Читать книгу Poor Banished Children of Eve - Welby T Cox - Страница 7

Before coming to British Columbia, I had been required to see my physician for a routine check of my vitals. More or less an instant medical analysis from a friendly source as consideration in the process to pick up the star as a general.

I was no longer a young man…but there aren’t many Custer’s in this man’s army. Now past fifty with the army looking at my colonel bars, Obviously thinking it was either time for a promotion based on longevity; experience in the field while taking fire, accommodations for bravery and leadership from various countries, as well as medals for being shot-up. Maybe they were thinking it was time for this grey beard to move along. As much as I despised doing the physical, I relented taking the Mannitol Hexanitrate to help pass the test for whatever the army had planned.

I went home to Kentucky to see my personal physician for more than twenty years. He had been less than positive, and pointed out the readings after taking them twice. He looked over his reading glasses, “you know Brandon, it isn’t indicated, in fact it is definitely contra-indicating an increased intra-cranial pressure.”

“Doc, I don’t know what the hell you are talking about?"

“I have known you a long time, you old war horse. That is to say Colonel, sir…or maybe it just seems a long time.” The doctor said.

“It’s been a long time and I don’t need bad news.” I said and we both laughed.

“We sound like the odd couple,” The surgeon said. “But seriously, don’t ever run into anything which causes sparks to fly, when you are really tipped in Nitro.”

“Wasn’t my cardio, Ok?”

Your electro-cardiograph was terrific, Colonel. Had I not known it was yours, I would have sworn ... it was the heart of a twenty something.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Colonel, too much mannitol hexanitrate produced a certain amount of nausea and I’m sure you are anxious to get home, take a seconal and lie down for a nap.”

“I ought to write the manual for minor tactics for the heavy pressure platoon.” I said.

“Why not.”

“Well doc, I’ve told you, why can’t I just throw myself on the mercy of the court?”

“You never do, Colonel…you always plead them not guilty.”

I laughed at the suggestion but I could see my old pal wasn’t going to let me off the hook.

“How many times have you been hit in the head?” He asked.

“You know damn well doc, it’s in my 201 but when you’re the quarterback the line hits you.”

“How many times, Colonel?”

“Oh for Christ sake, are you asking for the army, or as my friend and personal surgeon?”

“You know Brandon, I stood up for you and Bonnie and I’d never lie to you…this comes from the heart as your friend and physician.”

“Ok Doc, you have made me feel sufficiently trite, now what exactly do you want to know?”

“Concussions!”

“Real ones?”

“Anytime you were out cold or couldn’t remember.”

“Maybe ten or fifteen times.” I responded, “Counting Polo, give or take three shots to the head.”

“You poor bastard.” The surgeon said, “You’re in good health, but the heads going to kill you.”

“May I leave now?”

“Yes, sir,” The surgeon responded.

“Want to go on a duck hunt in the marshes near Vancouver? It will be terrific.”

“Isn’t that were they shoot old coots?”

“No, they shoot real ducks; mallards, pin-tails, widgeon, some geese…just like the shoots we went on when we were kids.”

“I was a kid in ’29 or ‘30”

“That was the first mean thing I ever heard you say.”

“I didn’t mean it like it sounded. I just meant ... I didn’t remember when shooting ducks was good; you must remember I’m a city boy.”

“Colonel, sir, I can hurt you, and I know you don’t mean that?”

“Of course not, just kidding.” I said laughing at my old friend.

“Happy to say you’re in good shape, and I would expect you will get the star, but just remember Brandon, if you ever get a severe headache, don’t fool with it and try to self-medicate…sorry I can’t go on the shoot…but then I can’t even shoot!” (Laughing)

“Hell.” I said, “... doesn’t matter. Neither can anybody else in this man’s army…I just enjoy having you around, taking your money at poker!”

“I’m going to give you something else to back-up the medication you are now taking.”

“Is there anything?”

“Not really. They’re working on stuff at Lilly.”

“Let’em work.”

“That is a laudable attitude, sir.”

“Go to hell.” I said. “You sure you don’t want to go on the shoot…just for the R and R?”

