A farewell to arms
Piani laid his head down, wiped at his face, with a piece of the
emergency dressing, then let it alone.
“The ——,” he said.
“They weren’t Germans,” I said. “There can’t be any Germans over there.”
“Italians,” Piani said, using the word as an epithet, “Italiani!”
Bonello said nothing. He was sitting beside Aymo, not looking at him.
Piani picked up Aymo’s cap where it had rolled down the embankment and
put it over his face. He took out his canteen.
“Do you want a drink?” Piani handed Bonello the canteen.
“No,” Bonello said. He turned to me. “That might have happened to us any
time on the railway tracks.”
“No,” I said. “It was because we started across the field.”
Bonello shook his head. “Aymo’s dead,” he said. “Who’s dead next,
Tenente? Where do we go now?”
“Those were Italians that shot,” I said. “They weren’t Germans.”
“I suppose if they were Germans they’d have killed all of us,” Bonello
said.
“We are in more danger from Italians than Germans,” I said. “The rear
guard are afraid of everything. The Germans know what they’re after.”
“You reason it out, Tenente,” Bonello said.
“Where do we go now?” Piani asked.
“We better lie up some place till it’s dark. If we could get south we’d
be all right.”
“They’d have to shoot us all to prove they were right the first time,”
Bonello said. “I’m not going to try them.”
“We’ll find a place to lie up as near to Udine as we can get and then go
through when it’s dark.”
“Let’s go then,” Bonello said. We went down the north side of the
embankment. I looked back. Aymo lay in the mud with the angle of the
embankment. He was quite small and his arms were by his side, his
puttee-wrapped legs and muddy boots together, his cap over his face. He
looked very dead. It was raining. I had liked him as well as any one I
ever knew. I had his papers in my pocket and would write to his family.
Ahead across the fields was a farmhouse. There were trees around it and
the farm buildings were built against the house. There was a balcony
along the second floor held up by columns.
“We better keep a little way apart,” I said. “I’ll go ahead.” I started
toward the farmhouse. There was a path across the field.
Crossing the field, I did not know but that some one would fire on us
from the trees near the farmhouse or from the farmhouse itself. I walked
toward it, seeing it very clearly. The balcony of the second floor
merged into the barn and there was hay coming out between the columns.
The courtyard was of stone blocks and all the trees were dripping with
the rain. There was a big empty two-wheeled cart, the shafts tipped high
up in the rain. I came to the courtyard, crossed it, and stood under the
shelter of the balcony. The door of the house was open and I went in.
Bonello and Piani came in after me. It was dark inside. I went back to
the kitchen. There were ashes of a fire on the big open hearth. The pots
hung over the ashes, but they were empty. I looked around but I could
not find anything to eat.
“We ought to lie up in the barn,” I said. “Do you think you could find
anything to eat, Piani, and bring it up there?”
“I’ll look,” Piani said.
“I’ll look too,” Bonello said.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go up and look at the barn.” I found a stone
stairway that went up from the stable underneath. The stable smelt dry
and pleasant in the rain. The cattle were all gone, probably driven off
when they left. The barn was half full of hay. There were two windows in
the roof, one was blocked with boards, the other was a narrow dormer
window on the north side. There was a chute so that hay might be pitched
down to the cattle. Beams crossed the opening down into the main floor
where the hay-carts drove in when the hay was hauled in to be pitched
up. I heard the rain on the roof and smelled the hay and, when I went
down, the clean smell of dried dung in the stable. We could pry a board
loose and see out of the south window down into the courtyard. The other
window looked out on the field toward the north. We could get out of
either window onto the roof and down, or go down the hay chute if the
stairs were impractical. It was a big barn and we could hide in the hay
if we heard any one. It seemed like a good place. I was sure we could
have gotten through to the south if they had not fired on us. It was
impossible that there were Germans there. They were coming from the
north and down the road from Cividale. They could not have come through
from the south. The Italians were even more dangerous. They were
frightened and firing on anything they saw. Last night on the retreat we
had heard that there had been many Germans in Italian uniforms mixing
with the retreat in the north. I did not believe it. That was one of
those things you always heard in the war. It was one of the things the
enemy always did to you. You did not know any one who went over in
German uniform to confuse them. Maybe they did but it sounded difficult.
I did not believe the Germans did it. I did not believe they had to.
There was no need to confuse our retreat. The size of the army and the
fewness of the roads did that. Nobody gave any orders, let alone
Germans. Still, they would shoot us for Germans. They shot Aymo. The hay
smelled good and lying in a barn in the hay took away all the years in
between. We had lain in hay and talked and shot sparrows with an
air-rifle when they perched in the triangle cut high up in the wall of
the barn. The barn was gone now and one year they had cut the hemlock
woods and there were only stumps, dried tree-tops, branches and fireweed
where the woods had been. You could not go back. If you did not go
forward what happened? You never got back to Milan. And if you got back
to Milan what happened? I listened to the firing to the north toward
Udine. I could hear machine-gun firing. There was no shelling. That was
something. They must have gotten some troops along the road. I looked
down in the half-light of the hay-barn and saw Piani standing on the
hauling floor. He had a long sausage, a jar of something and two bottles
of wine under his arm.
