A Soldier of the Great War (14 page)

She turned so deeply red that the blood and heat rushing to her face sent her perfume billowing through the room. Had Alessandro known her only from this, he might have fallen in love. Still, he asked, "What were you doing?"

"None of your business," she said, bitterly.

Alessandro smiled, which embarrassed her more.

She seized her cape and rushed past him.

He thought he would never see her again, but as she passed
him she put the Finnish matches into his hands and commanded him to follow her.

He did. When she reached the hedge she threw the cape over it and walked into the flower garden. Alessandro went after her, overcome by her perfume and that of the flowers. He was late for dinner, but he didn't care. "Light the matches," she said.

"All at once?"

"Of course not, idiot. One by one."

When he lit a match and held it up, she looked at him for the first time, staring at him until the match burned down.

By the time Alessandro lit another match she was bent over the flowers. She hadn't been able to turn from him until the match was extinguished, because he struck her as the kind of man she might marry. Men with fortunes, men ten or fifteen years her senior, had wanted to marry her, and she had declined. Too much reading of the
Dolce Stil Nuovo,
her father had said, too much Petrarca, too much independence. "What will you marry?" he had asked. "A tennis instructor? A shepherd?" Every time her father spoke like this, two dozen bankers and industrialists died in her heart. She would marry whomever she pleased.

"You must be from over there," Alessandro said, gesturing toward her father's house.

She had gathered an armful of flowers, and now she stood facing him. "I am."

"What's your name?"

"Lia Bellati. You are a Giuliani."

"Alessandro."

She held out her hand for the matches, and he gave them to her. Then she went to the hedge and retrieved her cape. "Let me take you to the gate," he offered. "I know the garden well enough to find my way in the dark."

She took his arm. Though she did it stiffly, he felt the heat rising from her, and he breathed deeply just because they were touching.

"How old are you?" he asked as they reached the gate.

"Old enough not to be asked such a question," she replied. It stung him, as she had intended.

"I have a horse," he said as she passed through the gate.

"That's nice."

"Do you ride? I know that you jump."

"I do ride," she answered, "but so what." Then, without looking back, she went toward her house.

Alessandro turned to walk down the path that led through the carefully apportioned quarters of the garden. His hands still smelled of perfume and sulfur from holding the matchbox. He tried to think of a way to see her. If she would not ride with him, he would have to meet her in another fashion, but he was inept at such things, and terrified of parties and receptions, where he was all legs.

 

A
LESSANDRO WOULD
sit by his window waiting for Lia to appear. Every minute, sometimes more frequently, he would look up from what he was reading to see if she had come into the garden. He had walked for hours in Monteverdi and in the Villa Doria, hoping to encounter her, and after a week in which he had had no success he began the first of many letters that ended up in the fire. Most of these were single sheets of paper with only one or two lines, because his longing for her and his strange agitation had given birth to sentences like, "My heart is crushed, my soul black, I cannot move."

As if to compensate for the shame of being thus overboiled, he would become one of Lermontov's young officers, the kind who would drink a glass of fruit brandy, put their revolvers to their heads, smile, and pull the triggers just to show that they were the sort of fellows to whom nothing meant anything. Having read Lermontov and other Russians, and having stayed up until four in the morning, Alessandro found himself making declarations such as,
"All I desire is one night with you, after which I will quickly cause myself to be disemboweled."

One clear morning when the sky was wildly blue and the sun was hot from the instant it cleared the mountains, Alessandro went out early, hoping to see Lia in the street or in the Villa Doria. He had just passed the stable near the Porta San Pancrazio when he looked back and saw her coming toward him from the garden. She was wearing riding boots and the strange pants that women wore when they rode: out of the saddle, they appeared to be a dress. He thought they were called
cotillons,
but, to be safe, he called them
mezzi pallonetti,
or "half balloonlets." She held a leather crop in her left hand.

"You're going riding," he said accusingly.

She looked at her dress, looked up, and said, "Isaac Newton."

