A Bell for Adano (6 page)

Gargano stepped out of the line. “Who questions my right?” he roared, and he pounded one clenched fist on the other clenched fist.

Carmelina, wife of the lazy Fatta, standing right beside him, startled him by whispering in his ear: “I question it, Two-Hands.”

Up to this time Zapulla the baker, standing in the front of his shop, had been torn between the two authorities, the old and the new. But he was so annoyed with Carmelina for having prodded him that he now said: “Arrest her, Mister Chief, if you have any courage.”

Up to this time Gargano the Chief, somewhat unsure of his ground, had been trying to think of a way of retiring gracefully. But now his manhood, as well as his authority, was challenged. He moved toward Carmelina and said: “Woman, you are under arrest.”

Carmelina shouted: “Keep your two active hands off me, Gargano.”

Zapulla said: “Will you let this woman shriek down your courage?”

Gargano clapped his hands on Carmelina. She screamed. All up and down the line women shouted: “Out with the Fascist Chief of Carabinieri. Out with Two-Hands. Out with men who push themselves to the head of a line ahead of women who have been waiting three hours.”

Gargano dragged Carmelina off screaming and kicking, and the anti-Gargano, anti-Fascist screams in the line grew louder and louder. Even Mercurio Salvatore, although as crier he was more or less an official and should have remained neutral or even taken the side of Gargano, raised his huge voice in a careful shout. “Down with injustice!”

When Gargano pulled Carmelina into Major Joppolo’s office, she was still screaming. But the Major jumped to his feet and said sharply: “Silence, shrew,” and she fell quiet at once.

“What is this all about?” the Major asked.

Gargano said: “This woman questioned my authority,” and he pointed at her with both forefingers. Carmelina said: “There is more to it than that.” Major Joppolo said: “Your authority to do what, Gargano?”

Carmelina shouted: “To push his way to the head of the line in front of Zapulla’s bread shop.”

Gargano said: “It is a privilege the officials of the town have always enjoyed.”

Major Joppolo said: “Is that so?”

Gargano said: “I charge this women with disturbing the peace and questioning authority.” Gargano was shrewd in saying this, for he saw that things were going against him, and now he had put the matter on an official rather than a personal basis. The Major would have to decide the case officially.

The Major decided with a speed which dazzled Gargano. He decided that the woman was right but that he could not say so, because if he did the Chief would never regain his authority, and the Major wanted to keep him in office. Therefore he said: “I sentence this woman to one day in jail, suspended sentence. Let her go, Gargano, and gather all the officials of Adano for me at once.”

When Carmelina got outside, she ran straight back to the bread shop. The bread was not ready yet, and the people gave her back her place at the head of the line and shouted to her: “What happened, Carmelina? What did they do to you?”

Carmelina told what had happened and she said: “Did you ever hear of such a light sentence in Adano? I believe in my heart that the Mister Major thought I was right. And what was the meaning of assembling the officials? I believe that he was for me.”

In the Major’s office, the officials gradually assembled. Some were held-over Fascists, some were new appointments to take the place of Fascists who had fled to the hills. In whispers, and with ample gestures, Gargano described to them the humiliation he had suffered, until Major Joppolo said: “Silence, please.”

The officials drew up in a circle around the Major’s desk. The Major stood up.

“I want you to be my friends,” he said. “As my friends, I will consider it my duty to tell you everything I think, for we do not want Adano to be a town of mysteries and a place of suspicion.

“Adano has been a Fascist town. That is natural, because the country was Fascist, therefore the town was also. But now that the Americans have come, we are going to run the town as a democracy.

“Perhaps you do not know what a democracy is. I will tell you.

“Democracy is this: democracy is that the men of the government are no longer the masters of the people. They are the servants of the people. What makes a man master of another man? It is that he pays him for his work. Who pays the men in the government? The people do, for they pay the taxes out of which you are paid.

