The Girl on the Via Flaminia Read online

  “I had Mimi clean it thoroughly,” Adele said. “The Americans like everything clean.”

  “You’ll like it, you’ll be very comfortable,” Nina said. “You were lucky I met you and I’m going to Florence. Try finding an apartment in the city now.”

  “Apartments are difficult because of the bombings,” Adele said. “Everybody thinks Rome is safe.”

  “Yes,” the girl said. “The Pope protects us, doesn’t he?”

  “Well,” Adele said, “one must be grateful to the priests for something.”

  “It’s all settled about the room,” Nina said. “You’ll be very happy, darling, and I’ll say addio Roma!” She looked at her friend. “ Let me see you.” She held up Lisa’s chin. “Isn’t she beautiful, Adele?”

  “She has a very pretty skin,” Adele said.

  “She has wonderful shoulders,” Nina said. “You should see her naked. Her shoulders are wonderful. But her hair is what I envy most. Wait until my captain discovers mine isn’t really this color.”

  “A tragedy,” Adele said.

  “He’ll die,” Nina said, “when it comes out black again . . .”

  “Then leave it red.”

  “At five hundred lire a rinse?”

  “He’s an American,” Adele said. “He can afford it.”

  “Won’t it be difficult,” Lisa asked, “your going to Florence now?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s forbidden for civilians to travel without a permit,” Lisa said. “But I suppose for a soldier . . .”

  “Not a soldier, cara,” Nina said. “An officer. In the American army there’s a great difference.”

  “Eh. . .” Adele said. “Love, love!”

  “Don’t be silly, Adele,” Nina said. “They serve magnificent breakfasts, the Americans.”

  “While we have nothing,” Lisa said.

  “One can always eat,” Nina said.

  “They say,” Adele said, “the Americans eat four times a day.”

  “They live well.”

  “What a country it must be, their America,” Adele said.

  “An Italian discovered it,” Lisa said.

  “And the English stole it,” Adele said.

  “What hasn’t the Italian lost?” Nina said.

  “I was telling the Signora Lisa how lucky she is,” Adele said, looking at the girl with her hard black eyes. “After the war she will be able to go to America.”

  “Of course,” Nina said, quickly. “That’s the advantage of having wonderful shoulders.”

  “Where were you married, my dear?” Adele asked. “In Rome?”

  “In Napoli,” Nina said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said, pausing. “In Napoli.”

  “Bella Napoli,” Adele said. “Is it as destroyed as they say?”

  “Terribly.”

  “Once upon a time,” Adele said, “how they sang!”

  “Well,” Nina said, “they don’t sing now.”

  “Yes,” Adele said, thinking of the lost songs.

  “Povera Italia . . .”

  “Poveri noi,” Lisa said.

  “Adele,” Nina said. “Go make a cup of coffee. I must have a cup of coffee before I go.”

  “Real coffee?” Lisa said.

  “From Nina’s captain,” Adele replied.

  “Oh.”

  “What will we do when she goes?” Adele said, standing up. “My husband without his coffee!”

  “Lisa’s Roberto will bring you American coffee,” Nina said.

  “Is his name Roberto?”

  “Sì.”

  The girl looked up questioningly at Nina. “Without his coffee my husband’s lost,” Adele said. She went out of the room. Outside, in the darkness, the trolleys were stalled in their barns, and on the Corso, in the shadow of the galleria, where the newspaper stand was, boarded up, there were sinister figures, indistinct and muffled. The police patrolled the boulevards in small squads of three, with slung carbines, and there were lights in the lower rooms of the questura where the detectives played cards. In the dining room here, in the flat on the Via Flaminia, Nina now turned to the girl who sat, her hands in the pockets of her raincoat. “I’m exhausted,” Nina said. “Such a day. Such excitement.”

  The blonde girl’s voice was very low.

  “When will he come?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Your Roberto,” she said.

  “Mine?” Nina said. “Yours, dear.”

  “When will he come?” Lisa said.

  On the hills above the city the trees were thinned out of the forests because the Germans had cut so much firewood during the occupation, and in the nursery, which had once been the villa of the dictator, the orphaned children slept, in their uniform nightgowns, in a long room with many mirrors. The mirrors had once witnessed other sleepers.

