"Just as you like," the priest said. "Not if you don't want."
"To hell with you," Rinaldi said. "They try to get rid of me. Every night they try to get rid of me. I fight them off. What if I have it. Everybody has it. The whole world's got it. First," he went on, assuming the manner of a lecturer, "it's a little pimple. Then we notice a rash between the shoulders. Then we notice nothing at all. We put our faith in mercury."
"Or salvarsan," the major interrupted quietly.
"A mercurial product," Rinaldi said. He acted very elated now. "I know something worth two of that. Good old priest," he said. "You'll never get it. Baby will get it. It's an industrial accident. It's a simple industrial accident."
The orderly brought in the sweet and coffee. The dessert was a sort of black bread pudding with hard sauce. The lamp was smoking; the black smoke going close up inside the chimney.
"Bring two candles and take away the lamp," the major said. The orderly brought two lighted candles each in a saucer, and took out the lamp blowing it out. Rinaldi was quiet now. He seemed all right. We talked and after the coffee we all went out into the hall.
"You want to talk to the priest. I have to go in the town," Rinaldi said. "Good-night, priest."
"Good-night, Rinaldo," the priest said.
"I'll see you, Fredi," Rinaldi said.
"Yes," I said. "Come in early." He made a face and went out the door. The major was standing with us. "He's very tired and overworked," he said. "He thinks too he has syphilis. I don't believe it but he may have. He is treating himself for it. Good-night. You will leave before daylight, Enrico?"
"Yes."
"Good-by then," he said. "Good luck. Peduzzi will wake you and go with you."
"Good-by, Signor Maggiore."
"Good-by. They talk about an Austrian offensive but I don't believe it. I hope not. But anyway it won't be here. Gino will tell you everything. The telephone works well now."
"I'll call regularly."
"Please do. Good-night. Don't let Rinaldi drink so much brandy."
"I'll try not to."
"Good-night, priest."
"Good-night, Signor Maggiore."
He went off into his office.
26
I went to the door and looked out. It had stopped raining but there was a mist.
"Should we go upstairs?" I asked the priest.
"I can only stay a little while."
"Come on up."
We climbed the stairs and went into my room. I lay down on Rinaldi's bed. The priest sat on my cot that the orderly had set up. It was dark in the room.
"Well," he said, "how are you really?"
"I'm all right. I'm tired to-night."
"I'm tired too, but from no cause."
"What about the war?"
"I think it will be over soon. I don't know why, but I feel it."
"How do you feel it?"
"You know how your major is? Gentle? Many people are like that now."
"I feel that way myself," I said.
"It has been a terrible summer," said the priest. He was surer of himself now than when I had gone away. "You cannot believe how it has been. Except that you have been there and you know how it can be. Many people have realized the war this summer. Officers whom I thought could never realize it realize it now."
"What will happen?" Istroked the blanket with my hand.
"I do not know but I do not think it can go on much longer."
"What will happen?"
"They will stop fighting."
"Who?"
"Both sides."
"I hope so," I said.
"You don't believe it?"
"I don't believe both sides will stop fighting at once."
"I suppose not. It is too much to expect. But when I see the changes in men I do not think it can go on."
"Who won the fighting this summer?"
"No one."
"The Austrians won," I said. "They kept them from taking San Gabriele. They've won. They won't stop fighting."
"If they feel as we feel they may stop. They have gone through the same thing."
"No one ever stopped when they were winning."
"You discourage me."
"I can only say what I think."
"Then you think it will go on and on? Nothing will ever happen?"
"I don't know. I only think the Austrians will not stop when they have won a victory. It is in defeat that we become Christian."
"The Austrians are Christians--except for the Bosnians."
"I don't mean technically Christian. I mean like Our Lord."
He said nothing.
"We are all gentler now because we are beaten. How would Our Lord have been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?"
"He would have been just the same."
"I don't think so," I said.
"You discourage me," he said. "I believe and I pray that something will happen. I have felt it very close."
"Something may happen," I said. "But it will happen only to us. If they felt the way we do, it would be all right. But they have beaten us. They feel another way."
"Many of the soldiers have always felt this way. It is not because they were beaten."
"They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is."
He did not say anything. He was thinking.
"Now I am depressed myself," I said. "That's why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking."
"I had hoped for something."
"Defeat?"
"No. Something more."
"There isn't anything more. Except victory. It may be worse."
"I hoped for a long time for victory."
"Me too."
"Now I don't know."
"It has to be one or the other."
"I don't believe in victory any more."
"I don't. But I don't believe in defeat. Though it may be better."
"What do you believe in?"
"In sleep," I said. He stood up.
"I am very sorry to have stayed so long. But I like so to talk with you."
"It is very nice to talk again. I said that about sleeping, meaning nothing."
We stood up and shook hands in the dark.
"I sleep at 307 now," he said.
"I go out on post early to-morrow."
