(Last update February 4, 2010)
“The De-Lovely Italians” (September 11, 1942)
The next day was the same thing over again, except longer. How could something be longer than eternity? Even if she had only traveled with them for about six hours yesterday and this morning they started at dawn, it still shouldn’t be able to be longer than eternity.
They had had only had a few hours sleep; the first rays of light came early in the desert’s summer and they had started in complete darkness. The column stopped for a couple of hours during the hottest part of the day. She didn’t find that all that better-–-it would have been great to lie down but after her experience yesterday with the scorpion, she didn’t feel easy enough to do so. Still, she could sit on her coat in the shade of the truck and stretch her legs out and since the sand was solid under her, she fell asleep sitting up even in the overwhelming heat.
They had a meal but it had sand in it and again Katherine hadn’t much of an appetite in the heat.
Then they took off again and shortly thereafter the constant wind picked up and fine, tiny grains of sand got through to more places on her body than they had yesterday. Little daggers of sand pierced into her nose and lips. Wearing a scarf over her nose and mouth didn’t stop the smallest particles—maybe it kept out some larger grains but so much got through, it could hardly have made that much difference. She thought she kept her mouth tightly shut but sand got through to her throat. She felt she had swallowed most of the Sahara; all right, only most of the Sahara within a few miles of their location. Though the goggles protected her eyes more than the scarf protected other parts, even it wasn’t a perfect barrier.
She became desperate for the convoy to stop. But she didn’t consider asking them to do so. Instead she started thinking of other methods to get them to stop and she focused in on violence. Violence was foreign to her but she started imagining scenarios. Maybe she could grab someone’s pistol. If she could do the impossible with the mortar, she could surely grab someone’s pistol. Not the captain’s. He’d be prepared. Maybe the guard behind her. Or the driver.
But this wasn’t like yesterday and she knew she was no longer the person she had been then. Today she was barely able to stand or walk, no way could she have run to pick up an ammo shell like she had done yesterday—she knew the reserves of strength that she hadn’t known she had yesterday were not there today. She couldn’t even focus on a goal like she had done yesterday. She became so desperate that later she actually considered the unthinkable and, she knew, hopeless task of asking the captain to stop. She could just tap him on the shoulder. Right, that would work. Like he cared what she felt when he was obviously on some kind of schedule. No, let’s rethink the pistol angle. Or maybe she could make them shoot her. That would stop this relentless blowing sand. Death: theirs, hers, she didn’t care. Just make it stop!
Then the wind let up. Her mind came back to some sort of reason. The heat of the sun became her main enemy and she forgot how much worse the wind had been—except that crazy thoughts she had had she now knew for what they had been: off-the-wall insane.
After a while she started wishing for the bone killing cold of the night just for a change. Surely any change would be preferable. It had already been 14 hours of hell. Who knew eternity could be measured in hours?
She was sure the day would never, ever end. But finally it turned dark and shortly thereafter it turned cool—she knew cold would follow. But the cold also meant that they would be stopping soon.
Then they were stopped in a most unexpected manner. Right around dark, they came over a small rise and found themselves at the edge of a compound facing a car full of Italians—they called out to them in that language. Obviously civilians; two lively and vocal young women were in the car. Although, there seemed to be a man in uniform—it was too dark to tell much from the distance between the vehicles.
Kichner was obviously disconcerted and since Katherine was beginning to recover from the heat in the coolness of the evening, she had enough energy to be pleased about that. She assumed this place was either not on his map, or they were off the path the column had been planning to take, or maybe the place was known but this was a new settlement.
What could these people be doing here? New settlers? She realized that Kichner was speaking Italian. Why had he learned Italian? For opera? Dante in the original? Was he stationed there once? Italian girl friends? He didn’t seem like a person who would learn Italian; maybe French or Russian to go with his English but Italian?
Her own Italian was nonexistent although when she was about eight she had learned a little French, which claimed to be a related language. But it was 15 years since she had heard or spoken a word of French. The two young women in the Italian party had obviously seen her and were motioning in her direction as they talked. There was an older Italian man as well-–-their father? And they had in their company what she could now see was a German colonel in uniform.
