A Soldier of the Great War (3 page)

The driver pressed hard on the brakes. Alessandro flew headlong into the windshield but was cushioned by his briefcase and his arms, and was able to stay in balance. The boy swung around and slammed against the streetcar in the fashion of a flexible whip, but he hung on.

When the door was opened, both Alessandro and the boy thought that they had won, but when the driver got up, they saw that he was a giant. Alessandro bent his head to look at him. "I didn't realize how..." he started to say. Then he looked at the driver's seat and saw that it had been lowered all the way to the floor.

As the driver descended, the boy backed away from the door. "If you touch this vehicle again...!" the driver said before he became voiceless with rage.

Alessandro walked down the steps and hopped to the ground. "If you don't let him ride, I won't ride either. I'm an old man. It might cost you your job."

"Crap on my job," the driver said, leaping back into the car. "I always wanted to be a jockey." He closed the door, and the streetcar started up suddenly and began to pull away.

Alessandro was shocked to see the construction worker in the newspaper hat pressed up against the window behind which he himself, only a few minutes before, had been resting. The construction worker lifted his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. Then he changed his mind and rushed to the front, but whatever he did or said there, the car did not stop, and the faces of the truck drivers, the sweeper women, and the Danes looked back at the old man and the boy, like expressionless moons.

"Seventy kilometers to Monte Prato," Alessandro said under his breath as the streetcar disappeared down the long straight road.

"In a few hours the other car will pass on its way back to Rome," the boy declared, still breathing hard from his run. "Maybe less than that."

"I just came from Rome," the old man said. "What good would it do me to go back? I'm going to Monte Prato. And you?"

"To Sant' Angelo, ten kilometers before Monte Prato."

"I'm aware of that."

"To my sister. She lives in the convent there."

"She's a nun?"

"No. She washes for them. They're very clean, but they can't do it all themselves."

Alessandro looked back and saw that, in leaving most of the city behind, the road had become beautiful. To right and left were fields now golden in the declining sun, and the tall trees on either side sparkled and swayed as the wind rushed through them. "I'll tell you what," he proposed. "I'll go with you as far as Sant' Angelo, and then continue on my own to Monte Prato."

"I don't know if they'll give the two of us a ride," the boy replied. "There isn't any traffic anyway. There hardly ever is, on this road, and not today, not on a saint's day."

"Do you think I would stand on the road and beg for a ride?" Alessandro asked indignantly.

"I'll do it for you."

"No you won't. I've had legs for seventy-four years, and I know how to use them. In addition," he said, rapping his cane on the surface of the road, "I have this. It helps. It's as long as a rhinoceros's penis, and twice as stiff."

"But you can't walk seventy kilometers. Even I can't," the boy said.

"What's your name?"

"Nicolò."

"Nicolò, I once walked several hundred kilometers over glaciers and snowfields, with no rest, and if I had been discovered I would have been shot."

"That was in the war?"

"Of course it was in the war. I'm going to Monte Prato," Alessandro declared, cinching up his belt, straightening his jacket, and patting down his mustache. "If you like, I'll accompany you as far as Sant' Angelo."

"By the time I get there, if I walk," Nicolò said, "I'll have to turn around and go back."

"Would you let a little thing like that stop you?" Alessandro asked.

Contemplating the old lion in front of him, Nicolò said nothing.

"Well, would you?" Alessandro demanded, his face so tense and peculiar that Nicolò was frightened.

"No, of course not," the boy said. "Why would I?"

 

"
THE FIRST
thing you have to do," Alessandro told him, "is take inventory and make a plan."

"What inventory, what plan?" Nicolò asked dismissively. "We have nothing and we're going to Sant' Angelo."

The old man was silent. They walked about a hundred steps.

"What do you mean, inventory?" Nicolò wanted to know. When he received no answer, he looked straight ahead and decided that if the old man chose not to talk, he wouldn't talk either. That lasted, as Alessandro knew it would, for no more than ten steps.

"I thought inventory was what they did in a store."

"It is what they do in a store."

"Where's the store?" Nicolò asked.

