Book: Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian

V >> Various >> Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian




How well I remember the first grief of my military life, a blow that
befell me a few days after I had entered college all aglow with the
poetry of war. It was the morning on which caps were distributed. Each
new recruit of the company found one that fitted him, but all were too
small for me, and the captain turned upon me furiously.

"Are you aware that the commissary stores will have to be reopened just
for you?" And I heard him mutter after a pause, "What are you going to
do with a head like that?"

Great God, what I underwent at that moment! What--be a soldier? I
thought. Never! Better beg my bread in the streets--better die and have
done with it!

Then I remember an officer, an old soldier, gruff but kindly, who had a
way of smiling whenever he looked at me. How that smile used to
exasperate me! I had made up my mind to demand an explanation, to let
him know that I didn't propose to be any man's butt, when one evening he
called me to him, and having given me to understand that he had heard
something about me and that he wanted to know if it were really true (I
was to speak frankly, for it would do me no harm), he finally, with many
coughs and smiles and furtive glances, whispered in my ear: "Is it true
that you write poetry?"

I recall, too, the insuperable difficulty of accomplishing the manual
tasks imposed upon me, especially that of sewing on my buttons--how
every few seconds the needle would slip through my fingers, till the
thread was tangled up in a veritable spider's web, while the button hung
as loose as ever, to the derision of my companions and the disgust of
the drill-sergeant, whose contemptuous--"You may be a great hand at
rhyming, but when it comes to sewing on buttons you're a hundred years
behind the times," seemed to exile me to the depths of the eighteenth
century.

I see the great refectory, where a battalion might have drilled; I see
the long tables, the five hundred heads bent above the plates, the rapid
motion of five hundred forks, of a thousand hands and sixteen thousand
teeth; the swarm of servants running here and there, called to, scolded,
hurried, on every side at once; I hear the clatter of dishes, the
deafening noise, the voices choked with food crying out: "Bread--bread!"
and I feel once more the formidable appetite, the herculean strength of
jaw, the exuberant life and spirits of those far-off days.

The scene changes, and I see myself locked in a narrow cell on the fifth
floor, a jug of water at my side, a piece of black bread in my hand,
with unkempt hair and unshorn chin, and the image of Silvio Pellico
before me; condemned to ten days' imprisonment for having made an
address of thanks to the professor of chemistry on the occasion of his
closing lecture, thereby committing an infraction of article number so-
and-so of the regulation forbidding any cadet to speak in public in the
name of his companions. And to this day I can hear the Major saying:
"Take my advice and never let your imagination run away with you;"
citing the example of his old school-fellow, the poet Regaldi, who had
got into just such a scrape, and concluding with the warning that
"poetry always made men make asses of themselves."

Yes, I see it all as vividly as though I were reliving the very same
life again--the silent march of the companies at night down the long,
faintly-lit corridors; the professors behind their desks, deafening us
with their Gustavus-Adolphuses, their Fredericks the Great, and their
Napoleons; the great lecture-rooms full of motionless faces; the huge,
dim dormitories, resounding with the respirations of a hundred pairs of
lungs; the garden, the piazza, the ramparts, the winding Modenese
sheets, the cafis full of graduates devouring pastry, the picnics in the
country, the excursions to neighboring villages, the intrigues, the
studies, the rivalries, the sadnesses, the enmities, the friendships.



IV.

A few days before the graduating examinations we were given leave to
study wherever we pleased. There were two hundred of us in the second
class, and we dispersed ourselves all over the palace, in groups of five
or six friends, each group in a separate room, and began the long,
desperate grind, cramming away day and night, with only an occasional
interruption to discuss the coming examination and our future prospects.

How cheerily we talked, and how bright our anticipations were! After two
years of imprisonment, home, freedom, and epaulets were suddenly within
our reach. Aside from the common satisfaction of being promoted to be an
officer, each one of us had his own special reasons for rejoicing. With
one of us it was the satisfaction of being able to say to the family
that had pinched and denied itself to pay for his schooling, "Here I am,
good people, nineteen years old and able to shift for myself;" with
another, the fun of swaggering in full uniform, with clanking heels and
rattling sword, into the quiet house where the old uncle who had been so
generous sat waiting to welcome him home; with a third, the joy of
mounting a familiar staircase, brevet in pocket, and knocking at a
certain door, behind which a girlish voice would be heard exclaiming,
"There he is!"--the voice of the little cousin to whom he had said good-
bye, two years before, in her parents' presence, reassured only by the
non-committal phrase: "Well, well, go to college first and make a man of
yourself; then we'll see."

