A Soldier of the Great War Read online

  "How do you know these things? I think you're wrong."

  "I know them because they're obvious."

  "Do you have a fish market?"

  "No."

  The construction worker was tremendously suspicious. "If you don't have a fish market, what do you do?"

  "I'm a professor."

  "Of fish?"

  "Of chicken," Alessandro answered.

  "Then you don't know enough to talk."

  "Ah," said Alessandro, holding up his finger. "A squid is not a fish."

  "It isn't?"

  "No."

  "What is it?"

  "It's a type of chicken, a water chicken."

  The construction worker looked abject. Feeling sorry for him, Alessandro said, "I'm not a professor of chicken, and as far as I know, there is no such thing, but the part about the oxygen is true. I regret that your squid died. He had already come all the way from Civitavecchia, and before that he had been pulled from the sea, which was his home, and he suffered many hours in the hold of a fishing boat as it worked its way back to land in the August heat. The journey was too much."

  The construction worker nodded. "But of what are you a professor?"

  "Aesthetics."

  "What are aesthetics?"

  "The study of beauty."

  "Beauty? What for?"

  "Beauty. Why not."

  "Why do you have to study it?"

  "You don't. It's everywhere, in great profusion, and always will be. Were I to cease studying it, it would not go away, if that's what you mean."

  "Then why do you?"

  "It entrances me, it always has, so it's what I do—despite occasional ridicule."

  "I'm not ridiculing you."

  "I know you're not, but others say that mine is an effeminate or a useless calling. Well, for some it is. Not for me."

  "Don't get me wrong; I don't think you look effeminate."

  The construction worker drew back to study him. "You're a tough old bastard, I think. You remind me of my father."

  "Thank you," Alessandro replied, slightly alarmed.

  Now the way to Monte Prato was clear. He had only to fall into the pleasant hypnosis of travel; to watch the long ranks of trees as they passed; to view the mountains when they first rose over the fields; to observe the great round moon and its attendant bright stars shining through the streetcar's glassy walls; to match the whirring of the engines with the mad chorus of the cicadas; to be comfortable, and old, and content with small things. He assumed that the remaining hours would pass without incident, that he would rest, and that he would be alone—free of memories too great for the heart to hold.

  BEFORE IT came to the edge of the city, where it would pick up speed, the trolley wound through many small streets not as congenial as the one on the side of the hill where Alessandro Giuliani had embarked. It crossed and recrossed the river Aniene, and rattled down desolate boulevards scored by the patterned shadows of iron fences and trees. At every church, the sweeper ladies crossed themselves, and now and then the squad of truck drivers noticed a new German truck, or a piece of construction machinery, and turned their heads to look at it while one of them told how much it cost or how many horsepower it had.

  At each stop the driver looked up into his mirror to scan both the interior of the car and the street, to see if anyone would insult and delay him by wanting to get on or off. Though no one had a short ticket, people sometimes changed their minds about how far they wanted to go, and he had to be alert: but Rome hardly stirred, offering not a soul to slow his progress. The streetcar made excellent time, and when it reached the edge of the city it was running ahead of schedule, This delighted the driver. If he beat his fares to a stop he could hurl himself forward and arrive even earlier at the next stop, where he would be less likely to encounter someone else. In this way he was able to convert his viscous long-distance local into the most ethereal express. He hated deceleration and he hated to make change, but he did like to drive, and each stop that he could pass at speed was for him the partial satisfaction of his long-standing dream of riding in the steeplechase as a jockey or even as a horse.

  At a place that was neither Rome nor the countryside, where fields of corn and wheat alternated with lumber yards and factory compounds, and where a distant highway was visible, sparkling like a stream as its traffic beat against the sunlight, they made an insincere lurch at an empty stop, and started off again as usual. Alessandro had begun to dream, but was pulled from his reverie by the insistent and conscientious action of the corner of his eye. Off to the right was a slightly sloping dirt road littered with potholes. A little way down this road, someone was running desperately, leaping the potholes and waving his arms.

