Bell for Adano, A - John Hersey [2]
“Awful,” the Major said, for although the blood was not yet dry, nevertheless there was already a beginning of a sweet but vomitous odor. “It’s a hell of a note,” he said, “that we had to do that to our friends.”
“Friends,” said Borth, “that’s a laugh.”
“It wasn’t them, not the ones like her,” the Major said. “They weren’t our enemies. My mother’s mother must have been like her. It wasn’t the poor ones like her, it was the bunch up there where we’re going, those crooks in the City Hall.”
“Be careful,” Borth said, and his face showed that he was teasing the Major again. “You’re going to have your office in the City Hall. Be careful you don’t get to be a crook too.”
“Lay off,” the Major said.
Borth said: “I don’t trust your conscience, sir, I’m appointing myself assistant conscience.”
“Lay off,” the Major said, and there was that echo. They passed a house which had been crushed by a naval shell. The Major said: “Too bad, look at that.” Borth said: “Maybe it was a crook’s house, how can you tell? Better forget the house and concern yourself with that.” He pointed into an alley at some horse dung and goat dung and straw and melon seeds and old chicken guts and flies. And Borth added: “No question of guilty or not guilty there, Major. Just something to get clean. You’ve got some business in that alley, not in that house there.”
“I know my business, I know what I want to do, I know what its like to be poor, Borth.”
Borth was silent. He found the seriousness of this Major Joppolo something hard to penetrate.
They came in time to the town’s main square, which was called Piazza Progresso. And on that square they saw the building they were looking for.
It was a building with a look of authority about it. This was not one of those impermanent-looking, World’sFair-architecture Fascist headquarters which you. see in so many Italian towns, buildings so up to the moment in design that, like airplanes, they were obsolete before they were ever finished. This was an old building, made of stone. At its second floor it had an old balcony, a place of many speeches. This building had served kings before Fascists and now was about to serve democracies after them. In case you couldn’t recognize authority in the shape of the building, there stood, in embossed bronze letters across the front, the words Palazzo di Città.
There was a clock tower on the left hand front comer. On top of the tower there was a metal frame which must have been designed to hold a bell. It was baroque and looked very old. But there was no bell.
On the side of the clock tower big white letters said: “Il Popolo Italiano ha creato col suo sangue l’Impero, to f feconderá col sua lavoro e to di f enderà contra chiunque colle sue armi.”
The Major pointed and said: “See, Borth, even after our invasion it says: `The Italian people built the Em, pire with their blood, will make it fruitful with their work and will defend it against anyone with their arms.”‘
Borth said: “I know you can read Italian. So can I. Don’t translate for Borth. “
The Major said: “I know, but think of how that sounds today.”
Borth said: “It sounds silly, sure.”
The Major said: “If they had seen any fruit of their work, they would have fought with their arms. I bet we could teach them to want to defend what they have. I want to do so much here, Borth.”
Borth said: “That sounds silly too. Remember the alley, clean up the alleyway, sir, it is the alley that you ought to concentrate on.”
The Major walked across the Piazza up to the big black door of the Palazzo, put his brief case down, took a piece of chalk out of his pocket, and wrote on a panel. of the door: “Victor Joppolo, Major, U.S.A., AMGOT, Town of Adano.” “
Then both men went inside and up some marble stairs, looking all around them as they climbed. They took a turn and went through a door marked Podestà. The office on the other side of that door took Victor Joppolo’s breath away.
In the first