Chapter 07

IN AUGUST, 1944, THE GALLERIA UMBERTO ECHOED LIKE A BOWLING alley to the noise of the truck convoys going north to the front. Father Donovan and Chaplain Bascom used to stroll afternoons through the din and the heat. Sometimes while window-shopping they’d take off their khaki caps and mop their brows. Chaplain Bascom wore a gold oak leaf, but Father Donovan was still that same first lieutenant who’d left a South Philadelphia parish with the blessing of his bishop and the Military Ordinariate.

Chaplain Bascom was commenting on the heat. He was a stout man, used to the sun over his turnip patch in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

For two years now he’d been indoctrinating his friend with Catholicism. He did it gently, for he was a mild sort of priest who replied you’re welcome when a telephone operator thanked him for his number.

The two chaplains often walked arm in arm. They were the only officers in the 34th Division who did so, sober. They were reasonably fond of each other. And their friendship was high propaganda for the chief of chaplains, showing how all faiths worked together in the army.

—These Neapolitans, he boomed jovially, could do with a shoutin baptism by immersion.

—But they’ve already been baptized once, said Father Donovan. Though not in the Baptist Church, chaplain.

—Well, I’ve written to Charleston, Chaplain Bascom went on doggedly. I told them that Naples is an unplowed field for Baptist missionaries with a will to work. . . . Bibles instead of cameos on Via Roma. Prohibition to cut out all this devil’s drink of vino. And good friendly Barathea Clubs on Wednesday evenings to keep these signorinas off the streets.

This was the focus of their differences. The division chaplain had introduced them in the staging area, and they’d been friends ever since. To Missus Bascom and Lavinia, Chaplain Bascom reiterated by V-mail that Padre Donovan was almost a white man. And Father Donovan had offered up many a Mass and rosary for the conversion of Chaplain Bascom and his South Carolina flock. Both were popular chaplains in the 34th. Men who had knocked up a signorina came to Father Donovan for confession. Those desiring advice on their life insurance came to Chaplain Bascom. They complemented one another. Chaplain Bascom at the end of a meetin yelled for every man to get away from the sides of the tent and come up and be saved. Father Donovan was still as shy and efficient and button-eyed as when he played quarterback at the seminary.

Father Donovan looked up at the glassless dome of the Galleria, at the lordly angels sounding their trumpets from the cornices.

—Spacious as the Vatican, he mused. I’ll get you to an audience with the Holy Father next time we’re in Rome.

Chaplain Bascom stumped along, huffing on his briar pipe. He’d underestimated the papist till the division went on the line. Then he’d seen why even Protestant colonels of regiments tried to requisition Romish chaplains. For along with his combat boots and neckerchief, Father Donovan wore a Purple Heart. He might have looked like a mouse, but the Italian-born mice at Cassino hadn’t been so much in evidence as Father Donovan ministering to the dying under a helmet that made him look like a child playing soldier.

And Father Donovan also whisked along thinking his own thoughts. Often he looked slyly at Chaplain Bascom. How much he thought on Chaplain Bascom while reading his breviary! What a find this man would be for Holy Mother Church! That swollen voice, how eloquent it could be pouring out in praise of Mary, instead of inveighing against dancing and cardplaying and likker! Father Donovan would have given his Purple Heart for the conversion of Chaplain Bascom. For this grace he importuned every saint in heaven, including his dead mother, who’d scrubbed floors all her life.

Father Donovan bent down and fastened a buckle on his combat boot. He paused to mop his thin pale face. He spied some GI’s sitting at tables on the terrace of an outside bar.

They sat at one of the wicker tables under the dome of the Galleria Umberto. All about him Father Donovan spotted GI’s of the 34th who waved to him and went back to their sprawling. He ordered a glass of vermouth for himself and a tumbler of flavored gaseous water for Chaplain Bascom.

—Our boys mustn’t think I’m guzzling, Chaplain Bascom said, holding up his orangeade to show everyone in the Galleria that he was taking the Neapolitan equivalent of an ice-cream soda.

Now Father Donovan didn’t smoke. He always said that the fumes of Chaplain Bascom’s pipe were enough for two. In spite of his wispy body he was in fine condition, and combat had made him like a grasshopper. Chaplain Bascom’s steaky belly had gone down during these two years of Africa and Sicily and Italy when he wasn’t getting Missus Bascom’s corn bread for supper. Father Donovan used to spend Sunday afternoons in South Philadelphia playing touch football with the kids of his choir—after he’d peeled off his Roman collar and rolled up his cassock till it was a black towel around his waist. Father Donovan loved baseball, candy, and the movies—after he’d assured himself that they’d been certified by the Legion of Decency.