"I'll see you when you come hack."
"We'll have a walk and talk together." I walked with him to the door.
"Don't go down," he said. "It is very nice that you are back. Though not so nice for you." He put his hand on my shoulder.
"It's all right for me," I said. "Good-night."
"Good-night. Ciaou!"
"Ciaou!" I said. I was deadly sleepy.
27
I woke when Rinaldi came in but he did not talk and I went back to sleep again. In the morning I was dressed and gone before it was light. Rinaldi did not wake when I left.
I had not seen the Bainsizza before and it was strange to go up the slope where the Austrians had been, beyond the place on the river where I had been wounded. There was a steep new road and many trucks. Beyond, the road flattened out and I saw woods and steep hills in the mist. There were woods that had been taken quickly and not smashed. Then beyond where the road was not protected by the hills it was screened by matting on the sides and over the top. The road ended in a wrecked village. The lines were up beyond. There was much artillery around. The houses were badly smashed but things were very well organized and there were signboards everywhere. We found Gino and he got us some coffee and later I went with him and met various people and saw the posts. Gino said the British cars were working further down the Bainsizza at Ravne. He had great admiration for the British. There was still a c
ertain amount of shelling, he said, but not many wounded. There would be many sick now the rains had started. The Austrians were supposed to attack but he did not believe it. We were supposed to attack too, but they had not brought up any new troops so he thought that was off too. Food was scarce and he would be glad to get a full meal in Gorizia. What kind of supper had I had? I told him and he said that would be wonderful. He was especially impressed by the dolce. I did not describe it in detail, only said it was a dolce, and I think he believed it was something more elaborate than bread pudding.
Did I know where he was going to go? I said I didn't but that some of the other cars were at Caporetto. He hoped he would go up that way. It was a nice little place and he liked the high mountain hauling up beyond. He was a nice boy and every one seemed to like him. He said where it really had been hell was at San Gabriele and the attack beyond Lom that had gone bad. He said the Austrians had a great amount of artillery in the woods along Ternova ridge beyond and above us, and shelled the roads badly at night. There was a battery of naval guns that had gotten on his nerves. I would recognize them because of their flat trajectory. You heard the report and then the shriek commenced almost instantly. They usually fired two guns at once, one right after the other, and the fragments from the burst were enormous. He showed me one, a smoothly jagged piece of metal over a foot long. It looked like babbitting metal.
"I don't suppose they are so effective," Gino said. "But they scare me. They all sound as though they came directly for you. There is the boom, then instantly the shriek and burst. What's the use of not being wounded if they scare you to death?"
He said there were Croats in the lines opposite us now and some Magyars. Our troops were still in the attacking positions. There was no wire to speak of and no place to fall back to if there should be an Austrian attack. There were fine positions for defense along the low mountains that came up out of the plateau but nothing had been done about organizing them for defense. What did I think about the Bainsizza anyway?
I had expected it to be flatter, more like a plateau. I had not realized it was so broken up.
"Alto piano," Gino said, "but no piano."
We went back to the cellar of the house where he lived. I said I thought a ridge that flattened out on top and had a little depth would be easier and more practical to hold than a succession of small mountains. It was no harder to attack up a mountain than on the level, I argued. "That depends on the mountains," he said. "Look at San Gabriele."
"Yes," I said, "but where they had trouble was at the top where it was flat. They got up to the top easy enough."
"Not so easy," he said.
"Yes," I said, "but that was a special case because it was a fortress rather than a mountain, anyway. The Austrians had been fortifying it for years." I meant tactically speaking in a war where there was some movement a succession of mountains were nothing to hold as a line because it was too easy to turn them. You should have possible mobility and a mountain is not very mobile. Also, people always over-shoot downhill. If the flank were turned, the best men would be left on the highest mountains. I did not believe in a war in mountains. I had thought about it a lot, I said. You pinched off one mountain and they pinched off another but when something really started every one had to get down off the mountains.
What were you going to do if you had a mountain frontier? he asked.
I had not worked that out yet, I said, and we both laughed. "But," I said, "in the old days the Austrians were always whipped in the quadrilateral around Verona. They let them come down onto the plain and whipped them there."
"Yes," said Gino. "But those were Frenchmen and you can work out military problems clearly when you are fighting in somebody else's country."
"Yes," I agreed, "when it is your own country you cannot use it so scientifically."
"The Russians did, to trap Napoleon."
"Yes, but they had plenty of country. If you tried to retreat to trap Napoleon in Italy you would find yourself in Brindisi."
"A terrible place," said Gino. "Have you ever been there?"
"Not to stay."
"I am a patriot," Gino said. "But I cannot love Brindisi or Taranto."
"Do you love the Bainsizza?" I asked.
"The soil is sacred," he said. "But I wish it grew more potatoes. You know when we came here we found fields of potatoes the Austrians had planted."
"Has the food really been short?"