“Therefore you are now the servants of the people of Adano. I too am their servant. When I go to buy bread, I shall take my place at the end of the line, and I will wait my turn. You too must behave now as servants, not as masters. You must behave as the servant of the man without shoes just as much as of the baron. If I find that any of you are not giving the type of service that I desire, I shall have to remove you from office.

“Remember: you are servants now. You are servants of the people of Adano. And watch: this thing will make you happier than you have ever been in your lives.”

Chapter
5

AT last, one afternoon a day or two later, the Major found himself alone with Giuseppe, the interpreter. “Giuseppe,” he said, “do you have natural blondes in this part of the country?”

Giuseppe winked understandingly: “Oh, so you got a pair a eyes after all, eh, boss?”

Major Joppolo said coolly: “Do you have natural blondes in this part, Giuseppe?”

Giuseppe said: “I guess a you seen the blonde in a church last Sunday, next a me, eh, boss?”

“Answer my question, interpreter,” the Major said severely.

“Okay, a boss,” Giuseppe said. “Blondes is natural in a north. Down here not so natural, a boss.”

“I thought not.”

The Major went back to his work. Giuseppe puttered around a bit and then said: “Boss.”

Major Joppolo answered with some temper. “What is it, Giuseppe?” he said.

“If a boss is a lonely, Giuseppe could fix a good date, maybe my friend a blonde.”

Major Joppolo said: “Who said I was lonely?”

Giuseppe said: “Boss, I been in a Cleveland, Ohio, I can tell what’s a like to be a long way from a home. Fellow gets a lonely.”

The Major said: “I haven’t got time to be lonely. I’m busy now, Giuseppe. “

“Yes, a boss.”

After he had worked a while, Major Joppolo said: “Giuseppe.”

“Yes, a boss.”

“Who was this blonde you were with last Sunday?” This time Giuseppe was very careful to keep his face grave, and to answer the Major’s question precisely. “Name’s a Tina. She’s a daughter a Tomasino. He’s a fisherman.”

“A fisherman? Is he a good fisherman?”

“Best a one, a boss.”

“Do the other fishermen respect him?”

“Sure, he’s a best a one.”

“Good, I want to see him, Giuseppe.”

This time Giuseppe couldn’t resist winking. “Sure, a boss, I get it.”

Major Joppolo said: “Bring him :n to see me early next week, Giuseppe. I want to start the fishermen going out again. It’ll supplement the food supply. By the first of next week, I’m sure I can get permission from the Navy.”

Chapter
6

I DON’T know how much you know about General Marvin. Probably you just know what has been in the Sunday supplements.

Probably you think of him as one of the heroes of the invasion; the genial, pipe-smoking history-quoting, snappy-looking, map-carrying, adjective-defying divisional commander; the man who still wears spurs even though he rides everywhere in an armored car; the man who fires twelve rounds from his captured Luger pistol every morning before breakfast; the man who can name you the hero and date of every invasion of Italy from the beginning of time; the father of his division and the beloved deliverer of Italian soil.

You couldn’t be blamed for having this picture. You can’t get the truth except from the boys who come home and finally limp out of the hospitals and even then the truth is bent by their anger.

But I can tell you perfectly calmly that General Marvin showed himself during the invasion to be a bad man, something worse than what our troops were trying to throw out.

By the time it was nine days old, the invasion was developing very successfully. The American beachheads were secure. One heavy counterattack had been thrown back, and our troops began to go ahead all along the line.

On the ninth morning, General Marvin was driving along the road toward Vicinamare and came to the town of Adano. From time to time along the road his driver had had to slow down behind the little Italian twowheeled carts of the countryside until traffic from the opposite direction had gone by. Then he passed the carts.

As they passed each cart, General Marvin waved his riding crop in such a way as to indicate that the cart should move over. Since there was nothing to move over into except the ditch, which at intervals along the road expanded into tank traps, the carts never did move over. The General grew angrier and angrier.

Now it happened that just as he came to the Fiume Rosso, or Red River, just before Adano, the General’s armored car was obliged to slow down for a cart which meandered along right in the center of the road.

