Vagabond Street

…and then one day we were demobilised.

We didn’t throw our caps into the air nor did we rush to get rid of our uniforms.

“So we won???!!!”

And we sat down in the tavern.

Later we each received a letter: on a certain day at a certain time at a certain port. Destination Cyprus.

“So! Cyprus still exists? We’d better go, then, my muleteer pals… We’ll get some hand-outs there…”

We changed our underwear, licked our boots and set off. We stacked our kitbags in the hold.

“They’re heavy, mates,” the deckhand commented.

“They’re full of boots…”

“Of course!”

We had a few hours. We piled once more into the tavern.

“We had a good time, didn’t we?!”

“When?”

“All these years…”

“Oh yes! If this war hadn’t happened, would we have ever ventured out from the ‘Sweet Land’…?”

“We’ll have stories to tell!”

“Have I told you about Giovanna?”

“Twenty times!”

“Let’s make it twenty-one.”

Before beginning he drained his glass. So did we. “Slurping” and “smacking” etc were anathema while he was talking.

“It was at night they began the bombing. And those damned bombs were the only things I was afraid of during my five years of being a hero!”

“Humph!” said my neighbour scornfully. “Bullshit! There’s only one thing I consider depressing. Death blindfold, at random. Not bombs, not mines, not bedbugs. Not to know which bastards you’re firing at, who is firing at you. That! At fucking random. Why are you looking at me like that, bums?”

“It wasn’t your turn.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Pardon me! Back to the bombs!”

But the first guy had taken it to heart. He didn’t want to continue. We had to move heaven and earth to persuade him.

“Come on, mate! Are you going to leave us in suspense?”

“Are we going to be gloomy on our last day?”

“Come on, have another drink… OK now?”

He emptied his glass as the rest of us tried to hide our amusement.

And at last he began.

“It happened to me when one damned bomb exploded next to the embankment. Forget that the mule farted too… Tonight, I say, you’re not going to escape mate! I was all alone in the pitch-black dark. I crawled into my skin. Then a hand suddenly gripped me… “Are you the new one?” They’ve brought him out very young. He’ll get used to it. If only he wasn’t so sweaty… “You’re soaking me, bastard,” I say. In a while, when the “All Clear” sounded and the lights came on, he was still there, gripping me! “Let go of me,” I say and turn round. He wasn’t there… It was a just hand attached to an arm cut off at the elbow. When I told the others what had happened, they split their sides with laughing… We looked for the owner. A needle in a haystack. One of our men from another platoon told me that they had found an identity disc and a wedding ring on the ground. We put them on the hand and buried it in a grassy spot…”

He paused for a moment and then went on:

“From then on, as soon as I heard a siren I pissed myself, so to speak. But I was lucky and I told Giovanna about my problem. I met her in Genoa, in the convalescent home. She was short and plump, full of freckles. You could sleep with her for a full mess-can. She stuffed herself and swore like a navvy. Especially when sober. When drunk, she was a sweetie. At any rate, she took to me, stood by me. When I told her about my fear she said, “There’s only one cure, my boy. Bring me your tins of food as soon as the sirens sound …” I tried it and it worked. Parole! At the next alert, I ran to her little room, undressed her and buried myself between her legs. I was shaking all over. My mouth was poison and my ears were buzzing … I wanted to throw up and begged a shell to fall on my head, to be done with it… Then Giovanna buried her hand in my clothes and began caressing me … I became a hedgehog … Yes, a bit more …my eyes went dark, I curled up, my teeth were an orchestra … I wanted to bury myself completely inside her, to make her feel pain. But Giovanna kept stroking my hair, like a mother! She smiled. And called me her baby. The bombs began falling again, coloured her white breasts, flashed in her eyes which were watching the light bulb spinning round, the shutters falling apart … From that evening, any way, I lost my fear! It was all over! Parole! She was a wonderful woman. I never felt such sweetness with any of the other women I slept with. I don’t know, perhaps because I got used to different things, bombs and suchlike. Right up to now, whenever I go with a woman, I have a lot of difficulty doing it. I don’t know why, but I can’t.”

And he fell into deep thought.

“Patience… In the next war you’ll be all right again…”

Then a third took over. He rarely talked.

“I bet you won’t believe what happened to me. How long have we been here? During all this time my mind has been fixed on my old mother’s mouth. As she was saying goodbye outside in the road under the street lamp, I noticed her lips. They were trembling in a way… I’d never seen such a thing, as if something inside was jogging them. There was down on them too, thickish.”

“From sorrow?”

“Maybe… The poor old girl. It’s two years now.”

“Two? Five whole years, sixty months.”

“I meant something else.”

The other one understood and shut up. He stubbed out hi