1919 (48 page)

Dick had three or four days to wait in Rome. The President was to arrive on January 3 and several couriers were held at his disposition. Meanwhile he had nothing to do but walk around the town and listen to the bands practicing
The Star-Spangled Banner
and watch the flags and the stands going up.

The first of January was a holiday; Dick and Ed and Mr. Barrow and Anne Elizabeth hired a car and went out to Hadrian's Villa and then on to Tivoli for lunch. It was a showery day and there was a great deal of mud on the roads. Anne Elizabeth said the rolling Campagna, yellow and brown with winter, made her think of back home along the Middlebuster. They ate fritto misto and drank a lot of fine gold Frascati wine at the restaurant above the waterfall. Ed and Mr. Barrow agreed about the Roman Empire and that the ancients knew the art of life. Anne Elizabeth seemed to Dick to be flirting with Mr. Barrow. It made him sore the way she let him move his chair close to hers when they sat drinking their coffee on the terrace afterwards, looking down into the deep ravine brimmed with mist from the waterfall. Dick sat drinking his coffee without saying anything.

When she'd emptied her cup Anne Elizabeth jumped to her feet and said she wanted to go up to the little round temple that stood on the hillside opposite like something in an old engraving. Ed said the path was too steep for so soon after lunch. Mr. Barrow said without enthusiasm, er, he'd go. Anne Elizabeth was off running across the bridge and down the path with Dick running after her slipping and stumbling in the loose gravel and the puddles. When they got to the bottom the mist was soppy and cold on their faces. The waterfall was right over their heads. Their ears were full of the roar of it. Dick looked back to see if Mr. Barrow was coming.

“He must have turned back,” he shouted above the falls. “Oh, I hate people who won't ever go anywhere,” yelled Anne Elizabeth. She grabbed his hand. “Let's run up to the temple.” They got up there breathless. Across the ravine they could see Ed and Mr. Barrow still sitting on the terrace of the restaurant. Anne Elizabeth thumbed her nose at them and then waved. “Isn't this wonderful?” she spluttered. “Oh, I'm wild about ruins and scenery . . . I'd like to go all over Italy and see everything. . . . Where can we go this afternoon? . . . Let's not go back and listen to them mouthing about the Roman Empire.”

“We might get to Nemi . . . you know the lake where Caligula had his galleys . . . but I don't think we can get there without the car.” “Then they'd come along. . . . No, let's take a walk.” “It might rain on us.” “Well, what if it does? We won't run.”

They went up a path over the hills above the town and soon found themselves walking through wet pastures and oakwoods with the Campagna stretching lightbrown below them and the roofs of Tivoli picked out with black cypresses like exclamation points. It was a showery springfeeling afternoon. They could see the showers moving in dark grey and whitish blurs across the Campagna. Underfoot little redpurple cyclamens were blooming. Anne Elizabeth kept picking them and poking them in his face for him to smell. Her cheeks were red and her hair was untidy and she seemed to feel too happy to walk, running and skipping all the way. A small sprinkle of rain wet them a little and made the hair streak on her forehead. Then there was a patch of chilly sunlight. They sat down on the root of a big beechtree and looked up at the long redbrown pointed buds that glinted against the sky. Their noses were full of the smell of the little cyclamens. Dick felt steamy from the climb and the wet underbrush and the wine he'd drunk and the smell of the little cyclamens. He turned and looked in her eyes. “Well,” he said. She grabbed him by the ears and kissed him again and again. “Say you love me,” she kept saying in a strangling voice. He could smell her sandy hair and warm body and the sweetness of the little cyclamens. He pulled her to her feet and held her against his body and kissed her on the mouth; their tongues touched. He dragged her through a break in the hedge into the next field. The ground was too wet. Across the field was a little hut made of brush. They staggered as they walked with their arms around each other's waists, their thighs grinding stiffly together. The hut was full of dry cornfodder. They lay squirming together among the dry crackling cornfodder. She lay on her back with her eyes closed, her lips tightly pursed. He had one hand under her head and with the other was trying to undo her clothes; something tore under his hand. She began pushing him away. “No, no, Dick, not here . . . we've got to go back.” “Darling girl . . . I must . . . you're so wonderful.” She broke away from him and ran out of the hut. He sat up on the floor, hating her, brushing the dry shreds off his uniform.

