Bell for Adano, A - John Hersey [47]
“But you can guess, Mister Major.” “All right, I guess two more months.”
“And how long do you think it will be after those two months before our Italian prisoners of war are released?” Major Joppolo got the point very quickly, and it did not please him in the least. “You have a sweetheart who has been captured?”
“I don’t know whether he has been captured or killed or what. That is the bad part. That is why I wanted to talk with you, Mister Major. Giorgio and I were going to be married.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“Can you find out for me whether he is a prisoner, Mister Major?”
"What do you expect me to do, go through all our prison camps and ask all the men if they are the sweetheart of Tina in Adano?"
"You must have some lists, don’t you?"
"That is none of my business. I am civil affairs officer of Adano."
"Please help me, Mister Major. Not knowing is worse than having him dead."
"A hundred people come in my office every day asking me this. I tell you it is none of my business. The war is still going on, can’t you understand that? We have a campaign to fight. We can’t just stop in the middle of battle and open up a question-and-answer service for forlorn lovers."
"Oh don’t, Mister Major, don’t. You had been so nice to me. I thought - "
"Is this why you were cordial to me? Is this why you sent your father to invite me to your house? So that I could track down your lover?" Major Joppolo stood up. "I’m sorry that you have a mistaken idea of how I work. If you have business to do with me, do not invite me to your home and feed me candy. Come to my office. I will give you equal treatment with all the others."
And he turned and went into the living room, where Captain Purvis was shaping a heart with his two thumbs and forefingers and then pointing first at himself, then at Francesca.
"I’m going home, Captain."
"What for? Hell, the evening’s just getting warm." "Oh, I’m fed up with this, I’m going home."
"Well, you’ll excuse me if I don’t come. Goddam, I never thought I’d ever get anywhere talking with my fingers, but this isn’t bad. See you tomorrow, Major."
The Major left. Captain Purvis tried to pick up where he left off, but pretty soon Tina came in with tears in her eyes and told Francesca in Italian what had happened, and Rosa came in and asked where the Major was, and Tomasino came back from putting the little ones to bed, and Captain Purvis ran out of finger talk, which parents can understand as well as daughters. And so he got up and left too.
Later Major Joppolo was angry with himself for his childish petulance with Tina. He told himself that he had no right to expect anything else. He reminded himself that he had done a little talking the first evening about his wife, and Tina hadn’t flown off the way he did. But he couldn’t bring himself to apologize to her, and for several days and nights he did not see her.
He had no way of knowing that Tina was just as lonely as he was, and he did not realize that female loneliness sometimes takes exactly the same forms as male loneliness.
Chapter 15
CORPORAL CHUCK SCHULTZ of the M.P.’s used to talk a lot about how much he hated red wine, but it nevertheless had a certain fascination for him. Chuck’s two best friends, Bill and Polack, also found the stuff interesting. The three of them drank it together quite often.
They used to buy it from Carmelina the wife of the lazy Fatta for a dollar a bottle. One night they bought three bottles for three dollars, and then they went to their billets to drink it.
It is very rare for an M.P. to drink anything, even vino, to excess, but Corporal Chuck Schultz was a rare M.P. His two friends, Bill and Polack, were in the Engineer Battalion which was working around Adano. They were billeted in the same house with Chuck and some other M.P.’s.
Chuck and Bill and Polack did not drink vino in order to savor it on their tongues. They did not drink it to compare it with other wines which they had had on other occasions. They did not drink it to complement