Americans in Italy: The Light Touch

by CORPORAL MACON REED, JR.

A MONASTIC GARDEN, ITALY. — I am sitting on a crumbling big stone and mortar bench on the promontory of a small mountaintop. Behind me is the mellowing masonry of a monastery not yet old, with little vineyards about, and white-gowned monks walking their meditative paths, and a musical bell chiming each quarter hour. The little hilltop is crowned with a circlet of fine sturdy trees, evergreens somewhat like holly, black-green of foliage. To the right is sea, broken by black-green islet hills and many coves. Our hill drops away almost sheer for a thousand feet to a quiet plain studded with white or gray villas and villages.

I am too tired to write like Ruskin (that’s the only reason, too!). Our unit moved out day before yesterday and we have worked hard two days getting established. What an odd, grotesque intrusion, to come here with our noise and enginery! Our holes and ditches are dug, tents up and stuff all placed.

This letter was just commencing when Uncle Pop came and took me places. Uncle Pop — Fra Gaycondo — is my favorite monk. He has drawbacks. He mutters a lot in his beard indistinctly and can ’t remember from one minute to the next that I don ’t capisce italiano spoke rapid. He is short, sixty-six, on the merry side, with nice innocent brown eyes. He paddles about the garden a lot with a pair of pruning scissors in a little tin scabbard.

After church, which I attended at nine this morning, I had explained to him that we were going to dig some foxholes in the side of the hill, just in case Jerry tried to come over. Wc scrabbled out a couple of puny orifices. Now there was something Uncle Pop wanted to show me that required a flashlight. I borrowed one. We went into a sort of cellar through monastic stone arches, and started down a flight of stone steps.

The stairs were very narrow, very dark, very steep, and a long flight. As we dropped and dropped, the steps became shiny wet. The air was dank. The walls, now cut in solid rock, were clammy wet to the touch. Another flight, and another. The world was a long way off. And what on earth went on?

At last we reached a great cavern or chamber and I understood. It was an ancient rock mine. All the stone for the monastery had been taken thence. An ideal raid shelter indeed. Some Italian officers must have thought so, too, for they had built a couple of medium-size houses there for a headquarters.

A tunnel led out to the hillside and back up to the monastery. I made Uncle Pop take me through the little church, beginning at the place where the bell rope hangs. There were great light murals on the ceiling panels, and richer, darker paintings on the walls. There was black marble and veined gray and white marble and veined red marble. Exquisitely slim and rounded pillars with white plinths worked and carved until they were frothy as lace. Uncle Pop had some trouble remembering which saint was which picture, so he added not much to the little I was able to make of everything. But be ye assured that this is distinctly an upper-case monastery. There are just a handful of the boys and all whitebearded. Their eyes and faces are really tranquil and beautiful.

The dining room has a balcony open to the most superb view. Glenn toured the circlet today and finished with this one: “ Boys, we’ve got scenery up here that just never quits.”

Back to Uncle Pop’s own quarters: three airy stone cells, one for his garden tools, one for I don’t know what, and the other for sleeping. He gave me two apples, a handful of nuts, and a glass of wine. Said he hoped little by little to make a good Catholic of me. He examined the flashlight with the naïve and obvious yearning of a child and wanted to know how much one cost. I didn’t tell him so, but I’ll get him one or bust.

He asked me if our radio ever talked Italian. I said I’d try to get an Italian program for him, but haven’t been able to yet. I gather the monks are not supposed to have radios or to listen, but concluded as long as we had one blaring all over the lot they might as well bend an ear. I think they make up a lot of useless errands to our area when the music is on. They are ever so childlike.

Conversationally, I asked him what was the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. I understood enough to know that he did not know, although he knew all about Catholicism. One after another, and over again, they ask me, in genuine puzzlement, “Why aren’t you Catholic?” Quite a question when asked just that way. I tried to explain that in America it is quite natural not to be Catholic, and that most people indeed are not. “Well, why not?”

There was some talk of ships, and I said American, English, French, Greek, Italian, and other ships were all in the war against the Germans. “ Why?” From this, and all in all, I take it they are completely out of the world.