The General stood up in his car and shouted in his deep bass voice (you’ve read about that voice in the supplements; it’s famous; one writer said it was like “a foghorn gone articulate”) : “Goddam you goddam cart get off the road!”

Unfortunately the driver of the cart was one Errante Gaetano, who earlier that morning had sold three dozen eggs to American soldiers at fourteen times the proper price, had immediately sunk most of his profits in the wine of his friend Mattaliano, and was now sleeping a deep and happy sleep on the seat of his cart. At this particular moment, he was dreaming about eating the nicer parts of a fish nine feet long. Naturally he did not pay much attention to the voice of General Marvin, no matter how famous the voice, because he could not hear it.

General Marvin roared at his driver: “Blow your horn. Blow that bastard off the road.”

The driver, a nice boy from Massachusetts, put the heel of his hand on the horn button against his own wish. He was in no hurry, and knew that no matter how fast they went, he would only have to wait when they got wherever they were going.

The mind of Errante did not react to the horn, even though the horn was something urgent called a klaxon. The cart kept right down the middle of the road, inasmuch as Errante’s mule was a cautious creature, just as wary of ditches on the right as of ditches on the left. This was a quality in his mule of which Errante Gaetano often boasted to his friends. “Give me none of your lopsided mules,” he would say, “give me a mule with a sense of the middle.”

This sense was going to be the undoing of his mule just now, because General Marvin’s face was beginning to grow dark, and some veins which have never been described in the supplements began to wriggle and pound on his forehead.

“I’ve had enough of these goddam carts,” the General shouted. He was standing up in the car, waving his riding crop around. “Do they think they’re going to stop the goddam invasion with goddam carts?”

Errante slept beautifully. He was coming to the grey part of the fish just under the ribs. It melted in the mouth of his dream. There was, however, a sound of thunder in the distance which made him think perhaps he had better cover the fish and finish eating the nice parts after the rain.

General Marvin roared: “Do these goddam Italians think they’re going to stop a bunch of goddam tanks with a bunch of goddam wooden carts?”

Colonel Middleton, the General’s Chief of Staff, and Lieutenant Byrd, his aide, could see the violence coming. Lieutenant Byrd looked back along the road, but he couldn’t see any bunch of goddam tanks. The only thing he could see that was being held up besides the General’s armored car was one seep, or amphibious ieep, which did not seem to be in a hurry.

Here it came. General Marvin shouted: “Throw that goddam cart off the road.”

Colonel Middleton, Lieutenant Byrd and the nice boy from Massachusetts ached all over with regret, but there was nothing they could do but obey. The driver stopped the car. The three got out. They held up the seep and enlisted the puzzled aid of three sergeants who were riding in it.

The six men walked forward on the road with the bass aria of General Marvin’s anger ringing in their ears. They did not have to run to catch up with the cart. That was another thing about the mule of Errante Gaetano which he liked. The mule was good and slow. “It is a mule,” he would say, “which lives in the present and is not always trotting into the future.”

Errante stirred in his sleep. The thunder of his dream was the most beautiful and most continuous thunder he had ever heard.

The six men surrounded the cart. Colonel Middleton reached up to waken Errante, but the General’s roars grew louder. “What are you doing?” he bellowed. “I told you to throw the goddam thing off the road.”

“We were just going to wake this fellow up and get him off first,” Colonel Middleton shouted back, but the shout was weak because he knew what the answer would be.

“Serve him goddam right. Throw him too. Just turn the whole goddam thing over.”

There was no protest from any of the six men. The only thing which was said was muttered by Lieutenant Byrd: “The old man hasn’t been getting enough sleep lately.”

Colonel Middleton went to the head of the mule and guided it to the side of the road. He directed the other five men to take positions on the left side of the cart and to lift together when he gave the signal.

General Marvin roared: “Come on, get it over with. What a bunch of goddam softies. Get it over with.” Colonel Middleton gave the signal. The five men lifted.

In his dream, Errante rose up above the nine-foot fish and soared off into space. The sensation was extremely pleasant.