Private Angelo Read online

  ‘I confess,’ said Angelo, ‘that I hadn’t thought of that. I am only a private, and common soldiers often fail to appreciate the plans and the methods of senior officers. Your very habit of thought, indeed, sometimes appears strange and foreign to us.’

  ‘Lack of understanding is the greatest evil in the world,’ said the Count. ‘My God! If understanding came to our minds as readily as condemnation to our lips, how happy we should be! – Or should we?’

  While the Count was pondering this question Angelo discreetly turned his back, and tearing the wristband from a ragged sleeve of his shirt, blew his nose on it. The sweat was cold on his body, and he had begun to shiver. He was very tired.

  He had folded the damp wristband, and was putting it into his trouser-pocket, when the inner door of the room was thrown noisily open, and a fat white-faced captain with very short legs and a nearly bald head came clumsily in and stammered, ‘The radio! the radio! They are going to make a special announcement!’

  ‘Who is going to make an announcement?’ asked the Count. ‘The Duce?’

  ‘No, no! It is the Allies, it is the Americans, it is General Eisenhower himself who is going to speak!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said the Count.

  ‘But I have just heard them saying it, and the voice had an American accent. Stand by, it said. Stand by for one minute and you will hear General Eisenhower make an important announcement.’

  ‘Who gave you permission to listen to foreign broadcasting?’ asked the Count. ‘It is a grave and serious offence, as you well know.’

  The Captain wiped his forehead with a yellow silk handkerchief, and stammering again, muttered, ‘But if I had not been listening I could not have told you about General Eisenhower’s announcement.’

  ‘That is so,’ said the Count. ‘It is a tolerable excuse, and I must admit that to show a strict regard for every trifling piece of legislation would lead us, eventually, into the deplorable ways of our good friends the Germans; which God forbid. – I shall come and listen to your illegal instrument.’

  He rose, and with dignity led the way into the inner room, an office with maps upon the wall, where two smart young subalterns stood expectantly before a small wireless set. It was emitting the angry sounds of a far-off electric storm, but these suddenly gave way to what might have been the voice of a man with a hurricane in his lungs and a throat like the dome of St Peter’s.

  One of the subalterns hurriedly made an adjustment, the voice was reduced to human volume, and its accent became recognizably American. The tone was flat, the voice was soberly inflected. A plain man was speaking plainly, but every word he uttered was momentous, every sentence affected millions of lives, and he spoke with authority. Here was one of the decisive utterances of history. They were listening, thought the Count with enthusiasm, not merely to an American general, but to Clio herself. – And then the voice grew smaller, it receded to an infinite distance, and the electric storm was heard again, angrier than before, and now, as it seemed, filling all space.

  ‘However,’ said the Count, ‘we have had the gist of it. We have been offered peace on honourable terms, we have accepted the offer, and an armistice has been signed. The war is over!’

  Angelo threw himself on to his knees, and grasping the Count’s left hand, covered it with kisses. ‘Peace!’ he exclaimed. ‘Peace has been restored to us, and now you will not require to have me shot!’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said the Count. ‘Of course not!’

  ‘And I shall no longer be miserable because I have not the dono di corragio. In time of peace one can live well enough without courage, like everybody else.’

  ‘It is the eighth of September in the year nineteen forty three,’ said the Count. ‘It is five-and-twenty minutes to seven. We must forever remember the hour and the day, for they are part of our history. At this moment we and all Italy are stepping, like joyous pilgrims, into a new and happier age!’

  The fat Captain was again wiping his forehead with his yellow handkerchief. ‘Do you suppose, sir,’ he asked, ‘that we shall be compelled to resign our commissions?’

  ‘Immediately,’ said the Count. ‘Now that the war is over, what need have we of commissions?’

  ‘I need mine to keep a roof over my head,’ said the Captain.

  ‘Farewell, my mistress,’ murmured one of the subalterns.

  ‘Our mistress,’ corrected the other. ‘You see, sir,’ he explained, ‘on a subaltern’s pay it is impossible to maintain a mistress who is both agreeable to the senses and presentable to one’s friends; but by using every economy Luigi and I have, for some time past, been able to share such a one. Now, of course, we shall have to relinquish her, and because she has spoiled my taste for any coarser fare, I can see for myself no prospect but emotional famine.’

  ‘Come, come,’ said the Count, ‘you are unduly pessimistic. We shall all have to make certain minor adjustments to accommodate ourselves to new conditions, and some of us, during the brief period of transition, may even suffer small inconveniences. But we must not fret about them, we must ignore them, because at last, after three long years of fighting, we have won that for which we have always striven: Peace! Whatever trials you may have to endure, gentlemen, never forget that on the eighth of September, at five-and-twenty minutes to seven, you entered, after an eternity of suffering, the promised haven of peace.’

  At that moment the windows rattled in their frames, and the fat Captain said, ‘A thunderstorm is a bad augury for peace.’

  ‘It is not thunder,’ said Angelo in a trembling voice. ‘It is gunfire.’

  ‘Guns!’ exclaimed the Count. ‘Whose guns, and why should they be firing?’

  ‘They may be firing a feu de joie,’ said the younger subaltern with a cynical smile.