The captain made some arrangement with them and came back to the truck and the Italians turned their car around and headed back from where they had come.
“Dr. Maurizzi recently built a compound over there.” Kichner motioned in the direction the car had turned back to. “His two daughters, Lucia and Sophia are visiting along with a German colonel, who is an old friend and on vacation, I gather. They invited us to dinner.”
“All of us?” asked the major.
“Myself and the commanding officer of the prisoners and the woman prisoner.”
Major Cleere wanted to know, “Why would a German colonel be taking a vacation here?”
“I don’t know. We will have to meet him. You can probably beg off if you don’t feel up to it.”
The major seemed to understand the dare but was cautious. She wondered why. They were already in the hands of the Germans.
Kichner went to arrange to move the column to a camping space closer to the compound and after a few minutes the major whispered to her, “It might be wise not to draw the attention of this German colonel.”
“Well, I do try to be wise,” she smiled: the smile of a naive, helpless woman.
The captain came back just in time to hear the last part and picked up on her tone, “Why do I not believe you?”
“Because you are suspicious by nature.”
“That may be.”
Katherine thought it was strange that Cleere then seemed to draw the captain into the conversation by saying that he had been telling her not to draw the attention of the colonel. “I don’t think you are the worst person into whose hands we could fall.”
“I think your compatriot isn’t so sure about that.”
“Never said you were the worst,” she said raising her left hand to her jaw to suggest that he was, however, no saint.
“You might as well stop that, as I am not going to feel guilty about it any more than you will feel guilty about doing what you did. But there is no need to mention it until I turn you over to those Field Marshal Rommel has designated to deal with prisoners. This colonel is not in my chain of command and may not even be under Rommel and I assume you have heard something of what is happening in other theaters of this war.” He paused. “I hate to make it plain that I don’t trust you, but I still don’t trust you. So, I have arranged for the major and me to go ahead and take the hot bath they have offered. I will bring the major back and pick you up and be a guard who isn’t quite a guard while you are able to bathe and change clothes. Do not give me any reason to make my lack of trust of you too obvious. Do you understand?”
“Right. I am to play sweet and innocent for which I get a bath and real food. As long as a British column doesn’t appear, I will try not to deviate too much from that. I can’t see how I can use this anyway-–-these people are also the enemy.”
“I suspect if you could see an opening, you would say the same thing.”
So, the column moved closer to the compound and set up camp there. While Kichner and Cleere were gone to the compound, she got out the spare uniform she had brought and had everything ready to go when they came back. They both looked all clean and fresh. Although she didn’t have a mirror, she knew she was dirty and sweaty and smelled bad and looked the opposite of fresh. What was the opposite of fresh?
Kichner took her up to a bedroom where the door was open and Lucia and Sophia came forward to greet her. They tried their English on her. Lucia took the lead. Katherine estimated that she was the oldest, a little younger than she was, maybe 21 or 22.
“Oh, your face, burned by sun. You careful in hot water of bath.”
Katherine put her right hand to her cheek, not having realized she was sunburnt; although she now remembered that Kichner had said so. “No matter how sunburnt I am, I am grateful for the chance to take a bath. Thank you so very much.”
Sophia, who was maybe 19 or 20, jumped into the conversation to tell her, “Captain Kichner ordered we leave only soap for skin and soap for hair in bathroom along with towels.” She looked at him accusingly then back to her, “But if you need anything else, you tell us.” She had started the hot water running.
“Soap and shampoo and hot water will be among the best gifts I could have imagined.”
“Oh, we have dress for you.” Lucia held up a shapeless brown dress that Katherine would have been surprise if either of them had ever worn-–-maybe it had belonged to their mother. Still, it looked clean and warm even if those were its only virtues. She didn’t want this captain or anyone else around to think she was even remotely attractive so the dress was just what she would have chosen. “That’s great. Thank you so very much for the loan.”
She smiled and had put all her sincerity into that to make sure none of them saw no sign that she knew the dress was ugly. She suspected Kichner would wondered how that could be as he seemed very aware of what was attractive and what wasn’t.
She put her spare uniform aside and took the dress.
Kichner told her, “You have 15 minutes to be ready to go down to dinner.”
