Famous Last Words (2 page)

maybe I’ll holler it, hunh? WELCOME, FELLOW AMERICAN

SONS OF BITCHES!” he roared. “That oughta make ‘em jump.”

(Dorothy closed the handles of the bag and walked away

into a corner, where she sat beside Miss Pudge’s cat—the cat asleep, impervious.)

“That oughta tell ‘em who I am.” said Ey.ra.

But Mauberley could only think of escape.

Anywhere neutral would serve his purpose and his first

idea had been to make a dash across the south of France to Spain. Others had done this before him early in December

and succeeded. But Mauberley had put it off too long and by the time he was prepared to run, the route to Spain was closed and the railroads north to Lugano and Switzerland had either been destroyed from the air or were under attack from Partisans. The only way to avoid the Americans now—

and the British—lay in the hope he could somehow get

across the Lombardy plain and through the Brenner Pass to UnterBalkonberg in Austria.

“Thing is,” said Ezra Pound, “you got more enemies than me and it’s Nazis you got to be afraid of just as much as the others. …”

Mauberley had even offended the Germans with his writing.

“You should’ve stuck to one side,” said Ezra. “Made up

your mind and stuck to one side.”

“I did,” said Mauberley.

Dorothy winced. “Take food and go,” she wanted to say.

“Be gone. It’s late.” But was silent, making a fist around the worry beads.

“Did, eh?” Ezra snapped. “Well—no you didn’t, arsehole.

What you did was stick yourself in the middle, right smack damn in the middle of everybody, and now you’ve got ‘em coming down like the Whores of Ghengis Khan on top of

you. Ghengela Cohen,” (Ezra could not resist it) “leader of the Lost Tribes of Israel and, after Moses, the first expansionist Jew. Yes—yes? Yanks and Huns and Brits all coming

down on top of poor old Hugh Selwyn Mauberley—arseeyed traitor to the whole world!” He laughed.

Mauberley did not appreciate the laughter; he was mortally afraid. Pound, of course, knew this but refused to play to fear of any kind in anyone. It was one of his taboos.

“Now,” he said, “since you went and made an enemy of

everyone, you got to go out there and pray that no one will recognize your puss. Fat chance. Your face may not be pretty but it’s potent: ready to explode. Soon as one of them enemies of yours gets a sight of it—barn!”

Yes.

“Barn?” Pound made an explosion with his fingers, jabbing at Mauberley’s face with its worried eyes, its pursed and

careful lips, its wellknown expression of apprehensive disdain.

“You might as well carry a big white flag, my friend.

Might as well advertize.”

Dorothy thought of all the photos over the years of Mauberiey printed in the papers and the magazines. Seen with

this one and that one and everyone. He’d wanted that. And got it. Now he would pay for it.

“Couldn’t we say goodbye with less antagonism, please?”

asked Mauberley.

“Please, hunh?” said Ezra.

“Yes.”

They stared at one another.

“Please. Well, well…1 like that. Pfeose, he said.”

Dorothy held her breath.

Ezra scowled and worked his jaws and turned away. Sunlight and silence. One whole minute. Ezra wandered—

bearded, old—across the floor. There was dust on the leaves of the potted geraniums. The windows needed washing.

Finally Ezra made his way to Mauberley. Mauberley sat

rigid. Dorothy hooked her fingers tight in her lap and waited.

“One more generation and you might’ve worked out,” Ezra said to Mauberley. “What a pity you never had children.”

Dorothy watched, ashamed. Ezra’s venom was like a snake’s.

If he bit himself, he’d die.

But Mauberley was used to it. “Yes,” he said. “I wish I had.” And smiled.

OIga’s cat sat up and scratched its neck.

Ezra said; “I’ve never kissed a man. So this is only what they call a soldier’s farewell. From one who stays…” he paused”…to one who goes. “And he leaned down, brushing the top of Mauberley’s head with his lips. And was gone.

Mauberley sat completely still.

Goodbye.

“You did have children,” said Dorothy, at last. The cat was purring, reaching to play with the worry beads. “Some of the best I’ve ever read.”

