Joe, washing his face, said, Cairo.
What an exotic name, she thought with envy. And then she felt herself flush. I'm really stupid, she said. An Italian, thirty-four years old, from the Nazi part of the world. . . he had been in the war, all right. But on the Axis side. And he had fought at Cairo; the tattoo was their bond, the German and Italian veterans of that campaign -- the defeat of the British and Australian army under General Gott at the hands of Rommel and his Afrika Korps.
She left the bathroom, returned to the living room and began making the bed; her hands flew.
In a neat stack on the chair lay Joe's possessions, clothes and small suitcase, personal articles. Among them she noticed a velvet-covered box, a little like a glasses' case; picking it up, she opened it and peeked inside.
You certainly did fight at Cairo, she thought as she gazed down at the Iron Cross Second Class with the word and the date -- June 10, 1945 -- engraved at its top. They didn't all get this; only the valiant ones. I wonder what you did. . . you were only seventeen years old, then.
Joe appeared at the door of the bathroom just as she lifted the medal from its velvet box; she became aware of him and jumped guiltily. But he did not seem angry.
I was just looking at it, Juliana said. I've never seen one before. Did Rommel pin it on you himself?
General Bayerlain gave them out. Rommel had already been transferred to England, to finish up there. His voice was calm. But his hand once more had begun the monotonous pawing at his forehead, fingers digging into his scalp in that combing motion which seemed to be a chronic nervous tic.
Would you tell me about it? Juliana asked, as he returned to the bathroom and his shaving.
As he shaved and, after that, took a long hot shower, Joe Cinnadella told her a little; nothing like the sort of account she would have liked to hear. His two older brothers had served in the Ethiopian campaign, while he, at thirteen had been in a Fascist youth organization in Milan, telephone android 2.2
android 2.2 phoneshis home town. Later, his brothers had joined a crack artillery battery, that of Major Ricardo Pardi, and when World War Two began, Joe had been able to join them. They had fought under Graziani. Their equipment, especially their tanks, had been dreadful. The British had shot them down, even senior officers, like rabbits. Doors of the tanks had to be held shut with sandbags during battle, to keep them from flying open. Major Pardi, however, had reclaimed discarded artillery shells, polished and greased them, and fired them; his battery had halted General Wavell's great desperate tank advanced in '43.
Are your brothers still alive? Juliana asked.
His brothers had been killed in '44, strangled with wire by British commandos, the Long Range Desert Group which had operated behind Axis lines and which had become especially fanatic during the last phases of the war when it was clear that the Allies could not win.
How do you feel about the British now? she asked haltingly.
Joe said, I'd like to see them do to England what they did in Africa. His tone was flat.
But it's been -- eighteen years, Juliana said. I know the British especially did terrible things. But --
They talk about the things the Nazis did to the Jews, Joe said. The British have done worse. In the Battle of London. He became silent. Those fire weapons, phosphorus and oil; I saw a few of the German troops, afterward. Boat after boat burned to a cinder. Those pipes under the water -- turned the sea to fire. And on civilian populations, by those mass fire-bombing raids that Churchill thought were going to save the war at the last moment. Those terror attacks on Hamburg and Essen and --
2012年2月16日星期四
2012年2月15日星期三
android 2.2 phones almost been successful.
I could do it, he thought, if there weren't those damn black slaves lurking around; I could endure those above me seeing it, their scorn -- after all, they scorn me and humiliate me every day. But to have those beneath see me, to feel their contempt. Like this chink peddling away ahead of me. If I hadn't taken a pedecab, if he had seen me trying to walk to a business appointment. . .