  A long moment passed during which Alessandro begged to remain at rest but was again overruled by the corner of his eye. He turned his head for a full view. Whoever it was, he wanted to get on the streetcar, and was screaming for it to stop. Although he could not be heard, what he said was apparent in the movement of his arms as they jolted slightly at each shout.

  "There's someone," Alessandro said weakly. Then he cleared his throat. "There's a person!" he shouted. Because no one else had seen the runner no one knew what Alessandro meant. They were not surprised that an old man, even one as dignified as he, would blurt out something incoherent on a hot afternoon. Except for one sweeper woman, who smiled idiotically, their reaction was to hold still and not look at him. The car was on a straightaway, accelerating to the southeast.

  Alessandro jumped to his feet. "Driver!" he screamed. "There's a person who wants to catch the streetcar!"

  "Where?" the driver shouted, without taking his eyes from the road.

  "Back there."

  The driver turned his head. No one was visible. "You're mistaken," he said. They were far away now from the corner of the dirt road. "Besides," the driver continued, "I can't pick anyone up between stops."

  Alessandro sat down. He looked back, and saw no one. It was not fair for the driver to race through the stops, especially because this was the last car of the day.

  Alessandro began to compose a letter of protest. It was short, but he rephrased it repeatedly. During this time the streetcar traveled a kilometer or two and was forced to slow down behind a huge truck that was hauling an arcane piece of electrical equipment almost as big as a house.

  "Hey, look," the construction worker said to Alessandro.

  Alessandro turned to see where the construction worker was pointing. Far behind them on the road, the slight figure from the dirt track was chasing them, after having run for two or three kilometers without flagging. No longer was he begging, and he had stopped waving his arms, as if he had decided that since the streetcar would give him nothing he would save his strength so he could get what he wanted himself.

  "I'll tell the driver," Alessandro said to the construction worker. He rose and made his way to the front. "Signore," he implored the driver, "look in back of us. Someone is chasing."

  The driver glanced up into his mirror. He saw the runner. "It's too late," he said. "The next stop is fifteen kilometers away. He'll never make it."

  "Why don't you let him on?" Alessandro demanded, his voice rising.

  "I told you. We don't pick up passengers between stops. Please sit down."

  "You sped right by the last stop, early. That's why he's running."

  "Please sit down."

  "No," Alessandro said. "I want to get off."

  "You get off in Monte Prato."

  "I want to get off here instead."

  "I can't do that."

  "Why not?"

  "Here? There's nothing here! We don't let people off here."

  "These are my fields. All these fields are mine. I want to check the wheat."

  The streetcar rolled to a stop and the doors were thrown open. "Okay, then," the driver said, glancing at the mirror, "check the wheat."

  "Just a minute," Alessandro answered. "I have to get my briefcase." He began to walk back to hi
s seat, very slowly.

  The driver was angry. "Come on!" he screamed. "You're holding us up."

  "Just a moment, just a moment," Alessandro said, and, upon reaching his seat, he added, "I dropped something."

  The driver closed the door and started up again, but the persistent runner was gaining. Alessandro looked back, and saw a boy of eighteen or nineteen sprinting behind the bus. He was wearing heavy leather work shoes, and he looked as if he were about to die from overexertion. His hair was plastered by sweat onto the sides of his forehead. He breathed hard through an open mouth. He was the color of a ripe pepper.

  "He's here!" Alessandro shouted.

  The driver looked stonily ahead, but the boy put on a final burst of speed and ran up to the door, where he hopped onto the step and held on. He was heaving, dripping sweat, and his head was bowed.

  Alessandro, briefcase under his arm, tapped his way to the front of the streetcar and hit the roof with his cane. "Signore," he said in a surprisingly deep and powerful voice, "I believe you have a passenger." At this very moment the boy, who looked like someone from a wild valley in Sicily, began to beat furiously on the glass. The way he hung on the door and pounded with his fists reminded Alessandro of his own tenacity in other times, and he was filled with affection and pride, as if the boy had been his son.