—There’s one favor you could do me, chaplain, said Father Donovan, leaning softly over his vermouth.

Never in his life had he raised his voice except to call for the murder of the umpire.

—Anything, anything, the chaplain said, clearing his throat of orangeade with a lordly gargle.

—Why won’t you call me Father? I’m a priest. Padre sounds like Teddy Roosevelt. . . . Oh I know it’s regular army and all that . . .

—Army Regulations, said Chaplain Bascom, assuming the rapt pose with which he ended his prayer meetings, provide that all chaplains, regardless of denomination, shall be addressed as chaplain . . .

—But they also state that there’s no objection to calling a priest Father. Don’t tell me that at this stage of the game you’re jealous of the prestige and affection in the word Father?

—Always a slight chip on your shoulder, Chaplain Bascom said, gathering his weight up behind his orangeade. He smelled brimstone.

—Just thought I’d ask, Father Donovan said in his meekest tone which he always lapsed into when piqued.

Chaplain Bascom glowered around the Galleria. His veinous porcine eyes stared, as though he were looking for some shrinking GI to go to work on with the magic words: All here from South Calina raise their hands. . . . He relit his pipe. Father Donovan, who knew all his moods, waited but said nothing. He looked at the other chaplain’s cap with its gold oak leaf and wondered why all the priests in the army except the chief in Washington seemed to be first lieutenants. Soon Chaplain Bascom would be a lieutenant colonel, at which point he’d begin to consider himself a staff officer, with command functions. In vain did Father Donovan keep telling himself that he was a priest, commissioned in the army only to keep souls in the way they should go, to give the last rites to the dying, and to return the living to their dioceses without loss of faith or stain of mortal sin. For sometimes when he was saying his rosary or reading his holy office, he’d find his fingers straying to his cap and feeling that lone silver bar. It was a sin of vanity. But in his examinations of conscience he admitted to himself that to be promoted to captain would delight and appease him. . . . He deserved it. He’d done just as much work as Chaplain Bascom. . . .

And Chaplain Bascom, watching his mild friend out of one corner of an eye throbbing with rage, thought: They’re all alike deep down inside. The same who started the Inquisition, the same who held back all scientific progress, the same who still wield a world dictatorship.

An oily Italian priest came cruising into the Galleria in black cassock and brushed round hat. He zoomed among the GI’s like a water bug, wheedling, panhandling, trembling with holy zeal for alms. He had a card in English which he thrust under the faces of the GI’s.

The Italian priest arrived over an isolated GI who’d passed out in his chair. He looked quickly around the Galleria, then bent over the hunched form.

As Father Donovan watched, saying a Hail Mary under his breath, the greasy Italian friar began to pry at a wad of lire and a pack of Luckies protruding from the unbuttoned breast pocket of the GI. Father Donovan leaped from his chair, crossed the Galleria, and barged up to the thieving brother. He didn’t know any Italian, but he used the Latin that came into his mind:

Then as a sort of exorcism he shook the silver cross of his collar insignia. The hustling friar, unshaven and smelling of his last meal, whirled about in his cape, gathered it about him with grimy fingers, and went streaking away into the crowds of the Galleria Umberto. Father Donovan woke the sleeping GI gently and returned across the arcade, wondering what in this world or the next he could find to say to Chaplain Bascom in excuse for this most unpleasant incident. Through his mind flashed all the dialectical training of the seminary, long since all but forgotten now that his sermons had become a matter of the monthly collection and choir rehearsal. Father Donovan prayed madly for the gift of tongues, for Jesuitical casuistry to fence off the questions his Baptist friend was preparing for him. Though he seldom did it, except when pounding the chest of a section sergeant who’d forgotten to make his Easter duty, Father Donovan rallied all his shyness and determined to take the aggressive. After all, the Church was facing a greater opponent than she’d had at Anzio.

—Shocking, said Father Donovan, seating himself. Probably not even a priest. Naples is full of them. Impostors . . .

