Naples '44 (21 page)

He related an anecdote of the extermination of the last of the nineteenth-century brigands in a small town nearby. They were surrounded in a house, and the police couldn't get them out. Every time they tried to break in someone was shot. In the end the priest was called
in to act as a go-between. He got the police to agree that if the brigands surrendered, there would be no more bloodshed. The brigands gave in, and it was decided to kill them all the same, but as the police captain was not prepared to break his word about shedding blood, they were smothered one by one in a bed.

Peters, the MP sergeant, had a lucky escape in an encounter with the bandits on the Nola road only a mile out of town. They tossed a grenade into his jeep, but this fortunately fell in the space behind the back seat, and the seat's metal back protected him from the blast and the fragments. He came out of it with only a damaged eardrum.

Conference to decide what is to be done. The Town Major, a pure cypher, suggested appeal to the nearest infantry unit for loan of a company. The first objection was we'd never get one, and the second, that they'd be useless in this situation if we did. The bandits have their own intelligence system and as soon as any body of soldiers moved in their direction they'd simply pull back into the hills. Peters turned out to be a marvellous old regimental sweat with a Palestinian campaign-ribbon, white-Blancoed to the eyes, and as expressionless as a trained butler. Said that the bandits, who were now fully motorised, were driving an ex-German army lorry.

Decision: to wait for the arrival of the FS sections, and then perhaps take action.

The news is that Benevento is now officially suffering from two epidemics: smallpox and typhoid. Ninety cases of typhoid have been reported, but there are no figures for smallpox. Nor are there any figures for the cases of typhus – from which there have been a number of deaths – including that of the Carabinieri captain who was the Marshal's predecessor. In speaking of this some days ago, the Marshal mentioned with perhaps a touch of relish that this officer was from Rome. ‘These Roman gentlemen don't seem to take root down here,' he
said. ‘They arrive so full of energy and enthusiasm, but they can't get used to the conditions. They take pills all the time and cover themselves with all sorts of powder, but they go out like candles.' Having said this, I felt his speculative gaze fall on me. ‘To be able to put up with a place like this,' the Marshal said, ‘your blood has to be like mine – too strong for the mosquitoes, fleas and lice.'

For myself the chief worry was the possibility of another bout of malaria. I took double doses of mepacrine – which was slowly turning my skin and the whites of my eyes yellow – slept under a mosquito net, and rubbed stinking mosquito repellent into all the exposed parts of my skin, but I got bitten all the same. People accept malaria as a matter of course in this town.

Here, to all intents and purposes, we were living in the Middle Ages. Only the buildings had changed – and most of these were in ruins. Epidemics, robbers, funerals followed by shrieking women, deformed and mutilated beggars, legless cripples dragging themselves about on wheeled platforms – even raving lunatics they'd no room for in the asylum. People walked the streets with handkerchiefs pressed over their mouths and noses as they probably did in the days of the plagues of old. This morning I actually found myself in a little square tucked away among the ruins where women were dancing to drive the sickness away.

Went to the Hotel Vesuvio for lunch where one of Don Ubaldo's friends arrived with the news that he has been taken ill. He had a prescription for medicine urgently required, but – although one can buy every kind of fancy cake or sweet in Benevento – there is no medicine. Could I help in any way?

I was due to go into Naples with my weekly report, so I left immediately in the Bianchi, covering the distance, including all the detours where the bridges were down, in a couple of hours, and took the prescription to my contact in the pharmaceutical world. There was no problem. My friend had every drug known to modern medicine, and I knew where his abundant supplies had come from. While waiting for the prescription
to be made up I wandered round the counter to inspect the activities of a small boy who was busily soaking off English labels before sticking on Italian ones. It was no business of mine to interfere, and it would have made no difference had I done so. All I should have done was lose a friend, and Don Ubaldo's medicine into the bargain. I am gradually becoming drawn into the system!

