The adjutant made a motion with his hand to the second runner who went out.
“Fix your eyes on the uniform. Spagnolini made it, you know. You might as well look, too,” Nick said to the signallers. “I really have no rank. We’re under the American consul. It’s perfectly all right for you to look. You can stare, if you like. I will tell you about the American locust. We always preferred one that we called the medium-brown. They last the best in the water and fish prefer them. The larger ones that fly making a noise somewhat similar to that produced by a rattlesnake rattling his rattlers, a very dry sound, have vivid colored wings, some are bright red, others yellow barred with black, but their wings go to pieces in the water and they make a very blowsy bait, while the medium-brown is a plump, compact, succulent hopper that I can recommend as far as one may well recommend something you gentlemen will probably never encounter. But I must insist that you will never gather a sufficient supply of these insects for a day’s fishing by pursuing them with your hands or trying to hit them with a bat. That is sheer nonsense and a useless waste of time. I repeat, gentlemen, that you will get nowhere at it. The correct procedure, and one which should be taught all young officers at every small-arms course if I had anything to say about it, and who knows but what I will have, is the employment of a seine or net made of common mosquito netting. Two officers holding this length of netting at alternate ends, or let us say one at each end, stoop, hold the bottom extremity of the net in one hand and the top extremity in the other and run into the wind. The hoppers, flying with the wind, fly against the length of netting and are imprisoned in its folds. It is no trick at all to catch a very great quantity indeed, and no officer, in my opinion, should be without a length of mosquito netting suitable for the improvisation of one of these grasshopper seines. I hope I have made myself clear, gentlemen. Are there any questions? If there is anything in the course you do not understand please ask questions. Speak up. None? Then I would like to close on this note. In the words of that great soldier and gentleman, Sir Henry Wilson: Gentlemen, either you must govern or you must be governed. Let me repeat it. Gentlemen, there is one thing I would like to have you remember. One thing I would like you to take with you as you leave this room. Gentlemen, either you must govern—or you must be governed. That is all, gentlemen. Good-day.”
He removed his cloth-covered helmet, put it on again and, stooping, went out the low entrance of the dugout. Para, accompanied by the two runners, was coming down the line of the sunken road. It was very hot in the sun and Nick removed the helmet.
“There ought to be a system for wetting these things,” he said. “I shall wet this one in the river.” He started up the bank.
“Nicolo,” Paravicini called. “Nicolo. Where are you going?”
“I don’t really have to go.” Nick came down the slope, holding the helmet in his hands. “They’re a damned nuisance wet or dry. Do you wear yours all the time?”
“All the time,” said Para. “It’s making me bald. Come inside.” Inside Para told him to sit down.
“You know they’re absolutely no damned good,” Nick said. “I remember when they were a comfort when we first had them, but I’ve seen them full of brains too many times.”
“Nicolo,” Para said. “I think you should go back. I think it would be better if you didn’t come up to the line until you had those supplies. There’s nothing here for you to do. If you move around, even with something worth giving away, the men will group and that invites shelling. I won’t have it.”
“I know it’s silly,” Nick said. “It wasn’t my idea. I heard the brigade was here so I thought I would see you or some one else I knew. I could have gone to Zenzon or to San Dona. I’d like to go to San Dona to see the bridge again.”
“I won’t have you circulating around to no purpose,” Captain Paravicini said.
“All right,” said Nick. He felt it coming on again.
“You understand?”
“Of course,” said Nick. He was trying to hold it in.
“Anything of that sort should be done at night.”
“Naturally,” said Nick. He knew he could not stop it now.
“You see, I am commanding the battalion,” Para said.
“And why shouldn’t you be?” Nick said. Here it came. “You can read and write, can’t you?”
“Yes,” said Para gently.
“The trouble is you have a damned small battalion to command. As soon as it gets to strength again they’ll give you back your company. Why don’t they bury the dead? I’ve seen them now. I don’t care about seeing them again. They can bury them any time as far as I’m concerned and it would be much better for you. You’ll all get bloody sick.”
“Where did you leave your bicycle?”
“Inside the last house.”
“Do you think it will be all right?”
“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “I’ll go in a little while.”
“Lie down a little while, Nicolo.”
“All right.”
He shut his eyes, and in place of the man with the beard who looked at him over the sights of the rifle, quite calmly before squeezing off, the white flash and clublike impact, on his knees, hot-sweet choking, coughing it onto the rock while they went past him, he saw a long, yellow house with a low stable and the river much wider than it was and stiller. “Christ,” he said, “I might as well go.”
He stood up.
“I’m going. Para,” he said. “I’ll ride back now in the afternoon. If any supplies have come I’ll bring them down tonight. If not I’ll come at night when I have something to bring.”
“It is still hot to ride,” Captain Paravicini said.
“You don’t need to worry,” Nick said. “I’m all right now for quite a while. I had one then but it was easy. They’re getting much better. I can tell when I’m going to have one because I talk so much.”