“Thankyou.”

Sitting.

Then rising.

They knew they would never see each other again. But

people do not say such things out loud.

Instead there was just a touching of hands—and Dorothy let him go.

On the hill above Rapallo Mauberley could smell the cordite miles away at Genoa mixed with the stink of dogs and garbage tangled in the wires along the beaches down below.

Stepping forward, he walked through a world transformed by violence and fear into a place where all the landmarks learned by heart had disappeared and every face might hide an enemy.

Later, having crossed the Po and come to Cremona hoping to find a train, he found instead the city was a shambles of blown-up houses and candy factories. Red clay dust obscured the sun. Smoke obscured the ruins of the station.

Nothing remained of the Telephone Exchange and the other public buildings. No one could tell what lay ahead along the roads. The soldiers of the Wehrmacht shot at you today, and, tomorrow, it might be the Allies.

Mussolini was in retreat at Salo by Lago di Garda. It was not, of course, being called a “retreat” but the new seat of Government: the German-sponsored Repubiica Fascisti of

which Mussolini was the figurehead. Two months before

Ezra had gone to visit him there and Mauberley had tagged along in the hope that Ezra might persuade il Duce to provide some means of their escaping into Switzerland. Or a piece of paper, at the very least, absolving them of conspiracy against their own kind and country. Everyone was seeking such pieces of paper. Mussolini himself was drafting rebuttals: “…1 did not mean…1 did not want…1 did not

intend…it was not my ultimate goal…” Just as later at Nuremburg so many others would say; “I did not know…”

Now Mauberley must decide which route he would take

into the mountains. Going around the western shores of Lago di Garda would cut at least a quarter of his journey; maybe a third. But he dared not risk the formidable concentration of German troops surrounding Mussolini’s encampment.

So it was that Mauberley turned eastward and made his

way to Mantua, thinking for certain the rail lines would be open to Verona and the north.

He arrived at Mantua on the 8th of March. On the 7th the bridge across the Rhine at Remagen had fallen into Allied hands. The panic brought about by this event swept down through the Wehrmacht all the way to Italy. Visions of being killed in a country they had come to hate seized the Army of Occupation with a frenzy of rebellion. The breaching of the Rhine defences was an atavistic signal that Germany was done for. Wives and children were in jeopardy. The attempt to maintain the Republica Fascist! had been hopeless to begin with and the “fight to the death” being called for by their leader would be meaningless so far away from Germany.

The only place for such a death was at home. And

home they went; by the thousands.

Nothing, it seemed, could stop them. It was a rout without precedent. Officers as well as men took part—though not a single enemy soldier pursued them. Only the Partisans, who struck from ambush. Three battalions, each swollen with Austrian and German civilians, were at the core of this retreat and they commandeered everything that rolled on wheels

to get them to the north. Their immediate goal was the Brenner Pass—almost a hundred and fifty miles away through

the mountains rising into Austria. Mauberley arrived at Mantua to find that all the world had joined him in his journey.

His first mistake was in taking the train; his second in wanting so much to get out of the cold that he bribed his way into a compartment instead of riding on the top of the car. Anonymity was guaranteed up top by the fact that everyone must shut his eyes against the wind and every face was

covered with scarves and turned-up collars. Not that he might not have fallen from the top, as one man did; or been frozen, as several were; but at least he would not have been

11

In the compartment—which was grossly overcrowded—

Mauberley was able to remove his cotton gloves and warm one hand in the palm of the other. The valise and attache case he carried on his lap, the handles turned against himself so no one could grab them and run away. Dorothy’s old cloth bag was rolled in his pocket against the chance he might be able to buy or steal enough to make himself a portable larder.

He hadn’t eaten since the last heel of bread and the last of the onions downed against the cold that morning, followed by the last gulp of wine. He would buy something more

when they got to Verona. In the linings of his clothes there was a fortune in lire and Reichsmark, suitably muffled in cotton wool so it wouldn’t “talk” every time he moved. In his pocket there was a modest amount of other monies, ready to be drawn against the need to bribe his way here and

there—as he had when he got on the train, as he might when the next opportunity to sleep beneath a roof appeared. For the moment, he was happy just to sit and be warmed by the pressure of the people on either side and the comfort of knowing someone else was in charge of his destination for a while.