—Oh, I don’t know, Chaplain Bascom said silkily. Looks kinda like the Good Samaritan rolling the man who lay by the side of the road, don’t it? Or Christ asking Mary Magdalene for a handout. . . . You have a very rich church, padre. Money rolls into Rome from all over the world. . . . I think I begin to understand the capitalism of the Roman Church. I’m only a Hard-Shelled Baptist, but I guess I realize that a big political machine don’t pay its expenses on hay. . . . No sireee.

Father Donovan felt a white flame of rage rising in him. Then he saw something and said in a choked voice:

Two nuns were entering the Galleria in that way they have of seeming not to walk. No GI yelled at them. Each nun had by the hand two little girls in the chaste black dresses of Neapolitan orphans. The children laughed to one another and to the GI’s. They had the glowing faces of southern Italian babies. The nuns beamed down on them, keeping a firm grip on their small hands. Then Father Donovan thanked Our Lady for answering his prayer.

—Ah yes, said Chaplain Bascom airily, mother love. . . . How nice to find it even in Naples. It’s the one great constant of our mean little world.

—But you miss the point, chaplain. . . . Those nuns have no natural tie to those orphans. They function in accordance with the Church’s exalted idea of parenthood, which goes back to Our Blessed Mother. . . . And you Protestants seem almost ashamed to admit that Christ had a mother. You make fun of our devotion to her, as though you were uneasy at the function of the love between man and God . . .

—It’s a scorcher today, padre, Chaplain Bascom said. He finished his orangeade, fanned himself, and loosened the shirt about his thick neck.

Chaplain Bascom brooded sulkily to himself. It was quite clear to him why the Roman Church had failed in the modern world. In a time when men wanted something positive to cling to, she offered them only the lacy traceries of an old theology. The twentieth century was too rapid for arguments on the navel of Adam. Especially Americans . . . they wanted that good solid old-time religion, which was precisely what the Baptist Church was giving them. Plenty of tangible things for Americans with common sense. Good shoutin of hymns, fear of hell, and tables heavy with food at church suppers—that was religion. Deep down inside Chaplain Bascom suspected that Christ was more than a little of a red; this was why He’d been done to death. No American need examine too deeply the nature of Christ. This was what the Baptist Church offered them: a renewal of the spirit on Sundays and Wednesdays, excellent business contacts, and keeping the young away from sinful habits. It was all so down to earth. Chaplain Bascom thought of Thomas Aquinas visiting Spartanburg, South Carolina, and had to slap his chunky thigh. . . . No, the Roman Church was Europe and the past and a dirty slice of history to boot. He’d seen enough to know how uneasily Romanism sat on Americans. Whereas your good southern Baptist was his religion walking and in act. So was his good comfortable wife, who cooked for church socials and taught Sunday school. So was his immaculate prim daughter. Practical Christianity. . . .

Over the kettledrumming of the truck convoys moving to the front, the crowds in the Galleria Umberto were like all the crowds of the world, drifting and inert except under stimulus. But this crowd had an uncrowdlike tendency to break up into its individual components. Their only common bond as a crowd was that they were all in Naples in August, 1944. Their focus shifted. Since most of these people came to the Galleria to lose themselves and therefore to find themselves, their flavor was more strongly marked than that of a crowd assembled for a specific purpose. The chaplains noticed isolated elements more easily than they might have at a race track or on a city street. And both chaplains thought to them selves that this crowd, perhaps more than any other on earth, showed the agony of the individual and of society, that some peculiar problem of the age was here mirrored.

Presently, in the crushing brilliance of the August sun and the buzzing of the convoys the chaplains found themselves dozing. A burr of laughter brought them sharply to in their chairs. For the laughter that they heard was intended to pierce even an unconscious man. Two Italian girls skipped arm in arm through the Galleria. There was an intimacy in their leaning on one another more flagrant and saucy than the friendship between school chums.

The girls spied the two chaplains, but they danced easily through the Galleria, in no hurry, exclaiming over the shop prices, casting swimming eyes over the lounging GI’s. And they sang. Both chaplains knew that they were singing not out of high spirits but as a call to all interested to come and buy, as a fruit vendor hawks melons in the street. They sang in English. It was an American song learned by rote from many darkened rooms with rumpled beds and empty vino bottles:

—You’ll nevair know just ow motch I mees you,

You’ll nevair know just ow motch I caaaare . . .

—Those girls are wearing crosses on their necks, said Chaplain Bascom, clucking with his tongue.

