“Good-night, Rinaldo,” the priest said.
“I’ll see you Fredi,” Rinaldi said.
“Yes,” I said. “Come in early.” He made a face and went out the door. The major was standing with us. “He’s very tired and overworked,” he said. “He thinks too he has syphilis. I don’t believe it but he may have. He is treating himself for it. Good-night. You will leave before daylight, Enrico?”
“Yes.”
“Good-by then,” he said. “Good luck. Peduzzi will wake you and go with you.”
“Good-by, Signor Maggiore.”
“Good-by. They talk about an Austrian offensive but I don’t believe it. I hope not. But anyway it won’t be here. Gino will tell you everything. The telephone works well now.”
“I’ll call regularly.”
“Please do. Good-night. Don’t let Rinaldi drink so much brandy.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Good-night, priest.”
“Good-night, Signor Maggiore.”
He went off into his office.
CHAPTER 26
I went to the door and looked out. It had stopped raining but there was a mist.
“Should we go upstairs?” I asked the priest.
“I can only stay a little while.”
“Come on up.”
We climbed the stairs and went into my room. I lay down on Rinaldi’s bed. The priest sat on my cot that the orderly had set up. It was dark in the room.
“Well,” he said, “how are you really?”
“I’m all right. I’m tired to-night.”
“I’m tired too, but from no cause.”
“What about the war?”
“I think it will be over soon. I don’t know why, but I feel it.”
“How do you feel it?”
“You know how your major is? Gentle? Many people are like that now.”
“I feel that way myself,” I said.
“It has been a terrible summer,” said the priest. He was surer of himself now than when I had gone away. “You cannot believe how it has been. Except that you have been there and you know how it can be. Many people have realized the war this summer. Officers whom I thought could never realize it realize it now.”
“What will happen?” I stroked the blanket with my hand.
“I do not know but I do not think it can go on much longer.”
“What will happen?”
“They will stop fighting.”
“Who?”
“Both sides.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“You don’t believe it?”
“I don’t believe both sides will stop fighting at once.”
“I suppose not. It is too much to expect. But when I see the changes in men I do not think it can go on.”
“Who won the fighting this summer?”
“No one.”
“The Austrians won,” I said. “They kept them from taking San Gabriele. They’ve won. They won’t stop fighting.”
“If they feel as we feel they may stop. They have gone through the same thing.”
“No one ever stopped when they were winning.”
“You discourage me.”
“I can only say what I think.”
“Then you think it will go on and on? Nothing will ever happen?”
“I don’t know. I only think the Austrians will not stop when they have won a victory. It is in defeat that we become Christian.”
“The Austrians are Christians — except for the Bosnians.”
“I don’t mean technically Christian. I mean like Our Lord.”
He said nothing.
“We are all gentler now because we are beaten. How would Our Lord have been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?”
“He would have been just the same.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“You discourage me,” he said. “I believe and I pray that something will happen. I have felt it very close.”
“Something may happen,” I said. “But it will happen only to us. If they felt the way we do, it would be all right. But they have beaten us. They feel another way.”
“Many of the soldiers have always felt this way. It is not because they were beaten.”
“They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.”
He did not say anything. He was thinking.
“Now I am depressed myself,” I said. “That’s why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.”
“I had hoped for something.”
“Defeat?”
“No. Something more.”
“There isn’t anything more. Except victory. It may be worse.”
“I hoped for a long time for victory.”
“Me too.”
“Now I don’t know.”
“It has to be one or the other.”
“I don’t believe in victory any more.”
“I don’t. But I don’t believe in defeat. Though it may be better.”
“What do you believe in?”
“In sleep,” I said. He stood up.
“I am very sorry to have stayed so long. But I like so to talk with you.”
“It is very nice to talk again. I said that about sleeping, meaning nothing.”
We stood up and shook hands in the dark.
“I sleep at 307 now,” he said.
“I go out on post early to-morrow.”
“I’ll see you when you come back.”
“We’ll have a walk and talk together.” I walked with him to the door.
“Don’t go down,” he said. “It is very nice that you are back. Though not so nice for you.” He put his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right for me,” I said. “Good-night.”
“Good-night. Ciaou!”
“Ciaou!” I said. I was deadly sleepy.
CHAPTER 27