They sat this way, beneath the canopy of broken glass that had been the station, for the next three hours, while the airraid sirens screamed and moaned and the B-24s flew above

them into the north and northwest to drop their bombs on Brescia and Milan. Then—at last—the whole train gave a

series of kicks and lumbered off to the east and the first blue hint of the mountains. Everyone sighed. There was even

laughter. They were free. They were going home.

Mauberley’s first awareness of being followed did not occur until the train was about to make its first stop. He had been snoozing, pleasantly warmed, rocking gently from side to side. Suddenly someone called out; “schcm malf’Look! And pointed through the glass of the compartment, out through the windows beyond the people in the corridor. Mauberley.

coming very slowly to his senses, tried to understand what all the commotion was about: people rising to peer above each other’s heads and pressing down on one another’s

shoulders. It was difficult to tell if there was anything to see at all—until there was a jolt and some of the people fell towards one side.

Then it could be seen: the rest of the army, with all its bicycles and horses, all its stragglers marching on foot, those who had started out in the night or even the afternoon before.

The road ran parallel to the track for several miles. And every mile was black with soldiers and overloaded transport, the transport moving at a snail’s pace; stalling; moving; stalling; moving—the train, too, losing its momentum. It was

plain they were coming to some sort of junction or perhaps a town. “We? We?” “Villafranca.”

Mauberiey was catching as many fleeting glimpses of this scene as he was able between the crowded bodies, when he became aware he was being watched. One of the people in the corridor—a severe, unsmiling woman who wore a rattylooking moleskin coat—was leaning against the glass, staring

in at him through narrowed eyes. Her hair was cut like the hair of a man. Her hands, laid out along the sleeves of the coat, were strong, and the fingernails bitten. But the most alarming thing about this woman was her expression.

Clearly, she knew who Mauberiey was—and clearly, she

hated him. Even when she saw he had seen her, she was so engrossed in this hatred she could not bring herself to look away.

Mauberiey tightened his grip on the valise and the attache case. He couldn’t breathe.

The woman lifted her chin, bit at one of her fingers and spat out a piece of nail against the partition. She might as well have blown him the kiss of death.

And then she was gone.

Her place was taken by a soldier with a pack whose shovel screeched along (he glass and made a series of marks like the graph of a heart attack.

Mauberiey sat there unable to move. Finally, looking down, he had to tell his fingers one by one: Jet go.

After that, the train rolled into the station yard at Villafranca, where it took on water and coal and let a few more

soldiers onto the tops of the cars and shuffled away into the winter afternoon and the wooded approaches to Verona.

13

Mauberley dared not sleep again. Or think of sleep. Or

even watch the others sleeping and dozing all around him.

Instead, he sat up very straight, with his eyes on the passenger opposite—a gaunt, unshaven man whose lips were

cracked and whose mouth was set as if about to bite on glass.

This was the only other person wide awake besides himself.

When the man stared back at him, Mauberley realized how rude he was being and smiled. And it was then—as the smile was being returned—he saw it was himself he had been

watching, caught in the trick of a lopsided mirror hanging between advertisements for Aqua di Silva and German fortitude: “Der Flihrer erwartet dein Opfer!” Eau de cologne

and sacrifice—and a trainload of deserters. A fitting way to go.

Someone began to sing. A soldier’s song. The whole car took it up and doubtless the passengers in other cars as well.

When the song was over there were cheers and shouts of: bitte! bitte! More. More. Another song was sung and another and another. Finally, silence. Out of this silence someone else began to sing—a woman singing all alone. She sang with a lull contralto voice, taking her rhythm from the train.

“Wien, Wien, nur du ailein soJJst stets die Stadt meincr Trdume sein.”

Everyone listened, each one caught in some private dream of home: Vienna, Munich, Berlin… .At least there were some with cities to which they could return. For Mauberlev, the cities of the past and all the people in them might as well have been the cities and the citizens of stars.