—Aren’t they entitled to pray? Father Donovan asked, setting down his vermouth.

The Neapolitan girls paused by the two chaplains’ table and stood there swaying enticingly, arms around each other’s waists.

Chaplain Bascom for the first time in his army career, instead of flashing the gold oak leaf on his right collar, took hold of his left and wriggled his silver cross at them. Father Donovan began to giggle.

—I’m thinking of my wife, roared Chaplain Bascom. Believe me, padre, I’ve reached such a maturity of married love that those two women seem to me vile Jezebels.

She sat genially down in the chair at Father Donovan’s right. The waiter brought two vermouths without being asked. Chaplain Bascom reddened as the other girl sank into the wicker chair at his left.

—As hungry as the devil for Christian souls, cried Chaplain Bascom. Padre, let’s end this comedy and get out of here. You can’t touch pitch and not be defiled. . . . I think my wife’s ears are burning back in Spartanburg, South Carolina . . . Padre, think of what you represent.

—That’s exactly what I’m doing, Father Donovan said. You and I were in tighter spots than this at Cassino, chaplain.

He looked at the girl, who was now nervously stroking her vermouth glass and shivering a little, though it was August. Then she reached out to lay her hand on his arm. But before her fingers descended, she seemed to reconsider and dropped her hand to the beaded bag that lay in her lap.

—But I do like you, Father Donovan said, taking a thousand lire from his Ayrab wallet. Now listen to me. You take this and go to a black market restaurant and buy all you want to eat. Then go to confession, hear? Then go home and get a good sleep. You look very tired. . . . Promise me? . . . Sacerdos sum. . . .

Both girls went quickly away, covering with one hand the jeweled crosses on their necks. They went out of the Galleria into Via Roma.

—They should be horsewhipped by their families, Chaplain Bascom said testily, mopping his beety brow.

—No, Father Donovan said, replacing his wallet. Their sin is partly the world’s.

—The world, Chaplain Bascom said, blowing his nose with an olive-drab handkerchief. Women go on the streets because they’re just plain ornery and refuse to settle down . . . and Italian women are much more immoral than our own. One minute they’re crossing themselves in church, and the next they’re on Via Roma. The only way the world is concerned in this filthy business is that public opinion doesn’t have the power in Naples that it has in our own country. Here nobody cares what those women do, because all the Italians are that way.

Father Donovan thoughtfully spread his ringless hands and ordered another vermouth. He didn’t try to answer Chaplain Bascom directly. He spoke more shyly than usual:

—We must be cautious in judging impurity because it’s such a natural sin. Not everyone murders. Not everyone robs. But impurity springs from the natural impulses of our own bodies. A deed which under one set of circumstances brings a child into the world becomes under others a mortal sin. Impurity comes from an impulse that we all possess.

—Then we must wrestle with that impulse, Chaplain Bascom cried in triumph, slapping the table so that the glasses jumped to attention. We must marry if we don’t want to burn, as the Apostle Paul says. . . . I don’t mind telling you, padre, that as a young preacher I wrestled mightily with the lusts of the flesh.

—Then you should be more charitable towards those who are still wrestling, said Father Donovan gently.

Chaplain Bascom always got riled up in his arguments with Father Donovan. Secretly he feared that the priests of popery got a more subtle and cunning training in propaganda than they gave you at the Baptist seminary. He saw why people feared the Roman Church. You could easily dismiss the run-of-the-mill Catholic as a superstitious fool living in the past, but Father Donovan not only had faith but could explain why he had it. Chaplain Bascom explained it to himself this way: Catholicism was a secret society whose aim was just barely eluding him. He was sure it was up to no good. This aim was known only to the pope and to a few of the inner circle. Even the average priest didn’t know it.

Chaplain Bascom was also honest with himself. He knew he wasn’t Christlike. Yet that name was always in his mouth because it was the open-sesame of his profession. It was a name which had a strange hold over people, possibly because they thought it should. The name Jesus Christ could open more hearts than a skeleton key. Nor was Chaplain Bascom quite at ease with the personality of Jesus Christ. His mind was teased by the concept of a carpenter who allowed Himself to be crucified and was remembered and invoked for the next two thousand years. Chaplain Bascom sometimes went so far as to ask himself whether he’d honestly have liked Christ. Perhaps He was just a little . . . effeminate. All this talk about love. . . . Chaplain Bascom acknowledged no other love than one took in the arms of a good woman. Any other love seemed to savor of unmentionable vice. . . .

