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Overview
Robert is an American GI in Rome during the final months of World War II. Lisa is a young woman obliged to work in Mamma Adele’s on the Via Flaminia. The passion they feel for one another is fueled by their separate, and equally desperate, needs. But can love truly exist between victor and vanquished?
This classic story of a poignant affair, set amid the aftermath of war, is as relevant and moving today as when it was first published in 1949.
“Keeps us guessing to the end. An enthralling narrative, and art of a high order.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Full of dramatic conflicts . . . The dialogue is the best I have read in any war novel.” —The New York Times
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609459826 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Europa Editions, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 10/08/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 147 |
| Sales rank: | 886,897 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 13 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The wind blew through Europe. It was a cold wind, and there were no lights in the city. It was said the cabinet was about to fall. Nobody knew for sure whether the cabinet which was in power at this time would fall and another coalition government would be formed. There was nothing that was very sure, and all one knew was that, if the cabinet did fall, the government which would be formed from the ruins would be another coalition one, and that the wind was cold. It did not look at this time as though the war would end, although actually the war was coming to an end. Nobody knew at this time that the war would end in a few months. There were children in the city who had never known a time in which there had not been a war. The fighting was going on in the north. Sometimes in the afternoon in the city one could see girls and young men standing in the main piazzas wearing red armbands and rough uniforms. Those were the partisans. The men were usually handsomer than the girls were pretty. Everybody looked at them very respectfully. They were part of the real and important fighting that was going on. In the city itself there were many soldiers. The soldiers were of different kinds. The kinds of fighting they did among themselves and the way they got drunk distinguished the soldiers. The English were very fond of fighting with the big steel buckles of their military belts, and the Americans with bottles, and some of the other troops preferred knives. The drunkenness was everywhere. The most conspicuous of the military drunks were the Americans. The Canadians had discovered that vermouth and banana oil made a kind of cocktail but hardly any of the other troops thought so. The Canadians hated the English and envied the Americans. The English envied the Americans and despised the Canadians. The French wore American uniforms and drove in American vehicles and despised the English and shrugged their shoulders at the Canadians and shook their heads in disbelief at the Americans. The lonesomest troops were the Poles and the Palestinian brigadiers.
The cold was really bad. It was December, and almost Christmas, and the war had been going on for over five years. Sometimes men would escape from the prison camps near the Austrian border. They would come home to their wives so terribly changed the women would shriek. There were some husbands, too, who came home to find their wives with other men or with soldiers. That kind of shrieking in the neighborhoods was also bad.
On this December night, the Via Flaminia was very dark, with the wind blowing down its length, and the night was cold with the kind of coldness that in another country would have meant snow. But here in this country there was no snow except on the mountains. There was rain, and fog, and the damp cold.
In this section of the city the people before the war had not been too rich or too poor. Now, of course, after more than five years of war, they were all more or less poor. The poverty was not of money. In this section of the city there were apartment houses with enormous windows and visible roof gardens. The trolley line went down to the end of the street which was the Via Flaminia and then crossed the Ponte Milvio which was a very old and very much-used bridge and from there the road went up north. During the day there were always accidents on the streets. Pedestrians were killed or hurt with a deadly regularity coming across the bridge or across the Via Flaminia, and they were usually killed or hurt by large fast six- or eight-wheeled military vehicles. The citizens, when there was such an accident, always cursed the fate which had brought the military vehicles to the city, and the dead or dying man would lie in the gutter covered with a blanket or an overcoat until an ambulance and a carabiniere would arrive to take him away to a hospital. Since there were no medicines in the hospitals, the man would often be considered lucky if he died en route. The blood would remain in a thick pool in the gutter.