ITALY. — There is an ancient and curious and tiny village hidden in the trees hardly a stone’s throw from us. There’s a tavern in the town where for several evenings some of our boys have sat them down. It is a dimly candlelit country store kind of joint with usually three or four local yokels, a few English, and a few of our boys, both white and colored. The first time I went I was astounded to see also a portly, expensively dressed, and not badlooking middle-aged lady, with a gorgeous miss of about eighteen or nineteen in a stunning semievening dress; and from another direction came an accented voice speaking cultivated English. It turns out this voice is a young Polish woman married to an Italian. The other two are wife and daughter of a very wealthy retired American bootlegger.

Four English boys come to the tavern every night and sing, quite nicely. Our boys are harmless, but noisy as all get-out, and all the women except Casimira, the Polish gal, get scared. She says, “ I like it when they make noise. It means they are enjoying.” A dozen or so townsfolk come every night for the little international show.

Last night Stud just had to have a rabbit supper, so I arranged with Mama. Mama is a fat and forty bandita who cooks a mean rabbit. We took Pat and Billy and Glenn and “Bareback” Ryder.

It was practically dark as we ate. There’s no juice, and candles have about given out. And Mama will split each rabbit head in two and put the pieces in with the rest. We fished into the platter with great trepidation each time. There is somehow something about a one-eyed stare from half a cooked rabbit head.

Then on to the dance, where Stud falls madly in love with a girl, Maria Theresa. Would I tell her that he loved her more than any girl he’d ever seen? I did.

“Tell him he has already tried to get engaged to two other girls in the village.”

“Tell her I just went around to their houses with friends of mine.”

“Tell him I like serious boys. He is a light boy and I have rejected many proposals from light boys, many.”

“Tell her I want to marry her and take her to America.”

“Tell him to come to my house for dinner tomorrow.”

“Tell her I won’t. I’m willing to take her to my house as my wife without any preliminaries. She should be willing to marry me without all that going to see her family stuff.”

He was vino earnest, I expressionless. I fancied there was a bit of twinkle in her far from stupid blue eyes. Ensued an interlude while he danced with another and Maria Theresa tried to act as though she was mighty pleased to be dancing with your wonderful husband. Then: —

“Tell her I want to marry her immediately.”

“Ask him when.”

“Tell her tomorrow.”

“Ask him what time.”

“Ask her about licenses and things.”

This was pretty complicated and ended in an agreement to get together with priest and interpreter at ten this morning to explore possibilities. I reminded Stud he is not Catholic.

“Tell her and see if it, makes any difference.”

“Tell him then I can’t marry him.”

Stud rises in drooping dejection. “ I’m going back to camp.” But she called him, and they came back to the agreement to see the priest today. Said Stud: “Hell, I’ll turn Catholic. I ain’t nothing but miscellaneous now.”

In bed later: “Reed, you think I’m kidding. I’m serious. I’m gonna marry her.”

But thus far no wedding bells.

The other night there was an air raid. It was the usual bright and noisy affair. It caught me on the road toward the village. I took shelter in a fine archway and watched. I suppose, all told, I’ve watched a dozen, but have yet to see anything hit on either end, and only once have I seen a plane in the lights. Well out in the open in a little flat place, I saw a tall figure by a truck. I moved over to join him, and when I got close, there in the rockets’ red glare, stark against a mad sky bursting and blazing like all hell gone berserk, was love’s old sweet story: a tall soldier holding a girl close enough to be doing a fair job of getting her under the safety of his own helmet with him.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said I. (Well, what would you have said?)

After it was over I hailed him: “Soldier, you’ve got the best technique I ever sawr for taking an air raid.” An English voice, offhand and cheerful, replied, “Better to have someone with you in a raid, isn’t it? You carry on better; because if there’s someone with you, you wouldn’t want her to see you had the wind up, wuuld you? ” I hadn’t thought of it just that way.

Come to think of it a little more differently, I’d like to go through a nice loud raid with you. Standing close, we could spit defiance at the impotent rage of the powers of darkness and know their utmost could not touch us. And I feel sure we could squeeze two under one helmet. What do you think?