"Merchants take inventory," Alessandro stated, "so that, knowing what they have, they can plan ahead. We can do the same. We can think in our brains of what we have, and what obstacles are in front of us to be overcome."

"What for?"

"Anticipation is the heart of wisdom. If you are going to cross a desert, you anticipate that you will be thirsty, and you take water."

"But this is the road to Monte Prato, and there are towns along the way. We don't need water."

"Did you ever walk seventy kilometers?"

"No."

"It may be difficult for you. It will be very difficult for me. I'm somewhat older than you, and, as you can see, I'm half lame. If I'm
to succeed, it will be by a narrow margin, and, therefore, I must court precision. It's always been that way for me. What do you have with you?"

"I don't have anything."

"You have no food?"

"Food?" The boy jumped in the air and whirled around, turning a full circle to show that he wasn't concealing anything. "I don't carry around food. Do you?" he asked.

The old man went to one side of the road and sat on a rock. "Yes," he answered, opening his briefcase. "Bread, and a half kilo each of prosciutto, dried fruit, and semi-sweet chocolate. We'll need a lot of water. It's hot."

"In the towns," Nicolò volunteered.

"Only a few towns line the route, but between them are springs. As soon as it gets hilly, you'll see, we'll have plenty of water."

"We don't need food. When we get to a village, we can eat there."

"The next village is fifteen kilometers away," the old man said, "and I walk slowly. When we arrive the stars will be halfway across the sky and every window will be shut tight. Though we won't be able to eat in the towns, this food will see us through. You'd be surprised at how much you burn up on a march."

"Where will we sleep?" Nicolò asked.

"Sleep?" Alessandro repeated, with one bushy white eyebrow riding so far above the other that it looked for a moment as if he had been in an automobile accident and had not quite recovered.

"Aren't we going to sleep at night?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"On a march of seventy kilometers you don't need to sleep."

"Yes, you don't
need
to sleep," the boy said, "but why not sleep? Who says you shouldn't?"

"If you slept you wouldn't be properly intent. You'd be swept away by dreams, and miss the waking dreams. And you would insult the road."

"I don't understand."

"Look," Alessandro said, grabbing Nicolò's wrist. "If I decide that I'm going to Monte Prato, seventy kilometers or not, I go to Monte Prato. You don't do things by halves. If you love a woman, you love her entirely. You give everything. You don't spend your time in cafes; you don't make love to other women; you don't take her for granted. Do you understand?"

Nicolò shook his head back and forth to express that he did not. He expected that the old man might be more than he could handle and was perhaps an escapee from an asylum, or, worse, someone who had contrived to avoid asylums altogether.

"God gives gifts to all creatures," Alessandro continued, "no matter what their station or condition. He may give innocence to a lunatic, or heaven to a thief. Contrary to most theologians, I have always believed that even worms and weasels have souls, and that even they are capable of salvation.

"But one thing God does not give, something that must be earned, something that a lazy man can never know. Call it understanding, grace, the elevation of the spirit—call it what you will. It comes only of work, sacrifice, and suffering.

"You must give everything you have. You must love unto exhaustion, work unto exhaustion, and walk unto exhaustion.

"If I want to go to Monte Prato, I go to Monte Prato. I don't hang around like an ass with half a dozen trunks who has gone to take the waters at Montecatini. People like that continually expose their souls to mortal danger in imagining that they are free of it, when, indeed, the only mortal danger for the spirit is to remain too long without it. The world is made of fire."

Alessandro's homily was a success, and Nicolò was beginning to get fiery himself. Swept up remarkably fast in a storm of passion and dreams, within a minute or two he had decided his fate and declared that he would go to Sant' Angelo, to Monte Prato, twice the distance, three times the distance, without rest, driving himself until he came close to death. His face, with its dark, lateral,
wolflike eyes, a crooked mouth, and a sharp and substantial nose, was tight with resolution.

Alessandro released his grip and held up one finger. "Of course," he said, "you must always rest." A cloud swept across the boy's face as he was knocked from his reverie. "There are times for sleep, for inactivity, dreaming, indiscipline, even lethargy. You'll know when you deserve these times. They come after you've been broken. I'm speaking of a helpless, tranquil state before the great excitement of dawn."

