A Bell for Adano (2 page)

Scattered along the wall and pressed against it, as if frightened, were a heavy table, several throne-like chairs of various sizes, another couch and, in the far corner, a white stone statue of a saint. She, besides being decently swathed in a marble scarf, had a piece of American signal corps telephone wire wound around her neck on its way from the nearest French door to the desk, where a field phone had evidently been set up. To the left of the door there was a tremendous bookcase with a glass front, beyond it an enamel washstand with a big stone pitcher beside it, and then a weirdly ornate upright piano.

Up to the right, over the two sofas, there were huge pictures of Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel and his Queen, facing each other in sympathetic misery. On the outside wall there was a picture of Crown Prince Umberto, smiling at everything that happened in the room. Over the Saint of the Telephone there was a photograph of Princess Marie Jose of Belgium, Umberto’s wife, dressed as a Red Cross nurse. Above the bookcase there was a great dustless square where a picture had been but was not now.

All this, both the heavy furniture and the ironic pictures, seemed placed there merely to press the eye toward the opposite end of the room, toward the biggest picture in the room, a romantic oil of a group of men pointing into the distance, and especially toward the desk.

The scale of everything in that room was so big that hugeness in the desk did not seem unnatural. It was of wood. On either end there were wooden bas-reliefs of fasces and of the phrase Anno XV, for the fifteenth year of Fascism, or 1937, when the desk was presumably made. Under the desk there was a wooden scrollwork footstool.

“Say,” said Major Joppolo, “this is okay.”

“Looks like that office of Mussolini’s,” Borth said. “Come to think of it, you look quite a lot like Mussolini, sir, except the mustache. Will it be okay with you to be a Mussolini?”

“Cut the kidding,” the Major said. “Let’s look around They went out through the white door at the end of the room and walked through several offices, all of which were crowded with desks and files and bookcases. The files had not been emptied or even disturbed. “Good,” said Borth, “lists of names, every one registered and all their records. It’ll be easy for us here.”

The Major said: “What a difference between my office and these others. It is shameful.”

All Borth said was: “Your office?”

When the two went back into the big office there was an Italian there. He had evidently been hiding in the building. He was a small man, with a shiny linen office coat on, with his collar buttoned but no tie.

The small Italian gave the Fascist salute and with an eager face said in Italian: “Welcome to the Americansl Live Roosevelt) How glad I am that you have arrived. For many years I have hated the Fascists.”

The Major said in Italian: “Who are you?”

The little man said: “Zito Giovanni. I have been well known as anti-Fascist.”

Major Joppolo said: “What do you do?” Zito said: “I greet the Americans.”

Borth said in an Italian which was heavily accented: “Idiot, what was your job before the disembarkation?” Zito said: “Zito Giovanni, usher in the Palazzo di Cittá, native of Adano.”

Major Joppolo said: “You were the usher here?” “Every day from eight to eight.”

“Why did you work for the Fascists if you hated them?”

“I have hated them many years, I am well known as anti-Fascist, I have lived under a great suspicion.”

The Major said: “Usher, I love the truth, you will find that out. If you lie to me, you will be in very serious trouble. Do not lie to me. If you were a Fascist, you were a Fascist. There is no need to lie. “

Zito said: “One had to eat, one had to earn a living. I have six children.”

Major Joppolo said: “So you were a Fascist. Now you will have to learn to live in a democracy. You will be my usher.”

The little Zito was delighted.

The Major said: “Do not salute me that way.” Zito bowed and said: “The fascist salute, no sir.” Major Joppolo said: “Do not bow. There is no need to grovel here. I am only a Major. Borth here is a Sergeant. Are you a man?”

Little Zito was getting very mixed up. “No sir,” he said cautiously. Then he saw by the Major’s expression that he should have said yes, and he did.

The Major said: “You may greet me by shaking my hand. You will greet Sergeant Borth in the same way.” Borth said, and his expression showed that he was teasing the Italian: “First I will find out if he’s a dangerous Fascist.”

Little Zito did not know whether to laugh or cry. He was frightened but he was also flattered by these men. He said: “I will never lie to you, Mister Major. I am anti-Fascist, Mister Sergeant. I will be usher here.”