Already we saw ourselves surrounded by children eager to finger our
sabres, by girls who signed to us as we passed, by old men who clapped
us on the shoulder, by mothers crying, "How splendidly he looks!" So
that it was with the greatest difficulty that we shook off this
importunate folk, saying to ourselves: "Presently, presently, all in
good time; but just now, really, you must let us be!"

Then, each following the bent of his disposition, his habits, and his
plans, we confided to one another the regiment, province, and city to
which we hoped to be assigned. Some of us longed for the noise and
merriment of the Milanese carnivals, and dreamed of theatres, balls and
convivial suppers. One sighed for a sweet Tuscan village, perched on a
hilltop, where, in command of his thirty men, he might spend the
peaceful spring days in collecting songs and proverbs among the country-
folk. Another longed to carry on his studies in the unbroken solitude of
a lonely Alpine fortress, hemmed in by ravines and precipices. One of us
craved a life of adventure in the Calabrian forests; another, the
activities of some great seaboard city; a third, an island of the
Tyrrhenian Sea. We divided up Italy among ourselves a hundred times a
day, as though we had been staking off plots in a garden; and each of us
detailed to the others the beauties of his chosen home, and all agreed
that every one of the places selected would be beautiful and delightful
to live in.

And then--war! It was sure to come sooner or later. Hardly was the word
mentioned when our books were hurled into a corner and we were all
talking at once, our faces flushed, our voices loud and excited. War, to
us, was a superhuman vision in which the spirit lost itself as in some
strange intoxication; a far-off, rose-colored horizon, etched with the
black profiles of gigantic mountains; legion after legion, with flying
banners and the sound of music, endlessly ascending the mountain-side;
and high up, on the topmost ridges, surrounded by the enemy, our own
figures far in advance of the others, dashing forward with brandished
swords; while down the farther slope a torrent of foot, horse, and
artillery plunged wildly through darkness to an unknown abyss.

A medal for gallantry? Which one of us would not have won it? Lose the
battle? But could Italians be defeated? Death--but who feared to die?
And did anybody ever die at nineteen? Who could tell what strange and
marvellous adventures awaited us, what sights we should see! Perhaps
some foreign expedition; a war in the East; was not the Eastern question
still stirring? We wandered in imagination over seas and mountains, we
saw the marshalling of fleets and armies, we glowed with impatience, we
cried out within ourselves, "Only give us time to pass our examinations,
and we'll be there too!"

And then the examinations took place, and on a beautiful July morning
the doors of the ducal palace were thrown open and we were told to go
forth and seek our destiny. And with a great cry we dashed out, and
scattered ourselves like a flight of birds over the length and breadth
of Italy.



V.

And now?

Six years have gone by, only six years, and what a long and strange and
varied romance might be woven out of the lives of those two hundred
college comrades! I have seen many of them since we graduated, and have
had news of many others, and I have a way of passing them in review one
after another, and questioning them mentally; and what I see and hear
fills me with a wonder not unmixed with sadness. And here they all are.

The first that I see are a group of brown, broad-shouldered, bearded
men, whom I do not recall just at first; but when they smile at me I
recognize the slender fair boys who used to look so girlish.

"Is it really you?" I exclaim, and they answer, "Yes," with a deep
sonorous note so different from the boyish voices I had expected to
hear, that I start back involuntarily.

And these others? Their features are not changed, to be sure, their
figures are as robust and well set-up as ever, but the smile has
vanished, there is no brightness in the eye.

"What has happened to you?" I ask; and they answer, "Nothing."

Ah, how much better that some misfortune should have befallen them than
that the years alone, and only six short years, should have had the
power so sadly to transform them!

Here are others. Good God! One, two, three, five of them; let me look
again; yes--gray-headed! What--at twenty-seven! Tell me--what happened?
They shrug their shoulders and pass on.

Then I see a long file of my own friends, some of them the wildest of
the class, one with a baby in his arms, one with a child by the hand,
another leading two. What? So-and-so married? So-and-so a pere de
famille? Who would have thought it?

Here come others; some, with bowed heads and reddened eyes, sign to me
sadly in passing. There is crape upon their sleeves.