Back to Benevento where I delivered the medicine for Don Ubaldo, who now appeared to be gravely ill, though I was not told with what. Saw a funeral with a professional mourner who tore at her cheeks with her fingernails, and drew blood. Also an Italian sanitary team chasing peasants to spray them with anti-typhus powder. The peasants did not know what was happening to them, and some were hooting with fear.

This afternoon the promised Canadians arrived in two splendid Dodge lorries, and proved to be the wildest of real-life gun-slinging cowboys, straight from the prairies. They have everything that any soldier can possibly want: an assortment of guns, hip-flasks, poker-dice, signed photos of Rita Hayworth, pocketfuls of french letters and occupation money. One sergeant has a diamond as big as my thumbnail taken in exchange for the bundles of thousand-lire notes acquired somewhere along the line. The diamond, he explained, is wealth in its most portable form. There are twelve Canadians: two captains, two sergeant-majors and eight sergeants, and the atmosphere is democratic. Nobody salutes anybody and the captains are called by their first names. On hearing of the possibility of a clash with bandits there were whoops of enthusiasm. The enthusiasm flagged this evening over the pre-dinner drinks when one of them spotted a guest of the Vesuvio sitting quietly in his corner being sick into a bag and was told that the man might be in the first stages of a highly infectious and usually fatal sickness. They have a wholly American and New World terror of poor hygiene, and are appalled by the dirtiness of Italy, a prejudice which did not prevent two of them from making their arrangements for tonight with the maid-of-all-work, whose general appearance is unhealthy to say the least.

A single night in the stifling communal dormitory of the Hotel Vesuvio, under the attack of its very special breed of house mosquito, has been enough to break some Canadian spirits, and this morning the two officers, a sergeant-major and four sergeants decided to move on to Avellino where conditions were reported better. I was therefore left with the other sergeant-major and four sergeants. They are friendly and cooperative – and in spite of their amorality, hard to dislike. They have absolutely nothing whatever to do with their time, and hardly know what the war is about. As was to be expected, not one of them speaks a word of Italian. Today has been spent in getting to know the town. They give candy to every child in sight, shove all male Italians off the pavement, and make an instant sexual advance to every woman of child-bearing age they encounter. These routine approaches are endured by the girls with great dignity, and some go to the lengths of making polite and even apologetic speeches explaining just why they feel unable to agree to have sexual intercourse on the spot.

The Canadians object very much to flies, which I have learned to live with, as there is nothing that can be done about them. These flies of Benevento are constantly in search of moisture, and when one lands on a Canadian lip or eyelid and begins to suck, it usually provokes a whinny of disgust. This afternoon we saw a man lying in the street, probably at death's door, being carefully avoided by passers-by, all with their handkerchiefs pressed over their noses. Jason, the youngest, wildest and most likeable of the Canadians, suggested ringing up the hospital and having an ambulance sent, and was surprised to be told that the phones do not work, the hospital has no ambulance, that one nurse who goes home at night looks after a hundred patients, and that there is not room to cram one single patient more into the floor space between the beds.

Gloom deepened at the Vesuvio tonight at the news that Don Ubaldo is not expected to live, and that people are beginning to leave the town in panic.

The services of the maid-of-all-work having been reserved in
advance for tonight by one of her regulars, I suggested to two of the Canadians in a romantic frame of mind that they might care to see what the local brothel had to offer. They went off, but were soon back complaining that the only girl available had a glass eye.

Don Ubaldo died of typhoid this morning.

In response to urgent requests from the Canadians that we move out of town I saw the principal citizen, who was clearly delighted to perform a service he might be able to cash in on at some later date, and also, no doubt, to see the back of us. He immediately found an empty farmhouse in the village of Sagranella, up in the hills, and within a couple of hours of seeing him we had installed ourselves there. The farmhouse is vast, clean and archaic – giving the sensation of living in a cave above ground, and it has magnificent views over the bare hills which, when we arrived, glittered like copper under the midday sun. This village seems hardly to have moved out of the Bronze Age. I am told it has a fox-cult, and every year a fox is captured and burned to death, and its tail is hung, like a banner, from a pole at the village's entrance. There is an enormous Easter Island-style head in a field nearby, which spares a sardonic smile for the passer-by, and which probably dates from Samnite times – or before. It is said that the
droit du seigneur
is practised as a matter of course on the neighbouring big estate, which seems to be cultivated almost entirely by women. They leave the village to go to work just before dawn, and return shortly after dark – a sixteen-hour day. The steward is said to feel a woman's muscles before employing her.

