Put out the lights, Barto."
"You might as well leave them," Bonello said. "We've got no more use for this place."
"I have a small locker trunk in my room," I said. "Will you help take it down, Piani?"
"We'll take it," Piani said. "Come on, Aldo."
He went off into the hall with Bonello.
I heard them going upstairs.
"This was a fine place," Bartolomeo Aymo said.
He put two bottles of wine and half a cheese into his haversack. "There won't be a place like this again.
Where will they retreat to, Tenente?"
"Beyond the Tagliamento, they say.
The hospital and the sector are to be at Pordenone."
"This is a better town than Pordenone."
"I don't know Pordenone," I said. "I've just been through there."
"It's not much of a place," Aymo said.
28
As we moved out through the town it was empty in the rain and the dark except for columns of troops and guns that were going through the main street.
There were many trucks too and some carts going through on other streets and converging on the main road.
When we were out past the tanneries onto the main road the troops, the motor trucks, the horse-drawn carts and the guns were in one wide slow-moving column.
We moved slowly but steadily in the rain, the radiator cap of our car almost against the tailboard of a truck that was loaded high, the load covered with wet canvas.
Then the truck stopped.
The whole column was stopped.
It started again and we went a little farther, then stopped.
I got out and walked ahead, going between the trucks and carts and under the wet necks of the horses.
The block was farther ahead.
I left the road, crossed the ditch on a footboard and walked along the field beyond the ditch.
I could see the stalled column between the trees in the rain as I went forward across from it in the field.
I went about a mile.
The column did not move, although, on the other side beyond the stalled vehicles I could see the troops moving.
I went back to the cars.
This block might extend as far as Udine.
Piani was asleep over the wheel.
I climbed up beside him and went to sleep too.
Several hours later I heard the truck ahead of us grinding into gear.
I woke Piani and we started, moving a few yards, then stopping, then going on again.
It was still raining.
The column stalled again in the night and did not start.
I got down and went back to see Aymo and Bonello.
Bonello had two sergeants of engineers on the seat of his car with him.
They stiffened when I came up.
"They were left to do something to a bridge," Bonello said. "They can't find their unit so I gave them a ride."
"With the Sir Lieutenant's permission."
"With permission," I said.
"The lieutenant is an American," Bonello said. "He'll give anybody a ride."
One of the sergeants smiled.
The other asked Bonello if I was an Italian from North or South America.
"He's not an Italian.
He's North American English."
The sergeants were polite but did not believe it.
I left them and went back to Aymo.
He had two girls on the seat with him and was sitting back in the corner and smoking.