Others, with heads high and flashing eyes, point exultantly to their
breasts. Our college dream, the military medal--ah, lucky fellows!

And here are some, moving slowly, and so pale, so emaciated, that I
hardly know them. Ah me! The surgeon's knife has probed those splendid
statuesque limbs, once bared with such boyish pride on the banks of the
Panaro; the surgeon's knife, seeking for German bullets, while the blood
streamed and the amputated limbs dropped from the poor maimed trunks.
Alas, poor friends! But at least they have remained with us, rewarded
for their sacrifice by the love and gratitude of all.

But what's become of so-and-so?

He died on the march through Lombardy.

And so-and-so?

Killed by a mitrailleuse at Monte Croce.

And my friend so-and-so?

He died of a rifle-bullet, in the hospital at Verona.

And the fellow who sat next to me in class?

HE died of cholera in Sicily.

Enough--enough!

So they all pass by, fading into the distance, while my fancy hastens
back over the road they have travelled, seeking traces of their passage
--how many and what diverse traces!

Here, books and papers scattered on the floor, half-finished projects of
battles, an overturned table, a smoking candle-end, tokens of a studious
vigil. There, broken chairs, fragments of glasses, the remains of a
carouse. Farther on, an expanse of waste ground, two bloody swords, deep
footprints, the impress of a fallen body. Here, a table covered with a
torn green cloth and strewn with cards and dice; yonder, in the grass, a
scented love-letter and a knot of faded violets. Over there a graveyard
cross, with the inscription: To my Mother. And farther on more cards,
cast-off uniforms, women's portraits, tailors' bills, bills of exchange,
swords, flowers, blood. What a vast tapestry one can weave with those
few broken and tangled threads! What loves, what griefs, what struggles,
follies, and disasters one divines and comprehends! Many a high and
generous impulse too; but how much more of squandered opportunity and
effort!

And even if nothing had been squandered, if, in those six years, not a
day, not an hour, had been stolen from our work, if we had not opened
our hearts to any affections but those that exalt the mind and give
serenity to life, a great and dear illusion must still have been lost to
us; an illusion that in vanishing has taken with it much of our strength
and hope; the illusion of that distant rose-colored horizon, edged with
the black profiles of gigantic mountains, legion after legion hurling
itself upon the enemy with flying banners and the sound of martial
music!

A lost war.

And if we had not lost that illusion, would not some other have vanished
in its place?



VI.

I think of myself and say: "How far it is from nineteen to twenty-five!"

Wherever I went, then, I was the youngest, since boys under nineteen
don't mix on equal terms with men; and I knew that whoever I met envied
me three things: my youth, my hopes, and my light-heartedness. And now,
wherever I go, I meet young fellows who look at me and speak to me with
the deference shown to an elder brother; and, as I talk to them, I am
conscious of making an effort to appear as cheery as they, and even find
myself wondering what stuff they are made of.

The other day, looking at a friend's child, a little girl of six, I said
to him, half laughing, "Who knows?"

"Isn't there rather too much disparity of age?" he answered.

I was silent, half-startled; then, counting up the years on my fingers,
I murmured sadly, "Yes."

At nineteen I could say of any little maid I met, that one day she might
become my wife; the rising generation belonged to me; but now there is a
part of humanity for which I am already too old!

And the future--once an undefined bright background, on which fancy
sketched all that was fairest and most desirable, without one warning
from the voice of reason: now, clearly outlined and distinctly colored,
it takes such precise shape that I can almost guess what it is to be,
can see my path traced out for me, and the goal to which it leads. And
so, marvels and glories, farewell!

And mankind? Well--I never was mistrustful, nor inclined to see the bad
rather than the good in human nature; indeed, I have a friend who is so
exasperated by my persistent optimism that, when I enlarge upon my
affection for my kind, he invariably answers, "Wait till your turn
comes!"