“I get my ducks at Kroger.” The doctor said. “And, it’s warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and I don’t have to get up before first light…or wear long handled drawers.”

“All right city boy, you’ll never know what you missed.”

“And, I don’t want to know,” the Doctor said. “I am glad you are in the kind of shape ... enables you to do such manly things, Colonel, sir.”

“I could learn to dislike you.” We shook hands and Doc patted my back as I went out the door.

************

They had known each other since boyhood, and I thought of how much water had passed under the bridges for me, and as I drove home, I thought of the drive down from Trieste to Venice, along the old road from Monfalcone to Latis and then on across the flat country. I hired a good driver and was able to relax in the front seat while watching the country roll by…the land I had known as a boy.

It looks quite different now, I thought. Maybe it’s because the distances have changed due to the construction of better roads and no more gravel rattling against the frame of the car. Everything is so much smaller when you’re older. I remember, the only times I used to ride through it was while in Camion, and the rest of the time we walked. I suppose what I looked for then was patches of shade whenever we fell out and the taste of sweet cool water from fresh wells on the farms, and ditches too…I remember looking for the ditches.

The driver made a curve and crossed the Tagliamento River on a temporary bridge. It was green along the banks of the river and men were fishing along the shoreline, were the river ran deep and cool with rocks for the big fish to hide. The brown bridge was being repaired and we could hear the sound of ratchets and hammers. However, less than a thousand yards away, the towns bombed out buildings and outbuildings of what remained of a once lovely country village stood as a reminder of the legacy of war. Replaced now by the sounds of a new economy, driven by war, were once the country-folk struggled but now they simply watch and remember the insanity of it all.

“Look at it.” The young driver exclaimed. “In this country you can find a bridge on a rail-spur.”

“I guess the lesson is,” I said, “Don’t ever build yourself a country house or hire Giotto to paint any frescoes, if you live a hundred yards from the bridge.”

“I knew there must be a lesson in it, sir.”

We had passed the ruined villa now, and into the straightaway were the willows grew by the ditches, still dark with water from the winter rain and snow and the fields, painting a beautiful landscape of Mulberry trees sure to be cut down. Just ahead a man was peddling a bike and using both hands to read the morning news.

“If there are heavies, the lesson ought to say a mile.” The driver remarked. “Would ... be about right sir?”

“If it’s a guided missile,” I said. “Better make it two hundred miles and you’d better give the cyclist a toot.”

The driver did so and the man moved over to the shoulder of the road without either looking up, or touching the handlebars. As we passed I tried to see what paper he was reading, but the name was hidden in the fold.

“I guess a man would be better off now to build a house or a church…or to get…who did you say? To paint the lovely pictures on the walls?” The driver asked.

“Giotto, he was a great painter from Firenze, his full name was Giotto di Bondone. He was also a skilled sculptor and architect who lived around the end of the fourteenth century. I saw two of his paintings in the church of St. Francis of Assisi.

They were of St. Francis and the life of Jesus Christ, though I dare not say how he connected the two of them since they lived at different times. But as great as his paintings, I thought his work as the architect of the Duomo in Florence, the design of the campanile and the façade was truly an inspired work, the most spectacular I’ve seen.”

“Sir, please forgive my stupidity, but what is this…how you say, camp…something?”

“The only stupid question, my son…is the one which isn’t asked…so please just ask. It is impossible to ask too many questions. Remember, once I had to ask as well. A campanile is a bell tower, a freestanding bell tower.”

“You must love and know a great deal about art?” It was more a statement than a question.

**************

We were on a straight stretch of road now and were making good time. One farm blended, nearly blurred into another and you could only see what was far ahead and moving toward you. Lateral vision was just a condensation of flat, low country in the winter, I’m not sure I like the speed, I thought to myself.

“Art,” I answered the driver, “I know quite a bit about painters and art.” I remembered how little I knew or cared to know before Bonnie. Besides medicine, art was her passion and I always told her, painting was her lover and I, its apprentice. She was such a brilliant and talented person, everything I know, which was worth knowing, the gentle side of life…I learned from my sweet Bonnie, my greatest love and my greatest joy in life.

