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A FAREWELL TO ARMS
ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Chapter I

In that late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fells early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.
The plain was rich with crops; there were many orchards of fruit trees and beyond the plain the mountains were brown and bare. There was fighting in the mountains and at night we could see the flashes from the artillery. In the dark it was like summer lighting, but the nights were cool and there was not the feeling of a storm coming.
Sometimes in the dark we heard the troops marching under the window and guns going past pulled by a motor-tractor. There was much traffic at night and many mules on the roads with boxes of ammunition on each side of their pack-saddles and gray motor trucks that carried men, and other trucks with loads covered with canvas that moved slower in the traffic. There were big guns too that passed in the day drawn by tractors, the long barrels if the guns covered with green braches and green leafy braches and vines laid over the tractors. To the north we could look across a valley and see a forest of chestnut trees and behind it another mountain on this side of river. There was fighting for that mountain too, but it was not successful, and in the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the braches were bare and the trunks black with rain. The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with the autumn. There were mists over the river and clouds on the mountain and the trucks splashed mud on the road and the troops were muddy and wet in their capes; their rifles were wet and under their capes the two leather cartridge-boxes on the fronts of the belts, gray leather boxes heavy with the packs of clips of thin, long 6.5 mm. cartridges, bulged forward under the capes so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they were six months gone with child.
There were small gray motor cars that passed going very fast; usually there was an officer on the seat with the river and more officers in the back seat. They splashed more mud than the camions even and if one of the officers in the back was very small and sitting between two generals, he himself so small that you could not see his face but only the top of his cap and his narrow back, and if the car went especially fast it was probably the King. He lived in Udine and came out in this way nearly every day to see how things were going , and things went very badly.
At the start of the winter came permanent rain and with the rain came the chlera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army.

Chapter II


The next year there were many victories. The mountain that was beyond the valley and the hillside where the chestnut forest grew was captured and there were victories beyond the plain on the plateau to the south and we crossed the river in August and lived in a house in Gorizia that had a fountain and many thick shady trees in a walled garden and a wistaria vine purple on the side of the house. Now the fighting was in the next mountains beyond and was not a mile away. The town was very nice and our house was very fine. The river ran behind uas and the town had been captured very handsomely but the mountains beyond it could not be taken and I was very glad the Austrians seemed to want to come back to the town some time, if the war should end, because they did not bombard it to destroy it but only a little in a military way. People lived on in it and there were hospitals and cafés and artillery up side streets and two bawdy houses, one for troops and one for officers, and with the end of the summer, the cool nights, the fighting in the mountains beyond the town, the shell-marked iron of the railway bridge, the smashed tunnel by the river where the fighting had been, the trees around the square and the long avenue of trees that led to the square; these with there being girls in the town, the King passing in his motor car, sometimes now seeing his faceand little long necked body and gray beard like a goat’s chin tuft; all these with the sudden interiors of houses that had lost a wall through shelling, with plaster and rubble in their gardens and sometimes in the street, and the whole thing going well on the Carso made the fall very different from the last fall when we had been in the country. The war was changed too.
The forest of oak trees on the mountain beyond the town was gone. The forest had been green in the summer when we had come into the town but now there were the stumps and the broken trunks and the ground torn up, and one day at the end of the fall when I was out where the oak forest had been I saw a cloud coming over the mountain. It came very fast and the sun went a dull yellow and then everything was gray and the sky was covered and the cloud came on down the mountain and suddenly we were in it and it was snow. The snow slanted across the wind, the bare ground was covered, the stumps of trees projected, there was snow on the guns and there were paths in the snow going back to the latrines behind trenches.
Later, below in the town, I watched the snow falling, looking out of the window of the bawdy house, the house for officers, where I sat with a friend and two glasses drinking a bottle of Asti, and, looking out at the snow falling slowly and heavily, we knew it was all over for that year. Up the river the mountains had not been taken; none of the mountains beyond the river had been taken. That was all left for next year. My friend saw the priest from our ness going by in the street, walking carefully in the slush, and pounded on the window to attract his attention. The priest looked up. He saw us and smiled. My friend motioned for him to come in. The priest shook his head and went on. That night in the mess after the spaghetti course, which every one ate very quickly and seriously, lifting the spaghetti on the fork until the loose strands hung clear then lowering it into the mouth, or else using a continuous lift and sucking into the mouth, helping ourselves to wine from the grass-covered gallon flask; it swung in a metal cradle and you pulled the neck of the flask down with the forefinger and the wine, clear red, tannic and lovely, poured out into the glass held with the same hand; after the course, the captain commenced picking on the priest.