And at this moment Chaplain Bascom realized that for two years Father Donovan had been playing with him, in that savage affection with which a cat tortures a mouse. He felt the blood rising under his crimson skin. And he knew at last that there are other forces in the world than the fists of a red-blooded American man. So he changed the subject.

Then something inside his burly soul swung outward like a rusty lock after it’s oiled. He called to the waiter to bring them each a vermouth. Father Donovan looked at the vermouth in front of the Baptist and began to laugh in the high-pitched relieved manner of a boy who has passed an examination he expected to flunk.

—Thank God I’ve lived to see this, chaplain! Vermouth! The blackmail I could collect from you if I had a camera! What would your South Carolina congregation say?

Chaplain Bascom took a huge swig of the vermouth. He made a face like a maddened bull and called for another.

—Why, I like you so much this way, Father Donovan said still laughing. And there’ve been times when you depressed me no end.

—The fruit of the vine isn’t altogether strange to me, Chaplain Bascom said in a mellow voice. In my youth . . .

—I’m not hearing your confession, Father Donovan said, raising a hand and smiling.

It was getting on to the time of sunset in the Galleria Umberto. The arcade was swelling up with people.

—I’m worried, said Chaplain Bascom resuming, for the future of the church. You and I both know, padre, that there are atheists in foxholes. And many of these fellows will go back to the States and attempt to sweep away the heritage of the ages. They’ll call all faith simply dead lumber which has survived because people were stupid and afraid.

—And I’m of the opinion, said Father Donovan, that good things, like the poor, will always be with us. It’s an article of faith with me that my own church will last till the end of time. As for the others, unless they have something to offer the returning veteran that is free of bigotry and sectionalism, those other churches will go down in defeat.

—Just this. When an American has seen Naples and death and the wretchedness of the whole world, he may try to forget it when he goes back to the farm in Illinois. But he won’t forget it completely. Malaria and sorrow temper the blood. And do you think that such a man will be satisfied again with a religion which says he may not smoke or drink, which offers strife for peace, which bases its commandments on little stupidities he has outgrown? . . . After this war we’re going to see either an age of complete barbarism or a gradual return to the simplicities and felicities of Our Lord’s life, adapted of course to the time in which we live. . . . And I, chaplain, have faith in human nature, which isn’t intrinsically evil. There are many things in human life that you and I have almost forgotten since we put on these uniforms. It’s natural to lose sight of these things in a war so vast and horrible as this one. And there are reckonings to come for all this slaughter. . . . But as surely as I know there’s sin in the world, I know also that there’s that in us which makes us desire to bring up our children in love and peace, which makes us shield our wives and daughters, and which occasionally makes us capable of the noblest sacrifice. . . . You can’t tell me that these virtues will ever utterly disappear. . . . You remember how far the striking of a match carried in those black nights on the line? So tiny but so bright? Well, just like that match, whatever is good will survive till the end of the world. Otherwise human life becomes the cruelest joke and the figure of Christ on the cross the hollowest gesture that anyone ever made.

They arose together and replaced their chairs as though they’d been at a formal dinner. Chaplain Bascom took Father Donovan’s arm. Together they walked through the Galleria Umberto. Father Donovan took pride in his uniform as he had pride in his Mass vestments, so he looked down to see if his trousers were neatly belled out over his combat boots. In this same spirit he called Chaplain Bascom’s attention to his protruding shirttail.

The Galleria was filtered with air currents. At the transept crossing from the San Carlo Theater to Via Santa Brigida a column of cool air swam on the heat.

He loved the Galleria because it was always full of Neapolitan children—children begging, children selling, children looking, children shuffling barefoot. What caught at him most were the little children pimping. They’d learned a perfect and Saxon English for the pleasures they offered for sale, and their obscene phrases smote Father Donovan more brutally than the worst sins he’d heard in the confessional, where at least he could be impersonal. But when a Neapolitan child played the bawd, the ugly sentences shrieked out as though a parrot spoke them, and they seemed all the fouler because the child understood their import. Father Donovan wondered about Americans who were capable of teaching such things to little Neapolitans of seven and eight. Sometimes when he lay awake at night, he thought of the tragedy of the children of Europe, born and passing their formative years under a rain of bombs, keeping alive by catering to the desires of soldiers. What would these poor children be like in maturity, who had never known the innocence of childhood? If these children grew into cold bitter reptiles, then the world would really have lost the war. . . .