In one of the apartment houses in that section of the city where the Via Flaminia crossed the Milvio bridge there was a flat in which a family known as the Pulcinis lived. It was a flat of six rooms, and the dining room which was large had been converted by the Signora Adele Pulcini into a place where the soldiers came at night for wine and eggs. There was a big mahogany table in the center of the dining room, a radio which the soldiers liked to have playing music as they drank, and on the wall, of course, there was a lithograph of a Sacred Heart. A French door led out of the dining room into a small shabby garden and to a back gate. The soldiers called the Signora Adele Pulcini "Mamma." And one night, toward the end of December, as the war unknowingly was coming to its hoped-for end, two soldiers were sitting at the big mahogany table in the Pulcini's apartment, drinking wine. One of the soldiers was a short, wiry, middle-aged English sergeant, and the other was an American, a young American, who was not a sergeant, but who was very flushed with wine, and who walked with a very slight limp.
It was about seven-thirty in the evening.
The middle-aged English sergeant had been listening for some time to the complaints of the young American who was not a sergeant. The Englishman did not think that anyone in the American army had a thing to complain about. The Englishman loved his country but not his country's rations. The Englishman often said, when he was thoroughly disgusted with the slice of bread and the slice of spam served in the sergeants' mess where, as an English sergeant, he had the luxury of being able to sit down at a long rough board table with seven other sergeants, that more than once he thought of going absent up into the hills to live with the bloody partigianos. Now, in the dining room, with a glass of wine in his hand, he said to the young American, "What're you blokes got to grouse about? Gawd," the Englishman said, "you ought t' be in His Majesty's fightin' forces for a bloody month, and chew our bully, and wash it down with a cup o' stinking tea, and be happy when they puts a bit o' marmalade on the bread, and then you'd have something to write home about."
"Beef to the brass," the American said.
"Ay," the Englishman said. "Scum o' the earth, her ladyship called us. Stood up she did, in the House o' Commons, and said it: scum o' the earth. An' bloody right she was."
The American limped slightly as he went toward the door. The door opened into a hallway, and the other rooms in the flat were off the hallway.
"Hey, Mamma!" the American called. "Mamma Pulcini! How about a bottle of vino? Subito!"
"Sì, sì," a woman's voice replied from the kitchen. "Un momento."
"Everything in this country's un momento," the American said. He limped back toward the table. He wore a wristwatch and a ring made of an Arabian coin and an identification bracelet. It looked like a great deal of jewelry. "How did I wind up in Italy?" he said to the English sergeant. "I wanted to go to France. My old man was in France in the last one. You ever go with a French broad, sarge?"
"No," the Englishman said.
"I met a sailor was in Marseilles," the American said. "He had a girl named Marie. He says when he was in Marseilles he used to sleep in her house, and in the morning her mother used to serve him breakfast in bed. They weren't even married, and she was only eighteen years old. How do you like that?"
"Eighteen," the English sergeant said. "Me missus is twice eighteen."
"France, that would have been for me," the American said.
"Oh," the sergeant said, "Rome ain't bad."
"Rome's a city," the American said. "Cities are different. But you take the rest of the country. Mountains!"
"Well, it's a pretty country, except for the flies."
"Listen, sarge," the American said. "Know what they can do with Europe? All of it? Fold it three ways and ram it. Listen. I walked up here from Anzio. Then at Velletri I fell off a cliff. In the dark! Fell off a cliff and bust my ankle."
He pulled up the leg of his trousers.
"Feel that," he said to the Englishman. "Feel that ankle."
Solicitously, the Englishman touched the stockinged bone.
"Here?" he asked.
"Right there," the soldier said. "Feel it?"
"Bit o' somethin' stickin' out," the Englishman said.
"That's where it's bust," the soldier said. "Off a goddam cliff in Velletri in the dark. But nobody believes me. Everybody thinks I'm trying to goof off from my outfit. Could I go back to my outfit with an ankle bust like that?"
He looked at the sergeant unhappily. The sergeant poured a glass of wine.
"I saw a chap once had his whole foot smashed," the sergeant said. "Bloody gun fell on him."