  Nina looked at her. “I telephoned,” she said. “Dio! To telephone an American! First one answers: who do I want? I say il sergente Roberto. Roberto? What Roberto? They never heard of a Roberto in their company. Oh, he says, the one who answers—Bob! Sì, Bob! Well, he says, this one on the telephone, how about me, babbee, instead of Bob? Finally he goes. Va bene. Another one comes to the telephone. Again who do I want. Again the Roberto, again the Bob. Then he says: ’allo, ’allo, who is speaking? Nina. Nina! this one shouts, on the telephone. How’s the old tomato? Che pomodoro? Who has a tomato? But that is how one telephones an American.”

  “And when you spoke to him?” the girl asked.

  “Who?”

  “Roberto.”

  Nina shrugged. “He was happy you had agreed. Why shouldn’t he be? Look how pretty his girl will be . . .”

  “Pretty,” the girl said.

  “But you are pretty,” Nina said, admiring her.

  “Yes, and this is pretty too,” Lisa said. “To wait, like this, in a strange house for a man I’ve never seen.”

  “Why do you have to see him? If he’s nice, he’s nice, sight unseen.” She looked at the girl again. There was a sound of the wind in the garden. Wine lay in the bottom of the glass on the table. “Listen to me, cara,” Nina said. She put her ringed hands on the girl’s shoulders. She could feel the strong bones under the raincoat and under the sweater. “Roberto’s a good boy. He’s intelligent, he’s not bad looking, he’s not an animal like some of the others. For three weeks he’s bothered me to introduce him to a nice girl. Have you eaten today?”

  “It’s not important,” Lisa said.

  “Have you paid your rent?”

  The girl was silent.

  “So. At least with Roberto you’ll eat, and you’ll have somewhere to live. I’ve told Adele you are married to him. I’ve explained to Roberto how it will be—that you’re not a street girl, and that the arrangement will be a permanent one. He’s anxious, too. The army’s a cold place, and you’re pretty.”

  “But I can’t,” the girl said, twisting away.

  “You can’t what?”

  “I can’t make love to a stranger.”

  Nina looked at her. The light lay softly on the blonde hair, and she thought how soft the hair looked, how soft the skin was. “One learns,” she said.

  “Oh, Nina . . .”

  “What do you want me to say? One learns. One learns everything. Wars are all the same. The men become thieves, and the women—” She shrugged her narrow expressive shoulders. “And it’s the same everywhere.”

  “Not in America,” the girl said.

  “In America, too, if they had gone through what we’ve gone through. No,” she said, “one doesn’t live as one likes to, but as one must. Go through the city. On the Corso, on the Via Veneto, on all the bridges—it’s the same. Everywhere the soldiers and the women. Why? Because there is nothing else, cara mia, except to drink and to make love and to survive. And our men? Poof! Their guts are gone. Let them whimper and shout-the cigarettes they smoke, and the coffee they drink, we buy them.”

  “I’m not one of the w
omen who stand on the bridges,” the girl said.

  “Did I say you were?” Nina said. “We are all unlucky in the same way. We were born, and born women, and in Europe, during the wars. Ah, Lisa, it’s all the same I tell you—for you or the contessa, in her elegant apartment, sleeping with some English colonel or some American brigadier! What do you think the contessa calls it? It’s an arrangement—it’s love . . . but she, too, needs sugar and coffee when she wakes up in a cold room. Everything now is such an arrangement. Besides, who will it harm? Adele will have her rent—and if you won’t be happier, at least you won’t be hungrier . . .”

  “But what will I say to him?” the girl said.

  “Madonna!” Nina said.

  “I’ve never gone with a soldier,” the girl said.

  “Ask him how’s his old tomato,” Nina said. “Dio, you’ve talked to a man before.”

  “Not one of the Americans.”

  “They speak exactly the same language.”

  “Yes,” Lisa said. “The liberators.”

  Nina gestured. “We lost the war, my dear.”

  “Only the war?” the girl said.

  “Oh, you make me sick!”

