John Passos - 1919

“He must have turned back,” he shouted above the falls. “Oh, I hate people who won’t ever go anywhere,” yelled Anne Elizabeth. She grabbed his hand. “Let’s run up to the temple.” They got up there breathless. Across the ravine they could see Ed and Mr. Barrow still sitting on the terrace of the restaurant. Anne Elizabeth thumbed her nose at them and then waved. “Isn’t this wonderful?” she spluttered. “Oh, I’m wild about ruins and scenery… I’d like to go all over Italy and see everything…. Where can we go this afternoon?… Let’s not go back and listen to them mouthing about the Roman Empire.”

“We might get to Nemi… you know the lake where Caligula had his galleys… but I don’t think we can get there without the car.” “Then they’d come along…. No, let’s take a walk.” “It might rain on us.” “Well, what if it does? We won’t run.”

They went up a path over the hills above the town and soon found themselves walking through wet pastures and oakwoods with the Campagna stretching lightbrown below them and the roofs of Tivoli picked out with black cypresses like exclamation points. It was a showery springfeeling afternoon. They could see the showers moving in dark grey and whitish blurs across the Campagna. Underfoot little redpurple cyclamens were blooming. Anne Elizabeth kept picking them and poking them in his face for him to smell. Her cheeks were red and her hair was untidy and she seemed to feel too happy to walk, running and skipping all the way. A small sprinkle of rain wet them a little and made the hair streak on her forehead. Then there was a patch of chilly sunlight. They sat down on the root of a big beechtree and looked up at the long redbrown pointed buds that glinted against the sky. Their noses were full of the smell of the little cyclamens. Dick felt steamy from the climb and the wet underbrush and the wine he’d drunk and the smell of the little cyclamens. He turned and looked in her eyes. “Well,” he said. She grabbed him by the ears and kissed him again and again. “Say you love me,” she kept saying in a strangling voice. He could smell her sandy hair and warm body and the sweetness of the little cyclamens. He pulled her to her feet and held her against his body and kissed her on the mouth; their tongues touched. He dragged her through a break in the hedge into the next field. The ground was too wet. Across the field was a little hut made of brush. They staggered as they walked with their arms around each other’s waists, their thighs grinding stiffly together. The hut was full of dry cornfodder. They lay squirming together among the dry crackling cornfodder. She lay on her back with her eyes closed, her lips tightly pursed. He had one hand under her head and with the other was trying to undo her clothes; something tore under his hand. She began pushing him away. “No, no, Dick, not here… we’ve got to go back.” “Darling girl… I must… you’re so wonderful.” She broke away from him and ran out of the hut. He sat up on the floor, hating her, brushing the dry shreds off his uniform.

Outside it was raining hard. “Let’s go back; Dick, I’m crazy about you but you oughtn’t to have torn my panties… oh, you’re so exasperating.” She began to laugh.

“You oughtn’t to start anything you don’t want to finish,” said Dick. “Oh, I think women are terrible… except prostitutes… there you know what you’re getting.”

She went up to him and kissed him. “Poor little boy… he feels so cross. I’m so sorry… I’ll sleep with you, Dick… I promise I will. You see it’s difficult… In Rome we’ll get a room somewhere.”

“Are you a virgin?” His voice was constrained and stiff.

She nodded. “Funny, isn’t it?… in wartime… You boys have risked your lives. I guess I can risk that.” “I guess I can borrow Ed’s apartment. I think he’s going to Naples tomorrow.” “But you really love me, Dick?” “Of course…. it’s only this makes me feel terrible… making love’s so magnificent.” “I suppose it is… Oh, I wish I was dead.”

They plodded along down the hill through the downpour that gradually slackened to a cold drizzle. Dick felt tired out and sodden; the rain was beginning to get down his neck. Anne Elizabeth had dropped her bunch of cyclamens.

When they got back the restaurant keeper said that the others had gone to the Villa d’Este, but would come back soon. They drank hot rum and water and tried to dry themselves over a brazier of charcoal in the kitchen. “We’re a fine pair of drowned rats,” tittered Anne Elizabeth. Dick growled, “A pair of precious idiots.”

By the time the others came back they were warm but still wet. It was a relief to argue with Barrow who was saying that if the ruling classes of today knew as much about the art of life as those old Italians he wouldn’t be a socialist. “I didn’t think you were a socialist any more,” broke in Anne Elizabeth. “I’m sure I’m not; look how the German socialists have acted in the war and now they try to crybaby and say they wanted peace all along.”

“It’s possible… to rec… to reconcile being a socialist with faith in our President and… er… in democracy,” stammered Barrow, going close to her. “We’ll have to have a long talk about that, Anne Elizabeth.”

Dick noticed how his eyes goggled when he looked at her. I guess he’s out after her, he said to himself. When they got into the car he didn’t care whether Barrow sat next to her or not. They drove all the way back to Rome in the rain.

The next three days were very busy with President Wilson’s visit to Rome. Dick got cards to various official functions, heard a great many speeches in Italian and French and English, saw a great many silk hats and decorations and saluted a great deal and got a pain in the back from holding a stiff military posture. In the Roman Forum he was near enough the President’s party to hear the short man with black mustaches who was pointing out the ruins of the temple of Romulus, say in stiff English, “Everything here bears relation to the events of the great war.” There was a hush as the people in the outer groups of dignitaries strained their ears to hear what Mr. Wilson would say.

“That is true,” replied Mr. Wilson in a measured voice. “And we must not look upon these ruins as mere stones, but as immortal symbols.” A little appreciative murmur came from the group. The Italian spoke a little louder next time. All the silk hats cocked at an angle as the dignitaries waited for the Italian’s reply. “In America,” he said with a little bow, “you have something greater, and it is hidden in your hearts.”

Mr. Wilson’s silk hat stood up very straight against all the time-eaten columns and the endless courses of dressed stone. “Yes,” replied Mr. Wilson, “it is the greatest pride of Americans to have demonstrated the immense love of humanity which they bear in their hearts.” As the President spoke Dick caught sight of his face past the cocksfeathers of some Italian generals. It was a grey stony cold face grooved like the columns, very long under the silk hat. The little smile around the mouth looked as if it had been painted on afterwards. The group moved on and passed out of earshot.

That evening at five, when he met Anne Elizabeth at Ed’s apartment he had to tell her all about the official receptions. He said all he’d seen had been a gold replica of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus up at the Capitol when the President had been made a Roman citizen, and his face in the forum. “A terrifying face, I swear it’s a reptile’s face, not warmblooded, or else the face on one of those old Roman politicians on a tomb on the Via Appia…. Do you know what we are, Anne Elizabeth? we’re the Romans of the Twentieth Century”; he burst out laughing, “and I always wanted to be a Greek.”