The Signora Adele Pulcini came into the dining room. She was a tall woman, with gray hair, in her fifties, and her face was sharp and dark. She was dressed in black, and a cigarette was in the corner of her mouth. At night she lay in bed, with the electric light on, smoking cigarettes and coughing. She looked at the two soldiers in the room, and she said to the American, "Imbecille! How many times have I told you not to shout? Twice last week the carabinieri came in ..."
"Come here, Mamma," the American said to the Signora Pulcini.
"Feel this ankle."
"Ankle?" the tall hard-faced woman said. "What ankle?"
"Feel it," the American said.
The Signora Pulcini accommodatingly felt his ankle.
"So?" she said.
"Busted," the soldier said. "Off a cliff in Velletri. That's what I got liberating your goddam city."
"Peccato," the woman said.
"Could I march with an ankle like that, busted?" the soldier said. "Could I, Mamma?"
"Of course not," the Signora Pulcini said, knowing that one must always agree with the soldiers who came to drink in her dining room on those nights when the city was dark and cold and lonely. "You are a very brave soldier."
"I'd have gone back to my outfit," the American said. "It wasn't I didn't want to. I came up with them from Oran. I went through Venafro with them. We hit the beach together. But the medics reassigned me. They could see I couldn't do the walking anymore."
"Of course," Adele Pulcini said, seeing how agitated he was, and how inside him something hurt, and knowing that the soldiers could be ugly and dangerous when the things inside them began to hurt. "Now sit down," she said. "Mimi will bring the wine." She, too, went to the door and called, but not loudly, "Mimi!"
From the kitchen a girl's voice, very light and quick, answered, "Sì, signora?"
"Fai presto," the tall woman in black said.
"Sì, signora," the girl's voice replied. "Vengo subito."
Adele Pulcini turned to her two soldiers. "In this house," she said, smiling, "we are all heroes."
"Bloody heroes," the English sergeant said.
Mimi entered the dining room, carrying a bottle of wine. It was a red wine made in the hills. The wine sparkled in the light. Mimi was sixteen. She enjoyed the soldiers, and she respected and was somewhat afraid of the Signora Pulcini. It was not that the signora was not kind. She was kind, but the kindness had a harsh quality, and Mimi would be frightened hearing the signora cough at night in the bedroom. The cough was frightening because the electricity would be on in the bedroom, and the signora would be lying in bed, fully clothed, in her black dress, smoking and coughing. It was impossible to know what the signora thought when she lay like that in bed with all the bedroom lights on.
When the American who limped saw Mimi he put his two hands over his heart like an opera singer, and said, "Bella mia." Little Mimi giggled.
She said to the Signora Pulcini, in her own language, "Is he crazy?"
"Sì," Adele said. "A little. Put down the bottle."
"Sì, signora," Mimi said, setting the bottle of wine on the dining room table.
"What did she say?" the American asked.
"She asked if you are crazy," Adele answered.
"We're all crazy, honey," the American who limped said. "The crazy Americans."
Mimi giggled at the soldier.
"That is true," she said to Adele.
"Yes," Adele said, "that is absolutely true."
"Come on, bella mia," the American said to the little girl. "We dance. American tip-top ballerino."
"Have I permission?" Mimi asked.
"Sì," the Signora Pulcini said. "Dance with him. He is drunk."
"Who's ubriaco?" the American said. "I ain't ubriaco."
"Hokay," Mimi said in English. "I danze."
They danced. The radio played, the wind blew against the wooden shutters, the Englishman poured himself another glass of wine, and the tall woman in the corner of whose eyes there were so many dark wrinkles smiled a little thinly as she watched her maid dance with the drunken and clumsy soldier.
The Englishman tasted the wine.
"Scum o' the earth she called us," he said, "her ladyship. Right in the House o' Commons."
He should have gone absent up into the bloody hills with the partigianos. It was almost Christmas and it was a good thing his missus wasn't in London. From London, now the air raids were over, there were reports of the big buzz bombs, and that was worse, his missus wrote, than the raids.