  “Yes,” the girl said, staring at the wine glass on the table, “he’ll feed me because he’s won the war, and that’s part of the arrangement, and then after he’s fed me we’ll go to bed, because that’s part of the arrangement, too.” She turned her head slowly, as though she were trapped in the room. “But why should I be better or different than the others standing on the bridges waiting for their soldiers? I’ll have my American. Everybody has one now.”

  “No,” Nina said, “you’ll jump in the Tiber.”

  “Why not?”

  “So they’ll fish out another fool.”

  “There will be one less in the world.”

  “I ought to let you!”

  “It’s not important either way,” the girl said.

  “Except,” Nina said angrily, leaning toward her, “I went through all the trouble of getting you a nice one.”

  The girl’s face was averted. “You take him,” she said. “You like Americans.”

  “Like them?” Nina laughed. “Some I could spit on. You should see their officers as I’ve seen them . . . what animals! Screaming in the hotel corridors, and such jokes! To them it’s a wonderful joke to hang toilet paper from a chandelier!”

  “They’re gay,” the girl said. “For them it’s a gay war.”

  “No,” Nina said, “not really; they’re not really gay. Really they’re a gloomy people, the Americans . . .”

  “And your captain?”

  “That’s something else.”

  “Will he marry you?”

  “The man has a wife somewhere. Ohio . . . and she’s cold and ungrateful and extravagant . . .”

  “Why doesn’t he divorce her?”

  “Oh,” Nina said, “it’s wonderful how many cold wives the Americans have they do not divorce!”

  “Che brutta guerra,” the girl said.

  “Sì. But what shall I do—cry my eyes out? Or jump in the Tiber? There’s enough corpses on the bottom now . . . and it’s better to eat and to go to Florence when one can . . .”

  “Or wait,” the girl said, “in a house for some Roberto . . .”

  “Yes, even to wait in a house for some Roberto,” Nina said.

  “But,” the girl said.

  “But what?”

  “He may not like me.” Nina looked at her, and smiled slightly. The light lay on the fine skin. Her hair shadowed her eyes.

  “My dear,” she said, “would you like to bet?”

  3.

  Eccolo!” Adele said, coming in through the doorway, carrying a tray. “The coffee . . .” The coffee steamed on the tray.

  Behind Adele appeared a tall thin old man, a newspaper tucked under his arm. His spectacles sat on his forehead. He looked into the room.

  “You are still here?” Ugo Pulcini said to Nina. “I thought you’d already be high in the mountains.”

  “My husband,” Adele said. “This is the Signora Lisa. She is taking Nina’s room.”

  “Ah,” Ugo said, “with the American husband.” He came into the room. “In Milan once—before the war, it was all before the war—I knew an American girl. A schoolteacher. At the Hotel Tuscania . . .”

  “So!” Adele said, looking at her husband.

  He smiled, deprecatingly. “An old transgression, my dear . . . 1920! She was making a summer tour. I remember she ate little sandwiches, and in the hotel there was a bar with a special fountain for American schoolteachers . . . a bar with carbonated water and ice cream . . .”

  “Did she enjoy her tour, Ugo?” Nina asked.

  “It was 1920 . . . a quarter of a century ago! Besides, I had a great curiosity about American women.”

  “Did you satisfy it?” Adele said.

  “To an extent, my dear: to an extent.” He sighed. “You see how far back I have to go to find a pleasant memory?”

  “Drink your coffee, Don Giovanni,” Adele said.

  “Now, of course, the tours are different,” Ugo said, sitting down. He sighed again, thinking perhaps of the carbonated water. “There are no more schoolteachers who eat little sandwiches at the Hotel Tuscania . . . now there are only soldiers who scratch their names on the walls of the Colosseum. Yes, among the names of the martyrs, and the ghosts of the great gladiators, their names, and some obscure village they come from.”

  “My husband talks,” Adele said to Lisa, apologetically. “He talked himself into the Regina Coeli once.”

  “Have you been in prison, Signor Pulcini?” the girl asked.

  “My dear, we have all been in prison,” Ugo said. “It was not too unpleasant. My wife used to come with chicken soup . . .”