The priest was young and blushed easily and wore a uniform like the rest of us but with a cross in dark red velvet above the left breast pocket of his gray tunic. The captain spoke pidgin Italian for my doubtful benefit, in order that I might understand perfectly, that nothing should be lost.
“Priest to-day with girls,” the captain said looking at the priest and at me. The priest smiled and blushed and shook his head. The captain baited him often.
“Not true?” asked the captain. “To-day I see priest with girls.”
“No,” said the priest. The other officers were amused at the baiting.
“Priest not with girls,” went on the captain. “Priest never with girls,” he explained to me. He took my glass and filled it, looking at my eyes all the time, but not losing sight of the priest.
“Priest every night five against one.” Every one at the table laughed. “You understand? Priest every night five against one.” He made a gesture and laughed loudly. The priest accepted it as a joke.
“The Pope wants the Austrians to win the wars,” the major said. “He loves Franz Joseph. That’s where the money comes from. I am an atheist.”
“Did you ever read the ‘Black Pig’?” ask the lieutenant. “I will get you a copy. It was that which shook my faith.”
“It is a fifthy and vile book,” said the priest. “You do not really like it.”
“It is very valuable,” said the lieutenant. “It tells you about those priests. You will like it,” he said to me. I smiled at the priest and he smiled back across the candle-light. “Don’t you read it?” he said.
“I will get it for you,” said the lieutenant.
“All thinking men are atheists,” the major said. “I do not believe in the Free Masons however.”
“I believe in the Free Mesons,” the lieutenant said. “It is a noble organization.” Some one came in and as the door opened I could see the snow falling.
“There will be no more offensive now that the snow has come,” I said.
“Certainly not,” said the major. “You should go on leave. You should go to Rome, Naples, Sicily------“
“He should visit Amalfi,” said the lieutenant. “I will write you cards to my family in Amalfi. They will love you like a son.”
“He should go to Palermo.”
“He ought to go to Capri.”
“I would like you to see Abruzzi and visit my family at Capracotta,” said the priest.
“Listen to him talk about Abruzzi. There’s more snow there than here. He doesn’t want to see peasants. Let him go to centres of cultures and civilization.”
“He should have fine girls. I will give you the addresses of places in Naples. Beautiful young girls—accompanied by their mothers. Ha! Ha! Ha!” The captain spread his hand open, the thumb up and fingers outspread as when you make shadow pictures. There was a shadow from his hand on the wall. He spoke again in pidgin Italian. “You go away like this,” he pointed to the thumb, “and come back like this,” he touched the little finger. Every one laughed.
“Look,” said the captain. He spread the hand again. Again the candle-light made its shadows on the wall. He started with the upright thumb and named in their order the thumb and four fingers, “soto-tenente (the thumb), tenente (first finger), capitano (next finger), maggiore (next to the little finger), and tenente-colonello (the little finger). You go away solo-tenente! You come back solo-colonello!” they all laughed. The captain was having a great success with finger games. He looked at the priest and shouted, “Every night priest five against one!” They all laughed again.
“You must go on leave at once,” the major said.
“I would like to go with you and show you things,” the lieutenant said.
“When you come back bring a photograph.”
“Bring good opera disks.”
“Bring Caruso.”
“Don’t bring Caruso. He bellows.”
“Don’t you wish you could bellow like him?”
“He bellows. I say he bellows!”
“I would like you to go to Abruzzi,” the priest said. The others were shouting. “There is good hunting. You would like the people and though it is cold it is clear and dry: You could stay with my family. My father is a famous hunter.”
“Come on,” said the captain. “We go whorehouse before it shuts.”
“Good-night,” I said to the priest.
“Good-night,” he said.