“Could one of you tell me after eight minutes?”
“I happy to, “ Sophia volunteered.
Katherine got privacy though there was no lock on the door. She undressed and started to step into the tub and then her brain shouted at her: “Impure! Impure!” She took a deep breath as she also had to when stepping into stagnant water where she would be washing her whole body. She had been taught that was unclean. But she had also later lived among people who insisted she take such baths. Fortunately, the Italians had also left a bucket of warm water for a final rinse. She quieted her brain and stepped in.
The hot water was wonderful. And she ran a little more warm water to wash her face in running water: no way could she wash her face in water that had touched her body. It was then that she found parts of her face were indeed highly sensitive. Most of the rest of her had been covered from the sun. But the cap, goggles and scarf had left some openings that she hadn’t realized had been exposed. There was no mirror in the bathroom to check. She unwrapped her long hair from the braids that she wore around her head and washed her head and hair thoroughly. No sunburn there. She hoped they had a good sturdy comb. Far too soon Sophia knocked at the door; her eight minute warning and she poured the bucket of water on top of her and got out, put a towel around her head and, using another towel, dried off and got dressed. She stuck her head out and asked for a comb.
“You can comb your hair out here,” Kichner said.
Sophia objected to the impropriety of that—she expressed herself on this mostly in Italian and Kichner not only argued with her on the subject but translated for Katherine.
“What could be improper about it?” the captain wanted to know. Lucia agreed with him. Katherine was beginning to suspect that Lucia would agree with anything the captain said. Oh well, she got her comb.
The sisters expressed surprise about how long her hair was. It was not in style for young women to wear their hair long. Lucia said something about an old aunt in a mountain village who also wouldn’t join the current century and cut her hair.
As Katherine combed through the tangles, she could see why the style for young women had changed. In two days of that horrendous travel her long hair had tangled, even thought it had been braided securely, so that most of the time she spent in getting ready was in getting through those tangles. But cutting her hair wasn’t an option for her.
When she could finally move a comb through her hair, she just left it free – that was the only way it would dry this evening, but she knew she would need to braid it before going to bed or it would tangle beyond help.
Although it would be impure to do so, Katherine was sure she would need the uniform she had worn for the past three days again and she didn’t want to put it on the way it was. So, she asked something that in normal circumstances she would never think of. “Can I wash the uniform I was wearing in the bathwater?”
“Oh, we have servants for that.” Lucia called out and a woman native to this area came in and she was told to wash the uniform and see if she could get it as dry as possible as quickly as possible. It was now time for dinner; in fact it seemed they were going to be late. This did not disturb the Italians but Katherine got the impression Kichner’s German heart was uncomfortable being late.
As they walked to dinner, Katherine found out that the two young women spent most of their time back in Italy and were only visiting. That their father was one of the 100,000 Italian settlers who had moved to Libya in the past decade or so. And wasn’t it hot during the day and cold at night. As they got to the bottom of the stairs, they heard the piano. The two Italian women rushed forward. It was Cleere. Sergeant Hauber was standing by him until they entered and the captain nodded to him that he could leave.
Cleere was dabbling with “Rhapsody in Blue,” probably knowing he was going to be interrupted in just a minute, as he was when Lucia and Sophia got to him gushing about the music he could play: do you know this and do you know that. And didn’t he play well. Katherine also moved to the piano, but she noticed that Kichner instead chose an soft chair on the other side of the room, stretching out his legs, though he verbally jumped in to help occasionally when communication failed over a language problem.
Then the colonel, his name turned out to be Runstedt, joined them, and the first thing he did was denigrate what he called decadent American music. Katherine wondered if he recognized Gershwin. Lucia and Sophia objected and said how much they loved it. He backed off a little, as a guest should. They brought out a music score and asked Cleere to play it. He stumbled a little over it as he had obviously never heard it. “De-Lovely” was unusual, Katherine knew, and only a few years old. The two young women lamented about the words and after Cleere couldn’t help with some of the words and phrases they had problems with, they brought the music to Kichner who was baffled for a translation of “TinPantheisis?” to start and then words here and there.
