U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [82]
The car rounded a block of houses and came out on the waterfront. "Judas Priest, Dick," said Steve, "the goddam town's on fire." Beyond the black hulks of boats drawn up
-195-on the shore a rosy flame like a gigantic lampflame sent a broad shimmer towards them across the water. "Gracious, Steve, do you suppose the Austrians are in there?" The car went whanging along; the conductor who came and got their fare looked calm enough. "Inglese?" he asked. "Americani," said Steve. He smiled and clapped them on the back and said something about the Presidente Veelson that they couldn't understand.
They got off the car in a big square surrounded by huge arcades that a raw bittersweet wind blew hugely through. Dressedup people in overcoats were walking up and down on the clean mosaic pavement. The town was al marble. Every façade that faced the sea was pink with the glow of the fire. "Here the tenors and the baritones and the sopranos al ready for the show to begin," said Dick. Steve grunted, "Chorus'l probably be the goddam Austrians." They were cold and went into one of the shiny nickel and plateglass cafés to have a grog. The waiter told them in broken English that the fire was on an American tanker that had hit a mine and that she'd been burning for three days. A longfaced English officer came over from the bar and started to tel them how he was on a secret mission; it was al bloody awful about the retreat; it hadn't stopped yet; in Milan they were talking about fal ing back on the Po; the only reason the bloody Austrians hadn't overrun al bloody Lombardy was they'd been so disorganized by their rapid advance they were in almost as bad shape as the bloody Italians were. Damned Italian officers kept talking about the quadrilateral, and if it wasn't for the French and British troops behind the Italian lines they'd have sold out long ago. French morale was pretty shaky, at that. Dick told him about how the tools got swiped every time they took their eyes off their cars. The Englishman said the thievery in these parts was extraordinary; that was what his secret mission was about; he was trying to trace an entire carload of boots that had vanished between Vinti
-196-miglia and San Raphael, "Whole bloody luggage van turns into thin air overnight . . . extraordinary. . . . See those blighters over there at that table, they're bloody Austrian spies every mother's son of them . . . but try as I can I can't get them arrested . . . extraordinary. It's a bloody melodrama that's what it is, just like Drury Lane. A jol y good thing you Americans have come in. If you hadn't you'd see the bloody German flag flying over Genoa at this minute." He suddenly looked at his wristwatch, ad-vised them to buy a bottle of whiskey at the bar if they wanted another bit of drink, because it was closing time, said cheeryoh, and hustled out.
They plunged out again into the empty marble town,
down dark lanes and streets of stone steps with always the glare on some jutting wal overhead brighter and redder as they neared the waterfront. Time and again they got lost; at last they came out on wharves and bristle of masts of crowded feluccas and beyond the little crimsontipped waves of the harbor, the breakwater, and outside the break-water the mass of flame of the burning tanker. Excited and drunk they walked on and on through the town: "By God, these towns are older than the world," Dick kept saying. While they were looking at a marble lion, shaped like a dog, that stood polished to glassy smoothness by centuries of hands at the bottom of a flight of steps, an American voice hailed them, wanting to know if they knew their way around this goddam town. It was a young fel ow who was a sailor on an American boat that had come over with a carload of mules. They said sure they knew their way and gave him a drink out of the bottle of cognac they'd bought. They sat there on the stone balustrade beside the lion that looked like a dog and swigged cognac out of the bottle and