  “While he played cards in his cell,” Adele said.

  “She resents my martyrdom,” Ugo said, smiling. “Well, one makes all sorts of mistakes in one lifetime.” He looked at Nina. “Would you possess, my dear,” he said elegantly, “an American cigarette? All day I’ve smoked nothing but Nazionali.”

  “For a martyr?” Nina said.

  “Perhaps,” Ugo said gently, “I should fall in love with a captain?”

  “Or a schoolteacher.”

  “Eh, my schoolteacher days are over,” the old man said. He took a cigarette from Nina’s extended pack, and lit it. Smoke flowed from his thin nostrils. “Even a cigarette has become a luxury in Europe,” he said.

  Outside, in the hallway, the doorbell rang again.

  “Ah!” Nina said, hearing the bell. “Finalmente!”

  She went out quickly into the hail.

  Ugo smiled at the blonde girl. “Your husband, signora, does he like Italy?”

  She was looking toward the door.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  He came into the room, smiling at them because he was not sure of his reception, and because they were strangers, carrying a musette bag, a little wary, a little uncomfortable, with Nina holding his arm. “Ecco,” she said, “the husband!”

  He looked at them and at the girl. He was not quite sure yet, and he was being careful, and he was being polite. “Buona sera,” he said.

  “Signor Pulcini . . . Signora Pulcini . . .” Nina said, beside him, and he smiled again at the tall dark woman with the gray hair and the black dress, and at the old man holding the cigarette elegantly between his thumb and forefinger. The girl in the raincoat had not moved, and she did not smile. “This is Roberto,” Nina said. “Guarda! Isn’t he intelligent looking for an American? And such a mouth!” She sniffed at him. “How many cognacs did you have?”

  “One,” the soldier said.

  “One?”

  “And a chaser.”

  “What chaser?”

  “A cognac.”

  “You must make him stop drinking, Lisa,” Nina said. “None of them will have stomachs by the time they go home.”

  “I was asking your wife, Signor Ro
berto,” Ugo said, “just before you came if you liked Italy.”

  He glanced again at the silent girl. He did not know how much was understood among them, and he was not sure of the kind of house he had come to.

  “Do I?” he said to the girl sitting there in that taut quietness at the table.

  She still did not smile.

  “Do you?” she said.

  “Yes,” the soldier said. “I think it’s pretty nice.”

  “But very much destroyed, no?” Ugo asked.

  “No,” the soldier said. “Surprisingly. I didn’t expect it to be as nice as it is.” He slipped the musette bag from his shoulder. “As a matter of fact,” he said carefully, “it’s much prettier than I thought it would be. Much more.” He hoped she understood, for Italy now was much more beautiful than he had thought coming across the Ponte Milvio in the cold, looking for a house on the Via Flaminia. And he thought, by the quick glance she gave him, that perhaps she had understood, and he hoped that she was pleased.

  Behind him, now, somebody said, “Mamma,” and then a young man come into the room. He was handsome, intense, and he was very tightly belted into an almost bleached raincoat. He stopped as he saw the strangers. “Scusate . . .”

  “This is my son, Antonio,” Adele said.

  Nina glanced again at her expensive wristwatch.

  “Dio, the time! My captain’ll kill me.” She went quickly to Lisa and kissed her. “Until I return,” she said. She shook hands with Ugo and Adele. “Arrivederci.”

  “Remember,” Ugo said, “it’s cold in the mountains.”

  “Come,” Nina said to Antonio. “I’ll kiss you too.”

  “No, grazie,” the boy said.

  “Not even a little one?”

  “Save it for the Alleati,” Antonio said.

  She turned. “What a grateful son you have,” she said to Adele.

  “I kissed better girls in Libya,” the boy said.

  “But dirtier,” Nina answered.

  “Only their skin,” Antonio said.

  “Are you insulting me, darling?” Nina said.

  “Who could insult you, carissima?” the boy said. Nina shrugged; he was obviously hopeless, and she was late. “Arrivederci, Roberto,” she said, touching Robert’s arm.

  “Good-by, Nina,” the soldier said. He looked at her. “And thanks.”