Chapter III


When I came back to the front we still lived in that town. There were many more guns in the country around and the spring had come. The fields were green and there were small green shoots on the vines, the trees along the road had small leaves and a breeze came from the sea. I saw the town with the hill and the old castle above it in a cup in the hills with the mountains beyond, brown mountains with a little green on their slopes. In the town there were more guns, there were some new hospitals, you met Bristish men and sometimes women, on the street, and a few more houses had been hit by shell fire. It was warm and like the spring and I walked down the alleyway of trees, warmed from the sun on the wall, and found we still lived in the same house and that it all looked the same as when I had left it. The door was open, there was a soldier sitting on the bench outside in the sun, an ambulance was waiting by the side door and inside the door, as I went in, there was the smell of marble floors and hospital. It was all as I had left it except that now it was spring. I looked in the door of the big room and saw the major sitting at his desk, the window open and the sunlight coming into the room. He did not see me and I did not know whether to go in and report or go upstairs first and clean up. I decied to go on upstairs.
The room I shared with the lieutenant Rinaldi looked out on the courtyard. The window was open, my bed was made up with blankets and my things hung on the wall, the gas mask in an oblong tin can, the steel helmet on the same peg. At the foot of the bed was my flat trunk, and my winter boots, the leather shiny with oil, were on the trunk. My Austrian sniper’s rifle with its blued octagon barrel and the lovely dark walnut, cheek-fitted, schutzen stock, hung over the two beds. The telescope that fitted it was, I remembered, locked in the trunk. The lieutenant, Rinaldi, lay asleep on the other bed. He woke when he heard me in the room and sat up.
“Ciaou!” he said. “What kind of time did you have?”
“Magnificent.”
We shook hands and he put his arm around my neck and kissed me.
“Oughf,” I said.
“You’re dirty,” he said. “You ought to wash. Where did you go and what did you do? Tell me everything at once.”
“I went everywhere. Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples, Villa San Giovanni, Messina, Taormina----“
“You talk like a time-table. Did you have any beautiful adventures?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Milano, Firenze, Roma, Napoli----“
“That’s enough. Tell me really what was the best.”
“In Milano.”
“That was because it was first. Where did you meet her? In the Cova? Where did you go? How did you feel? Tell me everything at once. Did you stay all night?”
“Yes.”
“That’s nothing. Here now we have beautiful girls. New girls never been to the front before.”
“Wonderful.”
“Yoi don’t believe me? We will go now this afternoon and see. And in the town we have beautiful English girls. I am now in love with Miss Barkley. I will take you to call. I will probably marry Miss Barkley.”
“I have to get washed and report. Doesn’t anybody work now?”
“Since you are gone we have nothing but frostbites, chilblains, and soft chancres. Every week some one gets wounded by rock fragments. There are a few real wounded. Next week the war starts again. Perhaps it start again. They say so. Do you think I would do right to marry Miss Barkley—after the war of course?”
“Absolutely,” I said and poured the basin full of water.
“To-night you will tell me everything,” said Rinaldi. “Now I must go back to sleep to be fresh and beautiful for Miss Barkley.”
I took off my tunic and shirt and washed in the cold water in the basin. While I rubbed myself with a towel I looked around the room and out the window and at Rinaldi lying with his eyes closed on the bed. He was good-looking, was my age, and he came from Amalfi. He loved being a surgeon and we were great friends. While I was looking at him he opened his eyes.
“Have you any money?”
“Yes.”
“Loan me fifty lire.”
I dried my hands and took out my pocket-book from the inside of my tunic hanging on the wall. Rinaldi took the note, folded it without rising from the bed and slid it in his breeches pocket. He smiled, “I must make on Miss Barkley the impression of a man of sufficient wealth. You are my great and good friend and financial protector.”
“Go to hell,” I said.
That night at the mess I sat next tot the priest and he was disappointed and suddenly hurt that I had not gone to the Abruzzi. He had written to his father that I was coming and they had made preparations. I myself felf as badly as he did and could not understand why I had not gone. It was what I had wanted to do and I tried to explain how one thing had led to another and finally he saw it and understood that I had really wanted to go and it was almost all right. I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.
We two were talking while others argued. I had wanted to go to Abruzzi. I had gone to no place where the roads were frozen and hard as iron, where it was clear cold and dry and the snow was dry and powdery and hare-tracks in the snow and the peasants took off their hats and called you Lord and there was good hunting. I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafés and night when the room whirled and you need to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange exicitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. Suddenly to care very much and to sleep to wake with it sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp and hard and clear and sometimes a dispute about the cost. Sometimes still pleasant and fond and warm and breakfast and lunch. Sometimes all niceness gone and glad to get out on the street but always another day starting and then another night. I tried to tell about the night and the difference between the night and the day and how the night was better unless the day was very clean and cold and I could not tell it; as I cannot tell it now. But if you have had it you know. He had not had it but he understood that I had really wanted to go to the Abruzzi but had not gone and we were still friends, with many tastes alike, but with the difference between us. He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget. But I did not know that then, although I learned it later. In the meantime we were all at the mess, the meal was finished, and the argument went on. We two stopped talking and the captain shouted, “Priest not happy. Priest not happy without girls.”