“I’ll send a runner with you.”
“I’d rather you didn’t. I know the way.”
“You’ll be back soon?”
“Absolutely.”
“Let me send—”
“No,” said Nick. “As a mark of confidence.”
“Well, ciao then.”
“Ciao,” said Nick. He started back along the sunken road toward where he had left the bicycle. In the afternoon the road would be shady once he had passed the canal. Beyond that there were trees on both sides that had not been shelled at all. It was on that stretch that, marching, they had once passed the Terza Savoia cavalry regiment riding in the snow with their lances. The horses’ breath made plumes in the cold air. No, that was somewhere else. Where was that?
“I’d better get to that damned bicycle,” Nick said to himself. “I don’t want to lose the way to Fornaci.”
The Mother of a Queen
WHEN HIS FATHER DIED HE WAS ONLY A kid and his manager buried him perpetually. That is, so he would have the plot permanently. But when his mother died his manager thought they might not always be so hot on each other. They were sweethearts; sure he’s a queen, didn’t you know that, of course he is. So he just buried her for five years.
Well, when he came back to Mexico from Spain he got the first notice. It said it was the first notice that the five years were up and would he make arrangements for the continuing of his mother’s grave. It was only twenty dollars for perpetual. I had the cash box then and I said let me attend to it, Paco. But he said no, he would look after it. He’d look after it right away. It was his mother and he wanted to do it himself.
Then in a week he got the second notice. I read it to him and I said I thought he had looked after it.
No, he said, he hadn’t.
“Let me do it,” I said. “It’s right here in the cash box.”
No, he said. Nobody could tell him what to do. He’d do it himself when he got around to it. “What’s the sense in spending money sooner than necessary?”
“All right,” I said, “but see you look after it.” At this time he had a con
tract for six fights at four thousand pesos a fight besides his benefit fight. He made over fifteen thousand dollars there in the capital alone. He was just tight, that’s all.
The third notice came in another week and I read it to him. It said that if he did not make the payment by the following Saturday his mother’s grave would be opened and her remains dumped on the common boneheap. He said he would go attend to it that afternoon when he went to town.
“Why not have me do it?” I asked him.
“Keep out of my business,” he said. “It’s my business and I’m going to do it.”
“All right, if that’s the way you feel about it,” I said. “Do your own business.”
He got the money out of the cash box, although then he always carried a hundred or more pesos with him all the time, and he said he would look after it. He went out with the money and so of course I thought he had attended to it.
A week later the notice came that they had no response to the final warning and so his mother’s body had been dumped on the boneheap; on the public boneheap.
“Jesus Christ,” I said to him, “you said you’d pay that and you took money out of the cash box to do it and now what’s happened to your mother? My God, think of it! The public boneheap and your own mother. Why didn’t you let me look after it? I would have sent it when the first notice came.”
“It’s none of your business. It’s my mother.”
“It’s none of my business, yes, but it was your business. What kind of blood is it in a man that will let that be done to his mother? You don’t deserve to have a mother.”
“It is my mother,” he said. “Now she is so much dearer to me. Now I don’t have to think of her buried in one place and be sad. Now she is all about me in the air, like the birds and the flowers. Now she will always be with me.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, “what kind of blood have you anyway? I don’t want you to even speak to me.”
“She is all around me,” he said. “Now I will never be sad.”
At that time he was spending all kinds of money around women trying to make himself seem a man and fool people, but it didn’t have any effect on people that knew anything about him. He owed me over six hundred pesos and he wouldn’t pay me. “Why do you want it now?” he’d say. “Don’t you trust me? Aren’t we friends?”
“It isn’t friends or trusting you. It’s that I paid the accounts out of my own money while you were away and now I need the money back and you have it to pay me.”
“I haven’t got it.”
“You have it,” I said. “It’s in the cash box now and you can pay me.”
“I need that money for something,” he said. “You don’t know all the needs I have for money.”
“I stayed here all the time you were in Spain and you authorized me to pay these things as they came up, all these things of the house, and you didn’t send any money while you were gone and I paid over six hundred pesos in my own money and now I need it and you can pay me.”
“I’ll pay you soon,” he said. “Right now I need the money badly.”
“For what?”
“For my own business.”
“Why don’t you pay me some on account?”
“I can’t,” he said. “I need that money too badly. But I will pay you.”
He had only fought twice in Spain, they couldn’t stand him there, they saw through him quick enough, and he had seven new fighting suits made and this is the kind of thing he was: he had them packed so badly that four of them were ruined by sea water on the trip back and he couldn’t even wear them.
“My God,” I said to him, “you go to Spain. You stay there the whole season and only fight two times. You spend all the money you took with you on suits and then have them spoiled by salt water so you can’t wear them. That is the kind of season you have and then you talk to me about running your own business. Why don’t you pay me the money you owe me so I can leave?”
“I want you here,” he said, “and I will pay you. But now I need the money.”
