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The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana :: Эко Умберто
Страница: 237 из 286He had screwed them all: Fascists, Germans, and God in a single stroke. Sffft.
And I was alive. I could not forgive myself for that.
Even in my memories the fog is thinning. I now see the Partisans entering Solara in triumph, and on April 25 comes the news of Milan’s liberation. People swarm the streets, the Partisans shoot into the air, they arrive perched on the fenders of their trucks. A few days later I see a soldier, dressed in olive drab, bicycling up the drive between the rows of horse-chestnut trees. He lets me know he is Brazilian, then goes happily off to explore his exotic surroundings. Were there Brazilians, too, with the Americans and British? No one had ever told me that. Drôle de guerre.
A week passes, and the first detachment of Americans arrives. All blacks. They are settling in with their tents in the Oratorio courtyard, and I make friends with a Catholic corporal, who shows me an image of the Sacred Heart that he always carries in his breast pocket. He gives me some newspapers with L’il Abner and Dick Tracy strips, and a few pieces of what he calls "chewing gum," which I make last a long time, taking the wad out of my mouth at night and putting it in a glass of water, as old folks do with their dentures. He gives me to understand that in exchange he would like to eat spaghetti, and I invite him home, certain that Maria will fix him agnolotti with hare sauce. But as we arrive, the corporal sees another black man sitting in our yard, a major. He excuses himself and leaves, stunned.
The Americans, looking for decent lodgings for their officers, had approached my grandfather, and we had put a nice room in the left wing at their disposition, the very room Paola later made into our bedroom.
Major Muddy is a portly man, with a Louis Armstrong smile, and he manages to communicate with my grandfather; it helps that he knows some French, at that time the only foreign language that educated people in those parts knew, and it is French that he speaks with Mamma and with the other ladies who live nearby. They come for tea to see the liberator-even that Fascist lady who hated her tenant farmer. All of them in the yard around a little table decked out with the good china, beside the dahlias. Major Muddy says "mersì bocou" and "Oui, màdam, moi ossì j’aime le champeign." He behaves with the polite hauteur of a black man who is finally being received in a white family’s house, and a nice house at that. The ladies whisper to themselves, My, such a gentleman, and to think they painted them as drunken savages.
The news of the German surrender arrives. Hitler is dead. The war is over.
And I was alive. I could not forgive myself for that.
Even in my memories the fog is thinning. I now see the Partisans entering Solara in triumph, and on April 25 comes the news of Milan’s liberation. People swarm the streets, the Partisans shoot into the air, they arrive perched on the fenders of their trucks. A few days later I see a soldier, dressed in olive drab, bicycling up the drive between the rows of horse-chestnut trees. He lets me know he is Brazilian, then goes happily off to explore his exotic surroundings. Were there Brazilians, too, with the Americans and British? No one had ever told me that. Drôle de guerre.
A week passes, and the first detachment of Americans arrives. All blacks. They are settling in with their tents in the Oratorio courtyard, and I make friends with a Catholic corporal, who shows me an image of the Sacred Heart that he always carries in his breast pocket. He gives me some newspapers with L’il Abner and Dick Tracy strips, and a few pieces of what he calls "chewing gum," which I make last a long time, taking the wad out of my mouth at night and putting it in a glass of water, as old folks do with their dentures. He gives me to understand that in exchange he would like to eat spaghetti, and I invite him home, certain that Maria will fix him agnolotti with hare sauce. But as we arrive, the corporal sees another black man sitting in our yard, a major. He excuses himself and leaves, stunned.
The Americans, looking for decent lodgings for their officers, had approached my grandfather, and we had put a nice room in the left wing at their disposition, the very room Paola later made into our bedroom.
Major Muddy is a portly man, with a Louis Armstrong smile, and he manages to communicate with my grandfather; it helps that he knows some French, at that time the only foreign language that educated people in those parts knew, and it is French that he speaks with Mamma and with the other ladies who live nearby. They come for tea to see the liberator-even that Fascist lady who hated her tenant farmer. All of them in the yard around a little table decked out with the good china, beside the dahlias. Major Muddy says "mersì bocou" and "Oui, màdam, moi ossì j’aime le champeign." He behaves with the polite hauteur of a black man who is finally being received in a white family’s house, and a nice house at that. The ladies whisper to themselves, My, such a gentleman, and to think they painted them as drunken savages.
The news of the German surrender arrives. Hitler is dead. The war is over.