Major Joppolo said: “Be here at seven o’clock each morning.”

“Seven o’clock,” said Zito.

A brief burst of machine gun and rifle fire echoed from distant streets. Zito cringed.

Borth said: “You are perhaps a man but you are also frightened.”

Major Joppolo said: “Has it been bad here?”

Zito started jabbering about the bombardments and the air raids. “We are very hungry,” he said when he had cooled down a little. “For three days we have not had bread. All the important ones ran away and left me here to guard the Palazzo. The stink of dead is very bad, especially in the Piazza San Angelo. Some people are sick because the drivers of the water carts have not had the courage to get water for several days, because of the planes along the roads. We do not believe in victory. And our bell is gone.”

Major Joppolo said: “Your bell?”

Zito said: “Our bell which was seven hundred years old. Mussolini took it. It rang with a good tone each quarter hour. Mussolini took it to make rifle barrels or something. The town was very angry. Everyone begged the Monsignor, who is the uncle of the Mayor, to offer some church bells instead. But the Monsignor is uncle of the Mayor, he is not the sort to desecrate churches, he says. It meant we lost our bell. And only two weeks before you came. Why did you not come sooner?” “Where was this bell?”

“Right here.” Zito pointed over his head. “The whole building tingled when it rang.”

Major Joppolo said to Borth: “I saw the framework for the bell up on the tower, did you?” Then he added to Zito: “That is your reason for wanting us to have come sooner, is it?”

Zito was careful. “Partly,” he said.

Borth said: “Usher, if you were a good Fascist you would be able to tell me why there is a big blank space up there on the wall over which there used to hang a picture. It is easy to see by the square of dust that there was a rather large picture there.”

Zito smiled and said: “The picture does not exist. It has been destroyed.”

Borth said: “You are not hiding it in the basement? You are not afraid that the Americans will be driven out by your German allies and that your leader will return some day and see the square of dust on the wall and ask questions?”

Zito said: “It is destroyed, I swear it. I cannot lie before the Mister Major.”

Major Joppolo said: “Usher, what is that big picture over my desk?”

This was where the little Zito told a beautiful lie. The picture was of a group of men in antique costume. One of them, by expression of face, position in the picture and by the accident of being the only one in the sunlight of all the men, was obviously their leader, and he was pointing out the side of the picture to the left.

Zito thought quickly and said: “That, Mister Major, is Columbus discovering America.”

Zito smiled because it was a beautiful lie. Major Joppolo did not discover for three weeks that the picture was really a scene from the Sicilian Vespers, that bloody revolt which the Sicilians mounted against a previous invader.

Now Major Joppolo said in English more or less to himself: “It’s a nice picture, I wonder how old it is, maybe it’s by somebody famous.”

The Major went to the desk, pulled out the highbacked chair and sat in it, carefully putting his feet on the scrollwork footstool.

Borth said: “How does it feel, Duce?”

The Major said: “There is so much to do, I hardly know where to begin.”

Borth said: “I know what I must do. I’ve got to find the offices of the Fascist Party, to see if I can find more records. May I take the Mister Usher and look for the Fascso?”

“Go ahead, Borth,” the Major said.

When the two had left, Major Joppolo opened his brief case and took out some papers. He put them in a neat pile on the desk in front of him and began to read:

“INSTRUCTIONS TO CIVIL AFFAIRS OFFICERS. First day: Enter the city with the first column. Cooperate with C.I.C. in placing guards and seizing records. Place all food warehouses, enemy food dumps, wholesale food concerns, and other major food stocks under guard. Secure an estimate from local food distributors of the number of days of food supplies which are on hand or available. Make a report through channels on food situation in your area. See that the following establishments are placed under guard or protection: foundries, machine shops, electrical works, chemical plants, flour mills, breweries, cement plants, refrigeration plants, ice plants, warehouses, olive oil refineries, sulphur refineries, tunny oil mills, soap manufacturing plants, and any other important establishments. Locate and make available to port authorities all known local pilots...”