The paintings she created, hang now in my apartment. They are reminders of what she may have reproduced those sounds of music in a woman’s world of a child crying to be changed and fed, music to her ears.

“I’m called DeNeri, sir.”

“Excuse me DeNeri, but there is a fine place at Cortina, excellent food, well run by an old family and nobody bothers you, lets head over there for a meal.” I said establishing my command.

“Yes, sir, Colonel…now, sir, the reason I asked you about the painters, is these Madonna’s. I thought I ought to see some painters, so I went to some big museum in Florence.”

“The Uffizi, or was it the Pitti Palace?”

“I’m not sure sir; I just remember it was a great long building, which ran in front of the Arno River. I am quite certain a person could stay in a building for more than a month and still not see it all. I kept looking at those paintings of the Madonna until they all started running together. I tell you Colonel, sir, a man who hasn’t checked out on this painting, can only see so many Madonna’s…and they get to him…You know my theory?”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“You know how crazy they are about bambinas, and the less they get to eat, the more bambinas they got…and have coming” Well beggin your pardon sir, I think these paintings were probably big bambini lovers, like all Italians. I don’t know these ones like you just mentioned now, so I don’t include them on my theory, and I’m hoping you’ll put me straight anyway.”

“Well, DeNeri…you must first understand. The Italians are mostly devout Catholics and the bambini of which you speak are the representation of the Christ child, whom no one has ever seen. There is a deep, unabiding longing to get a glimpse of God.”

“But it looks to me like these Madonna’s, whom I really saw plenty of, sir…it just looks to me like these straight ordinary Madonna painters were sort of a showing, say, of this whole bambini business…if you understand what it is I mean, sir?”

“DeNeri, have you heard the word manifest?”

“Can’t say I ever ran across it, sir.”

“While the vast majority of those interested in art, like yourself, indulge themselves with the visual impact of the face of the Madonna. What the great artist were doing in the Madonna, which you witnessed at the Uffizi, was a manifest. A plain way of showing and giving you the capability to readily and instantly perceive through the senses, most essentially through sight, not what the Madonna looked like DeNeri, but why was she chosen to deliver in a virgin birth, the Son of God.”

“Dude that is really heavy.”

“DeNeri, wrap your mind around this thought. All of the paintings you have seen of the Madonna shows her as a young woman, very beautiful, but what you must remember is there is a law among painters, which is called ‘artistic license’. It essentially says what the artist can imagine as a subject is his right to paint.”

“Oh! Are you saying that she may not look like these paintings?”

“Bingo, you are catching on, and I have a theory on this age issue.”

“I am all ears…and nose.” DeNeri said laughing at himself.

“Here is the drill, Mary had a sister whose name was Sarah and when the angel appeared to Mary, she was informed that her older sister was with child as well. It is said Sarah was 90. Someone is going to write a book in the future which capitalizes on this issue, and make a fortune.”

“Why not you, Colonel?”

“DeNeri, do you have any other theories on art?”

“Naturally, sir, it’s just the first look by an uneducated man…the bambini theory is about as far as my little brain got. What I really wish is ... the painters could paint some good pictures of the high country up around the rest center at Cortina.”

“It will surprise you to know; an artist named Titan was born and raised in that part of the country, and at least there is the local legend. Once, I went down the valley and saw the little house where he was supposed to have been born and lived.”

“Was it much of a place, sir?”

“No, not so much.”

“Well if he painted any pictures of the country up there, with those sunset colored rocks, and the pines when the snow comes, and all of those beautiful steeples on the tiny churches.”

“Those are campaniles, which I mentioned to you earlier and like those coming up in Ceggia. DeNeri, do you remember I told you the word means Bell Tower?”

“Well if he painted any really good pictures of the country and with those Campaniles, I’d sure as hell like to trade him out.”

“I know ... Titan painted some beautiful women as well, DeNeri.”

“If I had a joint, say a road house or some small Pensione’, I could use one of those behind the bar. But if I brought home a lovely picture of a nude by either Giotto or Titan or of some woman, my old lady would run my ars around the block a time or two.”

“You could donate it to a local museum.”

“All they got in the local museum back home is arrow heads, war bonnets, scalping knives, different scalps, petrified fish, peace pipes, and the skin of some outlaw who got hung. One of them women religious painters would be out of place, sir.”

