A Bell for Adano (22 page)

He paused for a long time. Then he said: “At that, hunger is better than some other things. I would like to have heard my wife laugh again.”

After another pause he said: “It seems to me that I have heard more laughter since the disembarkation. This is especially true among the children. You see, I have been trying to think out what made me stop and listen to the children the other afternoon, when I did not notice the Swimming War.”

“The what, cartman?”

“I call them Swimming War. They are American vehicles which swim.”

“Amphibious trucks, yes, go ahead.”

“Among the children there is more laughter. There is something else among the children which I never noticed before, too. In that crowd of them the other afternoon the thin child of Erba was holding the hand of the little Cacopardo. I do not know if you realize what that means, Mister Major. Erba is a cartman like me, only more stupid, Mister Major. Everyone knows the name of Cacopardo.”

“Yes, I know they are rich,” the Major said.

“I am almost as stupid as Erba, Mister Major, but I have noticed something. The things that children do are right on top of the children, and easy to see. The same things in older people lie deep down inside. Therefore at anv time what you see happening among the children is also happening among the older ones, only you cannot see it, since it is deep. I mean the laughing, and the holding of hands. And yet - “

Errante Gaetano paused. This time it did not look as if he would come out of the pause. He frowned. “And yet what, cartman?”

“And yet I still do not understand why they shot my mule. This need for sitting in jail I can understand: I simply did not notice the Swimming War, and I am sorry I got in its way. But about the mule that was shot, there is no explanation.”

At this moment Major Joppolo hated General Marvin with a bitter flash of hatred. He said: “Yes, cartman, there is an explanation. It isn’t a very good one, I know. You are a student of human nature, I can see that. You must have noticed that human beings often make mistakes. The shooting of your mule was a terrible mistake by one human being. I am very sorry that he happened to be an American.”

Errante scratched his back and said: “If it was a mistake, well, if it was a mistake…” And tears came into his eyes.

Major Joppolo covered up this embarrassment by saying to Gargano: “We are going to have to dismiss this case, Gargano. I regret that it caused you embarrassment. But after what this man has said, could you see any justice in punishing him?”

Gargano protested: “American soldiers might have been killed by the delay.”

The Major said: “I doubt it, Gargano. All he was guilty of was being too interested in the children’s laughter.”

Errante had recovered from his moment of emotion. He said: “There is more laughter. I think my wife would have laughed at my description of this man” - he looked at Gargano -”talking about my cart. It is too bad she died of the malaria. Now that you Americans are here, I think she would have laughed. In spite of the mistake about the mule. Yes, I think so, Mister Major.”

Chapter
25

“WELL, here’s what happened,” Major Joppolo was saying. The other people in Tomasino’s living room were laughing and talking loudly, but Tina and the Major paid them no attention.

“When the batch of prisoners came in last week, they had a new kind of paper. All it said was: `For release at p.w. cage nearest bearer’s home,’ and it was signed by somebody at Ninth Corps. Well, we wanted to check and make sure because we hadn’t heard anything about letting all the Italian prisoners loose.

“So I wrote a note to this guy at Ninth Corps, and I got his answer this morning. He said there was a new policy, they’d decided that it would be best for the morale of the people if we let the Italian prisoners free. He said the risk we might run of letting out a few fanatical officers who would continue to work for the Germans would be offset by the good that would be done for most towns.”

Tina said excitedly: “When will you let them free?” The Major said: “We have to sort them out, and send them to the prisoners’ cage nearest to where they live. We have quite a bunch from Vicinamare that we have to send up there. It will take about a week, I guess.”

Tina said: “Have you been to the enclosure recently?” The Major said: “Yes, I was there today.”

“Are there several men from Adano there?” “Yes, quite a few, I understand.”

“Oh, Mister Major, did you talk with any?” “Yes, I did.”

“You didn’t happen - ?”

“He’s not here, Tina. I looked for his name on the list. Also I asked some of the men from Adano. They said they had not heard anything. I went down to the cage specially to find out.