And yet, how much is gone already of the naif abandonment of those
boyish friendships, of that candid and ready admiration that, like a
well-adjusted spring, leapt forth at a touch, even when I heard a
stranger praised! Two or three disillusionments have sufficed to weaken
that spring. Already I begin to question my own enthusiasm, and a rising
doubt silences the warm, frank words of affection that once leapt
involuntarily to my lips. I read with dry eyes many a book that I used
to cry over; when I read poetry my voice trembles less often than it
did; my laugh is no longer the sonorous irresistible peal that once
echoed through every corner of the house. When I look in the glass--is
it fancy or reality?--I perceive in my face something that was not there
six years ago, an indescribable look about the eyes, the brow, the
mouth, that is imperceptible to others, but that I see and am troubled
by. And I remember Leopardi's words, AT TWENTY-FIVE THE FLOWER OF YOUTH
BEGINS TO FADE. What? Am I beginning to fade? Am I on the downward
slope? Have I travelled so far already? Why, thousands younger than I
have graduated since my day from the college of Modena; I feel them
pressing upon me, treading me down, urging me forward. The thought
terrifies me. Stop a moment--let me draw breath; why must one devour
life at this rate? I mean to take my stand here, motionless, firm as a
rock; back with you! But the ground is sloping and slippery, my feet
slide, there is nothing to catch hold of. Comrades, friends of my youth,
come, let us hold fast to each other; let us clasp each other tight;
don't let them overthrow us; let us stand fast! Ah, curse it, I feel the
earth slipping away under me!



VII.

Well, well-those are the mournful imaginings of rainy days. When the sun
reappears, the soul grows clear like the sky, and there succeeds to my
brief discouragement a state of mind in which it appears to me so
foolish and so cowardly to fret because I see a change in my face, to
mourn the careless light-heartedness of my youth, to rebel against the
laws of nature in a burst of angry regret, that I am overcome with
shame. I rouse myself, I scramble to my feet, I seize hold of my faith,
my hopes, my intentions, I set to work again with a resolution full of
joyful pride. At such moments I feel strong enough to face the approach
of my thirtieth year, to await with serenity disillusionments, white
hairs, sorrows. infirmities, and old age, my mind's eye fixed upon a
far-off point of light that seems to grow larger as I advance. I march
on with renewed courage; and to the noisy and drunken crew calling out
to me to join them, I answer, No!--and to the knights of the doleful
countenance, who shake their heads and say, "What if it were not true?"
--I answer, without turning my eyes from that distant light, No!--and to
the grave, proud men who point to their books and writings, and say with
a smile of pity and derision, "It is all a dream!"--I answer, with my
eyes still upon that far-off light, and the great cry of a man who sees
a ghost in his path, No! Ah, at such moments, what matters it that I
must grow old and die? I toil, I wait, I believe!



VIII.

Most of my classmates have undergone the same change. Their faces have
grown older, or sadder, as Leopardi would have us say; but with the
faces the souls have grown graver also. I have spoken of certain changes
in my friends that saddened me; but there are others which make me glad.
Now and then it has happened to me to come across some of the most
careless, happy-go-lucky of my classmates, and to be filled with wonder
when I hear them speak of their country, of their work, of the duties to
be performed, of the future to be prepared for. Owing, perhaps, to the
many and great events of these last years, their characters have been
suddenly and completely transformed. Some ruling motive--ambition,
family cares, or the mere instinctive love of study--has gathered
together and focused their vague thoughts and scattered powers; has
brought about the habit of reflection, and turned their thoughts towards
the great problem of life; has given to all a purpose, and a path to
travel, and left them no time to mourn the vanished past. We have all
entered upon our second youth, with some disillusionments, with a little
experience, and with the conviction that happiness--what little of it is
given to us on earth--is not obtained by struggling, storming, and
clamoring to heaven and earth WE MUST HAVE IT!--but is slowly distilled
from the inmost depths of the soul by the long persistence of quiet
toil. Humble hopes have succeeded to our splendid visions; steady
resolves, to our grand designs; and the dazzling vision of war, the
goddess promising glory and delirium, has been replaced by the image of
Italy, our mother, who promises only--and it is enough--the lofty
consolation of having loved and served her.



IX.

Our souls have emerged fortified from the sorrow of the lost war.

One day, surely, Italy will re-echo from end to end with the great cry,
"Come!"--and we shall spring to our feet, pale and proud, with the
answering shout, "We are ready!"

Then, in the streets of our cities, thronged with people, with soldiers,
horses, and wagons, amidst the clashing of arms and the blare of
trumpets, we classmates shall meet again. I shall see them once more,
many of them, perhaps, only for that short hour, some only for a moment.
At night, in the torchlit glare of a railway-station, we shall meet
again, and greet each other in silence, hand in hand and eye to eye. No
shouting, no songs, no joyous clamor, no vision of triumphal marches, no
veiling of death's image in the light hopefulness of reunion; we shall
say but one word to each other--good-bye--and that good-bye will be a
promise, a vow; that good-bye will mean, "This time, there will be no
descending from the mountains; you and I, lad, will be left lying on the
summit."

