Chapter 3

When I came back to the front we still lived in that town. There were
many more guns in the country around and the spring had come. The fields
were green and there were small green shoots on the vines, the trees
along the road had small leaves and a breeze came from the sea. I saw
the town with the hill and the old castle above it in a cup in the hills
with the mountains beyond, brown mountains with a little green on their
slopes. In the town there were more guns, there were some new hospitals,
you met British men and sometimes women, on the street, and a few more
houses had been hit by shell fire. It was warm and like the spring and I
walked down the alleyway of trees, warmed from the sun on the wall, and
found we still lived in the same house and that it all looked the same
as when I had left it. The door was open, there was a soldier sitting on
a bench outside in the sun, an ambulance was waiting by the side door
and inside the door, as I went in, there was the smell of marble floors
and hospital. It was all as I had left it except that now it was spring.
I looked in the door of the big room and saw the major sitting at his
desk, the window open and the sunlight coming into the room. He did not
see me and I did not know whether to go in and report or go upstairs
first and clean up. I decided to go on upstairs.

The room I shared with the lieutenant Rinaldi looked out on the
courtyard. The window was open, my bed was made up with blankets and my
things hung on the wall, the gas mask in an oblong tin can, the steel
helmet on the same peg. At the foot of the bed was my flat trunk, and my
winter boots, the leather shiny with oil, were on the trunk. My Austrian
sniper’s rifle with its blued octagon barrel and the lovely dark walnut,
cheek-fitted, _schutzen_ stock, hung over the two beds. The telescope
that fitted it was, I remembered, locked in the trunk. The lieutenant,
Rinaldi, lay asleep on the other bed. He woke when he heard me in the
room and sat up.

“Ciaou!” he said. “What kind of time did you have?”

“Magnificent.”

We shook hands and he put his arm around my neck and kissed me.

“Oughf,” I said.

“You’re dirty,” he said. “You ought to wash. Where did you go and what
did you do? Tell me everything at once.”

“I went everywhere. Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples, Villa San Giovanni,
Messina, Taormina——”

“You talk like a time-table. Did you have any beautiful adventures?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Milano, Firenze, Roma, Napoli——”

“That’s enough. Tell me really what was the best.”

“In Milano.”

“That was because it was first. Where did you meet her? In the Cova?
Where did you go? How did you feel? Tell me everything at once. Did you
stay all night?”

“Yes.”

“That’s nothing. Here now we have beautiful girls. New girls never been
to the front before.”

“Wonderful.”

“You don’t believe me? We will go now this afternoon and see. And in the
town we have beautiful English girls. I am now in love with Miss
Barkley. I will take you to call. I will probably marry Miss Barkley.”

“I have to get washed and report. Doesn’t anybody work now?”

“Since you are gone we have nothing but frostbites, chilblains,
jaundice, gonorrhea, self-inflicted wounds, pneumonia and hard and soft
chancres. Every week some one gets wounded by rock fragments. There are
a few real wounded. Next week the war starts again. Perhaps it starts
again. They say so. Do you think I would do right to marry Miss
Barkley—after the war of course?”

“Absolutely,” I said and poured the basin full of water.

“To-night you will tell me everything,” said Rinaldi. “Now I must go
back to sleep to be fresh and beautiful for Miss Barkley.”

I took off my tunic and shirt and washed in the cold water in the basin.
While I rubbed myself with a towel I looked around the room and out the
window and at Rinaldi lying with his eyes closed on the bed. He was
good-looking, was my age, and he came from Amalfi. He loved being a
surgeon and we were great friends. While I was looking at him he opened
his eyes.

“Have you any money?”

“Yes.”

“Loan me fifty lire.”

I dried my hands and took out my pocket-book from the inside of my tunic
hanging on the wall. Rinaldi took the note, folded it without rising
from the bed and slid it in his breeches pocket. He smiled, “I must make
on Miss Barkley the impression of a man of sufficient wealth. You are my
great and good friend and financial protector.”

“Go to hell,” I said.

That night at the mess I sat next to the priest and he was disappointed
and suddenly hurt that I had not gone to the Abruzzi. He had written to
his father that I was coming and they had made preparations. I myself
felt as badly as he did and could not understand why I had not gone. It
was what I had wanted to do and I tried to explain how one thing had led
to another and finally he saw it and understood that I had really wanted
to go and it was almost all right. I had drunk much wine and afterward
coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the
things we wanted to do; we never did such things.

We two were talking while the others argued. I had wanted to go to
Abruzzi. I had gone to no place where the roads were frozen and hard as
iron, where it was clear cold and dry and the snow was dry and powdery
and hare-tracks in the snow and the peasants took off their hats and
called you Lord and there was good hunting. I had gone to no such place
but to the smoke of cafés and nights when the room whirled and you
needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when
you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of
waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in
the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not
caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not
caring. Suddenly to care very much and to sleep to wake with it
sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp
and hard and clear and sometimes a dispute about the cost. Sometimes
still pleasant and fond and warm and breakfast and lunch. Sometimes all
niceness gone and glad to get out on the street but always another day
starting and then another night. I tried to tell about the night and the
difference between the night and the day and how the night was better
unless the day was very clean and cold and I could not tell it; as I
cannot tell it now. But if you have had it you know. He had not had it
but he understood that I had really wanted to go to the Abruzzi but had
not gone and we were still friends, with many tastes alike, but with the
difference between us. He had always known what I did not know and what,
when I learned it, I was always able to forget. But I did not know that
then, although I learned it later. In the meantime we were all at the
mess, the meal was finished, and the argument went on. We two stopped
talking and the captain shouted, “Priest not happy. Priest not happy
without girls.”

“I am happy,” said the priest.

“Priest not happy. Priest wants Austrians to win the war,” the captain
said. The others listened. The priest shook his head.

“No,” he said.

“Priest wants us never to attack. Don’t you want us never to attack?”

“No. If there is a war I suppose we must attack.”

“Must attack. Shall attack!”

The priest nodded.

“Leave him alone,” the major said. “He’s all right.”

“He can’t do anything about it anyway,” the captain said. We all got up
and left the table.