Another girl came into the dining room. She was very red-haired, and very trim, and she wore high-heeled shoes. In the wintertime hardly any of the women of the city, even when they could afford it, wore high-heeled shoes. In America, of course, the women wore them, and in Paris. Nina wore them, too. They had been bought for her in a smart shop by an American captain. She had been very grateful to the captain the night the shoes were purchased. Now, with the shoes, she wore a bright tight silk print dress, with a red leather belt around her small waist, and she was carrying a valise. She put the valise down on the floor. The silk dress fell away from her breasts.
"Adele," Nina said, "did she come?"
"Not yet," the Signora Pulcini said.
"I'm all packed," Nina said. She looked at her wristwatch. "Why doesn't she come?"
The American who limped deserted little Mimi. "Bella mia!" he said to the red-haired girl with the valise.
She slapped his reaching hand.
"Proibito," she said.
"What's the valise for?" the soldier asked.
"Nina goes to Florence," the Signora Pulcini said.
"To Florence?" the American said. "What's in Florence?"
"Love, caro mio," Nina said. "Love, love, love."
"Hell," the American said, "in Rome there's love, love, love too."
"She is engaged to an American," Adele said. "A capitano. He takes her to Florence."
"An officer?"
"The most beautiful officer," Nina said.
"Beautiful," the American said. "How the hell can he be beautiful and an officer?"
"He is not like you, lazzarone," Nina said. She was very gay. She patted the silk down on her hips. "He is gentle ... so polite! When he smiles, madonna, such teeth! Let me see your teeth."
The soldier bared his teeth for her.
"With teeth like that you stay in Rome."
"Let me take you to Florence," the soldier said.
"We'll go live in a palazzo. I know a guy in Florence lives in a palazzo. We'll borrow the palazzo from him."
"No," Nina said. "My captain respects Italian girls."
"Me, too," the soldier said. "I respect Italian girls."
"Sì. A letto."
"What's a letto?"
"In bed."
"Well," the American said, "that's a great place to respect them, ain't it?"
"No, no!" Nina said. "You are pretty, but not like my babbee ..."
"I'm as good as your babbee ..."
"Impossible!"
"Try me," the soldier said. "I'm terrific. Ain't I terrific, England?"
"Smashin'," the Englishman said.
"See that?" the soldier said. "I'm smashin'."
"No, no!" Nina said, gayly.
"I busted an ankle in Velletri liberating Roma bella," the soldier said, "and I'm seven thousand miles from Schenectady, and it's a cold night. Where's your gratitude?"
"Ah, babbee, I am so sorry for you," Nina said, patting his cheek. "But you do not have teeth like my captain."
She turned to the Signora Pulcini.
"Call me when Lisa comes," she said.
She waved to the soldier. "Ciao," she said, "poor babbee," and she went out of the room.
When she was gone, the American looked unhappily at the sergeant. "Aw, they save it for the brass," he said. He looked at Adele Pulcini. "Don't you know a girl, Mamma, who wants to have dinner with a sad soldato?"
"Always the girls," the tall woman said.
"What else is there?" the soldier said. "I just want a place I can take her."
"You have a girl home," Mamma Pulcini said.
"That's Schenectady," the soldier said.
"But you make trouble," the woman said. "You Americans always make trouble."
"I won't make no trouble, Mamma, honest to god," the soldier said. "Why should I make trouble?"
The signora looked at him doubtfully. "You will be nice to the girl?"
"Sure!"
"It may not be possible ..."
"Try," the soldier said. "I got money. Look at the money I got." He took a thick bunch of lire from his pocket. "What am I going to do with my goddam dough? Save it until I get back to Schenectady? Go on, Mamma. Call me a girl."
"Va bene," the tall woman said. "But it's only because I have pity for you."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Girl on the Via Flaminia"
by .
Copyright © 1949 Alfred Hayes.
Excerpted by permission of Europa Editions.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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