“I am happy,” said the priest.
“Priest not happy. Priest wants Austrians to win the war,” the captain said. The others listened. The priest shook his head.
“No. If there is a war I suppose we must attack.”
“Must attack. Shall attack!”
The priest nodded.
“Leave him alone,” the major said. “He’s all right.”
“He can’t do anything about it anyway,” the captain said. We all got up and left the table.

Chapter IV


The battery in the next garden woke me in the morning and I saw the sun coming through the window and got out of the bed. I went to the window and looked out. The gravel paths were moist and the grass was wet with dew. The battery fired twice and the air came each time like a blow and shook the window and made the front of my pyjamas flap. I could not see the guns but they were evidently firing directly over us. It was a nuisance to have them there but it was a comfort that they were no bigger. As I looked out at the garden I heard a motor truck starting on the road. I dressed, went downstairs, had some coffee in the kitchen and went out to the garage.
Ten cars were lined up side by side under the long shed. They were top-heavy, blunt-nosed ambulances, painted gray and built like moving-vans. The mechanics were working on one out in the yard. Three others were up in the mountains at dressing stations.
“Do they ever shell that battery?” I asked one of the mechanics.
“No, Signor Tenente. It is protected by the little hill.”
“How’s everything?”
“Not so bad. This machine is no good but the others march.” He stopped working and smiled. “Were you on permission?”
“Yes.”
He wiped his hand on his jumper and grinned. “You have a good time?” the others all grinned too.
“Fine,” I said. “What’s the matter with this machine?”
“It’s no good. One thing after another.”
“What’s the matter now?”
“New rings.”
I left them working, the car looking disgraced and empty with the engine open and parts spread on the work bench, and went in under the shed and looked at each of the cars. They were moderately clean, a few freshly washed, the others dusty. I looked at the tires carefully, looking for cuts or stone bruises. Everything seemed in good condition. It evidently made no difference whether I was there to look after things or not. I had imagined that the condition of the cars, whether or not things were obtainable, the smooth functioning of the business of removing wounded and sick from the dressing stations, hauling them back from the mountains to the clearing station and then distributing them to the hospitals named on their papers, depended to a considerable extent on myself. Evidently it did not matter whether I was there or not.
“Has there been any trouble getting parts?” I asked the sergeant mechanic.
“No, Signor Tenente,”
“Where is the gasoline park now?”
“At the same place.”
“Good,” I said and went back to the house and drank another bowl of coffee at the mess table. The coffee was a pale gray and sweet with condensed milk. Outside the window it was a lovely spring morning. There was that beginning of a feeling of dryness in the nose that meant the day would be hot later on. That day I visited the posts in the mountains and was back in town late in the afternoon.
The whole thing seemed to run better while I was away. The offensive was going to start again I heard. The division for which we worked were to attack at a place up the river and the major told me that I would see about the posts for during the attack. The attack would cross the river up above the narrow gorge and spread up the hillside. The posts for the cars would have to be as near the river as they could get and keep covered. They would, of course, be selected by the infantry but we were supposed to work it out. It was one of those things that gave you a false feeling of soldiering.
I was very dusty and dirty and went up to my room to wash. Rinaldi was sitting on the bed with a copy of Hugo’s English grammar. He was dressed, wore his black boots, and his hair shone.
“Splendid,” he said when he saw me. “You will come with me to see Miss Barkley.”
“No.”
“Yes. You will please come and make me a good impression on her.”
“All right. Wait until I get cleaned up.”
“Wash up and come as you are.”
I washed, brushed my hair and we started.
“Wait a minute,” Rinaldi said. “Perhaps we should have a drink.” He opened his trunk and took out a bottle.
“Not Strega,” I said.
“No. Grappa.”
“All right.”
He poured two glasses and we touched them, first fingers extended. The grappa was very strong.
“Another?”
“All right,” I said. We drank the second grappa, Rinaldi put away the bottle and we went down the stairs. It was hot walking through the town but the sun was starting to go down and it was very pleasant. The British hospital was a big villa built by Germans before the war. Miss Barkley was in the garden. Another nurse was with her. We saw their white uniforms through the trees and walked toward them. Rinaldi saluted. I saluted too but more moderately.
