‘Much longer than you or me,’ Nately blurted out lamely.
‘Oh, is that all!
That won’t be very much longer then, considering that you’re so gullible and brave and that I am already such an old, old man.’
‘How old are you?’ Nately asked, growing intrigued and charmed with the old man in spite of himself.
‘A hundred and seven.’
The old man chuckled heartily at Nately’s look of chagrin. ‘I see you don’t believe that either.’
‘I don’t believe anything you tell me,’ Nately replied, with a bashful mitigating smile.
‘The only thing I do believe is that America is going to win the war.’
‘You put so much stock in winning wars,’ the grubby iniquitous old man scoffed.
‘The real trick lies in losing wars, in knowing which wars can be lost.
Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how splendidly we’ve done nonetheless.
France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis.
Germany loses and prospers.
Look at our own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble.
Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn’t a chance of winning.
But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated.’
Nately gaped at him in undisguised befuddlement.
‘Now I really don’t understand what you’re saying.
You talk like a madman.’
‘But I live like a sane one.
I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, and I am an anti-fascist now that he has been deposed.
I was fanatically pro-German when the Germans were here to protect us against the Americans, and now that the Americans are here to protect us against the Germans I am fanatically pro-American.
I can assure you, my outraged young friend’—the old man’s knowing, disdainful eyes shone even more effervescently as Nately’s stuttering dismay increased—’that you and your country will have a no more loyal partisan in Italy than me—but only as long as you remain in Italy.’
‘But,’ Nately cried out in disbelief, ‘you’re a turncoat!
A time-server!
A shameful, unscrupulous opportunist!’
‘I am a hundred and seven years old,’ the old man reminded him suavely.
‘Don’t you have any principles?’
‘Of course not.’
‘No morality?’
‘Oh, I am a very moral man,’ the villainous old man assured him with satiric seriousness, stroking the bare hip of a buxom black-haired girl with pretty dimples who had stretched herself out seductively on the other arm of his chair. He grinned at Nately sarcastically as he sat between both naked girls in smug and threadbare splendor, with a sovereign hand on each.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Nately remarked grudgingly, trying stubbornly not to watch him in relationship to the girls. ‘I simply can’t believe it.’
‘But it’s perfectly true.
When the Germans marched into the city, I danced in the streets like a youthful ballerina and shouted,
"Heil Hitler!" until my lungs were hoarse.
I even waved a small Nazi flag that I snatched away from a beautiful little girl while her mother was looking the other way.
When the Germans left the city, I rushed out to welcome the Americans with a bottle of excellent brandy and a basket of flowers.
The brandy was for myself, of course, and the flowers were to sprinkle upon our liberators.
There was a very stiff and stuffy old major riding in the first car, and I hit him squarely in the eye with a red rose.
A marvelous shot!
You should have seen him wince.’
Nately gasped and was on his feet with amazement, the blood draining from his cheeks.
‘Major—de Coverley!’ he cried.
‘Do you know him?’ inquired the old man with delight.
‘What a charming coincidence!’
Nately was too astounded even to hear him.
‘So you’re the one who wounded Major – de Coverley!’ he exclaimed in horrified indignation.
‘How could you do such a thing?’
The fiendish old man was unperturbed.
‘How could I resist, you mean.