Chapter 2

The next year there were many victories. The mountain that was beyond
the valley and the hillside where the chestnut forest grew was captured
and there were victories beyond the plain on the plateau to the south
and we crossed the river in August and lived in a house in Gorizia that
had a fountain and many thick shady trees in a walled garden and a
wistaria vine purple on the side of the house. Now the fighting was in
the next mountains beyond and was not a mile away. The town was very
nice and our house was very fine. The river ran behind us and the town
had been captured very handsomely but the mountains beyond it could not
be taken and I was very glad the Austrians seemed to want to come back
to the town some time, if the war should end, because they did not
bombard it to destroy it but only a little in a military way. People
lived on in it and there were hospitals and cafés and artillery up side
streets and two bawdy houses, one for troops and one for officers, and
with the end of the summer, the cool nights, the fighting in the
mountains beyond the town, the shell-marked iron of the railway bridge,
the smashed tunnel by the river where the fighting had been, the trees
around the square and the long avenue of trees that led to the square;
these with there being girls in the town, the King passing in his motor
car, sometimes now seeing his face and little long necked body and gray
beard like a goat’s chin tuft; all these with the sudden interiors of
houses that had lost a wall through shelling, with plaster and rubble in
their gardens and sometimes in the street, and the whole thing going
well on the Carso made the fall very different from the last fall when
we had been in the country. The war was changed too.

The forest of oak trees on the mountain beyond the town was gone. The
forest had been green in the summer when we had come into the town but
now there were the stumps and the broken trunks and the ground torn up,
and one day at the end of the fall when I was out where the oak forest
had been I saw a cloud coming over the mountain. It came very fast and
the sun went a dull yellow and then everything was gray and the sky was
covered and the cloud came on down the mountain and suddenly we were in
it and it was snow. The snow slanted across the wind, the bare ground
was covered, the stumps of trees projected, there was snow on the guns
and there were paths in the snow going back to the latrines behind
trenches.

Later, below in the town, I watched the snow falling, looking out of the
window of the bawdy house, the house for officers, where I sat with a
friend and two glasses drinking a bottle of Asti, and, looking out at
the snow falling slowly and heavily, we knew it was all over for that
year. Up the river the mountains had not been taken; none of the
mountains beyond the river had been taken. That was all left for next
year. My friend saw the priest from our mess going by in the street,
walking carefully in the slush, and pounded on the window to attract his
attention. The priest looked up. He saw us and smiled. My friend
motioned for him to come in. The priest shook his head and went on. That
night in the mess after the spaghetti course, which every one ate very
quickly and seriously, lifting the spaghetti on the fork until the loose
strands hung clear then lowering it into the mouth, or else using a
continuous lift and sucking into the mouth, helping ourselves to wine
from the grass-covered gallon flask; it swung in a metal cradle and you
pulled the neck of the flask down with the forefinger and the wine,
clear red, tannic and lovely, poured out into the glass held with the
same hand; after this course, the captain commenced picking on the
priest.

The priest was young and blushed easily and wore a uniform like the rest
of us but with a cross in dark red velvet above the left breast pocket
of his gray tunic. The captain spoke pidgin Italian for my doubtful
benefit, in order that I might understand perfectly, that nothing should
be lost.

“Priest to-day with girls,” the captain said looking at the priest and
at me. The priest smiled and blushed and shook his head. This captain
baited him often.

“Not true?” asked the captain. “To-day I see priest with girls.”

“No,” said the priest. The other officers were amused at the baiting.

“Priest not with girls,” went on the captain. “Priest never with girls,”
he explained to me. He took my glass and filled it, looking at my eyes
all the time, but not losing sight of the priest.

“Priest every night five against one.” Every one at the table laughed.
“You understand? Priest every night five against one.” He made a gesture
and laughed loudly. The priest accepted it as a joke.

“The Pope wants the Austrians to win the war,” the major said. “He loves
Franz Joseph. That’s where the money comes from. I am an atheist.”

“Did you ever read the ‘Black Pig’?” asked the lieutenant. “I will get
you a copy. It was that which shook my faith.”

“It is a filthy and vile book,” said the priest. “You do not really like
it.”

“It is very valuable,” said the lieutenant. “It tells you about those
priests. You will like it,” he said to me. I smiled at the priest and he
smiled back across the candle-light. “Don’t you read it,” he said.

“I will get it for you,” said the lieutenant.

“All thinking men are atheists,” the major said. “I do not believe in
the Free Masons however.”

“I believe in the Free Masons,” the lieutenant said. “It is a noble
organization.” Some one came in and as the door opened I could see the
snow falling.

“There will be no more offensive now that the snow has come,” I said.

“Certainly not,” said the major. “You should go on leave. You should go
to Rome, Naples, Sicily——”

“He should visit Amalfi,” said the lieutenant “I will write you cards to
my family in Amalfi. They will love you like a son.”

“He should go to Palermo.”

“He ought to go to Capri.”

“I would like you to see Abruzzi and visit my family at Capracotta,”
said the priest.

“Listen to him talk about the Abruzzi. There’s more snow there than
here. He doesn’t want to see peasants. Let him go to centres of culture
and civilization.”

“He should have fine girls. I will give you the addresses of places in
Naples. Beautiful young girls—accompanied by their mothers. Ha! Ha!
Ha!” The captain spread his hand open, the thumb up and fingers
outspread as when you make shadow pictures. There was a shadow from his
hand on the wall. He spoke again in pidgin Italian. “You go away like
this,” he pointed to the thumb, “and come back like this,” he touched
the little finger. Every one laughed.

“Look,” said the captain. He spread the hand again. Again the
candle-light made its shadows on the wall. He started with the upright
thumb and named in their order the thumb and four fingers, “soto-tenente
(the thumb), tenente (first finger), capitano (next finger), maggiore
(next to the little finger), and tenente-colonello (the little finger).
You go away soto-tenente! You come back soto-colonello!” They all
laughed. The captain was having a great success with finger games. He
looked at the priest and shouted, “Every night priest five against one!”
They all laughed again.

“You must go on leave at once,” the major said.

“I would like to go with you and show you things,” the lieutenant said.

“When you come back bring a phonograph.”

“Bring good opera disks.”

“Bring Caruso.”

“Don’t bring Caruso. He bellows.”

“Don’t you wish you could bellow like him?”

“He bellows. I say he bellows!”

“I would like you to go to Abruzzi,” the priest said. The others were
shouting. “There is good hunting. You would like the people and though
it is cold it is clear and dry. You could stay with my family. My father
is a famous hunter.”

“Come on,” said the captain. “We go whorehouse before it shuts.”

“Good-night,” I said to the priest.

“Good-night,” he said.