Though she tried to follow Major Cleere’s suggestion and not bring attention to herself, Katherine was constitutionally incapable of letting such a thing go unexplained. “The songwriter was having fun with words. These are not English words or even American words. They are words invented just for this song.”
“People are allowed to invent words? How will anyone understand?”
“So,” said the colonel, “he cheated when he wasn’t good enough to find the right words.”
“In the hands of a lesser songwriter, it might have been a cheat, but what Cole Porter did was a one-off for this song and it works and people have even started using his words since the song came out. He is so good, that he is allowed to break the rules. The song is turning up everywhere. ’TinPanthesisis’ is a combination of words, one of which is slang and the other is chopped off of a real word. If you know what Tin Pan Alley is, the word is understandable. And most Americans know what Tin Pan Alley is and those of us elsewhere who listen to modern American music also know it. The skill that it took just to come up with this one word to mean what it does, which is a totally new concept, is extraordinary.”
Dinner was called, but the girls weren’t satisfied and would only go to dinner if they were promised a complete playing and explanation of the song afterwards.
The first thing that hit Katherine when they moved to their places around the table was the smell of warm food. It made her feel safe, surrounded by friends. She realized she would have to resist such feelings and to remember she was a prisoner.
The only common language of the six people for dinner was English. Dr. Maurizzi understood more English than he spoke, Colonel Runstedt was really quite fluent though with a heavy accent. The two sisters seemed to be able to speak most of what they wanted but needed you to speak slowly and simply for them to be able to follow along. Katherine who had spent considerable time in her life around people who barely spoke a common language, thought hard about her words when she spoke to them: using common words and declarative sentences. When the girls had problems understanding, they appealed to Captain Kichner who helped with a translation.
Katherine found the food delicious although unusual. She had no idea what she was eating. Was this Italian? Arab? A combination? The spices were strong but smooth. For the first time in two days she found herself hungry.
The young women also asked Captain Kichner about himself. Seems he had a scar on his cheek which Katherine hadn’t noticed. Lucia and Sophia had noticed and Lucia asked him if it was a war wound.
“Heidelberg,” Kichner said. When he saw they didn’t understand the reference, he said, “Fencing at the University of Heidelberg.”
“There was accident? But you must wear masks when fencing.”
Kichner shook his head.
Again Katherine couldn’t resist (this time she might also have had an urge to take a dig at her captor) so she leaned across the table and held up her hand to supposedly hide her words from the captain, “The Heidelberg fencing scar is really a famous thing. It is desired. I heard, they do wear special fencing goggles to protect their eyes and I would have thought that the really good fencers wouldn’t get scars, but the students want them. There are rumors of a test where someone stands still and has a blade flashed at his face.” She paused and then was forced to be fair. “But I have also heard that there have been serious injuries as you can well imagine.”
She hadn’t paid that much attention to using common words so Kichner had to translate some of this. He admitted that they did protect their eyes but was less than forthcoming about exactly what went on at Heidelberg behind the scenes. He did not seem upset by her interference, but the Colonel objected and told her, “I would think that you wouldn’t want to annoy your captor.”
“Have you ever been a prisoner, Colonel?”
“No.”
“Well maybe you will get the chance to see how you react to it, but I find a real desire to assert some will of my own even if it is only in little things that can’t possibly matter. Something that reinforces to myself that I am not completely under the control of another person or group. So far, I admit that the captain has been reasonably understanding of my little off-hand comments. Major Cleere doesn’t engage in this behavior, so I may not be able to speak for all prisoners, and I have only been a prisoner for a little over 30 hours, so maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet and is just me acting pretty much as I always have, giving my opinion freely.”
Sophia then noticed something else. “That isn’t sunburn on your left cheek, is it?”
“Ah,” she said drawing it out and then pausing and then without ever looking at the captain or giving any indication that she was debating what to tell them, she went on. “I was in a plane crash only yesterday and I do have a number of bruises, I’m afraid.”
“Oh yes. Captain Kichner told us that. You could have been killed.”
“Risking being killed is a part of living.”
“Really?” asked Dr. Maurizzi
“I don’t know. That just occurred to me. After all we are in a war zone where thousands of people are risking being killed every minute of every day. I thought it sounded a little profound until I said it, when I decided it sounded just disingenuous.”