—Next week, said Chaplain Bascom, if we’re still here, I mean to bring some soap and wash these children’s mouths out.

These children, Father Donovan thought, are the same as those in South Philadelphia. They’re the same as kids all over the world. I wish I had them all to teach them baseball and buy them popcorn.

—Oh I know that, I know that. But these children have no escape at all . . . not even a settlement house.

—What a place that arcade is, said Chaplain Bascom. A great novel could be made of it. I suppose the market place in Jerusalem was like this arcade. Except that Christ isn’t here.

—Oh, I disagree with you, Father Donovan said. I think He is . . . very much so.

They waited for a truck convoy to pass them with a roaring and a streaking. Across Via Verdi was a transient mess for American officers. In August, 1944, it was busier than a Childs. In shifts officers ate a soup, a plate of warmed-up C-ration, and a saucer of canned pears. It seemed as though every officer (except airplane drivers) out of combat took his meals there. It had a screen door that swung and clattered. On this door always hung one of two signs—OPEN or CLOSED. When this mess ran out of C-ration, the CLOSED sign went up like a storm flag. Winding out of the entrance was a queue of officers, a depressed little concentration of nurses clutching their shoulder bags, and civilian secretaries of the State Department and the War Shipping Administration. Officers paid ten lire a meal, civilians thirty-five. Ducking the bobbing screen door was a hag in a torn black dress who sold Stars and Stripes, Yank, and Time. She saluted all officers who bought a paper and beamed on them with jagged gums. One rumor had it that she was born during the Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D., another that she was the sybil come in from Cumae because business was better in Naples, another that she was Eleanor Roosevelt in disguise, gathering material for her column.

Father Donovan and Chaplain Bascom went to the tail of the line and mopped their faces and their necks in the Neapolitan afternoon. As four people came out of the mess, the line would inch up four places.

The tables in the mess were like those beds where people sleep in shifts. An old Neapolitan was wiping the untidy table top, stacking plates, and talking threateningly to himself. Chaplain Bascom seated himself and beat on the table jovially so that all the glassware vaulted.

The old Neapolitan retreated and was seen no more. Father Donovan turned his quick timid smile on a young Neapolitan in a drenched white coat who brought them two plates of soup.

—Ehhhh! the young Neapolitan said, relaxing and smiling. Non c’è male. Ma c’è troppo lavoro. . . .

—Dago-lover, said Chaplain Bascom. These people are good for nothing but to sing operas and work in barbershops.

Father Donovan didn’t answer. He was making the sign of the cross prefatory to saying grace before meals.

—I thank God even for C-ration, Father Donovan said when he’d finished his brief prayer.

Chaplain Bascom plowed into his soup. He continued to watch suspiciously the slight brown hands making their second sign of the cross in front of the Purple Heart ribbon on the priest’s left breast. Father Donovan then applied himself to his soup. He ate demurely, never looking at what he was eating.

—In the seminary, he said, they used to read aloud from pious writings while we were at our meals. So naturally I expect nothing but edifying thoughts from you until dessert.

The chaplains looked distrustfully at the second course, which was what they knew it would be: diced pork with beans, dehydrated potatoes, spinach, and a leaf of lettuce.

—But just taste this iced tea, Father Donovan cried gaily. You’re having qualms because you drank three glasses of vermouth. Don’t. Saint Thomas says we may drink till we feel hilarious.

With women Chaplain Bascom was almost feudal. In the slight glow of the vermouth he was still enraged that he hadn’t scored one this afternoon on Father Donovan.

The nurses were older than most ANC’s. They had an air of edgy misanthropy of women overseas too long. They had also a certain pride in their captaincies, since every nurse above the rank of second lieutenant considers that she has jumped the Rubicon.

It was a theory of his that people could be put at their ease by any of a dozen key phrases.

—Oh lands, said the nurse named Elsie, let’s not go into that. The only thing we’re sure of is that this is Naples, Italy, and that we wanna go home and can’t.

—Oh we know that, Tessie said. But since Salerno it’s been goddam . . . beg your pardon . . . wearing.

They smoked while eating, holding their cigarettes in painted fingernails which nevertheless betrayed how often those hands had been in hot water.

—There’s nothing pleasant about overseas assignments, Father Donovan said, slicing his preserved pear.