"Dawn..." Nicolò repeated, confused.

"Yes," said Alessandro, "dawn. Tell me, what kind of feet do you have."

"My feet?"

"Yes, your feet, the ones that are attached to your legs."

"I have human feet, Signore."

"Of course, but two kinds of feet exist. Every army knows this but won't admit it for fear of losing recruits.

"You may be tall, handsome, intelligent, graceful, and gifted, but if you have feet of despair you might just as well be a dwarf who shines shoes on the Via del Corso. Feet of despair are too tender, and can't fight back. Under prolonged assault they come apart. They bleed to death. They become infected and swollen in half an hour. I have seen men remove from their boots, after less than a day's march, feet that are nothing more than bloody sponges, soft shapeless things that look like skinned animals.

"On the other hand, if I may, are the feet of invincibility. In extreme cases such as those of South American mountain peasants it may appear that a man is wearing an old torn-up muddy pair of boots, when actually he is barefooted. Feet of invincibility are ugly, but they don't suffer, and they last forever—building defenses where they are attacked, turning color, reproportioning and repositioning themselves until they look like bulldogs. They do everything but bleed and feel pain.

"During your first days in the army you realize that despite all
other differences mankind is divided into two classes. Well, what kind of feet do you have?"

"I don't know, Signore."

"Take off your shoes."

Nicolò sat on the ground and unlaced his shoes. When they and his socks were strewn on the stones beside him, he rolled onto his back and put his legs up into the air so that Alessandro could inspect his feet.

The old man first looked at the soles. Then he felt under the heel. He glanced at the toes. "Your feet are repugnant, objectionable, and invincible. Put your shoes back on."

"And what about your feet, Signore? Are they invincible?"

"Need you ask?"

Nicolò had not needed to ask, for he had observed that Alessandro had scars even on his palms.

Then Alessandro took inventory of his briefcase. The first objects did not please Nicolò entirely, for they were a set of webbing straps that attached to the case so that it could be carried like a knapsack. "Take it," Alessandro said matter-of-factly, "until Sant' Angelo. You're young." Next to emerge was a pocket knife, very sharp and very old, with a flint in the handle. "The flint pulls out, you see," Alessandro said, "and if you strike it against the top of the blade, you get a spark. When we rest, we may need a fire to keep us warm."

"In August?"

"The higher you go, the colder it gets, even in August."

After the packets of food came a map. Having the appropriate map at hand, Alessandro explained, was an obsession that he had had for a long time. He liked to know where he was in the world and what was around him. A map, he stated, was for him what a Bible was for a priest, a book for an intellectual, and so forth.

They discovered on their map, among mountains, rivers, empty plains, and settlements too small to have their names shown, four beacon-like towns strung along the road. Alessandro
knew that at night these towns would sparkle and shine. Just their few lights in the slate-blue darkness would have, in their simplicity and purity, more of what made up light itself than the accumulated phosphorescence of whole ranks of great cities.

He indicated on the map that, here, if they were hungry or had not already eaten, they would halt for dinner. Here they would be able to see Rome far behind them, lower, and seething with lights. Here they would see no villages, Rome would be obscured, and they would have only stars—because the moon would rise that night, Alessandro said, late, but when the moon did rise it would be perfectly full. Here they would go off the road and traverse a set of rounded peaks that overlooked Sant' Angelo and, farther beyond, Monte Prato.

Alessandro said that they would walk through the night, the next day, the whole of another night, and the early part of the next morning. The weather would be good and the full moon would be their lantern.

Already Sant' Angelo and Monte Prato had become far more than just mountain villages on the line of the motorized trolley. They seemed far away, beautiful, and high. Before reaching them, Alessandro Giuliani and Nicolò would have much walking to do, and would have to pass through the towns of Acereto, Lanciata, and perhaps five or six others with beautiful names, equidistant over civilizing fields and groves of trees waving against the perfectly blue sky. At the start of their long walk, the road was deserted, and, perhaps because the world was silent, they were too.