“Another ‘D’ word we don’t know. The De-Lovely song goes on into many words that begin with ‘D’. What does this “dis-genuous” mean?” Katherine didn’t correct her pronunciation but in between bites she did look at Kichner to see if he knew the English and the Italian enough to translate it, and he gave a translation that seemed to satisfy them.
The colonel objected to even the name of the song, “But ‘de-lovely’ is not an English or an American word. I spent time at a university in America and there is no such word. I never heard it.”
Katherine tore herself away from the food to defend music she cared about. “I doubt many Americans could define many of Cole Porter’s words in this song—they would mostly understand the points he is making, but he is playing with the words. It is supposed to be a song about,” she paused. “About not really love nor passion, but the fun side of romance, or rather about the fun side of songs about romance.”
Lucia frowned at this. “But not love or passion?”
“If the song was about love or passion, it wouldn’t start with an introduction about the song itself which actually insults the song it is about to present.”
Colonel Runstedt again objected to the nonsense. “It sounds decadent. Is this Cole Porter Jewish?”
Katherine knew she shouldn’t get involved in an arguement with the German colonel and she tried to say something that would be non-controversial. “I actually know a lot about Cole Porter’s music but I have no reason to know anything at all about the person. I don’t know what color his hair is, whether he is a native New Yorker, is married or single, fat or thin. The music stands on its own. I care whether he writes a good song. Whether the song lightens the burdens of life, what it makes me feel.”
“But it could be part of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the moral fiber of the young people who listen to it.”
Katherine thought it was innocent enough to say, “It’s a song about music and romance, not a political statement.”
“These people have a plan for world domination and they are really subtle and smart. They have a world wide conspiracy that organizes all aspects of life and sneak things in that you don’t expect.”
Katherine thought she might be able to just ask, “Who does?”
He looked at her as if she was retarded. “Jews.”
Leave it Katherine thought to herself. Let it go. Stay out of it. Oh, hell. “Isn’t world domination the express goal, in words and deeds, of you Germans? Why claim there is someone else attempting it when you make it plain that is exactly what you are engaged in? And do you really want to claim that people you consider to be less than you, are really smart: enough to do subtly what you do with such obvious heavy handedness? I like smart people myself. No wonder the best scientists are Jews. “
“They are not the best scientists. Jews have been holding back the good German scientists.”
“Since science is based on hard evidence, I don’t see how one scientist can hold back another except by doing the work better and more quickly. Why punish a people for adding to human knowledge? And I might also warn you that the Bible indicates that the Jews have been major warriors: on the level of the ancient German barbarians.”
“Nonsense. Lies. They readily becomes slaves.”
“Everyone does when they have certain death as the alternative. If you and your family were surrounded by armed men, wouldn’t you surrender? And while under the threat of guns, wouldn’t you do as you were told? Besides peacefulness is hardly a synonym for weakness, and violence is not the same thing as strength. But you should re-read the Biblical book of Joshua. The ancient Hebrew people either had a very powerful God helping them or they were extraordinary warriors. Personally, I think the latter is more likely, but either way, they may not turn out to be consistently subservient.”
“We have evidence they are trying to take over the world.”
“Who is?”
“The Jews!”
“The people you just claimed readily become slaves?”
He spoke on top of her last words, “Germany is trying to save the world from them.”
Dr. Maurizzi murmured, “Fatti maschi, parole femmine,” [3] and Kichner asked him if he would like him to translate that for her, and he agreed.
“Facts are masculine, words are feminine.”
“In other words, whatever facts I have can be ignored as just the words of a female.”
Dr. Maurizzi claimed, “That is not what I meant.”
Katherine was about to respond when Captain Kichner leaned over to her. His tone was cold, direct, harsh and unyielding. It was a cease and desist order from someone who knew he had the power to enforce it. “You are a guest at a dinner party and this is boring everyone else.”
Her natural reaction was to argue back but she knew he would not allow that. She forced her jaw muscles to go rigid to keep herself from giving in to her desire to verbally fight back, Finally she relaxed giving in to this order. He had actually been very patient with her since she had fallen into his hands. She figured she as at a line she should not cross and she looked to Cleere and discovered his expression reinforced her thoughts not to follow her inclination.