“How do you do?” Miss Barkley said. “You’re not an Italian, are you?”
“Oh, no.”
Rinaldi was talking with the other nurse. They were laughing.
“What an odd thing—to be in the Italian army.”
“It’s not really the army. It’s only the ambulance.”
“It’s very odd though. Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There isn’t always an explanation for everything.”
“Oh, isn’t there? I was brought up to think there was.”
“That’s awfully nice.”
“Do we have to go on and talk this way?”
“No,” I said.
“That’s a relief. Isn’t it?”
“What is the stick?” I asked. Miss Barkley was quite tall. She wore what seemed to me to be a nurse’s uniform, was blonde and had a tawny skin and gray eyes. I thought she was every beautiful. She was carrying a thin rattan stick like a toy riding-crop, bound in leather.
“It belonged to a boy who was killed last year.”
“I’m awfully sorry.”
“He was a very nice boy. He was going to marry me and he was killed in Somme.”
“It was a ghastly show.”
“Were you there?”
“No.”
“I’ve heard about it,” she said. “There’s not really any war of that sort down here. They send me the little stick. His mother send it to me. They returned it with his things.”
“Had you been engaged long?”
“Eight years. We grew up together.”
“And why didn’t you marry?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was a fool not to. I could have given him that anyway. But I thought I would be bad for him.”
“I see.”
“Have you ever loved any one?”
“No,” I said.
We sat down on the bench and I looked at her.
“You have beautiful hair,” I said.
“Do you like it?”
“Very much.”
“I was going to cut it all off when he died.”
“No.”
“I wanted to do something for him. You see I didn’t care about the other thing and he could have had it all. He could have had anything he wanted if I would have known. I would have married him or anything. I know all about it now. But then he wanted to go to war and I didn’t know.”
I did not say anything.
“I didn’t know about anything then. I thought it would be worse for him. I thought perhaps he couldn’t stand it and then of course he was killed and that was the end of it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s the end of it.”
We looked at Rinaldi talking with the other nurse.
“ What is her name?”
“Ferguson. Helen Ferguson. Your friend is a doctor, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He’s very good.”
“That’s splendid. You rarely find any one any good this close to the front. This is close to the front, isn’t it?”
“Quite.”
“It’s a silly front,” she said. “But it’s very beautiful. Are they going to have an offensive?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll have to work. There’s no work now.”
“Have you done nursing long?”
“Since the end of ‘fifteen. I started when he did. O remember having a silly ideas he might come to the hospital where I was. With a sabre cut, I suppose, and a bandage around his head. Or shot through the shoulder. Something picturesque.”
“This is the picturesque front,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “People can’t realize what France is like. If they did, it couldn’t all go on. He didn’t have a sabre cut. They blew him all to bits.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Do you suppose it will always go on?”
“No.”
“What’s to stop it?”
“It will crack somewhere.”
“We’ll crack. We’ll crack in France. They can’t go on doing things like the Somme and not crack.”
“They won’t crack here,” I said.
“You think not?”
“No. They did very well last summer.”
“They may crack,” she said. “Anybody may crack.”
“The Germans too.”
“No,” she said. “I think not.”
We went over toward Rinaldi and Miss Ferguson.
“You love Italy?” Rinaldi asked Miss Ferguson in English.
“Quite well.”
“No understand,” Rinaldi shook his head.
“Abbastanza bene,” I translated. He shook his head.
“That is not good. You love England?”
“Not too well. I’m Scotch, you see.”
Rinaldi looked at me blankly.
“She’s Scotch, so she loves Scotland better than England,” I said in Italian.
“But Scotland is England.”
I translate this for Miss Ferguson.
“Pas encore,” said Miss Ferguson.
“Not really?”
“Never. We do not like English.”
“Not like the English? Not like Miss Barkley?”
“Oh, that’s different. You mustn’t take everything so literally.”
After a while we said good-night and left. Walking home Rinaldi said, “Miss Barkley prefers you to me. That is very clear. But the little Scotch one is very nice.”
“Very,” I said. I had not noticed her. “You like her?”
“No,” said Rinaldi.

Chapter V

The next afternoon I went to call on Miss Barkley again. She was not in the garden and I went to the side door of the villa where the ambulances drove up. Inside I saw the head nurse, who said Miss Barkley was on duty – “there’s a war on, you know.”
