,” the old man said. He had sliced the apple. He carried the slice on the blade of his knife toward his mouth. “What is it a question of then?”

  “She was hungry, I was lonely, that’s the story,” Robert said.

  “Then why are you so concerned?”

  “I don’t like feeling like a heel,�
�� the soldier said.

  “Only that?”

  “That’s the story,” Robert said.

  The old man chewed the slice of apple. “Listen, Roberto: the clock strikes. But time doesn’t end. Only a day.”

  “So?”

  “Yesterday was a crisis,” Ugo said. “It turns out tomorrow is also a crisis. What will Lisa do tomorrow?”

  The light ebbed. Darkness swept in from the hills. Visibility died. At home, wherever home was, there was light, warmth, ease, one’s familiar things.

  “That’s not my responsibility,” Robert said.

  “Whose is it?”

  “Hers. God’s. The world’s. How do I know?”

  “You see?” the old man said, quietly chewing the apple. “It is a question of love.”

  He turned away from the window. The small muscles ground in his jaw. “Look, Ugo,” he said to the old man at the table. “I’m seven thousand miles away from the Statue of Liberty. This isn’t my country: these aren’t my people. I went to bed with a girl. She was hungry. All right: the account’s square, isn’t it? I didn’t lie. I didn’t say I was in love. I didn’t promise her a villa. I played it as straight as I could. Do I owe her anything? Do I owe anybody anything?”

  “No,” the old man said, gently.

  “I’ve seen soldiers,” Robert said. “They’ll promise a girl anything to climb into the sack with her. Christ, to listen to them, they’re all millionaires back home. They’re all going to marry them, put them on a ship, take them back to mamma’s electric icebox! And then one bright morning they ship out and there’s Maria, weeping into her spaghetti, and no caro Johnnie in sight.”

  “Yes,” Ugo said. “That is true.”

  “Well, I’m built different, I guess,” Robert said. “Why? Ask God. I didn’t want to stand under the trees on the Via Veneto. I didn’t want to go down to the banks of the Tiber under the bridges. But I wasn’t going to lie. I wanted to make a deal. A simple deal. An exchange. All right, it didn’t work out. Perhaps you can’t make that kind of a deal, or the kind of a girl you can make it with I wouldn’t want anyway. Now Lisa’s in trouble. All right, what I can do to help her, I’ll do, money or whatever she needs or wants. But Christ almighty don’t put the responsibility for what happens to you Italians on my round shoulders!”

  “And when Lisa comes?” Ugo asked.

  “I said I’ll try to help!”

  “What a hard people you are,” the old man said.

  “What a sentimental people you are,” Robert said.

  “In Italy,” the old man said, “we say: when the wife sins, the husband is not innocent.”

  “I’m not her husband.”

  “What are you?”

  “Il conquistatore!” Robert said. And went out of the room.

  Ugo sighed. The knife cut meditatively into the apple. Outside, in the hallway, the doorbell rang. Ugo lifted his head to listen. The voice was familiar. Then Mimi came into the dining room, and behind her, somewhat dusty, her face streaked with tiredness, but apparently as unconquerable as ever, Nina. He looked at her in amazement.

  “Look, Signor Ugo!” Mimi cried. “It is Nina!”

  Nina swept to the table. She kissed the old man on the top of his thinning hair. “Eh,” she said, “where are the flowers? Where’s the music? The traveler’s home!”

  “A quick journey,” the old man said.

  “Be a darling, Mimi,” Nina said. “Put some coffee on. I’ve a kilometer of dust in me.” The little girl smiled and ran out. “So!” Nina said, surveying the room. “Home again. It’s good to be back. Up north—what destruction! We’re the only city left in Italy, Ugo.”

  “And Florence?” Ugo asked.

  “Cold, and full of soldiers.” She shuddered. Antonio came into the dining room. “Antonio!” Nina cried.

  The boy stopped. A quick distaste crooked his handsome mouth.

  “Where did you come from?” he said.

  “Heaven.”

  “And the beautiful captain?”

  “Who knows?” Nina said. “In hell, I hope.”

  Antonio snorted.

  “But what happened?” Ugo asked.

  Nina shook her coat from her shoulders. Her hair was again the red that five hundred lire a rinse could make it. “He left me,” she said, indifferently.

  “Remember, Papa?” Antonio said. “Such magnificent teeth!”

  “But how?” Ugo asked. “It was such a great love . . .”

  “How does a man leave you?” Nina said, smoothing her dress down at the hip. “He opens a door and he’s gone.”

  The old man shook his head. “Nina, Nina . . .”

  “Suddenly,” Nina said, “a tremendous confession. He’s married. And his conscience bothers him! It did not bother him for four months. His poor wife, waiting faithfully somewhere in . . . who knows? . . . Ohio! At six o’clock in the evening, when I’m in a hot bath, he has to start feeling guilty! And it was such a lovely hotel.”