And the list went on and on. When he had read three pages, Major Joppolo looked at his wrist watch. It was eleven thirty. Almost half of this first day was gone. He took the sheets of instructions up from the desk and tore them in half, and tore the halves in quarters, and crumpled up the quarters and threw them into a cane wastebasket under the desk.

Then he sat and stared out the nearest French door into the empty street for a long time. He looked tired and defeated.

He stirred and reached into his brief case again and took out a small black loose leaf notebook. The pages were filled with notes on his Amgot school lectures: notes on civilian supply, on public safety, on public health, on finance, on agriculture, industry, utilities, transportation, and all the businesses of an invading authority. But he passed all these pages by, and turned to the page marked: Notes to Joppolo from Joppolo.

And he read: “Don’t make yourself cheap. Always be accessible to the public. Don’t play favorites. Speak Italian whenever possible. Don’t lose your temper. When plans fall down, improvise...”

That was the one he wanted. When plans fall down, improvise.

Plans for this first day were in the wastebasket. They were absurd. Enough was set forth in those plans to keep a regiment busy for a week.

Now Victor Joppolo felt on his own, and he no longer looker tired. He got up briskly, went out onto the balcony and saw that there were two flagpoles there. He went back in, reached in his brief case and pulled out two flags, one American, the other British.

He tucked the Union Jack under his arm as he walked out again, felt for the toggles on the American flag, mounted them on the halyard on the left-hand flagpole, and raised the flag.

Before the flag reached the top of the pole there were five Italians in the Piazza. Before he had the British flag attached to the halyard on the right-hand pole, there were twenty. By the time he had both flags up, forty people were shouting: “Buon giorno, buon giorno, Americano.”

He waved to them and went back into his office. Now he was happy and quick.

He took up his brief case again, reached in and pulled out a pile of proclamations. He took them over to the table by the door, set the leftover maps and photos aside, and arranged the proclamations in order on the table. While he was on his way back to his desk, there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he said in Italian.

The door opened. A man came in whose appearance was vaguely familiar to Major Joppolo. The Major realized later that he had seen, not this man, but several who looked just like him, in bad American movies. He was the type of the second-rate Italian gangster, the small fellow in the gang who always stood behind the boss and who always took the rap. He had the bald head, the weak mouth. He had a scar across his cheek. His eye was furtive and he had the appearance of being willing but in need of instructions.

He said in English: “You pull up a flag. War’s a finish here in Adano, huh?”

The Major said: “Yes, who are you?”

The Italian said: “I’m from a Cleveland, Ohio. I been here a three year. You got a work for me?”

Major Joppolo said: “What’s your name?”

The Italian said: “Ribaudo Giuseppe. In a Cleveland, call a me Joe.”

Major Joppolo said: “What can you do?”

Ribaudo said: “I’m a good American. I’m a hate these Fascisti. I could do a good a job for you.”

Major Joppolo said: “If you’re such a good American, why did you leave the States?”

Ribaudo said: “I’m a kick out.” “I’m a no passport.”

“How’d you get in, then?”

‘I got a plenty friends in a Cleveland and a Buffalo.’ “What did you do in the States?”

“Oh, I work a here, work a there.”

Major Joppolo was pleased with Ribaudo for not trying to lie about his illegal entry and repatriation. He said: “Okay, I’ll hire you. You will be my interpreter.”

“You don’t a speak Italian?”

“Yes, but there’ll be other Americans here who don’t, and I may need you for other things, too. Do you know these people well, do you know who’s for us Americans and who’s against us?”

“Sure, a boss, I help a you plenty.”

“All right, what did you say your name was?” “Ribaudo Giuseppe, just a Joe for you.”

“No, we’re in Italy, I’ll call you Giuseppe here. Just two things now, Giuseppe. You’ve got to be honest with me; if you’re not, you’ll be in bad trouble. The other is, don’t expect me to do you any favors I wouldn’t do for anyone else, see?”

“Oh sure, a boss. You don’t a worry.”

“Now tell me, what does this town need the most?” “I could a go for a movie house, a boss.”

“No, Giuseppe, I mean right now.”

“Food, a boss. Food is a bad now in Adano. Three days a lot a people no eat a nothing.”

“Why is that, because of a shortage of flour?”