  The driver pressed hard on the brakes. Alessandro flew headlong into the windshield but was cushioned by his briefcase and his arms, and was able to stay in balance. The boy swung around and slammed against the streetcar in the fashion of a flexible whip, but he hung on.

  When the door was opened, both Alessandro and the boy thought that they had won, but when the driver got up, they saw that he was a giant. Alessandro bent his head to look at him. "I didn't realize how..." he started to say. Then he looked at the driver's seat and saw that it had been lowered all the way to the floor.

  As the driver descended, the boy backed away from the door. "If you touch this vehicle again...!" the driver said before he became voiceless with rage.

  Alessandro walked down the steps and hopped to the ground. "If you don't let him ride, I won't ride either. I'm an old man. It might cost you your job."

  "Crap on my job," the driver said, leaping back into the car. "I always wanted to be a jockey." He closed the door, and the streetcar started up suddenly and began to pull away.

  Alessandro was shocked to see the construction worker in the newspaper hat pressed up against the window behind which he himself, only a few minutes before, had been resting. The construction worker lifted his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. Then he changed his mind and rushed to the front, but whatever he did or said there, the car did not stop, and the faces of the truck drivers, the sweeper women, and the Danes looked back at the old man and the boy, like expressionless moons.

  "Seventy kilometers to Monte Prato," Alessandro said under his breath as the streetcar disappeared down the long straight road.

  "In a few hours the other car will pass on its way back to Rome," the boy declared, still breathing hard from his run. "Maybe less than that."

  "I just came from Rome," the old man said. "What good would it do me to go back? I'm going to Monte Prato. And you?"

  "To Sant' Angelo, ten kilometers before Monte Prato."

  "I'm aware of that."

  "To my sister. She lives in the convent there."

  "She's a nun?"

  "No. She washes for them. They're very clean, but they can't do it all themselves."

  Alessandro looked back and saw that, in leaving most of the city behind, the road had become beautiful. To right and left were fields now golden in the declining sun, and the tall trees on either side sparkled and swayed as the wind rushed through them. "I'll tell you what," he proposed. "I'll go with you as far as Sant' Angelo, and then continue on my own to Monte Prato."

  "I don't know if they'll give the two of us a ride," the boy replied. "There isn't any traffic anyway. There hardly ever is, on this road, and not today, not on a saint's day."

  "Do you think I would stand on the road and beg for a ride?" Alessandro asked indignantly.

  "I'll do it for you."

  "No you won't. I've had legs for seventy-four years, and I know how to use them. In addition," he said, rapping his cane on the surface of the road, "I have this. It helps. It's as long as a rhinoceros's penis, and twice as stiff."

  "But you can't walk seventy kilometers. Even I can't," the boy said.

  "What's your name?"

  "Nicolò."

  "Nicolò, I once walked several hundred kilometers over glaciers and snowfields, with no rest, and if I had been discovered I would have been shot."

  "That was in the war?"

  "Of course it was in the war. I'm going to Monte Prato," Alessandro declared, cinching up his belt, straightening his jacket, and patting down his mustache. "If you like, I'll accompany you as far as Sant' Angelo."

  "By the time I get there, if I walk," Nicolò said, "I'll have to turn around and go back."

  "Would you let a little thing like that stop you?" Alessandro asked.

  Contemplating the old lion in front of him, Nicolò said nothing.

  "Well, would you?" Alessandro demanded, his face so tense and peculiar that Nicolò was frightened.

  "No, of course not," the boy said. "Why would I?"

  "THE FIRST thing you have to do," Alessandro told him, "is take inventory and make a plan."

  "What inventory, what plan?" Nicolò asked dismissively. "We have nothing and we're going to Sant' Angelo."

  The old man was silent. They walked about a hundred steps.

  "What do you mean, inventory?" Nicolò wanted to know. When he received no answer, he looked straight ahead and decided that if the old man chose not to talk, he wouldn't talk either. That lasted, as Alessandro knew it would, for no more than ten steps.

  "I thought inventory was what they did in a store."