Resigning herself to the inevitable she turned back to the others, “Quite right. I am so sorry. Especially since it is impossible to argue when facts don’t serve as common ground anyway.”
Lucia ignored all the conversation about Jews and jumped back to the words in the song, “We have all the words of the song, but many are not in dictionary?”
Katherine went back to the previous conversation. “The writer is saying that even if you don’t recognize the words, you will still know what he means.”
“Decadent.” Seemed like the colonel was going to get the last word in their previous argument after all.
The rest of the conversation was lighter. Major Cleere was cheerful and friendly and spoke of opera and a short trip to Italy before the war.
After dinner, they adjourned to the piano and Major Cleere played a line at a time and Katherine spoke the words:
“‘I feel a sudden urge to sing the kind of ditty that invokes the Spring’. The most unusual word in this line is ‘ditty’ which means a short, little song of no consequence. Are there any other words you don’t know?”
Lucia and Sophia shook their heads.
“‘So, control your desire to curse while I crucify the verse.’ Here it isn’t the words so much as the concept you have trouble with, I suspect. It means: please don’t get upset although I am going to kill this verse, or maybe hurt or cripple this verse.”
Lucia said, “Really? Crucify a verse? Like Christ was crucified?”
“It is the kind of thing an American critic might say about a verse; maybe some critic said it about a previous song Porter wrote, or he just wanted an exaggerated insult about the verse. The next line is, ‘This verse I’ve started seems to me the ‘Tin Pan-tithesis’ of melody’ and this was, I think, a big problem for your translation. First off, you have to know that modern American music became mass marketed on a street in New York which a journalist nicknamed Tin Pan Alley. This became a derogatory term for the kind of popular music that came out of it, but there were some songwriters who were so sure of what they were doing that they felt comfortable even using derogatory terms about their own music. Both Cole Porter and George Gershwin did so. So Tin Pan-tithesis is something related to Tin Pan Alley, a minor, not quite respectable attempt at melody. Please realize that I am not representing the writer here, just giving you an off-the-cuff translation.”
Sophia asked, “What is off-the-cuff?”
“The Americans make more idioms than any other people I know of. A cuff is the end of a shirt sleeve and off-the-cuff is not fully thought through or researched. Then, without much more, we get to those words that begin with a ‘d’ that you had problems with including ‘De-Lovely’ which is a new word and would have to relate to lovely and therefore be about how something looks, I think. So, he is mixing his senses here while using all ‘d’ words. Then you have verses with normal words and then ‘dilemma’ and ‘de limit’ which had the sound he wanted but a dilemma is a puzzle and ‘de limit’ just rhymes, although it might mean past the limit. In addition there is ‘chickadee’ which I think is some kind of bird but which some people, like the movie actor W.C. Fields, made popular sort of as a term of endearment, although with reservations. So, now, Lucia or Sophia, would one of you two like to sing it for us?”
Lucia jumped up immediately and did just that and she did a passable job; especially at what Katherine thought was her real purpose, which seemed to be trying to impress Captain Kichner.
At the end of the song, the captain insisted that his prisoners return to camp. The Italians thought that was cruel and they should both stay for a nightcap.
But Katherine jumped in to say that she was really dead tired and would like to forgo the nightcap and go to bed. “But I would like to thank you all so very much for the bath and the dinner and company and, again, I do apologize for being half of that argument at dinner. I must admit that I never could resist a debate.”
The two young women took her, along with Kichner as her unofficial guard to their rooms where she braided her hair, changed into her clean second uniform, gathered the uniform she had worn coming in, which had been washed. It was still wet but she was sure it would dry quickly in the heat of the next day. She thanked everyone again and went off back to camp with the captain, got into her sleeping bag and was duly handcuffed to the cot. The captain turned her over to the sergeant and the major and as he turned to leave, she said to him, “Good luck.” He looked back at her as if to ask what she meant, but she was already asleep. He returned to the tent just in time for them to leave at dawn.
Copyright 2007-2009 by B. E. Warne: All rights reserved.