Bell for Adano, A - John Hersey [85]
“Giuseppe’s a fix.”
“I mean a real good party, Giuseppe. With people like the Mayor and that old sulphur crackpot, and some nice girls of course.”
“Giuseppe’s a fix.”
“And some wine. Couldn’t we get some champagne for a change?”
“Giuseppe’s a fix
“If we really had a big party, then a certain Captain and a certain young lady could do a disappearing act, couldn’t they?”
Giuseppe winked again.
“That’s what I hate about a small party, anyone goes out, everyone else notices it. We ought to have a big party for a change.”
Giuseppe said: “How many you want, a Cap?”
“Oh, I don’t know, you can get some of these Italians together and decide. I’ll put up whatever dough you need. We could have it down at the villa where my men stay, that Quattrocchi guy’s house. Lot of spare rooms down there with beds in ‘em, heh, Giuseppe?” And this time it was Captain Purvis who winked.
“When you want a party?” Giuseppe asked.
“Well, pretty soon, how about next Friday?”
“Giuseppe’s a fix.”
And so it happened that in his mail, two or three days later, Major Joppolo got a card, on which was written in Italian: “A Committee of the people of Adano request the pleasure of your company at a party in honor of His Excellency the Mister Major Victor Joppolo on Friday evening, July 29th, at Villa Rossa, 71 Via Umberto the First, at 8:30 p.m.”
Major Joppolo propped the card on the inkstand on his desk where he could read it, and often did: “…in honor of His Excellency... ‘
Chapter 31
THE MORNING the prisoners were released the sun was bright and Adano looked its best.
Major Joppolo’s street-cleaning truck had just swished up the Via Umberto the First and turned along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, with the Chief Street Cleaner, Saitta, spick and span in his white suit, at the wheel. And now the paving blocks glistened from their rinsing, and the smell of wet horse dung was clean on the morning air.
It was a fine day for coming home.
The released prisoners came up the Via Umberto the First in a body. They were still in uniform, but their uniforms were dirty from sleeping on the ground, and many of them were unshaven and had long hair.
They stopped by at Zapulla’s bakery on their way up the street, and as they approached the square almost every one of them had half a loaf of good white bread in his hand. They sang and shouted: “Going homel Going homel” as they walked up the street.
They did not march. They had had enough of lining up for inspection and lining up for chow and lining up to shoot and be shot at. They were just a mob of boys going home as they walked up the Via Umberto the First. There was laughter in some of their throats and some of them were crying.
The war aim of most men is to go home. And so for these Italian boys the hateful war was fulfilled, and they were incredibly happy as they walked up the street.
Their eyes were open wide, like the eyes of small children who notice everything. They noticed that Mussolini’s pompous inscriptions were painted off the walls. They saw that the street was clean. The bread tasted better in their mouths than it had ever tasted before. They had hardly turned into the Via Umberto the First from the Via Favemi before their ears heard a woman sing. The horse dung was not even sour any more, according to their noses, but was new and sweet on the morning air.
Any day would have been good for coming home, but this home and this day were best. They sang and shouted: “Coming home! Coming homel”
There had not been any advance notice of the prisoners’ release, except what Major Joppolo had given Tina, and she told no one. But somehow the word spread far ahead of their actual