I wonder what it’s like to sit home in your living room and see the whole world on a little gray glass tube. If those Nazis can fly back and forth between here and Mars, why can’t they get television going? I think I’d prefer that, to watch those comedy shows, actually see what Bob Hope and Durante look like, than to walk around on Mars.
Maybe that’s it, she thought as she put the magazine back on the rack. The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television? Anyhow, they killed most of the really great comedians. Because most of them were Jewish. In fact, she realized, they killed off most of the entertainment field. I wonder how Hope gets away with what he says. Of course, he has to broadcast from Canada. And it’s a little freer up there. But Hope really says things. Like the joke about Göring… the one where Göring buys Rome and has it shipped to his mountain retreat and then set up again. And revives Christianity so his pet lions will have something to– “Did you want to buy that magazine, miss?” the little dried-up old man who ran the drugstore called, with suspicion.
Guiltily, she put down the Reader’s Digest which she had begun to thumb through.
Again strolling along the sidewalk with her shopping bags, Juliana thought, Maybe Göring will be the new Fuhrer when that Bormann dies. He seems sort of different from the others. The only way that Bormann got it in the first place was to weasel in when Hitler realized how fast he was going. Old Göring was off in his mountain palace. Göring should have been Fuhrer after Hitler, because it was his Luftwaffe that knocked out those English radar stations and then finished off the RAF. Hitler would have had them bomb London, like they did Rotterdam.
But probably Goebbels will get it, she decided. That was what everyone said. As long as that awful Heydrich doesn’t. He’d kill us all. He’s really bats.
The one I like, she thought, is that Baldur von Schirach. He’s the only one who looks normal, anyhow. But he hasn’t got a chance.
Turning, she ascended the steps to the front door of the old wooden building in which she lived.
When she unlocked the door of her apartment she saw Joe Cinnadella still lying where she had left him, in the center of the bed, on his stomach, his arms dangling. He was still asleep.
No, she thought. He can’t still be here; the truck’s gone. Did he miss it? Obviously.
Going into the kitchen, she set her grocery bags on the table among the breakfast dishes.
But did he intend to miss it? she asked herself. That’s what I wonder.
What a peculiar man… he had been so active with her, going on almost all night. And yet it had been as if he were not actually there, doing it but never being aware. Thoughts on something else, maybe.
From habit, she began putting food away in the old G.E. turret-top refrigerator. And then she began clearing the breakfast table.
Maybe he’s done it so much, she decided, it’s second nature; his body makes the motions, like mine now as I put these plates and silver in the sink. Could do it with three-fifths of his brain removed, like the leg of a frog in biology class.
“Hey,” she called. “Wake up.”
In the bed, Joe stirred, snorted.
“Did you hear the Bob Hope show the other night?” she called. “He told this really funny joke, the one where this German major is interviewing some Martians. The Martians can’t provide racial documentation about their grandparents being Aryan, you know. So the German major reports back to Berlin that Mars is populated by Jews.” Coming into the living room where Joe lay in the bed, she said, “And they’re about one foot tall, and have two heads… you know how Bob Hope goes on.”
Joe had opened his eyes. He said nothing; he stared at her unwinkingly. His chin, black with stubble, his dark, achefilled eyes… she also became quiet, then.
“What is it?” she said at last. “Are you afraid?” No, she thought; that’s Frank who’s afraid. This is—I don’t know what.
“The rig went on,” Joe said, sitting up.
“What are you going to do?” She seated herself on the edge of the bed, drying her arms and hands with the dish towel.
“I’ll catch him on the return. He won’t say anything to anybody; he knows I’d do the same for him.”
“You’ve done this before?” she asked.
Joe did not answer. You meant to miss it, Juliana said to herself. I can tell; all at once I know.
“Suppose he takes another route back?” she said.
“He always take Fifty. Never Forty. He had an accident on Forty once; some horses got out in the road and he plowed into them. In the Rockies.” Picking up his clothes from the chair he began to dress.
“How old are you, Joe?” she asked as she contemplated his naked body.
“Thirty-four.”
Then, she thought, you must have been in the war. She saw no obvious physical defects; he had, in fact, quite a good, lean body, with long legs. Joe, seeing her scrutiny, scowled and turned away. “Can’t I watch?” she asked, wondering why not. All night with him, and then this modesty. “Are we bugs?” she said. “We can’t stand the sight of each other in the daylight—we have to squeeze into the walls?”
Grunting sourly, he started toward the bathroom in his underpants and socks, rubbing his chin.
This is my home, Juliana thought. I’m letting you stay here, and yet you won’t allow me to look at you. Why do you want to stay, then? She followed after him, into the bathroom; he had begun running hot water in the bowl, to shave.
On his arm, she saw a tattoo, a blue letter C.
“What”s that?” she asked. “Your wife? Connie? Corinne?”
Joe, washing his face, said, “Cairo.”
What an exotic name, she thought with envy. And then she felt herself flush. “I’m really stupid,” she said. An Italian, thirty-four years old, from the Nazi part of the world… he had been in the war, all right. But on the Axis side. And he had fought at Cairo; the tattoo was their bond, the German and Italian veterans of that campaign—the defeat of the British and Australian army under General Gott at the hands of Rommel and his Afrika Korps.
She left the bathroom, returned to the living room and began making the bed; her hands flew.
In a neat stack on the chair lay Joe’s possessions, clothes and small suitcase, personal articles. Among them she noticed a velvet-covered box, a little like a glasses’ case; picking it up, she opened it and peeked inside.
You certainly did fight at Cairo, she thought as she gazed down at the Iron Cross Second Class with the word and the date—June 10, 1945—engraved at its top. They didn’t all get this; only the valiant ones. I wonder what you did… you were only seventeen years old, then.
Joe appeared at the door of the bathroom just as she lifted the medal from its velvet box; she became aware of him and jumped guiltily. But he did not seem angry.
“I was just looking at it,” Juliana said. “I’ve never seen one before. Did Rommel pin it on you himself?”
“General Bayerlain gave them out. Rommel had already been transferred to England, to finish up there.” His voice was calm. But his hand once more had begun the monotonous pawing at his forehead, fingers digging into his scalp in that combing motion which seemed to be a chronic nervous tic.
“Would you tell me about it?” Juliana asked, as he returned to the bathroom and his shaving.
As he shaved and, after that, took a long hot shower, Joe Cinnadella told her a little; nothing like the sort of account she would have liked to hear. His two older brothers had served in the Ethiopian campaign, while he, at thirteen had been in a Fascist youth organization in Milan, his home town. Later, his brothers had joined a crack artillery battery, that of Major Ricardo Pardi, and when World War Two began, Joe had been able to join them. They had fought under Graziani. Their equipment, especially their tanks, had been dreadful. The British had shot them down, even senior officers, like rabbits. Doors of the tanks had to be held shut with sandbags during battle, to keep them from flying open. Major Pardi, however, had reclaimed discarded artillery shells, polished and greased them, and fired them; his battery had halted General Wavell’s great desperate tank advanced in ‘43.