“That’s rather odd, surely?”
Jackson gave a bark of laughter. “Not so much odd as fortuitous. There are plenty of Italian Americans in the Fifth Army, but they’ve all wangled positions in the stores. The last thing they want is CIC sticking their noses in.”
“You mean—they’re pinching their own supplies?” James said, appalled.
Jackson stopped. “Do you know, I think we should take a detour. There’s something I ought to show you.”
He took James up the hill into the old quarter, a mass of dark medieval buildings piled on top of one another. Zigzagging erratically through the middle of this labyrinth was an alleyway that seemed to have become the main street by virtue of its length rather than any claim to magnificence. It resembled nothing so much as an African souk, James thought: narrow, chaotic and unbelievably crowded, with both buyers and sellers. Market stalls roughly assembled from a couple of suitcases and a plank of wood were piled high with every item of army equipment conceivable—ration packs, blankets reworked into dresses and coats, boots, cigarettes, vials of penicillin, toilet paper, even rolls of telephone wire. Passersby picked over items of military underwear, or haggled vociferously over candy bars filleted from American K rations. The stallholders eyed the two officers warily as they pushed through the crush, but apart from one shifty-looking gentleman who slid a couple of British bayonets out of sight as they approached, they made no attempt to conceal their wares.
“We used to round them up occasionally,” Jackson was saying, “but a different set of faces simply came and took their places the next day. Penicillin’s where the real money is, of course. So much has gone missing our medics sometimes have to come here and buy it back from the black marketeers, just to keep the field hospitals supplied.”
James nodded. Penicillin: It was the word on everyone’s lips. Before penicillin there had been no effective way to treat the infections caused by bullet wounds or bomb shrapnel, so that even a relatively minor injury could lead to the loss of a limb or death. An American company, Pfizer, had now found a way to manufacture the wonder drug in huge quantities, and was even running advertisements in magazines and newspapers boasting of the difference their product could make to the war.
“Why do the Italians want so much of it?” James asked. “After all, it’s not as if they’re fighting now.”
“It’s not injuries they want it for, it’s venereal disease. It’s rampant here.”
“Oh. Of course.” James remembered the girls who had approached him earlier. Ver’ cleen. Ver’ cleen. “There’s a fair amount of…fraternization, I take it?”
They had turned off the street market now and were walking down through the old town. As if to illustrate his words, a raucous group of GIs rounded the corner. Each had a bottle in one hand and a laughing girl in the other.
Jackson shrugged. “It’s simple economics, I’m afraid. The Jerries conscripted all the able-bodied Italian men and shipped them off to labor camps or to fight in Russia. After that, the economy collapsed—prostitution and black-marketeering are pretty much all that’s left. According to the latest Bureau bulletin, there are over forty thousand prostitutes in Naples. That’s out of a total female population of ninety thousand. If you exclude the very old or the very young, almost any woman you see here is on the game.”
“And there’s nothing we can do about it?”
Jackson shot him a glance. “Well, winning the war would be a start,” he said mildly.
“I meant nothing we can do here, in Naples?”
“We do what we can.” Jackson pointed at a sign above a shop. The original lettering had been painted out and the words PRO STATION daubed on top. “Officially, prostitution is illegal and we don’t tolerate it. But we give out free prophylactics to any soldier who wants them. And there’s a sort of fungicide, too, which the girls can use to clean themselves—blue powder, the men call it. But that’s as far as our interest extends. At the end of the day, all that concerns Allied Military Government is keeping the soldiers on their feet. After a couple of weeks here, most are headed back to the front. So long as they can stand up and fire a rifle, that’s what matters.”
Back on the seafront he ushered James through the doorway of a restaurant. Behind the blackout blinds it was packed with people. Most were officers, but there was a smattering of GIs entertaining local girls, and several tables of surprisingly prosperous-looking Italians, some of whom were eating with American or British staff officers.
“You’d hardly know there was a war on, would you?” Jackson said, enjoying James’s surprise.
“Signor Jackson. How very nice to see you.” The maître d’ was shimmying between the tables toward them.
“A quiet table please, Angelo. My colleague and I have business to discuss.” The Italian smiled and led them to a table at the back.
“The women look pretty good, don’t they?” Jackson commented, looking around him as they sat down. “They call it the Kraut diet—they’re all on the verge of starvation.” A handwritten menu was placed on the table. “Be careful what you order, though. There aren’t many cats on the streets of Naples anymore.”
A waiter was passing through the tables with some fish on a platter, showing them to the diners to attract their admiration. Jackson stopped him. “And take a look at these,” he said to James. “Notice anything strange about them?”
“They seem all right to me.”
“The heads don’t match the bodies.”
Now that James looked more closely, he saw that each fish did indeed consist of two separate pieces, carefully fitted together at the neck. The join was almost invisible. “Dogfish, probably,” Jackson said dismissively. “Edible, but hardly a delicacy.” He spoke sharply to the waiter in very fast Italian. The waiter shrugged and said something back—once again James found himself quite unable to make out most of the words. Jackson nodded. “It seems they have sea urchins today, though I’d advise you against those as well.”
“Why’s that?”
“They have a rather inconvenient effect.” Seeing James’s incomprehension, he lowered his voice. “On the libido. Unless you intend to visit one of the rooms upstairs later, I’d steer clear.”
“So this is a—well, a brothel?”
The other man shrugged. “Not as such. But every black market restaurant has a few girls hanging around. There’s a rather notorious beauty at this establishment, as it happens, with a glass eye and a famously supple throat. If you like that sort of thing.” He sat back and regarded James anxiously for a moment. “You married, Gould?”
“Um,” James said, taken off guard. “Not exactly.”
“But you’ve got a girl? Back home, I mean?”
“Absolutely.” Jackson seemed to be waiting for more details, so he added, “Her name’s Jane. Jane Ellis. She’s a land girl.”
“Engaged to her?”
“Pretty much.”
“Good. You’ll find that comes in useful. In the wedding interviews.”
“Yes, I was going to ask you—”
“My advice to you, Gould,” Jackson said with sudden urgency, leaning toward him, “is to steer clear of seafood, stay out of the sun, and think of your girl.”
“Well, of course. But what I don’t quite understand—”
“At the first sign of trouble, just tell them you’re fidanzato. Engaged.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” James said, completely mystified.
“Got to set the right example. You’re the wedding officer now, you see.” Jackson appeared to give a kind of shudder.
“Actually, I don’t see,” James said. “The first I knew of it was that sign on your door—”