Tina said: “You are very kind, Mister Major.”

He said: “I was very rude before.” He wanted to tell her why he had been rude -that there are certain things a lonely man doesn’t like to listen to, that he had begun to like Tina, and that he didn’t like the feeling of being used by her just to get something she wanted. But he didn’t. He didn’t because she pulled him up short.

She said: “Do you think my Giorgio is in one of the other prisoners camps?

The Major said: “There’s no way of telling,” and his voice was suddenly cool.

“When will I know?”

“Next week some time. I’ve told you all I can. I shouldn’t have told you this much.”

j”Be careful,” Tina said, and her smile teased the Maor, “you are getting rude again.”

The Major smiled too. “I could tell you why, but I won’t,” he said.

Chapter
26

MAJOR JOPPOLO’S desire for popularity in Adano stuck out all over him. It was not just that he wanted to do a good job, and felt that popularity was one sign that he had. It was not much tied up with wanting the Americans to be well received, though he did want that. It was mainly that he himself wanted very much to be liked.

He did not let this desire show itself blatantly, in back-slapping and flattery and other usual means of achieving popularity. He was not especially a politician. But in everything he did, in every decision he made, he was swayed just a little by the way that act would affect his popularity in the town.

By the same token, in everything that the town did, or the officials of the town, Major Joppolo hunted out little signs that he was liked, and watched vigilantly for warning signals that this thing or that thing was making him disliked.

For this reason it made him uneasy, one morning, to have the usher Zito come to him and say that all the officials of the town wished to have a conference with him some time that morning. He wondered if they wanted to express their displeasure at something he had done.

He said: “Right now, Zito, if they can all come in now.

So in a few minutes they began coming in. As usual Bellanca the Mayor came in first, and it seemed to the Major that the old man’s eyes, which were sad from his years of conflict with bad men, were even sadder than usual. D’Arpa the vice mayor came next, walking fast and somehow low, like a weasel, and his little animal eyes looked sad to the Major too. The Major scanned each face as it approached him: the face of Tagliavia the Maresciallo of Finance, looking prosperous but worried, the Major thought; of Panteleone, the Municipal Secretary, looking unctuous but perhaps a little less unctuous than usual, the Major thought; of the pearshaped volunteer health officer, Signora Carmelina Spinnato, too efficient and fat to have any expression with meaning in it; of Rotondo, the lieutenant of Carabinieri, blank as a wall; and of Saitta, the man concerned with cleaning up the town, himself the cleanest man in town, a face scrubbed with pumice until it shined but even in its cleanliness a little sadder than usual, the Major imagined. The face of Gargano the Two-Hands especially concerned Major Joppolo, for he knew that he might have offended the Chief of Carabinieri in the trial of Errante. And indeed, Gargano did seem to look a little severe.

Honest old Bellanca was spokesman for. the group. He said: “We have something to ask of you, Mister Major: ‘

“I’ll try to oblige you,” Major Joppolo said. “You may not like it,” the old man said.

Major Joppolo said: “Is there something I have done you wish me to correct?”

Gargano the Two-Hands pointed both forefingers at the Major and said: “It is something you have not done.” The others laughed at that remark, and Major Joppolo became more uneasy than ever.

“Something I have forgotten to do?” he asked.

“No,” said Tagliavia, the prosperous-looking Maresciallo of Finance, hooking his thumbs in his waistcoat, “you did not forget to do it because you did not know you were supposed to do it. It is something you did not think of doing, and we are very angry with you for not having thought of it.”

The others all laughed again, and Major Joppolo began to suspect that they were in a rather gay mood, and that they had put on the glum faces to fool him. But he did not show his suspicion.

He said: “Tell me what it is. I am sorry to have made you angry.

Signora Carmelina Spinnato bounced over to his desk and looked gravely at his profile, and then bounced around front and set up a frame with her thumbs and forefingers and looked through it at his full face. “Which do you think it should be?” she asked the others. “From the side or from the front?” Major Joppolo had never imagined that Signora Carmelina Spinnato could be playful, but she looked as if she were trying to be now, bouncing around with that look of mock gravity on her face.