  ‘That is undoubtedly the explanation,’ said the Count. ‘They are shouting their welcome to peace!’

  ‘Perhaps they are firing against the English,’ said Angelo.

  ‘Impossible,’ declared the Count. ‘The English are hundreds of miles away.’

  ‘They were coming very fast when I last saw them.’

  ‘But it’s unthinkable! And even if they have achieved the impossible, and arrived at the gates of Rome, why should they continue to fight against us when Clio herself, borrowing the lips of General Eisenhower, has declared an armistice?’

  ‘They may not have heard about it,’ said Angelo. ‘The English are frequently unaware of what goes on in Europe.’

  ‘Then we shall go and inform them,’ declared the Count. ‘You and I, my dear Angelo, shall be the first to give them the good news that henceforth we and they must live together in perfect amity and mutual assistance. Come, Angelo, let us waste no time.’

  The windows rattled more violently as the gunfire grew louder, and Angelo tried to evade his errand with one excuse after another. But the Count would listen to none of them, and presently they were driving out of Rome towards the aerodrome that lies along the Appian Way. For that was the direction from which the firing came.

  The evening was now darkening, and against the first veils of twilight the flashing of the guns was faintly hued with orange. Every shell that was fired made Angelo wince as though he were equipped, like the field-pieces, with a recoil-mechanism; but the Count was deeply interested in what he saw.

  ‘Why, bless my soul,’ he declared, ‘they are Germans. It’s a German battery! The poor Tedeschi, they have not heard the news. No one ever tells them anything!’

  Briskly leaving his motor-car he approached the German officer in command, saluted him smilingly, clapped him on the shoulder with his other hand, and with a great deal of geniality started to explain that an armistice had been signed, and the war was over.

  The German, already in a vile temper, listened for five seconds only, and then interrupted to abuse the Count in a loud voice and with vulgar detail.

  ‘So you also are a traitor!’ he shouted. ‘You too are a rebel, are you, like the mutinous swine over the
re whom we are now liquidating?’

  ‘Mutinous? Surely the English have not mutinied?’ asked the Count.

  ‘Not the English, you blockhead, but those garlic-eating Judases, your fellow-countrymen!’

  ‘It is impossible!’

  ‘They told us the war was over – and this is our answer.’

  ‘You cannot be serious. You are not firing against Italian soldiers?’

  ‘They may have been soldiers once,’ said the German. ‘Most of them are corpses now.’

  ‘But we are your allies,’ exclaimed the Count. ‘You cannot fire against us! Good heavens, even a German should realize that this is no way to behave.’ And turning toward the nearest gun-crew he shouted, ‘Cease fire immediately!’

  The German officer at once drew his revolver, and pressing the muzzle against the Count’s stomach, declared in a voice so hoarse that it drew a little blood – which he swallowed noisily – ‘You are under arrest. Move one inch or utter a single word, and I shall kill you!’

  The Count was hard put to it to comply, for there were twenty things he wanted to say, but fortunately, before the strain became intolerable, there was a compelling sound in the air, a sibilance that swiftly grew louder and came nearer, and with a common impulse he and the German threw themselves flat on the ground.

  Within half a minute the Count had recovered consciousness, and sitting up he perceived that the shell, which seemingly had landed within a yard of the nearby gun, had instantly killed all its crew, while the German officer had been mortally wounded by a heavy splinter. Towed by their tractors, the remaining guns of the battery were moving to a new position.

  Though beyond human aid the German officer was still conscious, and the Count was able to deliver, without interruption, a brief lecture on the evils of intolerance.

  ‘You Tedeschi,’ he concluded, ‘have persistently underrated us, and made light of our military qualities. The excellence of our artillery, for example, is quite generally admitted by impartial observers, and our gunners have frequently used it to great advantage. But have you ever praised them? Never! It may be, of course, that until now you have never seen for yourself what they can do –’

  A barely human sound came from the German’s lips, and his booted heels twitched on the ground. The Count, after stooping to examine him, shrugged his shoulders and murmured, ‘They will never learn.’

  He returned to his car and was about to drive away when, from somewhere on the ground, a voice in agitation cried, ‘A moment, please! Wait a moment, do!’

  ‘My dear Angelo,’ said the Count, ‘I had quite forgotten you. Where have you been? Underneath the car?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ said Angelo. ‘It was the obvious place to choose.’

  ‘And while you were lying there, safe and snug, I came near to losing my life,’ said the Count. ‘Several Germans, less fortunate than I, were killed outright.’

  ‘By the English?’ asked Angelo.

  ‘No, no!’ cried the Count. ‘Really, my dear boy, your appreciation of the situation is woefully at fault. They are Italian gunners, our own splendid soldiers, who are now engaged in battle with the Germans. Look there! Oh, bravo, bravo! They have found the range again. I have always maintained that our artillery is first-class – and who will deny that now?’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ asked Angelo, ‘that now, when we have stopped fighting against our enemies, we must go to war against our allies?’