I said I knew.
“You’re the American in Italian army?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How did you happen to do that? Why didn’t you join with us?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Could I join now?”
“I’m afraid not now. Tell me. Why did you join up with the Italians?”
“I was in Italy,” I said, ”and I spoke Italian.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m learning it. It’s a beautiful language.”
“Somebody said you should be able to learn it in two weeks.”
“Oh, I’ll not learn it in two weeks. I’ve studied it for two months now. You may come and see her after seven o’clock if you wish. She’ll be off then. But don’t bring a lot of Italians.”
“Not even for the beautiful language?”
“No. Nor for the beautiful uniforms.”
“Good evening,” I said.
“A rivederci, Tenente.”
“A rivederla.” I saluted and went out. It was impossible to salute foreigners as an Italian, without embarrassment. The Italian salute never seemed made for export.
The day had been hot. I had been up the river to the bridgehead at Plava. It was there that the offensive was to begin. It had been impossible to advance on the far side the year before because there was only one road leading down from the pass to the pontoon bridge and it was under machine-gun and shell fire for nearly a mile. It was not wide enough either to carry all the transport for an offensive and the Austrians could make a shambles out of it. But the Italians had crossed and spread out a little way on the far side to hold about a mile and a half on the Austrian side of the river. It was a nasty place and the Austrians should not let them hold it. I suppose it was mutual tolerance because the Austrians still kept a bridgehead further down the river. The Austrian trenches were above on the hillside only a few yards from the Italian lines. There had been a little town but it was all rubble. There was what was left on a railway station and a smashed permanent bridge that could not be repaired and used because it was in plain sight.
I went along the narrow road down toward the river, left the car at the dressing station under the hill, crossed the pontoon bridge, which was protected by a shoulder of the mountain, and went through the trenches in the smashed-down town and long the edge of the slope. Everybody was in the dugouts. There were racks of rockets standing to be touched off to call for help from the artillery or to signal with if the telephone wires were cut. It was quite, hot and dirty. I looked across the wire at the Austrian lines. Nobody was in sight. I had a drink with a captain that I knew in one of the dugouts and went back across the bridge.
A new wide road was being finished that would go over the mountain and zig-zag down to the bridge. When this road was finished the offensive would start. It came down through the forest in sharp turns. The system was to bring everything down the new road and take the empty trucks, carts and loaded ambulances and all returning traffic up the old narrow road. The dressing station was on the Austrian side of the river under the edge of the hill and stretcher-bearers would bring the wounded back across the pontoon bridge. It would be the same when the offensive started. As far as I could make out the last mile or so of the new road where it started to level out would be able to be shelled steadily by the Austrians. It looked as though it might be a mess. But I found a place where the cars would be sheltered after they passed that bad-looking bit and could wait for the wounded to be brought across the pontoon bridge. I would have liked to drive over the new road but it was not yet finished. It looked wider and well made with a good grade and the turns looked very impressive where you could see them through openings in the forest on the mountain side. The cars would be all right with their good metal-to-metal brakes and anyway, coming down, they would not be loaded. I drove back up the narrow road.
Two carabinieri held the car up. A shell had fallen and while we waited three others fell up the road. They were seventy-sevens and came with a whishing rush of air, a hard bright burst and flash and then gray smoke that blew across the road. The carabinieri waved us to go on. Passing where the shells had landed I avoided the small broken places and smelled the high explosive and the smell of the blasted clay and stone and freshly shattered flint. I drove back to Gorizia and our villa and, as I said, went to call on Miss Barkley, who was on duty.
At dinner I ate very quickly and left for the villa where the British had their hospital. It was really very large and beautiful and there were fine trees in the grounds. Miss Barkley was sitting on a bench in the garden. Miss Ferguson was with her. They seemed glad to see me and in a little while Miss Ferguson excused herself and went away.
“I’ll leave you two,” she said. “You get along very well without me.”
“Don’t go, Helen,” Miss Barkley said.
“I’d really rather. I must write some letters.”
“Good-night,” I said.
“Good-night, Mr. Henry.”
“Don’t write anything that will bother the censor.”
“Don’t worry. I only write about what a beautiful place we live in and how brave the Italians are.”
“That way you’ll be decorated.”
“That will be nice. Good-night, Catherine.”