"Would it weigh upon you too heavily were I to accompany your?"

She smiled as she resumed her walk to the stable.

"Even though I have to change, I'll catch up," he said as he ran down the hill to his house.

He threw open the front door with such violence that everyone in the house ran into the hallways in expectation of a terrible event. He was up the stairs in a second. In another second he had thrown off his clothes. On went the summer riding pants, a polo shirt, and (with much cursing) a pair of cavalry boots. He pulled his wallet from a desk drawer, grabbed the money, and dropped the rest. In an instant he rinsed his mouth with dental salts and brushed his hair, one stroke. He shot out the door. He shot back in to seize his riding crop. He shot back out and made a tremendous racket in his heavy boots as he descended the stairs.

"You look very handsome," his mother called out as he disappeared beyond the front door.

He ran up the hill. Lia was gone. Her horse had probably been saddled and waiting.

Though she might have fifteen or twenty minutes' head start, he could catch her. He was a fierce rider and he had a great horse. His father had provided the animal, tack, and board, because he wanted Alessandro to see the country not from a speeding train but slowly and in detail, as he himself had seen it.

"You'll learn more in your journeys to and from Bologna, if you make them on horseback, than from all your professors combined," the attorney Giuliani had said, and he had almost been right. Just for this visit home Alessandro had ridden from Bologna by way of Florence and Sienna, and it had taken eight days. He did it with a compass, and was off the road much of the time, especially in the treeless plains by the lakes north of Rome. The horse was the best hunt horse, young but not inexperienced, the color of an expensive gun-stock and built almost like a racing thoroughbred, except that his legs were thicker and stronger. He could run all day, he could jump high walls, and at times he was astonishingly fast. He was good at swimming rivers, and if the surf were gentle he would canter into the sea.

Though Alessandro had run up the hill and arrived at the stable in a sweat, he entered calmly and put a saddle on the horse as if he were going to exercise him in the park. It was a hunt saddle, and the horse, whose name was Enrico, became edgy.

"Did Lia Bellati leave here a little while ago?" Alessandro asked the stableman as he cinched the saddle and elevated the stirrups as if for racing.

"Half an hour ago," the stableman said imprecisely. "She went to the sea, on the Laurentina."

"I'll catch her," Alessandro said as he put the bridle on Enrico.

"I don't think so," the stableman said.

"Why not? You know Enrico. You know how I can ride."

"The Signorina Bellati rides extremely well. Her brother is a cavalryman and she's on his horse."

"I thought he was in the navy."

"I don't think so. He has a sword."

"They all have swords."

"He has the long kind, the kind, you know, that can reach all the way to the ground even when a man is sitting in the saddle. The kind that's like a scythe, that can cut you in half."

"To hell with his sword. You can judge horses. Which is better?"

The stableman was silent.

"I see," Alessandro said. "I'll catch her anyway. Enrico can take fences like a bird. I'll catch her in the forest just before she comes to the sea."

"Tell me if it's so," the stableman said as he led the horse from the stall.

When the horse came into the light he pranced and waved his head. Alessandro jumped into the saddle, and on his way up he was blinded by the bright sun.

"Don't go too fast in the city," the stableman cautioned. "The
carabinieri
will chase you."

"I have to go fast. She left me no choice," Alessandro replied. Then he spurred Enrico and galloped him recklessly down the hill.

They crossed the Tiber on the Ponte Aventino early enough in the morning for the fishermen to be on the bridge, lowering their square nets from complicated little derricks. The river was beginning to run low, but in April it was still clear and it smelled fresh. The grass on the banks was green, and the walkways had been swept clean by the March floods.

Alessandro looked to the sides and ahead for mounted
carabinieri.
They would not be out in force, because mounted police detested the morning. That he knew this enabled him to ride through the city much faster than he was sure Lia had dared, and he guessed that he would cut her lead by five minutes.

A man with white mustaches and a white suit did not like the way Alessandro sped past his carriage: "Monkey! Cretin! Fool! Who gave you permission to ride so fast?"