“From the back!” shrilled D’Arpa the vice mayor. All laughed again.

Major Joppolo said: “Stop laughing at me. You can laugh at me behind my back, but this is my office, not here.”

Old Bellanca said: “We are not laughing at you. This is something which is important for Adano.”

“Then tell me what it is.”

“You will forgive me,” old Bellanca said, “for giving you orders, Mister Major, but you are to go to the house at Number Twenty-three, Via Favemi, and there you are to climb to the second floor and ask for a man named Spataforo. He will tell you what to do.”

“He certainly will,” Gargano said, and all of them laughed.

“You will find this man Spataforo somewhat opinionated,” old Bellanca said.

“Some people call him rude,” Signora Carmelina Spinnato said, and all laughed.

“You must not mind him,” old Bellanca said. “Just do as he tells you.”

The Major said: “I do not like all this mystery, but I’ll go. What was the address again?”

“Number Twenty-three, Via Favemi,” old Bellanca said. “Go to the second floor, look for Spataforo, and forgive him his manners.”

Major Joppolo took down the address and the name. “When must I go?” he asked.

“At your convenience, Mister Major,” old Bellanca said.

And the officials of the town of Adano trooped out of the Major’s office, looking like so many bad children.

The Major did not wish to seem too curious, so he waited until after lunch to go to Number Twenty-three, Via Favemi.

He found that the house at Number Twenty-three, Via Favemi, was just another three-storey grey stone house like all the others. By the front door there was a box-like frame with a glass cover. Inside the frame there were about five portrait photographs of that quaint style with the background touched away so that the heads seemed to float in small private clouds. The frame evidently leaked, for streaks of rain and grey dust had run down the pictures. One of the pictures seemed to be of Tina when she had dark hair.

The Major tried the door and found it unlocked. He went up some stairs to the second floor where he found a door in a serious state of disrepair. It sagged from its hinges and one of the panels gaped and was warped. He knocked.

There was no answer, so he knocked again. There was no answer the second time, so he went in.

Through a dark little entrance hall he went into a large room. It was an old photographic studio, in utter ruin, it seemed.

In the middle of the room there was a huge, woodframed portrait camera, covered with dust, and beside it a high four-legged stool. Between the stool and the box-like camera there was a spider’s web, laden with dust and the carcasses of flies and moths. At the end of the room which the camera faced there was an iron and wood bench, like an old park bench, and behind the bench there hung a faded backdrop, an out-of-scale painting of St. Peter’s Square in Rome. A pile of dusty wooden film packs lay on the floor, and in one corner there was a heap of cuttings of developed film.

The last thing he saw in the room looked as if it were made of cobwebs and old clothes. It was a man.

He was lying on the floor under a window. Major Joppolo hurried over, because he thought he was dead. But when the Major got near, the corpse spoke: “Go away,” it said. “If you want to look at your own face, look in a mirror.”

Major Joppolo said: “I was told to come here and to look for a man named Spataforo. Are you Spataforo?” The man said: “Spataforo is my name.”

The Major said: “They said you would tell me what to do.”

Spataforo said: “Oh Lord in Heaven, deliver me from vain people... Go and sit on the bench.”

Major Joppolo went over to the bench, leaned over and blew away the dust from a spot big enough to sit on. He sat down.

Spataforo still did not get up from the floor. He said: “You are like all the others. You can look at the faces of thousands of your countrymen, but you think your face is more beautiful than all the others. You want to take your face and put it in a frame and put it on a shelf and stare at it. You are disgusting.”

Major Joppolo said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. If there is something you wish to do, do it. I do not have all day.”

The old man began slowly to get up. His knees cracked as he moved them. “Vain and in a hurry,” he said. “What is your hurry, vain man? Can’t you wait for your image to be made?”