  “What did you do?” Ugo asked.

  “I threw his toothbrush after him, and slammed the door. Wet as I was! Then I went downstairs and ordered a big dinner.”

  “On his bill?”

  “Of course. And in the dining room, fortunately, there was a British major . . . bellissimo!”

  “With magnificent teeth?” Antonio said.

  “And a magnificent staff car going back to Rome,” Nina said. “So—”

  “Here you are,” Ugo said.

  “Here I am.”

  “What army comes after the English?” Antonio said.

  “You’re very funny, carissimo,” Nina said.

  “How about the Poles?” Antonio said. “They have magnificent teeth, too.”

  “I prefer you,” Nina said.

  “Grazie.”

  “Because you have such a sweet disposition, Antonio mio,” Nina said. She turned again to Ugo. “How is Lisa? And Roberto? Come, Ugo: talk to me. I’m dying for news.” She went out into the hall. “Mimi, is the coffee ready?” she called.

  “What news is there?” Ugo said, following her. “Just bad news . . .”

  Antonio stood alone in the room for a moment. In his pocket he touched the cold flattened head of the African bullet. He thought, She is not afraid of me, but she will be, they all will be, some day. The bullet was reassuring. It focused him again. Touching it, he could remember what he was, and what had happened to him, and why he was justified. After a while, he went out of the dining room, too.

  The room was quiet.

  Imperceptibly, the last touch of daylight ended.

  She came in noiselessly, through the door which opened from the garden, with the sky, briefly revealed, dark now, all the light gone. The collar of her raincoat was high up about her face, and she looked, coming into the room in which no lamp had yet been lighted, tired and drained. She came into the room as though she were estranged from this too, the familiar furniture, the familiar walls, and sank tiredly into a chair, huddled into her coat. She was glad the room was empty and dark, and she would have liked the darkness to continue always. She stared at the room now as though everything in it, during the time she had been absent from it, had been transformed into something unfamiliar and even menacing; as though now, even the simplest of objects, a radio, a chair, a table, had acquired an ability to threaten her, and to become part of the general hostility. She sat there, and piece by piece the involuntary images of her day would rise up into her mind, and she would look at them in their remembered light like the pieces of some grotesque and obscene play into whose plot she had fallen, and then she would, her whole mind shrinking, push them away again, thrust them back, and then they would return: the nakedness of the women in the big cold gray empty surgical room, waiting to be examined; the girl, shrieking, in the truck, as they drove through the streets, and the girl who spat at everything; and the hands emerging to touch her, the faces emerging, professional, official, dry, indifferent, disbelieving. They would return, and subside, and t
hey left this stony emptiness inside her, this deathlike silence in which she sat.

  She was there, in the darkness, when Mimi came into the dining room, and startled, said, recognizing her, “Oh, signora! You frightened me . . .”

  She heard the little girl come quickly to her. Something human again, moving, a voice, a distant incomprehensible desire to be kind, to be sympathetic, when she had gone far beyond the place where sympathy or kindness could touch her. “Did it go well?” Kind, the voice, young yet, was kind, gentle. “Were they bad, the police? I hope it went well . . .”

  “Yes,” Lisa said, “it went well.”

  “Povera signora!” Pity; this one was young, this one had pity. “But you must not worry. I do not worry. I am frightened all the time,” Mimi said, “but it only makes me giggle . . .”

  Separate, there was the separateness, and the feeling of being beyond the reach of their voices, in this stoniness, this absence of all feeling.

  Mimi touched her, hesitantly.

  “Would you like a piece of fruit, signora? If you eat something, perhaps you will feel better.”

  “No, grazie.”

  “Life is so ugly now,” Mimi said, “is it not true, signora?”

  “Sì, sì . . .”

  “You must not look like that, Signora Lisa.” The little girl’s hand touched hers. She could feel the fingers endeavoring to express their sympathy. “Is it true you are not married to Signor Roberto? I heard Antonio talking. He was very angry. . .”

  She did not answer.

  “I don’t agree with Antonio,” the little girl said. “Antonio talks because he’s unhappy. I think it does not matter, the marriage, if one is in love. Do you love Signor Roberto?”

  “Please,” Lisa said.

  “He is simpatico,” the little girl said. “For an American he is very simpatico.”

  There was a sound behind them in the darkness. She thought vaguely: now they will put the lights on. And she did not want the lights on. She wanted this darkness to continue. She wanted it to be always dark. In the darkness, Mimi saw Antonio standing, looking into the room.

  “Look, Antonio,” Mimi said. “The Signora Lisa is home.”

  “Yes,” Antonio said. “I see she’s home.”