U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [339]
"We might get to Nemi . . . you know the lake where Caligula had his gal eys . . . but I don't think we can get there without the car.""Then they'd come along. . . . No, let's take a walk.""It might rain on us.""Wel , what if it does? We won't run." They went up a path over the hil s above the town and soon found themselves walking through wet pastures and oakwoods with the Campagna stretching lightbrown below them and the roofs of Tivoli picked out with black cypresses like exclamation points. It was a showery springfeeling afternoon. They could see the showers moving in dark grey and whitish blurs across the Campagna. Underfoot little redpurple cyclamens were blooming. Anne Elizabeth kept picking them and poking them in his face for him to smel . Her cheeks were red and her hair was untidy and she seemed to feel too happy to walk, running and skip-ping al the way. A smal sprinkle of rain wet them a
-371-little and made the hair streak on her forehead. Then there was a patch of chil y sunlight. They sat down on the root of a big beechtree and looked up at the long redbrown pointed buds that glinted against the sky. Their noses were ful of the smel of the little cyclamens. Dick felt steamy from the climb and the wet underbrush and the wine he'd drunk and the smel of the little cyclamens. He turned and looked in her eyes. "Wel ," he said. She grabbed him by the ears and kissed him again and again. "Say you love me," she kept saying in a strangling voice. He could smel her sandy hair and warm body and the sweetness of the little cyclamens. He pul ed her to her feet and held her against his body and kissed her on the mouth; their tongues touched. He dragged her through a break in the hedge into the next field. The ground was too wet. Across the field was a little hut made of brush. They staggered as they walked with their arms around each other's waists, their thighs grinding stiffly together. The hut was ful of dry cornfodder. They lay squirming together among the dry crackling cornfodder. She lay on her back with her eyes closed, her lips tightly pursed. He had one hand under her head and with the other was trying to undo her clothes; something tore under his hand. She began push-ing him away. "No, no, Dick, not here . . . we've got to go back.""Darling girl . . . I must . . . you're so won-derful." She broke away from him and ran out of the hut. He sat up on the floor, hating her, brushing the dry shreds off his uniform.
Outside it was raining hard. "Let's go back; Dick, I'm crazy about you but you oughtn't to have torn my panties
. . . oh, you're so exasperating." She began to laugh.
"You oughtn't to start anything you don't want to fin-ish," said Dick. "Oh, I think women are terrible . . . ex-cept prostitutes . . . there you know what you're getting." She went up to him and kissed him. "Poor little boy . . . he feels so cross. I'm so sorry . . . I'l sleep with you,
-372-Dick . . . I promise I wil . You see it's difficult . . . In Rome we'l get a room somewhere."
"Are you a virgin?" His voice was constrained and stiff. She nodded. "Funny, isn't it? . . . in wartime . . . You boys have risked your lives. I guess I can risk that."
"I guess I can. borrow Ed's apartment. I think he's going to Naples tomorrow.""But you real y love me, Dick?""Of course, . . . it's only this makes me feel terrible . . . making love's so magnificent.""I suppose it is . . . Oh, I wish I was dead." They plodded along down the hil through the down-pour that gradual y slackened to a cold drizzle. Dick felt tired out and sodden; the rain was beginning to get down his neck. Anne Elizabeth had dropped