“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.”
Something Fishy
Monday morning did not come soon enough at Powell River. Even though Heinz and I enjoyed being with each other, we had plenty to eat, lots of fresh air and exercise and took the golf cart to the little village to the city park were we played fetch with the new rubber ball. I threw the ball and Heinz tried to catch it before it hit the ground. He was a remarkable outfielder, never missing the ball once and had energy to spare.
But this morning I was anxious to see if there were messages from Max or mail from Princepe’. Stranger still, when I arrived at the camp office, there was another new face.
“Good morning, I’m Colonel Brandon Simpson.”
“Yes, Colonel Sir, how may I help you?”
“Is Kiah off today?”
“Oh, yes sir, she is not here.”
“Back tomorrow, then?”
“Forgive me please, I am new today and I know no one, except the manager whom you may speak with?”
“No need to bother him, are you able to check for mail or messages?”
She