The Wedding Officer

5

THIS IS as far as we go,” the driver said, pulling the truck over to the side of the road. He pointed. “The Riviera is down that way, if you can get through the rubble.” He watched as James climbed down from his perch on top of a pile of ammunition boxes, then gave a cheery half-salute before putting the big K-60 into gear. “Good luck, sir.”

James Gould picked up his kit bag and knapsacks and arranged them around his body in the position of least discomfort, the heavy roll of the kit bag balanced on one shoulder and the knapsacks slung over the other. “’Bye,” he called, attempting to return the driver’s salute over the kit bag. “Many thanks.” As the truck drove away, an old woman’s face, weather-beaten as a pug’s, appeared at a nearby window and peered at him fearfully. He nodded politely. “Buona sera, signora.” The face vanished abruptly.

He had been warned about the smell. As they’d retreated from Naples the Germans had blown up the sewers—those that hadn’t already been destroyed by weeks of British and American bombing. Burning braziers stood outside some of the buildings to counteract the stink, but they seemed to have little effect. In the gloom of the narrow streets, with half-destroyed ruins towering precariously on either side, the inky flames only added to the apocalyptic atmosphere. As he gingerly picked his way through the debris James saw one building, now reduced to rubble, which appeared to be still smoldering. Only when he got closer did he realize that what he had taken for wisps of smoke were actually streams of flies, busily zooming in and out of the rubble. The smell was particularly bad just there.

He continued to nod at the Italians he passed: an elderly man, who scuttled past with his eyes averted despite James’s polite “Buona sera”; a couple of scugnizzi, street urchins, who stopped to stare at him, their arms draped insolently around each other’s shoulders; an ancient woman, indistinguishable from the one who had appeared at the window earlier—the same lined face, the same dumpy body, the same shapeless black dress. He stopped her and tried to ask for directions. “Scusi, signora. Dov’è il Palazzo Satriano, per cortesia?” He had been practicing his Italian on the troop ship from Africa, but the flowing consonants still felt strange and chewy in his mouth. The woman gave him a glance in which terror mingled with incomprehension. He tried again. “The Palazzo Satriano? It’s on the Riviera di Chiaia.” It was no good: He might as well have been speaking Swahili. “Grazie mille,” he said resignedly, and pressed on.

Knowing that his destination was on the seafront, and reasoning that he couldn’t go far wrong if he kept downhill, he continued the way he was going. All around him were signs of the city’s recent history. On one wall a giant mural depicting Mussolini’s fascio symbol, an ax surrounded by a bundle of sticks, had been overpainted with a German swastika, and on top of that, a hastily whitewashed panel bore a crude Stars and Stripes and the words Viva gli alleati, Welcome to the Allies. The mural was decorated with a spray of bullet holes, though it was impossible to tell at which point in the wall’s artistic evolution they had been added.

Two young women were coming toward him. They were dark-haired, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, beauties of the type that one saw in prewar photographs of the country, although he noticed that they were wearing what seemed to be American military jackets, brightened up here and there with twists of colored fabric. Each of them had a flower tucked behind one ear. They glanced at him, the nearest smiling shyly, and he tried the same sentence on them. “Scusate, signorine. Dov’è il Palazzo Satriano?”

The girls’ reaction was very different from the old woman’s. The one who had smiled was instantly in front of him, standing very close, her fingers playing with the buttons of his uniform and her voice murmuring something so quietly that he had to put his head close to her mouth to hear.

“Tree teen russians. Ver’ cleen, ver’ cleen.”

He realized too late they were prostitutes. Her soft fingers brushed his hand, and even as he pulled away from her he felt her slender leg still pressing against his. “You like?” she murmured eagerly, pointing at herself and then her companion. “Both tree teen russians.” Three tins of rations: It was nothing, it was less than five shillings.

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking a step away from her. “Sono un ufficiale inglese.” He hesitated. Had he just said that he was an English officer, or an official Englishman? “Mi sono perso, that’s all.”

The girl smiled, a little ruefully, as if to say it would have been nice to meet him on an evening when he was neither an official Englishman nor perso, lost. He had come across whores before, of course—the dour-faced women back home who put cards in their windows that read “Soldiers’ washing dealt with,” the heavily made-up caricatures who prowled Piccadilly and Regent Street, the well-padded lucciole of his last posting—but never had he come across such beauty sold so cheap, or such a wistful, resigned shrug at his refusal.

He turned the next corner and found that he was in a street crammed with bars and restaurants. It surprised him: The briefing notes had said such premises were still officially closed. “Naples is the first major city to be liberated by the Allies. The free world will be watching to see how we conduct ourselves,” the notes had gone on to say. On the evidence before him now, James thought, the free world might be a little shocked. The street had narrowed even further, so that it was barely wider than a desk, and the ubiquitous braziers gave off a stifling heat. Even so, the little thoroughfare was thronged with people. Pressing past him were uniforms of every hue and nationality—British khaki and American olive green, but also a melee of Poles, Canadians, New Zealanders, Free French, Highlanders, even a few diminutive Gurkhas, all picking their way cheerfully through the rubble. And the girls—everywhere he looked there were more dark-haired, dark-eyed young women with flowers tucked behind their ears, strolling in pairs, hanging on the arms of the soldiers, or leaning languidly against the doors of the bars, waiting for customers. Dresses cut from army blankets, or adapted military uniforms, seemed to be the order of the day, which gave the little street the air of a bizarre military camp.

It was hard getting through the crowd with the kit bag over his shoulder: Whenever he turned one way or the other it bashed against someone, like Charlie Chaplin and his ladder. He found himself apologizing left and right to those he was assaulting. There appeared to be no particular regard for rank here, which was just as well given the difficulty of returning salutes around the kit bag. Once he thought he felt light fingers tugging at his knapsack; when he looked around a scugnizzo was already slipping away through the crowd, casting James an affronted look over his shoulder as if it was hardly sporting of him to have fastened his luggage so tightly.

At an intersection a street trolley rattled past, unbelievably full, a trio of nuns hanging off the running boards, its klaxon lowing as it attempted to clear a way through a tangle of traffic. Convoys of trucks were being directed by an American military policeman in a white tin helmet and, opposite him, an Italian carabiniere in an elaborate band-leader’s uniform. The American had a whistle in his mouth; shrill blasts accompanied his gestures, impatient and stern. The Italian, by contrast, seemed almost apologetic as he shrugged and gesticulated at the traffic. Long-horned oxen, harnessed in pairs to wooden carts like something out of an Egyptian watercolor, defecated lethargically as they waited their turn. Small boys darted amongst the mayhem selling lipsticks and lucky charms.

Eventually a friendly British fusilier pointed him in the right direction. The way led down a side street barely larger than an alley, then followed a dizzying series of zigzagging stone staircases. It was a relief to be out of the din and the crush, and it was a little while before James realized that he was no longer hemmed in on every side by buildings.

He stopped, momentarily taken aback by the view. In front of him, a vast orange sun was setting over the Bay of Naples. Under the red sky the sea was as smooth as a saucepan of boiled milk. Along the seafront, palm trees nodded in the evening breeze. And on the other side of the bay, the vast bulk of Mount Vesuvius loomed abruptly out of a distant peninsula, like an egg in its eggcup. A tiny question mark of smoke hung over its summit.

“Gosh,” he said aloud. Then, conscious that one was not here to admire views but to finish a war, he descended the steps toward the large building he could see at the bottom.