Bell for Adano, A - John Hersey [60]
“Is it not the Mister Sergeant’s turn to pick a crime?” the Mayor asked.
“Perhaps it is, perhaps it is. Well, let’s see. This morning I think Mayor Nasta will repent the crime of not having made good use of his freedom. He will repent the crime of having talked against the Americans.” Mayor Nasta turned pale. Borth stood up.
“He will repent the crime of having invented false rumors, of having told the gullible people here in Adano that the Germans were planning a counterattack for next week.”
Mayor Nasta turned his head and looked at the door. Borth motioned to the M.P. s to step into it, and they did. “He will also repent having said slanderous and false things about Major Joppolo. Also he will be very sorry that he lied about the son of the cartman Afronti.”
Mayor Nasta was white as a sheet. “Liesl They are lies!” he said.
Borth said: “Mayor Nasta is excitable this morning. And he had grown so calm about his repentantes. Why is he excitable this morning?”
Mayor Nasta was excitable because he knew he was caught. “Lies,” he shouted. “My enemies have been lying against me.”
Borth said: “Is this a lie? Is it a lie that you said yesterday morning, before fifteen people on the sidewalk in front of the Palazzo: `The Americans are such cowards that they had to be pushed from their transports into landing barges when they came here’? Is it a lie that you said...” And Sergeant Borth repeated word for word ten sentences that Nasta had said, as informers reported them. Sergeant Borth had a very good memory, and he enjoyed deflating this man, and he made a very terrifying show of it for Mayor Nasta.
After ten sentences, Mayor Nasta did not shout anything more about lies. He resorted to ridiculous, hollow threats which echoed his days of power: “I will have you killed,” he shouted. “I will have you put in prison.”
“No,” Borth said, “you have that just backwards, Mayor Nasta. I will have you put in prison.”
Mayor Nasta shouted: “You can’t do that. I will report you to the authorities. You will be sorry. When you are beaten, you will be sorry.”
Borth said: “I think you really believe that the crooks of the world can win this war. You’d better think that one over a little. We are going to give you a chance to think it over, Mayor Nasta. You are under arrest.”
Then Borth said to the two M.P. s in English: “Take him away, boys. He’s getting noisy.”
The M.P.’s took Nasta by both arms. Borth said: “I’m going to miss your daily visits, Mayor Nasta. I hope you will come to see me when you get out, I mean if you get out.”
Mayor Nasta said stubbornly: “You will be sorry.” The M.P.’s took Nasta away to the prisoner of war cage.
The p.w. cage was simply the walled park opposite the Church of the Benedettini, with all but one of its gates boarded up and a little barbed wire strung along the top of the wall. When Mayor Nasta was admitted, there were some two hundred Italians and about twenty Germans in the enclosure. Several of the Italians were from coastal defense divisions, and a number were from Adano itself, and as soon as they saw Mayor Nasta, they told their friends from other towns: “There is the Fascist pig we were telling you about.”
And from that moment on, Mayor Nasta was addressed by all the Italians in the p.w. cage as Fascist Pig. Mayor Nasta did not make a very good start in the cage. The Americans had a forty-year-old, Italian-speaking Top Sergeant in charge of the guard. The first time Mayor Nasta saw the Top Sergeant walking in the enclosure, he rushed up to him and said: “This is a mistake.’ I should not have been imprisoned. It was all a mistake.” “Is that so?” the Top Sergeant said in a slow, Brooklynese Italian. “You are another mistake? We have several mistakes here. All mistakes here must clean the latrine. You are our newest mistake, so you will have the privilege of cleaning the latrine this week.”
Life in the p.w. cage was not very pleasant for Mayor Nasta. None of the men had blankets, and the nights were pretty cold, so they slept in close rows, keeping each other warm with their bodies. But no