"It is nothing of great importance—nothing you will find in the least taxing, my dear Frugoni," he began heartily. "You are simply one among a number of veterans I am consulting for your wartime recollections, you see—for a work of history a colleague of mine is undertaking."
Frugoni's expression sagged with disappointment.
"It will be a scholarly work—a work of reference primarily, so I fear there will be little profit in it for anyone—" Boselli nodded regretfully "—but remembering that you had served with the General in the mountains I knew I could rely on your strong sense of patriotism—" Frugoni looked as if he was about to burst into tears; it was time to dust the pill with a trace of sugar "—and naturally your name would be mentioned in the acknowledgements in addition to the modest honorarium we are making to some contributors."
"Honorari—?" Frugoni abandoned the attempt.
"Payment," said Boselli briskly. "Small, of course. More a dummy2
gesture than a payment. But in deserving cases like yourself we do the best we can ... if the information supplied is of use, of course."
"Of use?"
"Of interest. I'm sure you saw a great deal of action when you were in the mountains immediately after the Armistice of 1943."
"When we threw in the sponge, you mean?" Frugoni gave a short, bitter laugh. "Jesus Christ! You can say that again—
more than I wanted to, that's how much action I saw. But I wasn't in the mountains, Signor Boselli, not at first, anyway."
"Indeed?" Boselli wasn't interested in anything Frugoni had done before he reached the mountains, but it wouldn't do to seem too eager to reveal that fact.
"No—we were in billets just outside Salerno—good billets, too. Then the bloody Germans turfed us out—turfed us all out, and disarmed us too. Shot two of the officers right in front of our billet when they wouldn't play ball, they did—
they knew what was in the wind right enough, the Germans did. What they called Panzer grenadiers— trigger-happy sods, they were. We reckoned afterwards that someone had told 'em the Yanks and the English were going to land there—
which they did, of course. . . ."
"But you stayed and fought?"
"Without our guns?" Frugoni started to laugh again, and then stopped as though he had remembered the more heroic dummy2
role he had to sustain now. "No—'cause we wanted to, but without our guns, see, an' with the place crawling with German tanks—well, this mate of mine and me thought we'd have more chance up Naples way—"
More chance of getting home, more likely. In a word, Frugoni had deserted at the first opportunity.
"More chance of resisting the enemy?"
"That's right, sir. But when we got to Naples things were real bad there, I can tell you—they'd been fighting the Germans in the streets there, the people had. Even the little kids—they're bloodthirsty— and everywhere they'd blocked the streets with trams and lorries so the Germans were shooting everyone on sight, practically." He shook his head unbelievingly at the memory. "The main roads were jammed with supply columns heading south—there was no chance of gettin' through 'em—gettin' through to join up with some proper unit, I mean."
Frugoni had jumped out of the frying pan into a very hot fire: he had escaped formal captivity with his regiment only to find himself in the midst of a popular insurrection. Even Boselli could remember the tales of Neapolitan carnage which percolated northwards as the enraged inhabitants of that dangerous city had turned on the Germans with medieval fury . . . tales of stranded tank crews parboiled and houses full of women and children put to the torch. It had been from such horrors that men like George Ruelle had risen.
dummy2
"So you headed for the hills?"
"It was the only thing to do, seein' as how things were, you see
—"
"And met the General."
"Yes." For one second Frugoni failed to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "That was a bit of—luck—for us, of course."
Of course! Twice the wretched man had fled from his duty, though each time in circumstances which would have daunted better men and for which Boselli could not in his heart wholly blame him. And all in order to fall into the clutches of the one man who would make very sure that he had no third opportunity of escaping! Fate had surely played a cat-and-mouse game with Private Frugoni.
"Number One on the Breda, I was for the General, Signor Boselli, sir." All the whine and pretence had gone from the voice now; this at least was genuine. "An' that's a rotten bad gun, too—the Breda 30—a proper swine to clean, with that oil pump in it. An' it's got no carrying handle, either: I'd like to make the silly fucker that designed it carry it up the mountainsides that I had to, carrying it like a bleedin' baby
—"
"That would be a responsible job, I'm sure," Boselli cut through the old soldier's complaint. "The General must have trusted you, then."
"The General. . . ." The memory half strangled the words and then re-injected the old mendacious note. "A major, 'e was dummy2
then, major in the Bersaglieri—'e made us jump, Christ 'e did, an' no mistake. We blocked the road from Campobasso for nearly a week—took a regiment of their Alpine troops, what they call Jaegers, to shift us. An' they wouldn't have done it then if the bastard hadn't let us down."
It was odd, but under the hate which lay like a half-hidden substratum beneath the pretence of soldierly pride there was a thin vein of genuine admiration. It was probably true that—
The bastard?
That was the word which had been lodged in his mind like a tiny thorn under the skin: the General had used it yesterday—
had used it twice in one short space of time. And yet under ordinary circumstances his language was always notably free of such words—beyond an occasional "for the love of God" in moments of exceptional stress the General's vocabulary was as disciplined as a priest's.
Boselli's own mind had been fully extended at the time, yet those two "bastards" had pricked nevertheless; and more, there had been something curious about the sound of them—
the emphasis had been too evenly distributed, just as it had been in Frugoni's tone: too even and lacking in vehemence. . . .
And then he had it: it had quite simply been a name and not an epithet-not "the bastard" but more precisely "The Bastard"!
He examined his fingernails. "You mean Ruelle?" he said dummy2
casually.
"Ah—I guess you've heard a thing or two about The Bastard, eh?" Frugoni leered at him. "You'll 'ave to be careful puttin'
'im in your book alongside of the General, you will—'e won't like that, I can tell you, not at all. Come to that, The Bastard won't neither, if the swine's still around. There wasn't no love lost between them two, there wasn't."
"Yes, so I've heard," murmured Boselli, stifling the rising sense of excitement he felt at so easily getting to the one question he had feared to ask directly.
"I could tell you a thing or two about them," Frugoni confided maliciously. "I bet you ain't 'eard the 'alf of it, not the 'alf of it!"
"I expect I've heard it all before, my dear fellow," said Boselli, controlling the level of disinterest in his voice with scientific exactness. "But do go on all the same."
It was going to be a good day after all.
VI
COMING OUT OF the midday sunlight into the cafe's shadow, for a moment he could see very little. Then, as he peered round the supporting trellis-work of the vine-covered roof, his gaze was directed by the admiring eyes of two young girls towards the corner in which Armando Villari had arranged himself.
dummy2
Not that their admiration was going to do them any good.
They weren't in the Clotheshorse's income group for one thing, and the Clotheshorse was on duty anyway (although that was probably the least important consideration). But above all the swine was far too busy admiring his own profile in the mirror on his left—Boselli didn't know which offended his sense of decency the more, the girls' sickening bitch-on-heat look or Villari's narcissism. Almost it made him want to quit the job cold, except that the General's parting words and his own recent discoveries made the situation painfully clear: he had to work with Villari or risk not working at all, and for a man with hungry relatives and no cushion of private savings that was no choice.