A farewell to arms
“All right. Wait till I get cleaned up.”
“Wash up and come as you are.”
I washed, brushed my hair and we started.
“Wait a minute,” Rinaldi said. “Perhaps we should have a drink.” He
opened his trunk and took out a bottle.
“Not Strega,” I said.
“No. Grappa.”
“All right.”
He poured two glasses and we touched them, first fingers extended. The
grappa was very strong.
“Another?”
“All right,” I said. We drank the second grappa, Rinaldi put away the
bottle and we went down the stairs. It was hot walking through the town
but the sun was starting to go down and it was very pleasant. The
British hospital was a big villa built by Germans before the war. Miss
Barkley was in the garden. Another nurse was with her. We saw their
white uniforms through the trees and walked toward them. Rinaldi
saluted. I saluted too but more moderately.
“How do you do?” Miss Barkley said. “You’re not an Italian, are you?”
“Oh, no.”
Rinaldi was talking with the other nurse. They were laughing.
“What an odd thing—to be in the Italian army.”
“It’s not really the army. It’s only the ambulance.”
“It’s very odd though. Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There isn’t always an explanation for
everything.”
“Oh, isn’t there? I was brought up to think there was.”
“That’s awfully nice.”
“_Do_ we have to go on and talk this way?”
“No,” I said.
“That’s a relief. Isn’t it?”
“What is the stick?” I asked. Miss Barkley was quite tall. She wore what
seemed to me to be a nurse’s uniform, was blonde and had a tawny skin
and gray eyes. I thought she was very beautiful. She was carrying a thin
rattan stick like a toy riding-crop, bound in leather.
“It belonged to a boy who was killed last year.”
“I’m awfully sorry.”
“He was a very nice boy. He was going to marry me and he was killed in
the Somme.”
“It was a ghastly show.”
“Were you there?”
“No.”
“I’ve heard about it,” she said. “There’s not really any war of that
sort down here. They sent me the little stick. His mother sent it to me.
They returned it with his things.”
“Had you been engaged long?”
“Eight years. We grew up together.”
“And why didn’t you marry?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was a fool not to. I could have given him
that anyway. But I thought it would be bad for him.”
“I see.”
“Have you ever loved any one?”
“No,” I said.
We sat down on a bench and I looked at her.
“You have beautiful hair,” I said.
“Do you like it?”
“Very much.”
“I was going to cut it all off when he died.”
“No.”
“I wanted to do something for him. You see I didn’t care about the other
thing and he could have had it all. He could have had anything he wanted
if I would have known. I would have married him or anything. I know all
about it now. But then he wanted to go to war and I didn’t know.”
I did not say anything.
“I didn’t know about anything then. I thought it would be worse for him.
I thought perhaps he couldn’t stand it and then of course he was killed
and that was the end of it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s the end of it.”
We looked at Rinaldi talking with the other nurse.
“What is her name?”
“Ferguson. Helen Ferguson. Your friend is a doctor, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He’s very good.”
“That’s splendid. You rarely find any one any good this close to the
front. This is close to the front, isn’t it?”
“Quite.”
“It’s a silly front,” she said. “But it’s very beautiful. Are they going
to have an offensive?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll have to work. There’s no work now.”
“Have you done nursing long?”
“Since the end of ’fifteen. I started when he did. I remember having a
silly idea he might come to the hospital where I was. With a sabre cut,
I suppose, and a bandage around his head. Or shot through the shoulder.
Something picturesque.”
“This is the picturesque front,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “People can’t realize what France is like. If they did,
it couldn’t all go on. He didn’t have a sabre cut. They blew him all to
bits.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Do you suppose it will always go on?”
“No.”
“What’s to stop it?”
“It will crack somewhere.”
“We’ll crack. We’ll crack in France. They can’t go on doing things like
the Somme and not crack.”
“They won’t crack here,” I said.
“You think not?”
“No. They did very well last summer.”
“They may crack,” she said. “Anybody may crack.”
“The Germans too.”
“No,” she said. “I think not.”
We went over toward Rinaldi and Miss Ferguson.
“You love Italy?” Rinaldi asked Miss Ferguson in English.
“Quite well.”
“No understand,” Rinaldi shook his head.
“Abbastanza bene,” I translated. He shook his head.
“That is not good. You love England?”
“Not too well. I’m Scotch, you see.”
Rinaldi looked at me blankly.
“She’s Scotch, so she loves Scotland better than England,” I said in
Italian.
“But Scotland is England.”
I translated this for Miss Ferguson.
“Pas encore,” said Miss Ferguson.
“Not really?”
“Never. We do not like the English.”
“Not like the English? Not like Miss Barkley?”
“Oh, that’s different. You mustn’t take everything so literally.”
After a while we said good-night and left. Walking home Rinaldi said,
“Miss Barkley prefers you to me. That is very clear. But the little
Scotch one is very nice.”
“Very,” I said. I had not noticed her. “You like her?”
“No,” said Rinaldi.
CHAPTER V
The next afternoon I went to call on Miss Barkley again. She was not in
the garden and I went to the side door of the villa where the ambulances
drove up. Inside I saw the head nurse, who said Miss Barkley was on
duty—“there’s a war on, you know.”
