The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

Author:John Cheever
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780307743985
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1982-07-09T22:00:00+00:00

THIS WAS in the thirties—a decade, in Italy, of marching in the streets, arrests, assassinations, and the loss of familiar lights. Cecil Smith returned to England when the war broke out. Very few suitors came to the palace in those days. The crippled Duke was an implacable anti-Fascist, and he told everyone that II Duce was an abomination and an infection, but he was never molested or thrown into prison, as were some less outspoken men; this may have been because of his rank, his infirmities, or his popularity with the Romans. But when the war began, the family was forced into a complete retirement. They were thought, wrongly, to be in sympathy with the Allies, and were allowed to leave the palace only once a day, to go to late or early Mass at San Giovanni. They were in bed and asleep on the night of September 10, 1943. The owl was hooting. Luigi, the old butler, woke them and said there was a messenger in the hall. They dressed quickly and went down. The messenger was disguised as a farmer, but the Duke recognized the son of an old friend. He informed the Duke that the Germans were coming down the Via Cassia and were entering the city. The commanding general had put a price of a million lire on the Duke’s head; it was the price of his intransigence. They were to go at once, on foot, to an address on the Janiculum. Winifred-Mae could hear the owl hooting in the tower, and she had never been so homesick for England. “I don’t want to go, ducky,” she said. “If they’re going to kill us, let them kill us in our own beds.” The Duke smiled kindly and opened the door for her onto one of the most troubled of Roman nights.

There were already German patrols in the streets. It was a long walk up the river, and they were very conspicuous—the weeping Englishwoman, the Duke with his stick, and the graceful daughter. How mysterious life must have seemed at that moment! The Duke moved slowly and had to stop now and then to rest, but though he was in pain, he did not show it. With his head up and a price on it, he looked around alertly, as if he had stopped to observe or admire some change in his old city. They crossed the river by separate bridges and met at a barbershop, where they were taken into a cellar and disguised. Their skin was stained and their hair was dyed. They left Rome before dawn, concealed in a load of furniture, and that evening reached a small village in the mountains, where they were hidden in a farmhouse cellar.

The village was shelled twice, but only a few buildings and barns on the outskirts were destroyed. The farmhouse was searched a dozen times, by Germans and Fascists, but the Duke was always warned long in advance. In the village, they were known as Signor and Signora Giusti, and it was Winifred-Mae who chafed at this incognito.

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