—You can say that again, Father! As soon as I looked at you, I knew you was a priest. . . . Remember me in your prayers so I can stay outa the booby hatch.

—If they didn’t smoke like stoves, Chaplain Bascom said on the way out of the mess, they wouldn’t be so nervous.

On the sidewalk outside the transient officers’ mess they put on their caps and peered at one another in the sunset that streamed down through the dome of the Galleria. Father Donovan yawned in the hot light.

Between the two stairways of the Galleria that cascaded into Via Verdi there was an entrance they’d not noticed before. Over the doorway hung a sign in yellow and red:

ARIZONA

For Allied Officers

Now Father Donovan couldn’t imagine what Arizona was doing in Naples. But since he was fond of western movies, he thought this might be worth looking into. Chaplain Bascom said:

—Since you put me on the path to perdition with vermouth, we might as well look in. Maybe they have cactus plants and saddle horses.

The corridor of the Arizona was leaden with smoke. A girl sat in a checkroom the size of a telephone booth. She reached out as they passed and flipped their caps out of their belts.

—But we won’t be staying long, girlie, Chaplain Bascom said, reaching for his cap.

—Hundred lireee, pleeese, she shrieked and put their caps on an inaccessible hook.

Inside there was nothing but a small room swimming in smoke. Tables were crammed about a cleared square no bigger than a checkerboard. Officers hunched over these tables, a few French, a few British. But most were American airplane drivers with their high soft boots ensconced also on the tables. Everybody was drinking steadily. But somehow the chaplains sensed that nothing had really begun yet. On a dais smothered in greenery a small Italian band was playing dance music. They did it self-consciously, as though they were imitating phonograph records. Steered by Chaplain Bascom, Father Donovan sat down at a table on the edge of the cleared space. Trying to feel at ease, he tapped his boot to the music.

—Everybody’s looking at us queerly, Chaplain Bascom whispered. Our insignia must stick out like a neon sign.

A waiter shambled up and regarded them with menacing timidity. Evidently something went on at the Arizona which made the Neapolitan personnel regard the Allies as an honest-to-goodness conquering army.

—Now this will be on me, Father Donovan said grandly, bringing out his Ayrab wallet. Will you bring us a bottle of . . . champagne, please?

When the wine came Father Donovan blanched at the price, but to make good his gesture he paid up without a murmur. An airplane driver with swollen eyes leaned over chummily from the next table:

—Atmosphere, I presume? Father Donovan said, feeling quite worldly. He’d learned much from the movies.

—Well, ya can call it that, the airplane driver said. He was on the wrong side of the chaplains to see the crosses on their collars. I keep comin here night after night. I call myself a beast, but I keep comin. . . . Roger.

—What’s he talking about? Chaplain Bascom whispered. He’s drunk. No wonder they have so many casualties in the air force.

—I heard that, the airplane driver cried. Lissen, Jack, I come here to fergit my troubles, not for fights with doughfeet. But if ya spoilin for a bruise, wait till my buddy gets back from the bobo, an we’ll mop up the floor with the botha yez. . . . Roger.

—We’re not in the infantry, Father Donovan said, laying a hand on his arm. We’ve just worked with it a little. And since we’re both in the same army, there’s not much sense in a fight, is there?

He settled back mollified and beamed on Father Donovan’s Purple Heart. He pointed to his own, to his wings, and to the Twelfth Air Force patch on his left shoulder. It had been crocheted in rhinestones by some Neapolitan. He winked at Father Donovan and reached over to put an arm about his shoulders.

—Y’are all right, lootenant. But who’s that ole beagle with ya? Shoulda left him home.

With a warm swell of good feeling Father Donovan set the two glasses precisely in the middle of the table and poured out the champagne. It bubbled so cool and golden that even Chaplain Bascom assumed his Something Special air. They clinked glasses. Father Donovan was a host for the first time in his life. Being curate under a bitter brooding pastor in South Philadelphia had somewhat pinched his naturally hospitable nature. All he’d ever been able to do for anyone was to teach kids baseball. Only in saying Mass had he ever been in a position to do something grand for other people.

—Delicious, said Chaplain Bascom, smacking his lips. I see the point of Solomon’s warning against wine. Look how it giveth its color in the cup.

—That guy talks like a chaplain, the airplane driver muttered, emerging from a funk in which he’d laid his head on his chest.