Alessandro turned in the saddle. He was twenty years of age, and insults were fast and automatic. "A cheese like you has no right to talk," he screamed. "Cannibal, suck-worm, lecher, penis-head, fungus."

The streets grew broader and the spaces more open. Alessandro let Enrico gallop, because it seemed safe that no mounted
carabinieri
would be stirring in the less populated sections of Rome. He pressured Enrico's strong sides with the heels of his boots. Though no fox or rabbit was ahead of him, Enrico elongated his strides, and horse and rider rounded a wide corner, oblivious of everything except their speed and the blue sky opening up ahead over the countryside.

Two mounted
carabinieri
riding precisely in tandem on high-spirited, chestnut-colored horses were heading toward the city. They were tall in the saddle, dressed immaculately in blue uniforms and long black boots. Their buttons gleamed, and broad white sashes crossed their chests, the slings for their cavalry swords. Both men had shiny holsters that closed upon oversized wooden pistol-handles, and their saddles were fitted with scabbards from which projected the oiled stocks and gleaming bolts of standard military rifles. They carried ammunition in neat little leather pouches that hung from their belts and saddles. Their caps had heavy insignia propped against a striking red band They even wore white gloves.

Alessandro had often wondered if, in fact, a man in a tailored dress uniform, loaded down with straps, buckles, sashes, pouches, a hat, a sword, a pistol, white gloves, a huge rifle, and, perhaps most importantly, his dignity, could really ride and fight.

He guessed, from having been a boy and from having climbed mountains, that if one were not comfortable, could not bend, or were restricted and weighted down with equipment, fighting would be most difficult.

Even if the
carabinieri
were merely symbols who rode through the streets and parks to commemorate the real work they did in
more rugged places and more rugged dress, would not their pride, training, and experience cause them to forget that they were mounted peacocks, and make them ride like hell? Washerwomen and seamstresses who worked within their closely guarded fortresses must have been ready to correct rents in their uniforms and starch them silly. Still, weighted down like that, how would they and their horses enjoy the action? He had never been able to win a race without enjoying it. Could they?

Enrico took the corner with huge strides, running almost like a cat, bending his whole body.

They ran right into the
carabinieri,
whose mounts parted and reared. You could gallop past these gentlemen at your own risk, but never, never, could you go between them. They would prefer to be shot.

Alessandro had not intended to part them or to panic their horses, but now he had five seconds in which to decide what to do.

Were he to capitulate, rein Enrico in, and swear that his horse had been stung by a hornet or frightened by a train whistle, his fine and sentence might not be unbearable. On the other hand, if he slapped Enrico's heated buttocks with the crop, bent into the wind, and raced for his freedom, he might escape embarrassment, fines, and imprisonment, he would have an answer to his question about how the
carabinieri
rode and fought, and he would be almost certain of overtaking Lia Bellati. In this case, if he were caught, the penalties would be more severe. In fact, the
carabinieri
might dismount, pull their rifles, and shoot him.

They would not do it easily. For all they knew, he was a novice on a runaway horse, a lunatic, or a retarded boy who worked in a stable. Even if they decided to bring him down, he thought, they would not stand much chance of doing it unless they were right on him with their pistols, for even in open country with a clear shot, by the time they dismounted, secured their horses, got their rifles, dropped to the ground, took aim, and fired, neither he nor Enrico, moving at high speed over an uneven track that caused them to
bob and sway, would be good targets. And not only that, he was already moving quite fast in the direction in which he wanted to go and he doubted that the handsome horses of the
carabinieri
could take a fence or dodge the trees and bushes the way Enrico could. The
carabinieri's
pouches and swords would be jangling and bouncing all over them, and Alessandro was dressed to slip through the wind. Besides, he was already elated with the chasing. How just that he should be chased. He would be not only pulled ahead, but pushed. Fear, delight, and being twenty were made for each other: he whipped Enrico's flanks and bent forward. Enrico, who was never whipped and who was very intelligent, received the message and ignited like a rocket.