One had to blame the Germans for the situation. Tendency to bite off more than they could chew. After all, they had barely managed to win the war, and at once they had gone off to conquer the solar system, while at home they had passed edicts which. . . well, at least the idea was good. And after all, they had been successful with the Jews and Gypsies and Bible Students. And the Slavs had been rolled back two thousand years' worth, to their heartland in Asia. Out of Europe entirely, to everyone's relief. Back to riding yaks and hunting with bow and arrow. And those great glossy magazines printed in Munich and circulated around to all the libraries and newsstands. . . one could see the full-page color pictures for oneself: the blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan settlers who now industriously tilled, culled, plowed, and so forth in the vast grain bowl of the world, the Ukraine. Those fellows certainly looked happy. And their farms and cottages were clean. You didn't see pictures of drunken dull-wilted Poles any more, slouched on sagging porches or hawking a few sickly turnips at the village market. All a thing of the past, like rutted dirt roads that once turned to slop in the rainy season, bogging down the carts.
But Africa. They had simply let their telephone android 2.2enthusiasm get the better of them there, and you had to admire that, although more thoughtful advice would have cautioned them to perhaps let it wait a bit until, for instance, Project Farmland had been completed. Now there the Nazis had shown genius; the artist in them had truly emerged. The Mediterranean Sea bottled up, drained, made into tillable farmland, through the use of atomic power -- what daring! How the sniggerers had been set back on their heels, for instance certain scoffing merchants along Montgomery Street. And as a matter of fact, Africa had almost been successful. . . but in a project of that sort, almost was an ominous word to begin to hear. Rosenberg's well-known powerful pamphlet issued in 1958; the word had first shown up, then. As to the Final Solution of the African Problem, we have almost achieved our objectives. Unfortunately, however --
Still, it had taken two hundred years to dispose of the American aborigines, and Germany had almost done it in Africa in fifteen years. So no criticism was legitimately in order. Childan had, in fact, argued it out recently while having lunch with certain of those other merchants.android 2.2 phones
They expected miracles, evidently, as if the Nazis could remold the world by magic. No, it was science and technology and that fabulous talent for hard work; the Germans never stopped applying themselves. And when they did a task, they did it right.
One had to blame the Germans for the situation. Tendency to bite off more than they could chew. After all, they had barely managed to win the war, and at once they had gone off to conquer the solar system, while at home they had passed edicts which. . . well, at least the idea was good. And after all, they had been successful with the Jews and Gypsies and Bible Students. And the Slavs had been rolled back two thousand years' worth, to their heartland in Asia. Out of Europe entirely, to everyone's relief. Back to riding yaks and hunting with bow and arrow. And those great glossy magazines printed in Munich and circulated around to all the libraries and newsstands. . . one could see the full-page color pictures for oneself: the blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan settlers who now industriously tilled, culled, plowed, and so forth in the vast grain bowl of the world, the Ukraine. Those fellows certainly looked happy. And their farms and cottages were clean. You didn't see pictures of drunken dull-wilted Poles any more, slouched on sagging porches or hawking a few sickly turnips at the village market. All a thing of the past, like rutted dirt roads that once turned to slop in the rainy season, bogging down the carts.
But Africa. They had simply let their telephone android 2.2enthusiasm get the better of them there, and you had to admire that, although more thoughtful advice would have cautioned them to perhaps let it wait a bit until, for instance, Project Farmland had been completed. Now there the Nazis had shown genius; the artist in them had truly emerged. The Mediterranean Sea bottled up, drained, made into tillable farmland, through the use of atomic power -- what daring! How the sniggerers had been set back on their heels, for instance certain scoffing merchants along Montgomery Street. And as a matter of fact, Africa had almost been successful. . . but in a project of that sort, almost was an ominous word to begin to hear. Rosenberg's well-known powerful pamphlet issued in 1958; the word had first shown up, then. As to the Final Solution of the African Problem, we have almost achieved our objectives. Unfortunately, however --
Still, it had taken two hundred years to dispose of the American aborigines, and Germany had almost done it in Africa in fifteen years. So no criticism was legitimately in order. Childan had, in fact, argued it out recently while having lunch with certain of those other merchants.android 2.2 phones
They expected miracles, evidently, as if the Nazis could remold the world by magic. No, it was science and technology and that fabulous talent for hard work; the Germans never stopped applying themselves. And when they did a task, they did it right.
订阅：
博文 (Atom)