Richard House - The Kills

I remember distinct moments from this period. The fire. The women. The women, brought from the south, were either camp followers, or women traded on the route through the country, from the beaches. Wherever they landed the men, who found almost no resistance, distracted themselves with women, and rather than discard them, collected them, adding to each regiment a sizeable retinue of girls. They were housed in the basement rooms at the palazzo, and I spent my time watching from the courtyard window as the women gathered and washed, or simply spent their days, a kind of endless waiting as if idleness stuck to them, glued them into deeper inaction. The soldiers had gathered women without any particular eye, taking, by criteria, women who were young first, comely second. The trek along the beaches, then inland across the malarial swamps, through the lowlands and foothills, and later, the mountains, had meant that few were lost through combat, but along the way the skinnier girls had become lost, or abandoned, or did not have the fortitude to last.

I have no real idea about how the women came to be in our palazzo. I know only that they were, and how they appeared thinner than seemed reasonable, and how they followed the soldiers without complaint. They washed; they worked on their backs. The British soldiers appeared not to enjoy this. The American, the Polish, the French all took to these opportunities, and there was no small amount of abuse, shouting, little displayed physically. But the women were spoken to as imbeciles. They were paid in food. Badly. Stale bread. Dried meats. Processed foods that were shipped in, offloaded and left to cook in their cans on pallets on beaches further south. One can of corned beef would service as pay, so that these women were worth less than canned meat. These women were worth less than rotten scraps. As supplies improved, so did their pay. One night a week the Americans would arrive and back a truck into the courtyard, and on this truck they would hold a barbecue, cook meats; they were uncommonly generous.

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(page 34) Because of the dead the city was overrun with rats. Many had been trapped in basements when the bombing started, others were caught in catacombs, in the churches, in what passed as shelters, so the city took on a sweet smell which sank into a rank stench, recognizable as decay. The Americans brought us cats. This was one of their first gifts. Cats to kill the rats. The rats who had grown fat and large on the dead were easy to catch, and we were soon overrun with cats, who without live rats to hunt, turned to the same food source. They became aggressive and seemed to hold designs upon the living.

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(page 35) The Americans reported the truck missing. They came another time in separate vehicles, but the truck was taken, assumed sold, as most other provisions and equipment were stolen away and resold, sometimes back to them. In this instance the truck was found, and inside, littering the truck-bed, were the bodies of cats, necks snapped, slaughtered in the hundreds. As for the rats we would find our own solution.

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(page 36) The loss of D— had a profound effect. While we did not play together, knew each other in passing, I thought of her as someone close, similar. Her proximity and encouragement (while she was free), and a discouragement (when she was incarcerated). Once she was gone — or unavailable — I turned to my brother A— for company. At that time I needed a compatriot. I needed to know I was not alone.

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(page 40) Here I must speak about my sister. Here everything comes together and I should speak of the third woman who has held influence over me. So far E— has been absent, and there are many reasons for this, not least of all the considerable pain I feel at remembering her.

The episode of the cats caused a change in how the Americans treated their women. They viewed them afterward more coldly, as a resource, the men arrived now with briskness, as if keeping to an appointment, and no longer delayed to joke and play games, to tease. They also began to play small but cruel games. Through the Americans the black market thrived. In opening the city they brought back trade in two tiers, honest and expensive, dishonest and more various, and double the price. One young recruit, a handsome willowy man, a private from Kentucky, from whom I would not have expected such cruelty, brought with him packets of stockings which he gave to the women, there was one girl he was fond of, young, very small, from the mountains in the south, who had fine and dark features, and was known among the women as Mouse. The youth held back one packet, which he handed over with a kind of pride. Unlike the other sets of stockings, these were coloured, a faint but handsome pink. The women, at first delighted by the gifts, perhaps believing that some normalcy was now returning, that they had been forgiven for the episode of the cats, soon appeared puzzled, and as I watched a wave of doubt flickered through them. While the stockings were in packets, they were not new, some were rolled, and others carelessly folded, a sagginess to them that showed that they had been worn. These stockings, it later became known, were taken from the bodies of the dead or stolen from the homes of the absent. A whole new economy grew about the houses and apartments which had been abandoned, and also the houses of the dead. These places were looted — and I will not lay the blame solely at the feet of the Americans, I will not say that this was entirely about finding treasure, about taking trophies, but they caused this need, and the houses which had remained secure until now were plundered.

The women received gifts from the houses of the dead. Lamps. Carpets. Clothes. L— dressed now in a fine patterned silk nightdress, and wore over this a sheer white nightgown with cascading frills, a silly pretty thing which suited her. I watched as she received this gift, from a commander, who gave it to her in a box, wrapped in tissue paper, so that it appeared as a gift a lover might present his mistress, a fine token brought from Paris, to signify a small, perhaps intimate, occasion. It was of course no such thing. Shortly after other such boxes appeared and we learned that one of the boutiques on via F—, which had remained shuttered and unbothered through the barricade, was now forced open and looted. But this made a better gift, something she was happy to accept as it came from no one’s home, from no other body.

She stretched the fine material over her arm, allowed it to smooth over her, the weight fitting itself to her body. In wrapping her arms about the commander she looked up and caught me watching. With one finger she gave a small tick-tick wave, indicating that I should not watch. I should keep out of this business. I should not be involved, because, clearly, all this would invite would be trouble. But even with this small admonishment, I had to admit to a fascination.

L— kept a good eye on the women. She did not interfere in squabbles, but quelled them quickly if they appeared to stay unresolved, or if the irritation escalated into a fight. More like the sultan than the chief of the harem, she signalled her displeasure and her pleasure with gestures: sent girls away, picked men when they arrived. An authority on her that even the soldiers obeyed.

She also gave advice: ‘Would it be better to be dead?’ ‘If he enjoys you now, he won’t hurt you later.’

On occasion a darkness fell over the group. The girls would become unhappy, or some incident, an argument with one of the men would infect the air. L— was not immune, and I learned when and when not to observe them.

One night L— came to our door. My father answered and shut it immediately.