Bell for Adano, A - John Hersey [50]
Bill said: “Uno and tre is quattro. Due and tre is cinque. Jeez, I can even add.”
Chuck said: “Let’s go an’ find something ‘fore we pass out.”
The three boys got up. They were pretty drunk now. They staggered out of their room and along a long corridor until they came to a drawing room.
Polack said: “Lookit that room, like a goddam Gran’ Central Station. There’s a lot of Eyetalian junk in there.” Chuck said: “Let’s have look.”
Polack said: “Why’n we give ‘m a chair?”
Chuck said: “Good idea. Take the goddam shroud off’n a chair, give ‘im a chair.”
Chuck and Polack skated across the floor to a chair. They bent over it to take the slip cover off. Their fumbling hands could not find where to loosen the cover. “Lif’ it up,” Chuck suggested. “Look at it from unnerneath.”
So they lifted the chair above their heads. Polack reeled. Chuck lost his grip. The chair crashed to the floor, and a leg broke off. Bill picked the leg up.
Chuck said: “Too damn much trouble, lousy chair. Hell with a chair.”
Polack spotted a terra cotta bust standing on a marble pillar-like stand in one comer. “Who’s ‘at?”
Bill said, as if positive: “Garibaldi.”
Polack said: “Le’s give’m a Garibally.” And he went over to the corner, lifted the bust off the pillar, started uncertainly back toward the others, lost his balance, and dropped the bust. It broke into hundreds of pieces.
Polack looked over the mantel at a painting of a fat nude. She was lovely in his wine-washed eyes, and he said: “Give’m a woman. A Major needs a woman.”
So the three worked together to get the painting down. They balanced themselves on chairs and grunted and all lifted on the bottom edge of the painting. They managed to lift it off its hook, but they could not keep it balanced. The picture fell, and its canvas hit the back of a chair, and the fat woman was ripped from flank to flank.
Polack said: “Hell with Gran’ Central Station. Le’s go in ‘nother room.”
They went into a dining room. In one corner there was a big glass-faced cabinet containing Venetian glass= ware on shelves. “Give ‘im somethin’ to drink out of,” Chuck said.
He tried the door of the cabinet, but it was locked. “Bill,” he said, “open this goddam thing up. Don’t just stan’ there with that goddam club. Open up.”
Polack said: “Case of ‘mergency, break glass an’ pull lever.”
Bill stepped up and poised the chair leg. “Uno, due, tre,” he said, and on three he let go. The glass front shivered to the floor. The three boys staggered forward to chose a gift. First they dropped a bowl. Then they dropped a glass swan. Then they dropped a big goblet. Then they knocked the whole cabinet over and broke everything.
The three men went from room to room this way, leaving a trail of ruin behind them. Their disappointment grew as they saw their chances dwindling of getting anything good enough (or durable enough) for the Major.
Finally Chuck said: “Hell of a war, when you can’t even find a present in of Four Eyes’ house.”
Polack said: “Hell of a lousy goddam unfair war.” Bill said: “Le’s go to bed.”
So they went to bed. Polack heard Chuck crying in his bedroll, and he said: “Smatter, Chuck, feel sick?” Chuck sobbed: “Hell of a war.”
Polack said: “Yeah, hell of a war, Chuck, go to sleep.”
Chapter 16
WHEN Major Joppolo arrived at his office next morning, two visitors were waiting for him. One was Quattrocchi, owner of the house where Chuck, Bill and Polack were billeted. But Quattrocchi had to wait, because the other was Lord Runcin, one of the Amgot higher-ups. The Allied Military Government was, and still is, a joint British-American affair, and as in the higher echelons of the military command, American and British officers were sandwiched in with each other. Lord Runcin was near the top.
Lord Runcin was a man of about fifty.