Bell for Adano, A - John Hersey [88]
It was not until the fruit came on that Tina said: “Nicolo, tell me what happened.”
Nicolo had been waiting for her to urge him. “It isn’t very nice, Tina,” he said. “War isn’t ever very nice.”
“I know,” Tina said. “Tell it to me just as it happened.” Nicolo said. “I will have to tell it that way, Tina. That is the way I remember it and I couldn’t lie to you about it. It didn’t happen nicely.” Major Joppolo said: “I guess it never seems very nice.” Nicolo said: “It never does.”
Captain Purvis, who did not speak Italian, said: “What the hell is all this wop talk about? Let me in on the good news. “
Major Joppolo decided it was best to ignore the Captain. The Captain started trying to make eyes at Nicolo’s girl.
Tina said: “Did he ask for me, Nicolo?”
Nicolo said: “I’d better begin at the beginning.”
Tina said: “All right.”
Nicolo looked Major Joppolo straight in the face: “You will see that what happened to Giorgio was a very complicated thing. It was all tied up with what we Italians felt in this war, and I guess with what any man thinks about a war, or even about a game that he thinks he must win. You will see, it was complicated.”
Major Joppolo said: “I will understand. My mother and father came from Florence. “
Surprisingly Tina took the trouble to say: “He will understand. “
Nicolo said: “I don’t know whether I understand myself. It began in the battle for Beja, in Tunisia. It was a -kind of infection, like something a soldier gets in his bowels, only it was in the heart. Our hearts went all watery, and we were through with the war, although we were still supposed to be fighting. It was the artillery.” Tina said: “Did he ask for me, Nicolo?”
Nicolo deliberately kept himself from being too sympathetic. He said: “You’d better let me tell it from the beginning, Tina. It’ll be better that way, I promise:”
She said: “All right.”
Nicolo said: “The artillery was bad. They say you stop living for a moment when you sneeze. When a shell goes off near you, you have the same kind of paroxysm, and when you come out of it, you know you have been dead for a moment. You can’t go on dying like that many times a day, day after day, and be the same. Think what it would be like if you sneezed twenty times an hour, twenty-four hours a day, for days and days on end. Even that would be terrible, and there is hardly any fear in a sneeze.”
Captain Purvis said: “Cutie, how would you like to dance the dance of the sheets?” But Nicolo’s girl was listening to the story. The Captain said: “Goddamit, I’m going to have to start taking lessons in dago, I can see that. Pass me the vino, will you, Major?”
Nicolo said: “We all changed, except Giorgio.” Tina gasped a little when she heard the name. Nicolo said: “Giorgio used to argue with us. He said we had to go on fighting until we were consumed, and he talked about our honor, and he used to say that even if war made you think that men were just animals, you had to remember that animals often fight each other to the death. I remember he often used to say: `Have you ever tried to figure out what makes two dogs fight each other?’“ Nicolo turned to the Major and said: “Have you ever thought about that, sir?”
The Major said: “No, I hadn’t.”
Nicolo said: “It is worth thinking about “
Tina said: “Did he ever talk about me?”
Nicolo ignored her. He said: “It makes war a little more sensible if you think about the dogs. Anyhow, Giorgio was tenacious, and I used to admire him for it, though I always argued with him. I thought we ought to give ourselves up. He was so tenacious that he made me help him kill two Germans and we put on their uniforms and came back to Sicily on a Siebel ferry. We had to be careful to pick two Germans just the right size for uniforms. Giorgio made me do it with him because he said otherwise we would be taken.”
Nicolo’s girl spoke for the first time: “Tell Tina about the night before you left Tunisia.”
Nicolo said: “Oh yes, just before we killed the