“I’ll see you in a little while,” Miss Barkley said. Miss Ferguson walked away in the dark.
“She’s nice,” I said.
“Oh, yes, she’s very nice. She’s a nurse.”
“Aren’t you a nurse?”
“Oh, no. I’m something called a V.A.D. We work very hard but no one trusts us.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t trust us when there’s nothing going on. When there is really work they trust us.”
“What is the difference?”
“A nurse is like a doctor. It takes a long time to be. A V.A.D. is a short cut.”
“I see.”
“The Italians didn’t want women so near the front. So we’re all on very special behavior. We don’t go out.”
“I can come here though.”
“Oh, yes. We’re not cloistered.”
“Let’s drop the war.”
“It’s very hard. There’s no place to drop it.”
“Let’s drop it anyway.”
“All right.”
We looked at each other in the dark. I thought she was beautiful and I took her hand. She let me take it and I held it and put my arm around under her arm.
“No,” she said. I kept my arm where it was.
“Why not?”
“No.”
“Yes,” I said. “Please.” I leaned forward in the dark to kiss her and there was a sharp stinging flash. She had slapped my face hard. Her hand had hit my nose and eyes, and tears came in my eyes from the reflex.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. I felt I had a certain advantage.
“You were quite right.”
“I’m dreadful sorry,” she said. “I just couldn’t stand the nurse’s-evening-off aspect of it. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I did hurt you, didn’t I?”
She was looking at me in the dark. I was angry and yet certain, seeing it all ahead like the moves in a chess game.
“You did exactly right,” I said. “I don’t mind at all.”
“Poor man.”
“You see I’ve been leading a sort of a funny life. And I never even talk English. And then you are so very beautiful.” I looked at her.
“You don’t need to say a lot of nonsense. I said I was sorry. We do get along.”
“Yes,” I said. “And we have gotten away from the war.”
She laughed. It was the first time I had ever heard her laugh. I watched her face.
“You are sweet,” she said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are a dear. I’d be glad to kiss you if you don’t mind.”
I looked in her eyes and put my arm around her as I had before and kissed her. I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her lips; they were closed tight. I was still angry and as I held her suddenly she shivered. I held her close against me and could feel her heart beating and her lips opened and her head went back against my hand and then she was crying on my shoulder.
“Oh, darling,” she said. “You will be good to me, won’t you?”
What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying.
“You will, won’t you?” she looked up at me. “Because we’re going to have a strange life.”
After a while I walked with her to the door of the villa and she went in and I walked home. Back at the villa I went upstairs to the room. Rinaldi was lying on his bed. He looked at me.
“So you make progress with Miss Barkley?”
“We are friends.”
“You have that pleasant air of a dog in heat.”
I did not understand the word.
“Of a what?”
he explained.
“You,” I said, “have that pleasant air of a dog who --”
“Stop it,” he said. “In a little while we would say insulting things.” He laughed.
“Good-night,” I said.
“Good-night, little puppy.”
I knocked over his candle with the pillow and got into bed in the dark.
Rinaldi picked up the candle, lit it and went on reading.

Chapter VI


I was away for two days at the posts. When I got home it was too late and I did not see Miss Barkley until the next evening. She was not in the garden and I had to wait in the office of the hospital until she came down. There were many marble busts on painted wooden pillars along the walls of the room they used for an office. The hall too, that the office opened on, was lined with them. They had the complete marble quality of all looking alike. Sculpture had always seem a dull business – still, bronzes looked something. But marble busts all looked like a cemetery. There was one fine cemetery though – the one at Pisa. Genoa was the place to see the bad marbles. This had been the villa of a very wealthy German and the busts must have cost him plenty. I wondered who had done them and how much he got. I tried to make out whether they were members of the family or what; but they were all uniformly classical. You could not tell anything about them.