“Come up,” I said. “There is the ladder.” Then I realized that I should
help him with the things and went down. I was vague in the head from
lying in the hay. I had been nearly asleep.
“Where’s Bonello?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you,” Piani said. We went up the ladder. Up on the hay we set
the things down. Piani took out his knife with the corkscrew and drew
the cork on a wine bottle.
“They have sealing-wax on it,” he said. “It must be good.” He smiled.
“Where’s Bonello?” I asked.
Piani looked at me.
“He went away, Tenente,” he said. “He wanted to be a prisoner.”
I did not say anything.
“He was afraid we would get killed.”
I held the bottle of wine and did not say anything.
“You see we don’t believe in the war anyway, Tenente.”
“Why didn’t you go?” I asked.
“I did not want to leave you.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know, Tenente. He went away.”
“All right,” I said. “Will you cut the sausage?”
Piani looked at me in the half-light.
“I cut it while we were talking,” he said. We sat in the hay and ate the
sausage and drank the wine. It must have been wine they had saved for a
wedding. It was so old that it was losing its color.
“You look out of this window, Luigi,” I said. “I’ll go look out the
other window.”
We had each been drinking out of one of the bottles and I took my bottle
with me and went over and lay flat on the hay and looked out the narrow
window at the wet country. I do not know what I expected to see but I
did not see anything except the fields and the bare mulberry trees and
the rain falling. I drank the wine and it did not make me feel good.
They had kept it too long and it had gone to pieces and lost its quality
and color. I watched it get dark outside; the darkness came very
quickly. It would be a black night with the rain. When it was dark there
was no use watching any more, so I went over to Piani. He was lying
asleep and I did not wake him but sat down beside him for a while. He
was a big man and he slept heavily. After a while I woke him and we
started.
That was a very strange night. I do not know what I had expected, death
perhaps and shooting in the dark and running, but nothing happened. We
waited, lying flat beyond the ditch along the main road while a German
battalion passed, then when they were gone we crossed the road and went
on to the north. We were very close to Germans twice in the rain but
they did not see us. We got past the town to the north without seeing
any Italians, then after a while came on the main channels of the
retreat and walked all night toward the Tagliamento. I had not realized
how gigantic the retreat was. The whole country was moving, as well as
the army. We walked all night, making better time than the vehicles. My
leg ached and I was tired but we made good time. It seemed so silly for
Bonello to have decided to be taken prisoner. There was no danger. We
had walked through two armies without incident. If Aymo had not been
killed there would never have seemed to be any danger. No one had
bothered us when we were in plain sight along the railway. The killing
came suddenly and unreasonably. I wondered where Bonello was.
“How do you feel, Tenente?” Piani asked. We were going along the side of
a road crowded with vehicles and troops.
“Fine.”
“I’m tired of this walking.”
“Well, all we have to do is walk now. We don’t have to worry.”
“Bonello was a fool.”
“He was a fool all right.”
“What will you do about him, Tenente?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can’t you just put him down as taken prisoner?”
“I don’t know.”
“You see if the war went on they would make bad trouble for his family.”
“The war won’t go on,” a soldier said. “We’re going home. The war is
over.”
“Everybody’s going home.”
“We’re all going home.”
“Come on, Tenente,” Piani said. He wanted to get past them.
“Tenente? Who’s a Tenente? _A basso gli ufficiali!_ Down with the
officers!”
Piani took me by the arm. “I better call you by your name,” he said.
“They might try and make trouble. They’ve shot some officers.” We worked
up past them.
“I won’t make a report that will make trouble for his family.” I went on
with our conversation.
“If the war is over it makes no difference,” Piani said. “But I don’t
believe it’s over. It’s too good that it should be over.”
“We’ll know pretty soon,” I said.
“I don’t believe it’s over. They all think it’s over but I don’t believe
it.”
“_Viva la Pace!_” a soldier shouted out. “We’re going home!”
“It would be fine if we all went home,” Piani said. “Wouldn’t you like
to go home?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll never go. I don’t think it’s over.”
“_Andiamo a casa!_” a soldier shouted.
“They throw away their rifles,” Piani said. “They take them off and drop
them down while they’re marching. Then they shout.”
“They ought to keep their rifles.”
“They think if they throw away their rifles they can’t make them fight.”
In the dark and the rain, making our way along the side of the road I
could see that many of the troops still had their rifles. They stuck up
above the capes.
“What brigade are you?” an officer called out.
“_Brigata di Pace_,” some one shouted. “Peace Brigade!” The officer said
nothing.
“What does he say? What does the officer say?”
“Down with the officer. _Viva la Pace!_”
“Come on,” Piani said. We passed two British ambulances, abandoned in
the block of vehicles.
“They’re from Gorizia,” Piani said. “I know the cars.”
“They got further than we did.”
“They started earlier.”
“I wonder where the drivers are?”
“Up ahead probably.”
“The Germans have stopped outside Udine,” I said. “These people will all
get across the river.”