  ‘Surely there is some better way of expressing the situation,’ said the Count, and driving slowly while he considered the problem, turned the car towards Rome. Behind them the night was loud and the sky lurid with gunfire. ‘From what we have just seen,’ he continued, ‘we may reasonably infer that the Germans are no longer, in fact, or strictly speaking, our allies; and if that is indeed the case, we must, before we can discuss the situation clearly, find some new and more accurate title for them.’

  ‘They will become our gaolers,’ said Angelo bitterly. ‘If they have turned against us they will hold the mountains to the north like a great door between us and the rest of the world, and all Italy will become a prison. We shall be the starving convicts and they will be the gaolers with whips in their hands.’

  ‘But you must remember,’ said the Count, ‘that now we have powerful friends who will come to rescue us. The English and the Americans will not allow the Germans to illtreat us. The English are already in Calabria, and we expect the Americans to land somewhere near Salerno either to-morrow or the day after. – That is in confidence, of course. – We may indeed be in the toils of Germany at this moment, but soon, very soon, the Americans and the English will come and liberate us. Pazienza! It will not be long.’

  ‘Speriamo,’ said Angelo.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHORTLY AFTER NOON on the following day the Count was driving home to lunch. He was displeased to observe an unusual number of German soldiers on the streets, and the occasional sound of distant gunfire brought a little frown to his forehead. But when he entered the Piazza di Spagna his attention was taken by the exceptional colour of the flower-sellers’ stalls, and ordering his driver to stop, he got out and bought, in wilful defiance of the hour, a bunch of every variety displayed. These he sent, by a convenient boy whom he found waiting beside the stall, to his dear friend the Marchesa Dolce, who lived in a small house high above the Piazza. The boy with his many-coloured, scented burden slowly climbed the steps, and the Count returned to his car.

  Having lunched alone he sent for Angelo, and at once complimented him on his improved appearance. Cleanly shaved and diligently washed, smartly attired in a new uniform, Angelo now looked a credit to his regiment. Embracing him, the Count lightly stroked his hair and said with a sigh, ‘Mine still grows as thick as yours, but it’s turning grey. The first of the winter snow has fallen on it.’

  ‘In the most attractive manner,’ said Angelo.

  ‘It is not uncomely, I have been assured of that,’ the Count agreed, ‘but white hairs are a warning of the coldness that comes with age, and I do not like them. – That, however, is a topic we can discuss at some more convenient time. There is an affair of the moment that we must talk about now. The fact of the matter is that we are living in difficult and dangerous days.’

  ‘Have the English and the Americans changed their minds? Are they not coming to liberate us?’

  ‘Of course they are, but the process may take some weeks, and in the meanwhile the Tedeschi are in power. The King and Marshal Badoglio have fled from Rome, and General von Kluggenschaft, whose troops control the city, has made it perfectly clear that he no longer regards us as his loyal friends and indispensable allies.’

  ‘How many of our soldiers have the Tedeschi killed?’ asked Angelo.

  ‘Several score, I believe – but we must not let emotion obscure intelligence. We must remember, my dear Angelo, that the soldier’s anticipation of a violent end is part of his contract. The shadow of the recruiting sergeant is very like the shadow of death, and a soldier’s life, even in our army, is a flimsy structure. We must be practical – and to come to the point, I want you to take some of my pictures to Pontefiore, where, I think, they will be safer for the next few weeks than they might be in Rome.’

  ‘That is prudent indeed. You are sending the Piero della Francesca?’

  ‘That, and my little Raphael, the two small Bronzinos, and Simone Martini’s portrait of Petrarch. I have several others packed up; the Filippino Lippi, and the Lorenzo di Credi with the light blue sky. Indeed, the best of my small collection is going, and though I do not for a moment suppose that the Germans would take them from me, I shall feel happier when they are in Pontefiore, where the Countess will be able to find secure hiding-places for them.’

  ‘But how am I to take them there?’

  An arrangement had been made, the Count assured him. Several weeks before, in preparation for an emergency, he had had the pictures packed in wooden cases, and that very morning he had called on G
eneral von Kluggenschaft to ask for the loan of two German army lorries.

  ‘So you and the General are friends, are you?’ asked Angelo.

  ‘Far from it,’ said the Count. ‘He has a revolting personality, and whenever I see him I have to be extraordinarily polite in order to prevent an open quarrel. But as I needed his lorries I offered to sell him some wine if he would provide me with the necessary transport to bring it here. I mentioned an absurdly low price, his greed was instantly aroused, and when he had further diminished my figure we closed the bargain. Come, now, and let me show you the vehicles in which you will travel.’

  In a small courtyard the lorries were already loaded, and their drivers, in German uniform, stood beside them. With wooden precision they came to attention and saluted.

  ‘You need not be very frightened of them,’ said the Count. ‘Like so many people in the army of our late ally, they are not real Germans, but wretched prisoners forced into service. This one is a Czech, and that, I believe, some sort of a Russian who was taken captive in the Caucasus.’

  ‘They don’t look very happy,’ said Angelo.

  ‘They have very little reason to,’ replied the Count, and unlacing the canvas cover of the nearer lorry he revealed how well it had been loaded. The pictures in their wooden cases were only a small part of the cargo. The bulk of it was softly filled sacks among which the cases stood, gently held and firmly guarded.