And often, traversing a long expanse of time, I evoke the vision of
distant battle-fields on which the lot of Italy is decided. My fancy
hastens from valley to valley, from hill to hill; and at all the most
difficult passages, at all the posts of danger, I see one of my old
classmates, a gray-haired colonel or general, at the head of his
regiment or of his brigade; and I love to picture him at the moment
when, attacked by a heavy force of the enemy, he directs the defence.

The two sides have joined battle, and from a neighboring height, he
observes the fighting below. Poor friend! At that moment, perhaps, life
and honor hang in the balance; thirty years of study, of hopes, of
sacrifices, are about to be crowned with glory or scattered like a
handful of dust down that green slope at his feet--it all hangs on a
thread. Pale and motionless he stands there watching, the sabre
trembling in his convulsive grasp. I am near him, my eye is upon his
face, I feel and see and tremble with him, I live his life.

Courage, friend! Your spirit has passed into your men, the fight is
theirs, never fear! That uncertain movement over there towards the right
wing is but the momentary confusion caused by some inequality of the
ground; they are not falling back, man. Listen, the shouts are louder,
the firing grows heavier, the last battalion has been thrown into
action, all your men are fighting. Ah! how his gaze hurries from one end
of the line to the other, how pale he has grown; life seems suspended.
What are those distant voices? What flame rushes to his face? What is
this smile, this upward glance? Victory!--but, by God, man, rein in your
horse, look at me--here I am, your old classmate who holds out his arms
to you--and now off, down to the battlefield among your soldiers--and
God be with you!

He has put his charger to the gallop and disappeared.

And who knows how many of my friends may find themselves some day, at
some hour of their lives, face to face with such an ordeal? Who knows
how many an act of patriotism will make their names illustrious, how
dear to the people some of these names may become? What if some day I
were to see the youth who sat next to me in the class-room or at table,
or slept beside me in the dormitory, riding through the streets on a
white horse, in a general's uniform, covered with flowers and surrounded
by rejoicing crowds? And who knows--may I not knock at the door of some
other, and throw my arms about the pale, sad figure, grown ten years
older in a few months; telling him that the popular verdict is unjust,
that there are many who know that he is not to blame for the disaster,
that sooner or later the excitement will subside, and the victims of the
first rash judgment be restored to honor; that his name is still dear
and respected, that he must not despond, that he must take heart and
keep on hoping?

Ah, when I think of the fierce trials that life has in store for many of
my classmates, of all that they may do to benefit their country, of all
that their glory will cost them; when I, who have left the army, think
of all this, I feel that, not to be outdone by my old school-fellows in
paying the debt of gratitude that I owe my country, I ought to toil
without ceasing, to spend my nights in study, to treasure my youth and
strength as a means of sustaining my intellectual effort; that, in order
to preach the beauty of goodness, I ought to lead a blameless life; that
I ought to keep alive that glowing affection, a spark of which I may
sometimes communicate to others; to study children, the people, and the
poor, and to write for their benefit; to let no ignoble word fall from
my pen, to sacrifice all my inclinations to the common welfare, never to
lose heart, never to strive for approval, to hope for nothing and long
for nothing but the day on which I may at last say to myself: I have
done what I could, my life has not been useless, I am satisfied.



X.

And this is the thought that comes to me in closing: I should like to
have before me a lad of seventeen, well-bred and kindly, but ignorant of
the human heart, as we all are at that age; and putting a friendly hand
on his shoulder, I should like to say to him:

"Do you want to make sure of a peaceful and untroubled future? Treat
your friends as considerately as you would a woman, for, believe me,
every harsh word or ill-mannered act (however excusable, however long-
forgotten) will return some day to pain and trouble you. Recalling my
friends after all these years, I remember a quarrel that I had with one
of them, a sharp word exchanged with another, the resolve, maintained
for many months, not to speak to a third. Puerilities, if you like, and
yet how glad I should be not to have to reproach myself with them! And,
though I feel sure that they have made no more impression upon others
than upon myself, how much I wish for an opportunity of convincing
myself of the fact, of dissipating any slight shadow that may have
lingered in the minds of my friends!

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