“Really, not so much.”

“Well, do you see a Campanile down there across the plain?” I asked DeNeri. “I’ll show you a place down there were I used to fight when I was younger.”

“Did you fight here, too, sir?”

“Yeah.” I responded. “I’m like horse shit; DeNeri…the army has sent me all over the road.”

“Who was it ... hit Trieste in the war?”

“The Krauts…Austrians, I mean.”

“Did we ever get it back?”

“Not till the end, after the war was over.”

“Who had Florence and Rome?”

“America.”

“Well I guess you weren’t so damn bad off then. Beggin your pardon, sir…I was in the thirty-sixth division, sir.”

“I’ve seen the patch.”

“I was thinking about Rapido, sir. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

“You weren’t,” I said. “You were just thinking about Rapido. Listen, DeNeri, everybody who has soldiered for a long time, has had their Rapidos…and more than one.”

“I couldn’t take more than one, sir.”

************

The driver went through the small village of San Dona di Piave’. It set my mind to wondering and remembering it as a village, which was destroyed and recently rebuilt…and now only slightly uglier than a southern town. This village was as cheery and prosperous as a string of them, up the river, are miserable and gloomy. To myself, I was wondering, did Fossella ever get over the war? I never saw it before the bombs hit. They shelled it unmercifully before the major offensive in 1918. Then we shelled it again before retaking it. I remembered how the attack had taken off from Monastier, gone through Forna, and on this winter day, I remember how it had been during the summer.

It was only a few weeks ago ... I had been through Fossella and had gone out along the sunken road…just to find the place were I had been hit, out on the river bank. It was easy to locate because of the bend in the river, and the location of the heavy machine gun post.

The crater around it so smoothly grassed now and the sheep had neatly nibbled it down, until it looked like the putting green at Augusta. The river was slow and muddy black here, with reeds along the edges, and I squatted low, looking across the river from the bank, were you could never show your face in the daylight. I relieved myself in the exact place were I determined, by triangulation, I had been shot thirty years ago.

“A poor effort,” I muttered aloud to myself, or maybe the river ... which was heavy laden with the quiet of autumn, and rolling from the fallen rains…” but I knew it to be my own.”

I stood and looked around. There was no one in sight…and I remembered I had left the car down the sunken road, in front of the last and saddest rebuilt house there.

“Now I’ll complete the monument,” I said to no one but the deceased and I took my old pocketknife, which all good poachers carry, from my pocket. It locked on opening it, twirling it; I dug a perfect hole in the soft earth. I cleaned the blade on my combat boot and then I inserted a brown ten thousand lira note in the hole and tamped it down with my foot, replacing the divot, like one from a badly missed wedge.

It was twenty years at five hundred liras a year for the Medaglia d’ Argento al Volore Militare. The VC carries ten Guineas and the Silver Star is free.

“I’ll keep the change.” I thought to myself.

It’s ok now, it was blood money; look how the grass grows from the treatments of blood and body parts, spiking the iron in the earth along with Lorenzo’s leg, both of Audio’s legs, and my kneecap. It’s a wonderful monument…it has everything, fertility, money, blood, iron…sounds like some city I know near Cleveland, were fertility, money, blood and iron mix, there is the fatherland were only coal is needed to stoke the furnace of progress.

Looking across the river to the white house, which had once been white washed stone, I spat into the river. A long spittle through my front teeth and I just made it into the deep current, leaving my personal genome as a part of the reoccurring nature, perhaps changing the genetic code in five generations of the catfish. Standing there, I thought as well of the ancient biblical story of the half-man, half-fish who walked out of the Nile River to build the tombs and the pyramids. Perhaps by some miracle of natural design, another quasi-reptilian aquatic character will appear to rebuild the bombed out towns and villages.

I couldn’t spit all night, nor afterwards for a long time. But, I spit well now for a man who doesn’t chew. I walked slowly back to the car along the sunken road to find the driver fast asleep.

“Wake up son,” I said to him. “Turn the car around and take the road to Treviso, we won’t need a map in this part of the world, we need only follow the bombed out villages.”