I said I knew.
“You’re the American in the Italian army?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How did you happen to do that? Why didn’t you join up with us?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Could I join now?”
“I’m afraid not now. Tell me. Why did you join up with the Italians?”
“I was in Italy,” I said, “and I spoke Italian.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m learning it. It’s a beautiful language.”
“Somebody said you should be able to learn it in two weeks.”
“Oh, I’ll not learn it in two weeks. I’ve studied it for months now. You
may come and see her after seven o’clock if you wish. She’ll be off
then. But don’t bring a lot of Italians.”
“Not even for the beautiful language?”
“No. Nor for the beautiful uniforms.”
“Good-evening,” I said.
“A rivederci, Tenente.”
“A rivederla.” I saluted and went out. It was impossible to salute
foreigners as an Italian, without embarrassment. The Italian salute
never seemed made for export.
The day had been hot. I had been up the river to the bridgehead at
Plava. It was there that the offensive was to begin. It had been
impossible to advance on the far side the year before because there was
only one road leading down from the pass to the pontoon bridge and it
was under machine-gun and shell fire for nearly a mile. It was not wide
enough either to carry all the transport for an offensive and the
Austrians could make a shambles out of it. But the Italians had crossed
and spread out a little way on the far side to hold about a mile and a
half on the Austrian side of the river. It was a nasty place and the
Austrians should not have let them hold it. I suppose it was mutual
tolerance because the Austrians still kept a bridgehead further down the
river. The Austrian trenches were above on the hillside only a few yards
from the Italian lines. There had been a little town but it was all
rubble. There was what was left of a railway station and a smashed
permanent bridge that could not be repaired and used because it was in
plain sight.
I went along the narrow road down toward the river, left the car at the
dressing station under the hill, crossed the pontoon bridge, which was
protected by a shoulder of the mountain, and went through the trenches
in the smashed-down town and along the edge of the slope. Everybody was
in the dugouts. There were racks of rockets standing to be touched off
to call for help from the artillery or to signal with if the telephone
wires were cut. It was quiet, hot and dirty. I looked across the wire at
the Austrian lines. Nobody was in sight. I had a drink with a captain
that I knew in one of the dugouts and went back across the bridge.
A new wide road was being finished that would go over the mountain and
zig-zag down to the bridge. When this road was finished the offensive
would start. It came down through the forest in sharp turns. The system
was to bring everything down the new road and take the empty trucks,
carts and loaded ambulances and all returning traffic up the old narrow
road. The dressing station was on the Austrian side of the river under
the edge of the hill and stretcher-bearers would bring the wounded back
across the pontoon bridge. It would be the same when the offensive
started. As far as I could make out the last mile or so of the new road
where it started to level out would be able to be shelled steadily by
the Austrians. It looked as though it might be a mess. But I found a
place where the cars would be sheltered after they had passed that last
bad-looking bit and could wait for the wounded to be brought across the
pontoon bridge. I would have liked to drive over the new road but it was
not yet finished. It looked wide and well made with a good grade and the
turns looked very impressive where you could see them through openings
in the forest on the mountain side. The cars would be all right with
their good metal-to-metal brakes and anyway, coming down, they would not
be loaded. I drove back up the narrow road.
Two carabinieri held the car up. A shell had fallen and while we waited
three others fell up the road. They were seventy-sevens and came with a
whishing rush of air, a hard bright burst and flash and then gray smoke
that blew across the road. The carabinieri waved us to go on. Passing
where the shells had landed I avoided the small broken places and
smelled the high explosive and the smell of blasted clay and stone and
freshly shattered flint. I drove back to Gorizia and our villa and, as I
said, went to call on Miss Barkley, who was on duty.
At dinner I ate very quickly and left for the villa where the British
had their hospital. It was really very large and beautiful and there
were fine trees in the grounds. Miss Barkley was sitting on a bench in
the garden. Miss Ferguson was with her. They seemed glad to see me and
in a little while Miss Ferguson excused herself and went away.
“I’ll leave you two,” she said. “You get along very well without me.”
“Don’t go, Helen,” Miss Barkley said.
“I’d really rather. I must write some letters.”
“Good-night,” I said.
“Good-night, Mr. Henry.”
“Don’t write anything that will bother the censor.”
“Don’t worry. I only write about what a beautiful place we live in and
how brave the Italians are.”
“That way you’ll be decorated.”
“That will be nice. Good-night, Catherine.”
“I’ll see you in a little while,” Miss Barkley said. Miss Ferguson
walked away in the dark.
“She’s nice,” I said.
“Oh, yes, she’s very nice. She’s a nurse.”
“Aren’t you a nurse?”
“Oh, no. I’m something called a V. A. D. We work very hard but no one
trusts us.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t trust us when there’s nothing going on. When there is really
work they trust us.”
“What is the difference?”
“A nurse is like a doctor. It takes a long time to be. A V. A. D. is a
short cut.”
“I see.”
“The Italians didn’t want women so near the front. So we’re all on very
special behavior. We don’t go out.”
“I can come here though.”
“Oh, yes. We’re not cloistered.”
“Let’s drop the war.”
“It’s very hard. There’s no place to drop it.”
“Let’s drop it anyway.”
“All right.”