Outside it was raining hard. “Let's go back; Dick, I'm crazy about you but you oughtn't to have torn my panties . . . oh, you're so exasperating.” She began to laugh.

“You oughtn't to start anything you don't want to finish,” said Dick. “Oh, I think women are terrible . . . except prostitutes . . . there you know what you're getting.”

She went up to him and kissed him. “Poor little boy . . . he feels so cross. I'm so sorry . . . I'll sleep with you, Dick . . . I promise I will. You see it's difficult . . . In Rome we'll get a room somewhere.”

“Are you a virgin?” His voice was constrained and stiff.

She nodded. “Funny, isn't it? . . . in wartime . . . You boys have risked your lives. I guess I can risk that.” “I guess I can borrow Ed's apartment. I think he's going to Naples tomorrow.” “But you really love me, Dick?” “Of course,. . . it's only this makes me feel terrible . . . making love's so magnificent.” “I suppose it is . . . Oh, I wish I was dead.”

They plodded along down the hill through the downpour that gradually slackened to a cold drizzle. Dick felt tired out and sodden; the rain was beginning to get down his neck. Anne Elizabeth had dropped her bunch of cyclamens.

When they got back the restaurant keeper said that the others had gone to the Villa d'Este, but would come back soon. They drank hot rum and water and tried to dry themselves over a brazier of charcoal in the kitchen. “We're a fine pair of drowned rats,” tittered Anne Elizabeth. Dick growled, “A pair of precious idiots.”

By the time the others came back they were warm but still wet. It was a relief to argue with Barrow who was saying that if the ruling classes of today knew as much about the art of life as those old Italians he wouldn't be a socialist. “I didn't think you were a socialist any more,” broke in Anne Elizabeth. “I'm sure I'm not; look how the German socialists have acted in the war and now they try to crybaby and say they wanted peace all along.”

“It's possible . . . to rec . . . to reconcile being a socialist with faith in our President and . . . er . . . in democracy,” stammered Barrow, going close to her. “We'll have to have a long talk about that, Anne Elizabeth.”

Dick noticed how his eyes goggled when he looked at her. I guess he's out after her, he said to himself. When they got into the car he didn't care whether Barrow sat next to her or not. They drove all the way back to Rome in the rain.

The next three days were very busy with President Wilson's visit to Rome. Dick got cards to various official functions, heard a great many speeches in Italian and French and English, saw a great many silk hats and decorations and saluted a great deal and got a pain in the back from holding a stiff military posture. In the Roman Forum he was near enough the President's party to hear the short man with black mustaches who was pointing out the ruins of the temple of Romulus, say in stiff English, “Everything here bears relation to the events of the great war.” There was a hush as the people in the outer groups of dignitaries strained their ears to hear what Mr. Wilson would say.

“That is true,” replied Mr. Wilson in a measured voice. “And we must not look upon these ruins as mere stones, but as immortal symbols.” A little appreciative murmur came from the group. The Italian spoke a little louder next time. All the silk hats cocked at an angle as the dignitaries waited for the Italian's reply. “In America,” he said with a little bow, “you have something greater, and it is hidden in your hearts.”

Mr. Wilson's silk hat stood up very straight against all the time-eaten columns and the endless courses of dressed stone. “Yes,” replied Mr. Wilson, “it is the greatest pride of Americans to have demonstrated the immense love of humanity which they bear in their hearts.” As the President spoke Dick caught sight of his face past the cocksfeathers of some Italian generals. It was a grey stony cold face grooved like the columns, very long under the silk hat. The little smile around the mouth looked as if it had been painted on afterwards. The group moved on and passed out of earshot.

That evening at five, when he met Anne Elizabeth at Ed's apartment he had to tell her all about the official receptions. He said all he'd seen had been a gold replica of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus up at the Capitol when the President had been made a Roman citizen, and his face in the forum. “A terrifying face, I swear it's a reptile's face, not warmblooded, or else the face on one of those old Roman politicians on a tomb on the Via Appia. . . . Do you know what we are, Anne Elizabeth? we're the Romans of the Twentieth Century”; he burst out laughing, “and I always wanted to be a Greek.”