"I myself have never had enough to eat but I am a big eater and I have not starved. The mess is average. The regiments in the line get pretty good food but those in support don't get so much. Something is wrong somewhere. There should be plenty of food."
"The dogfish are selling it somewhere else."
"Yes, they give the battalions in the front line as much as they can but the ones in back are very short. They have eaten all the Austrians' potatoes and chestnuts from the woods. They ought to feed them better. We are big eaters. I am sure there is plenty of food. It is very bad for the soldiers to be short of food. Have you ever noticed the difference it makes in the way you think?"
"Yes," I said. "It can't win a war but it can lose one."
"We won't talk about losing. There is enough talk about losing. What has been done this summer cannot have been done in vain."
I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. Gino was a patriot, so he said things that separated us sometimes, but he was also a fine boy and I understood his being a patriot. He was born one. He left with Peduzzi in the car to go back to Gorizia.
It stormed all that day. The wind drove down the rain and everywhere there was standing water and mud. The plaster of the broken houses was gray and wet. Late in the afternoon the rain stopped and from out number two post I saw the bare wet autumn country with clouds over the tops of the hills and the straw screening over the roads wet and dripping. The sun came out once before it went down and shone on the bare woods beyond the ridge. There were many Austrian guns in the woods on that ridge but only a few fired. I watched the sudden round puffs of shrapnel smoke in the sky above a broken farmhouse near where the line was; soft puffs with a yellow white flash in the centre. You saw the flash, then heard the crack, then saw the smoke ball distort and thin in the wind. There were many iron shrapnel balls in the rubble of the houses and on the road beside the broken house where the post was, but they did not shell near the post that afternoon. We loaded two cars and drove down the road that was screened with wet mats and the last of the sun came through in the breaks between the strips of mattings. Before we were out on the clear road behind the hill the sun was down. We went on down the clear road and as it turned a corner into the open and went into the square arched tunnel of matting the rain started again.
The wind rose in the night and at three o'clock in the morning with the rain coming in sheets there was a bombardment and the Croatians came over across the mountain meadows and through patches of woods and into the front line. They fought in the dark in the rain and a counter-attack of scared men from the second line drove them back. There was much shelling and many rockets in the rain and machine-gun and rifle fire all along the line. They did
not come again and it was quieter and between the gusts of wind and rain we could hear the sound of a great bombardment far to the north.
The wounded were coming into the post, some were carried on stretchers, some walking and some were brought on the backs of men that came across the field. They were wet to the skin and all were scared. We filled two cars with stretcher cases as they came up from the cellar of the post and as I shut the door of the second car and fastened it I felt the rain on my face turn to snow. The flakes were coming heavy and fast in the rain.
When daylight came the storm was still blowing but the snow had stopped. It had melted as it fell on the wet ground and now it was raining again. There was another attack just after daylight but it was unsuccessful. We expected an attack all day but it did not come until the sun was going down. The bombardment started to the south below the long wooded ridge where the Austrian guns were concentrated. We expected a bombardment but it did not come. It was getting dark. Guns were firing from the field behind the village and the shells, going away, had a comfortable sound.
We heard that the attack to the south had been unsuccessful. They did not attack that night but we heard that they had broken through to the north. In the night word came that we were to prepare to retreat. The captain at the post told me this. He had it from the Brigade. A little while later he came from the telephone and said it was a lie. The Brigade had received orders that the line of the Bainsizza should be held no matter what happened. I asked about the break through and he said that he had heard at the Brigade that the Austrians had broken through the twenty-seventh army corps up toward Caporetto. There had been a great battle in the north all day.
"If those bastards let them through we are cooked," he said.
"It's Germans that are attacking," one of the medical officers said. The word Germans was something to be frightened of. We did not want to have anything to do with the Germans.
"There are fifteen divisions of Germans," the medical officer said. "They have broken through and we will be cut off."
"At the Brigade, they say this line is to be held. They say they have not broken through badly and that we will hold a line across the mountains from Monte Maggiore."
"Where do they hear this?"
"From the Division."
"The word that we were to retreat came from the Division."
"We work under the Army Corps," I said. "But here I work under you. Naturally when you tell me to go I will go. But get the orders straight."
"The orders are that we stay here. You clear the wounded from here to the clearing station."
"Sometimes we clear from the clearing station to the field hospitals too," I said. "Tell me, I have never seen a retreat--if there is a retreat how are all the wounded evacuated?"
"They are not. They take as many as they can and leave the rest."
"What will I take in the cars?"
"Hospital equipment."
"All right," I said.
The next night the retreat started. We heard that Germans and Austrians had broken through in the north and were coming down the mountain valleys toward Cividale and Udine. The retreat was orderly, wet and sullen. In the night, going slowly along the crowded roads we passed troops marching under the rain, guns, horses pulling wagons, mules, motor trucks, all moving away from the front. There was no more disorder than in an advance.