Bell for Adano, A - John Hersey [76]
The old man said: “So you are an American. I did not know the Americans were so ugly. I thought they were taller and whiter.”
Slowly the old man went around behind his camera. He took a cloth which had once been black but now was grey with dust from the top of the camera, and he bent over and put the cloth over his head and the camera, and he peered into the camera.
His muffled voice came out from under the cloth. “Even upside down you are ugly. Usually I like faces much better upside down, but not yours. You are ugly right side up and upside down. Too puffy in the cheeks. The lips are too full. Nothing that can be repaired by turning you upside down.”
Finally the old man came out from under the cloth. He went around the spider web and sat on the stool again. He reached for the shutter bulb and sat there with it in his hand.
“See how the ugly young man tries to make himself beautiful for the photographl” he said. “Look at him lick his lips, so they will be moist and shinel Look at him try to make his eyes look bright by opening them a little wider than usual, so that they look like marbles to play withl Look at him fix his face in half a smile, which is frozen and falsel” The old man laughed a creaking, dusty laugh.
Major Joppolo did not dare speak his annoyance, for fear the old man would squeeze the shutter bulb, so he sat there getting redder and more and more frozen looking.
Spataforo said: “It is a funny thing: men are more vain than women. Women are said to look at themselves in mirrors all the time, and comb their hair, and paint themselves. But it is the men who are really vain. Look at you! Roosted Peacockl You think you are so handsome.”
At last the old man squeezed the bulb.
The Major was so relieved that he did not say any of the things he had thought a few seconds before. He just sat waiting for the old man to change the film and take another.
But the old man said: “What are you waiting for, ugly young man? Do you want to put half a dozen pictures of yourself on your mantelpiece?”
The Major said: “Photographers usually take two or three pictures, to be sure of getting one good one.” Spataforo said: “Not this photographer. After you have been in this hateful business for so many years you cannot count them, you do not have to practice on each sitter. No, that is all, thank the Lord in Heaven.” Major Joppolo did not waste any time in leaving. Back at the Palazzo, he met Bellanca the Mayor and D’Arpa the Vice Mayor in the upstairs hallway.
“I have been to see your friend at Number Twentythree, Via Favemi,” the Major said, and he was just able to smile.
Bellanca said: “Did he tell you that you are ugly?”
“He certainly did.”
D’Arpa made motions of cranking at the side of his head, and Bellanca said: “He tells everyone the same thing. He even tells the most beautiful girls in town, like Tomasino’s daughter Francesca, that they are ugly and vain. He is crazy.”
The Major transferred his annoyance from Spataforo to old Bellanca -for citing Francesca instead of Tina as an example of beauty. He said: “What in the world did you send me to the old crack-brain for? What do you want the picture for?”
“You will see,” old Bellanca said. “It will be the nicest picture you have ever seen.”
Bellanca looked at D’Arpa. D’Arpa looked at old Bellanca. The two of them laughed delightedly.
Chapter 27
TACTFULLY Major Joppolo left the project of the raising of the motor ship Anzio entirely in Lieutenant Livingston’s hands.
The Lieutenant made fine headway. By the twentyfirst, he had acquired the use of the floating drydock. By the twenty-fourth, the Anzio