Father Donovan blushed. There was a cyst of delicacy in him that made him itch and sweat when things didn’t run smoothly.

The flier had been regarding them with a confused affection and hostility, like a dog making up its mind. He tottered to their table and seated himself with the help of Father Donovan.

—Thank ya. My buddy musta died in the bobo. Since last month at Cerignola, all ya have to do is yell flak, an we all start shittin . . .

—Well, I advise you to watch your language when you get there, said Chaplain Bascom. There are ladies in America.

—If you wasn’t a major, I might be tempted to tellya to blow it. In fact, I think I will anyway.

—That’s all you Protestant chaplains is good for is to pull rank. Ya get GI after leavin a little piddlin church in Georgia that pays ya five bucks a Sunday . . .

The flier gave a windy sigh, said Roger, and went to sleep on Father Donovan’s shoulder. He removed the dead weight softly from himself and settled the head on another table.

At this moment some glasses and bottles went whizzing through the air and crackled against the orchestra stand. A fight began in the farthest corner between three airplane drivers and two combat engineers. The noise rose in level as though an invisible hand had turned up the volume control on a radio. What was going on the chaplains couldn’t see clearly for the billowing smoke and the crowds pushing in from their tables. The disturbers of the peace were lured out the door by the Italian manager into the arms of waiting MP’s.

Then girls appeared and sat down invited or not at various tables. The din rose. This was what everyone had been waiting for.

The airplane driver came to and straightened up. He identified the girls for Father Donovan:

—That’s Lola with the green handkerchief. . . . That’s Gina with the earrins. . . . That one there signalin the waiter is Bruna. . . . That number in red is Bianca Stella. . . . Most of em is married to officers in the Italian Army that are prisoners of war. All these cheesecakes have bambini. But a gal has to make a livin. . . . Mamma mia, what a covey of quail. . . . They all got a union rate of two thousand lire a night . . . an don’t tell me that us airplane drivers have inflated the prices. . . . But O Roger, Roger. . . .

Father Donovan and Chaplain Bascom turned on one another as though they’d just met and were sizing one another up.

A girl had come out in front of the orchestra. She got an ovation. In a low rasp she sang “I’ll Be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places.” A carnation was stuck in her hair. She wore a dress that seemed to have been sewn from pieces of lace and silk rooted out of ashcans.

—That’s Lydia, the airplane driver said, his eyes bloodshot. An she don’t gimme the time of day.

—It seems, whispered Father Donovan, rising from the table, that Lydia is about to take off her clothes.

The two chaplains retreated through the maze of tables where the officers leaned forward toward Lydia through the iron-gray smoke. Some had girls on their knees who incited them to drink deeply, to forget everything but This Moment Now. Through the fumes eyes looked out at Lydia with weariness and desire and fever. There was an air of daze and bestial futility cut by the mechanical-saw voice of Lydia. The chaplains got their caps. The MP at the door leered at their insignia.

Outside it was dark. Evening had come to Naples, but the heat stayed on as loving and deadly as a pillow over a sleeper’s face. Down the steps of the Galleria Umberto came buzzing evidence of trafficking going on up there in the blackout. Chaplain Bascom was sweating and panting as he put his cap on his head and set it determinedly at a forty-five-degree angle.

Father Donovan said nothing but bent down and tucked his trousers over his combat boots. Then he noticed a little girl sitting on the curb. She had blond hair, so rare in Neapolitan babies. She seemed so tiny and alone. She was peeling a stick of American chewing gum, her mouth already open in anticipation. And her eyes glowed like a kitten’s at dusk. Father Donovan walked over to talk to her. He had another stick of gum in his pocket to give her. But she, fearful of her treasure, darted out into the street. He laughed and ran after her.

Around the corner from the San Carlo an English lorry turned in. It slid like a huge coffin behind the blackout lenses on its headlights. These cast a sick pencil of glow on the little girl’s bobbing hair, on the pursuing legs of Father Donovan. Chaplain Bascom saw what was happening. He shouted and leaped into the street after them. The lorry bore down. His ears exploded with the scream of brakes and the crunch of bodies, as collies are mashed under heavy turning wheels.

On the opposite curb the tiny Neapolitan girl watched the truck back off. The two bodies lay there quietly, one with a bit of purple silk ribbon over his heart. She put her gum into her mouth. Americani. For it wasn’t the first time she’d seen the dead lying in the streets of Naples.

FOURTH PORTRAIT