From These Broken Streets: A Novel by Roland Merullo

Author:Roland Merullo [Merullo, Roland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

Thirty-Seven

Colonel Scholl woke from a turbulent sleep, six restless hours wracked by a parade of lurid dreams. He lay in the comfortable bed for a time, letting the possibilities play in his mind, postponing the duties of the day, nursing a loneliness so subtle and so familiar, it felt like the whispering of a friend.

Eventually, the duties—his actual life, not the imaginary one—could be postponed no longer. He washed, shaved, put on his uniform, and by then his mind had cleared and the images set safely aside. In a flash of insight, the colonel understood his purpose for the day. All along, good soldier that he was, he’d been waiting for specific orders; now, good officer that he was, he realized he’d been assigned to Naples not to take orders but to give them. Hadn’t Kesselring said “use your own initiative”? In all the city, there was no officer senior to him (the Italian generals—Pentimalli and Del Tetto—had, shortly after his arrival, turned over their authority and fled the city. Where, he wondered, did they intend to go?).

At breakfast, sitting alone at a white-clothed table in a private enclave of the hotel dining room, he drank his Italian coffee and ate his Italian egg and waited for the annoying Lieutenant Renzik to report for duty. It wasn’t until 7:13, nearly a quarter of an hour late, that Renzik appeared at the door of the dining room, casting his eyes about as if watching for birds nesting in the corners. Eventually, he looked toward the enclave, saw his colonel, and practically sprinted across the empty main room.

The salute, the obligatory “Herr Colonel,” the sloppy posture.

“You’re late, Lieutenant.”

“My apologies, sir. There has been a small problem.”

Scholl watched him, almost amused. “Describe it, please,” he said when Renzik held to a trembling silence. “Has the proclamation not been printed?”

“No, sir. It has. They, the posters are ready, they—”

“What then?”

“Sir, the jeep in which I was supposed to drive you this morning has been . . . sabotaged.”

“In what way?”

“In the way in which it has been . . . Two tires were flattened and one sustained damage that made it hard to refill, sir.”

“Where had it been left?”

“In the usual parking garage, sir. Near the university buildings at the port. Which, I was told, has always been safe. A guard—”

“And you tried to drive it with the flattened tire, am I correct?”

“Correct, sir, because I couldn’t fill it with air, and I was late, because the nipple—”

“What nipple, Lieutenant?”

“The tire nipple, sir. Where you attach the hose. It was bent.”

“And how did you get here?”

“I drove the jeep, but the tire is ruined now, sir.” He took a sharp breath. “Shredded.”

“Lieutenant, listen to me. By the time I take the last sip of my coffee and walk to the front door, have another vehicle ready. I don’t care what it is, as long as it has four wheels with inflated tires. Has the proclamation been posted?”

“Everywhere, Herr Colonel.”

“Good. How many men do we expect to collect?”

“I don’t understand, Herr Colonel.

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