“You need it too badly to pay for your own mother’s grave to keep your mother buried. Don’t you?” I said.
“I am happy about what has happened to my mother,” he said. “You cannot understand.”
“Thank Christ I can’t,” I said. “You pay me what you owe me or I will take it out of the cash box.”
“I will keep the cash box myself,” he said.
“No, you won’t,” I said.
That very afternoon he came to me with a punk, some fellow from his own town who was broke, and said, “Here is a paisano who needs money to go home because his mother is very sick.” This fellow was just a punk, you understand, a nobody he’d never seen before, but from his home town, and he wanted to be the big, generous matador with a fellow townsman.
“Give him fifty pesos from the cash box,” he told me.
“You just told me you had no money to pay me,” I said. “And now you want to give fifty pesos to this punk.”
“He is a fellow townsman,” he said, “and he is in distress.”
“You bitch,” I said. I gave him the key of the cash box. “Get it yourself. I’m going to town.”
“Don’t be angry,” he said. “I’m going to pay you.”
I got the car out to go to town. It was his car but he knew I drove it better than he did. Everything he did I could do better. He knew it. He couldn’t even read and write. I was going to see somebody and see what I could do about making him pay me. He came out and said, “I’m coming with you and I’m going to pay you. We are good friends. There is no need to quarrel.”
We drove into the city and I was driving. Just before we came into the town he pulled out twenty pesos.
“Here’s the money,” he said.
“You motherless bitch,” I said to him and told him what he could do with the money. “You give fifty pesos to that punk and then offer me twenty when you owe me six hundred. I wouldn’t take a nickel from you. You know what you can do with it.”
I got out of the car without a peso in my pocket and I didn’t know where I was going to sleep that night. Later I went out with a friend and got my things from his place. I never spoke to him again until this year. I met him walking with three friends in the evening on the way to the Callao cinema in the Gran Via in Madrid. He put his hand out to me.
“Hello Roger, old friend,” he said to me. “How are you? People say you are talking against me. That you say all sorts of unjust things about me.”
“All I say is you never had a mother,” I said to him. That’s the worst thing you can say to insult a man in Spanish.
“That’s true,” he said. “My poor mother died when I was so young it seems as though I never had a mother. It’s very sad.”
There’s a queen for you. You can’t touch them. Nothing, nothing can touch them. They spend money on themselves or for vanity, but they never pay. Try to get one to pay. I told him what I thought of him right there on the Gran Via, in front of three friends, but he speaks to me now when I meet him as though we were friends. What kind of blood is it that makes a man like that?
One Reader Writes
SHE SAT AT THE TABLE IN HER BEDROOM with a newspaper folded open before her and only stopping to look out of the window at the snow which was falling and melting on the roof as it fell. She wrote this letter, writing it steadily with no necessity to cross out or rewrite anything.
Roanoke, Virginia
February 6, 1933
Dear Doctor—
May I write you for some very important advice—I have a decision to make and don’t know just whom to trust most I dare not ask my parents—and so I come to you—and only because I need not see you, can I confide in you even. Now here is the situation—I married a man in U. S. service in 1929 and that same year he was sent to China, Shanghai—he staid three years—and came home—he was discharged from the service some few months ago—and went to his mother’s home in Helena, Arkansas. He wrote for me to come home—
I went, and found he is taking a course of injections and I naturally ask, and found he is being treated for I don’t know how to spell the word but it sound like this “sifilus”—Do you know what I mean—now tell me will it ever be safe for me to live with him again—I did not come in close contact with him at any time since his return from China. He assures me he will be OK after this doctor finishes with him—Do you think it right—I often heard my Father say one could well wish themselves dead if once they became a victim of that malady—I believe my Father but want to believe my Husband most—Please, please tell me what to do—I have a daughter born while her Father was in China—
Thanking you and trusting wholly in your advice I am
and signed her name.
Maybe he can tell me what’s right to do, she said to herself. Maybe he can tell me. In the picture in the paper he looks like he’d know. He looks smart, all right. Every day he tells somebody what to do. He ought to know. I want to do whatever is right. It’s such a long time though. It’s a long time. And it’s been a long time. My Christ, it’s been a long time. He had to go wherever they sent him, I know, but I don’t know what he had to get it for. Oh, I wish to Christ he wouldn’t have got it. I don’t care what he did to get it. But I wish to Christ he hadn’t ever got it. It does seem like he didn’t have to have got it. I don’t know what to do. I wish to Christ he hadn’t got any kind of malady. I don’t know why he had to get a malady.
Homage to Switzerland
PART I
PORTRAIT OF MR. WHEELER IN MONTREUX
INSIDE THE STATION CAFE IT WAS WARM and light. The wood of the tables shone from wiping and there were baskets of pretzels in glazed paper sacks. The chairs were carved, but the seats were worn and comfortable. There was a carved wooden clock on the wall and a bar at the far end of the room. Outside the window it was snowing.