The great and extraordinary attraction of this place is the presence of myriads of fireflies in the bushy slopes beneath us, and tonight, with the darkness, every bush carried its own soft, bluish illumination, and every leaf and branch was separately and glowingly lit up. This delighted the Canadians, who show a childlike wonderment for such new experiences. One of the few buildings of note spared by the American bombing was the Strega factory, where one can buy a bottle of amber-coloured, aromatic liqueur for the reasonable sum of 100 lire, plus one pound of
sugar. It turned out that the Canadians carried even a supply of sugar in their Dodge, so earlier in the day we had gone over to the factory and bought a dozen bottles. With these a housewarming took place at the farmhouse tonight, and the Canadians, instantly drunk on the strong, sticky liquor, stripped off their clothes and went dancing and singing out of the house and down the hillside among the bushes and the fireflies – an unearthly and even poetic sight.

The Canadians are generous and open-handed in every way. Bred in the freedom of limitless spaces, property, possessions and territorial rights of any kind seem to mean less to them than those things do to us. Anything they have is yours for the asking: their transport, their booze, or even a personally autographed picture of Rita. Unhesitatingly, and as a matter of course, a share is offered in the two dazed peasant girls picked up on one of their forays, whom they treat like pet monkeys, and feed with biscuits and scraps of bacon at odd times all through the day. They have run out of whisky, and I have some misgivings about the sweet and ensnaring Strega. This they drink by the tumblerful, even for breakfast, after which, buckling on their guns, they go staggering off in search of adventure.

To my surprise, definite occupation was found for me on my last visit to HQ: to investigate the motives of a clandestine political party operating in this area. Some sixty-five political parties have now been inscribed with our blessing and will take part in the wild democratic free-for-all to be expected when elections are held. In addition there are many unrecognised movements aspiring to lead the nation back to greatness. Most of these are freakish, like Lattarullo's Separatists who want to dress people in Roman tunics, enforce a legal minimum of ten children per family, and reintroduce serfdom in one guise or another. Some are regarded as more purposeful and sinister including the one to be investigated, called Forza Italia!, which is suspected of Neo-Fascist leanings. My contacts in Benevento dismiss it with scorn as just another maniac right-wing movement backed by the landlords and the rural Mafia, run in this case by a half-demented
latifundista
who proclaims
himself a reincarnation of Garibaldi. However, a report has been ordered, so, learning that a public meeting was to be held today in San Marco di Cavali, a hill village in the Monti del Sannio about thirty miles away, I asked the Canadians for the loan of their Dodge, and went up there, leaving at about six before any of my friends were astir, and arrived at about eight.

Political meetings in the far South are held early to avoid the worst heat, and they often provide the excuse for the organisation of an impromptu fair. In this case people who had come to hear the speeches had also taken the opportunity to bring a few sheep with them for sale, and a stall selling toys made out of plaited straw, maize-flour cakes, and tin panpipes, had been set up, and a three-man band waited to play. San Marco seemed to have been carved out of the bone of the mountain, a human corral, where the fight against misery left nothing much over for anybody in the way of a life. It was a village of shepherds with totem-pole faces, solemn and silent men born into a life hardly distinguishable from slavery. In some cases it may have been real slavery, because it was commonly said that in this and many other districts in the South young boys were secretly sold by their parents to the owners of large flocks. These taciturn men were bigger and tougher-looking than Southern Italian peasants, with whom I suspect they have little in common.