U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [265]
"Jesus, that was almost good night," said Summers. Steve started singing, Come away from that window, my light and my life, but the rest of them drowned it out with an out of tune Deutschland Deutschland Uber Alles. They suddenly al felt crazy drunk. Ed Schuyler was standing on a chair giving a recitation of the Erlkönig when Feldmann, the Swiss hotel-keeper's son who was now head of the section, stuck his head in the door and asked what in the devil they thought
-201-they were doing. "You'd better go down in the abris, one of the Italian mechanics was kil ed and a soldier walking up the road had his legs blown off . . . no time for monkeyshines." They offered him a drink and he went off in a rage. After that they drank marsala. Sometime in the early dawn greyness Dick got up and staggered to the window to vomit; it was raining pitchforks, the foaming r'ds of the Brenta looked very white through the shim-mering rain. Next day it was Dick's and Steve's turn to go on post to Rova. They drove out of the yard at six with their heads like firebal oons, damn glad to be away from the big scandal there'd be at the section. At Rova the lines were quiet, only a few pneumonia or venereal cases to evacuate, and a couple of poor devils who'd shot themselves in the foot and were to be sent to the hospital under guard; but at the officers'
mess where they ate things were very agi-tated indeed. Tenente Sardinaglia was under arrest in his quarters for saucing the Coronele and had been up there for two days making up a little march on his mandolin that he cal ed the march of the medical colonels. Serrati told them about it giggling behind his hand while they were waiting for the other officers to come to mess. It was al on account of the macchina for coffee. There were only three macchine for the whole mess, one for the colonel, one for the major, and the other went around to the junior officers in rotation; wel , one day last week they'd been kidding that bel a ragazza, the niece of the farmer on whom they were quartered; she hadn't let any of the officers kiss her and had carried on like a crazy woman when they pinched her behind, and the colonel had been angry about it, and angrier yet when Sardinaglia had bet him five lira that he could kiss her and he'd whispered something in her ear and she'd let him and that had made the colonel get purple in the face and he'd told the ordi-nanza not to give the macchina to the tenente when his
-202-turn came round; and Sardinaglia had slapped the ordi-nanza's face and there'd been a row and as a result Sardi-naglia was confined to his quarters and the Americans would see what a circus it was. They al had to straighten their faces in a hurry because the colonel and the major and the two captains came jingling in at that moment. The ordinanza came and saluted, and said pronto
spaghetti in a cheerful tone, and everybody sat down. For a while the officers were quiet sucking in the long oily tomatocoated strings of spaghetti, the wine was passed around and the colonel had just cleared his throat to begin one of his funny stories that everybody had to laugh at, when from up above there came the tinkle of a mandolin. The colonel's face got red and he put a forkful of spaghetti in his mouth instead of saying anything. As it was Sunday the meal was unusual y long: at dessert the coffee macchina was awarded to Dick as a courtesy to gli americani and somebody produced a bottle of strega. The colonel told the ordinanza to tel the bel a ragazza to come and have a glass of strega with him; he looked pretty sour at the idea, Dick thought; but he went and got her. She turned out to be a handsome stout oliveskinned countrygirl. Her cheeks burning she went timidly up to the colonel and said, thank you very much but please she never drank strong drinks. The colonel