I sat on a chair and held my cap. We were supposed to wear steel helmets even in Gorizia but they were uncomfortable and too bloody theatrical in a town where the civilian inhabitants had not been evacuated. I wore one when we went up to the posts and carried an English gas mask. We were just beginning to get some of them. They were a real mask. Also we were required to wear an automatic pistol; even doctors and sanitary officers. I felt it against the back of the chair. You were liable to arrest if you did not have one worn in plain sight. Rinaldi carried a holster stuffed with toilet paper. I wore a real one and felt like a gunman until I practised firing it. It was an Astra 7.65 caliber with a short barrel and it jumped so sharply when you let it off that there was no question of hitting anything. I practised with it, holding below the target and trying to master the jerk of the ridiculous short barrel until I could hit within a yard of where I aimed at twenty paces and then the ridiculousness of carrying a pistol at all came over me and I soon forgot it and carried it flopping against the small of my back with no feeling at all except a vague sort of shame when I met English-speaking people. I sat now in the chair and an orderly of some sort looked at me disapprovingly from behind of a desk while I looked at the marble floor, the pillars with the marble busts, and the frescoes on the wall and waited for Miss Barkley. The frescoes were not bad. Any frescoes were good when they started to peel and flake off.
I saw Catherine Barkley coming down the hall, and stood up. She did not seem tall walking toward me but she looked very lovely.
“Good-evening, Mr. Henry,” she said.
“How do you do?” I said. The orderly was listening behind the desk.
“Shall we sit here or go out in the garden?”
“Let’s go out. It’s much cooler.”
I walked behind her out into the garden, the orderly looking after us. When we were out one the gravel drive she said, “where have you been?”
“I’ve been out on post.”
“You couldn’t have sent me a note?”
“No,” I said. “Not very well. I thought I was coming back.”
“You ought to have let me know, darling.”
We were off the driveway, walking under the trees. I took her hands, then stopped and kissed her.
“Isn’t there anywhere we can go?”
“No,” she said. “We have to just walk here. You’ve been away a long time.”
“This is the third day. But I’m back now.”
She looked at me, “And you do love me?”
“Yes.”
“You did say you loved me, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I lied. “I love you.” I had not said it before.
“And you call me Catherine?”
“Catherine.” We walked on a way and were sopped under a tree.
“Say, ‘I’ve come back to Catharine in the night.’”
“I’ve come back to Catharine in the night.”
“Oh, darling, you have come back, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I love you so and it’s been awful. You won’t go away?”
“No. I’ll always come back.”
“Oh, I love you so. Please put your hand there again.”
“It’s not been away.” I turned her so I could see her face when I kissed her and I saw that her eyes were shut. I kissed both her shut eyes. I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every evening to the house for officers where the girls climbed all over you and put your cap on backward as a sign of affection between their trips upstairs with brother officers. I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.
“I wish there was some place we could go,” I said. I was experiencing the masculine difficulty of making love very long standing up.
“There isn’t any place,” she said. She came back from wherever she had been.
“We might sit here just for a little while.”
We sat on the flat stone bench and I held Catharine Barkley’s hand. She would not let me put my arm around her.
“Are you very tired?” she asked.
“No.”
She looked down at the grass.
“This is a rotten game we play, isn’t it?”
“What game?”
“Don’t be dull.”
“I’m not, on purpose.”
“You’re a nice boy,” she said. “And you play it as well as you know how. But it’s a rotten game.”
“Do you always know what people think?”
“Not always. But I do with you. You don’t have to pretend you love me. That’s over for the evening. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
“But I do love you.”
“Please let’s not lie when we don’t have to. I had a very fine little show and I’m all right now. You see I’m not mad and I’m not gone off. It’s only a little sometimes.”
I pressed her hand, “Dear Catherine.”
“It sounds very funny now – Catherine. You don’t pronounce it very much alike. But you’re very nice. You’re a very good boy.”
“That’s what the priest said.”
“Yes, you’re very good. And you will come and see me?”
“Of course.”
“And you don’t have to say you love me. That’s all over for a while.” She stood up and put out her hand. “Good-night.”
I wanted to kiss her.
“No,” she said. “I’m awfully tired.”
“Kiss me, though,” I said.
“I’m awfully tired, darling.”
“Kiss me.”
“Do you want to very much?”
“Yes.”
We kissed and she broke away suddenly. “No. Good-night, please, darling.” We walked to the door and I saw her go in and down the hall. I liked to watch her move. She went on down the hall. I went on home. It was a hot night and there was a good deal going on up in the mountains. I watched the flashes on San Gabriele.
I stopped in front of the Villa Rossa. The shutters were up but it was still going on inside. Somebody was singing. I went on home. Rinaldi came in while I was undressing.
“Ah, ha!” he said. “It does not go so well. Baby is puzzled.”
“Where have you been?”
“At the Villa Rossa. It was very edifying, baby. We all sang. Where have you been?”
“Calling on the British.”
“Thank God I did not become involved with the British.”