  "It is what they do in a store."

  "Where's the store?" Nicolò asked.

  "Merchants take inventory," Alessandro stated, "so that, knowing what they have, they can plan ahead. We can do the same. We can think in our brains of what we have, and what obstacles are in front of us to be overcome."

  "What for?"

  "Anticipation is the heart of wisdom. If you are going to cross a desert, you anticipate that you will be thirsty, and you take water."

  "But this is the road to Monte Prato, and there are towns along the way. We don't need water."

  "Did you ever walk seventy kilometers?"

  "No."

  "It may be difficult for you. It will be very difficult for me. I'm somewhat older than you, and, as you can see, I'm half lame. If I'm to succeed, it will be by a narrow margin, and, therefore, I must court precision. It's always been that way for me. What do you have with you?"

  "I don't have anything."

  "You have no food?"

  "Food?" The boy jumped in the air and whirled around, turning a full circle to show that he wasn't concealing anything. "I don't carry around food. Do you?" he asked.

  The old man went to one side of the road and sat on a rock. "Yes," he answered, opening his briefcase. "Bread, and a half kilo each of prosciutto, dried fruit, and semi-sweet chocolate. We'll need a lot of water. It's hot."

  "In the towns," Nicolò volunteered.

  "Only a few towns line the route, but between them are springs. As soon as it gets hilly, you'll see, we'll have plenty of water."

  "We don't need food. When we get to a village, we can eat there."

  "The next village is fifteen kilometers away," the old man said, "and I walk slowly. When we arrive the stars will be halfway across the sky and every window will be shut tight. Though we won't be able to eat in the towns, this food will see us through. You'd be surprised at how much you burn up on a march."

  "Where will we sleep?" Nicolò asked.

  "Sleep?" Alessandro repeated, with one bushy white eyebrow riding so far above the other that it looked for a mome
nt as if he had been in an automobile accident and had not quite recovered.

  "Aren't we going to sleep at night?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "On a march of seventy kilometers you don't need to sleep."

  "Yes, you don't need to sleep," the boy said, "but why not sleep? Who says you shouldn't?"

  "If you slept you wouldn't be properly intent. You'd be swept away by dreams, and miss the waking dreams. And you would insult the road."

  "I don't understand."

  "Look," Alessandro said, grabbing Nicolò's wrist. "If I decide that I'm going to Monte Prato, seventy kilometers or not, I go to Monte Prato. You don't do things by halves. If you love a woman, you love her entirely. You give everything. You don't spend your time in cafes; you don't make love to other women; you don't take her for granted. Do you understand?"

  Nicolò shook his head back and forth to express that he did not. He expected that the old man might be more than he could handle and was perhaps an escapee from an asylum, or, worse, someone who had contrived to avoid asylums altogether.

  "God gives gifts to all creatures," Alessandro continued, "no matter what their station or condition. He may give innocence to a lunatic, or heaven to a thief. Contrary to most theologians, I have always believed that even worms and weasels have souls, and that even they are capable of salvation.

  "But one thing God does not give, something that must be earned, something that a lazy man can never know. Call it understanding, grace, the elevation of the spirit—call it what you will. It comes only of work, sacrifice, and suffering.

  "You must give everything you have. You must love unto exhaustion, work unto exhaustion, and walk unto exhaustion.

  "If I want to go to Monte Prato, I go to Monte Prato. I don't hang around like an ass with half a dozen trunks who has gone to take the waters at Montecatini. People like that continually expose their souls to mortal danger in imagining that they are free of it, when, indeed, the only mortal danger for the spirit is to remain too long without it. The world is made of fire."

  Alessandro's homily was a success, and Nicolò was beginning to get fiery himself. Swept up remarkably fast in a storm of passion and dreams, within a minute or two he had decided his fate and declared that he would go to Sant' Angelo, to Monte Prato, twice the distance, three times the distance, without rest, driving himself until he came close to death. His face, with its dark, lateral, wolflike eyes, a crooked mouth, and a sharp and substantial nose, was tight with resolution.