Anne Elizabeth who was a great admirer of Wilson was annoyed at first by what he was saying. He was nervous and excited and went on talking and talking. For this once she broke her pledge and drank some hot rum with him, as the room was terribly chilly. In the light of the street lamps on the little corner of the Spanish Stairs they could see from Ed's window, they could see the jumbled darkness of crowds continually passing and repassing. “By God, Anne Elizabeth, it's terrible to think about it. . . . You don't know the way people feel, people praying for him in peasants' huts . . . oh, we don't know anything and we're grinding them all underfoot. . . . It's the sack of Corinth . . . they think he's going to give them peace, give them back the cosy beforethewar world. It makes you sick to hear all the speeches. . . . Oh, Christ, let's stay human as long as we can . . . not get reptile's eyes and stone faces and ink in our veins instead of blood. . . . I'm damned if I'll be a Roman.”

“I know what you mean,” said Anne Elizabeth, ruffling up his hair. “You're an artist, Dick, and I love you very much . . . you're my poet, Dick.”

“To hell with them all,” said Dick, throwing his arms around her.

In spite of the hot rum, Dick was very nervous when he took his clothes off. She was trembling when he came to her on the bed. It was all right, but she bled a good deal and they didn't have a very good time. At supper afterwards they couldn't seem to find anything to say to each other. She went home early and Dick wandered desolately around the streets among the excited crowds and the flags and the illuminations and the uniforms. The Corso was packed; Dick went into a café and was greeted by a group of Italian officers who insisted on setting him up to drinks. One young fellow with an olive skin and very long black eyelashes, whose name was Carlo Hugobuoni, became his special friend and entertainer and took him around to all the tables introducing him as Il captain Salvaggio Ricardo. It was all asti spumante and Evviva gli americani and Italia irridenta and Meester Veelson who had saved civiltá and evviva la pace, and they ended by taking Dick to see the belle ragazze. To his great relief all the girls were busy at the house where they took him and Dick was able to slip away and go back to the hotel to bed.

The next morning when he came down to drink his coffee there was Carlo waiting for him in the hotel lobby. Carlo was very sleepy; he hadn't been able to find a raggaza until five in the morning but now he was at the orders of his caro amico to show him round the town. All day Dick had him with him, in spite of his efforts to get rid of him without hurting his feelings. He waited while Dick went to get his orders from the military mission, had lunch with him and Ed Schuyler; it was all Ed could do to get him away so that Dick could go to Ed's apartment to meet Anne Elizabeth. Ed was very funny about it, said that, as he'd lost Magda, he wouldn't be able to do anything worthwhile there himself and was glad to have Dick using the room for venereal purposes. Then he linked his arm firmly in Carlo's and carried him off to a café.

Dick and Anne Elizabeth were very tender and quiet. It was their last afternoon together. Dick was leaving for Paris that night, and Anne Elizabeth expected to be sent to Constantinople any day. Dick promised he'd get himself out to see her there. That night Anne Elizabeth went with him to the station. There they found Carlo waiting with a huge salami wrapped in silver paper and a bottle of chianti. The fellow that was going with him had brought the despatch cases, so there was nothing for Dick to do but get on the train. He couldn't seem to think of anything to say and it was a relief when the train pulled out.

As soon as he reported to Colonel Edgecombe he was sent off again to Warsaw. Through Germany all the trains were late and people looked deathly pale and everybody talked of a bolshevik uprising. Dick was walking up and down the snowy platform, stamping to keep his feet warm, during an endless wait at a station in East Prussia, when he ran into Fred Summers. Fred was a guard on a Red Cross supply car and invited Dick to ride with him a couple of stations. Dick fetched his despatches and went along. Fred had the caboose fitted with an oilstove and a cot and a great store of wine, cognac and Baker's chocolate. They rode all day together talking as the train joggled slowly across an endless grey frozen plain. “It's not a peace,” said Fred Summers, “it's a cockeyed massacre! Christ, you ought to see the pogroms.” Dick laughed and laughed. “Jerusalem, it makes me feel good to hear you, you old bum, Fred. . . . It's like the old days of the grenadine guards.”