Chapter 21

THE TROUBLE with Errante Gaetano was that he couldn’t keep his mind on anything. Or to put it the other way around: whatever had his mind at the moment seized it so wholly that he couldn’t think about anything else. It made no difference what his mind ought to be on; whatever it was on, it was really on.

After General Marvin ordered his good mule shot, Errante got another. This one was not as amiable as the first, and was more stubborn in its mind. But it was a mule, and it gave Errante both pleasure and work.

One afternoon Errante was driving this new mule through the town. It was late in the afternoon, the hour when most of the children of the town got out on the Via Umberto the First and shouted for caramels. American military traffic seemed to be particularly heavy at that hour each evening.

As he thought back on it later (and he had plenty of time to think it over in jail), it seemed to Errante that a great number of things happened very quickly. Actually it was just that quite a few things flashed across his mind in fairly rapid succession, giving him an illusion of great activity.

First he looked ahead down the Via Umberto the First and he saw the bridge over the Rosso River, and he shied, like a sensitive horse seeing a place where it has hurt itself once before. Errante shuddered every time he saw that bridge, because it made him think of the rude awakening he had had there and of the shooting of his mule.

Next he saw a row of amphibious trucks come toward him across the bridge. These amphibious trucks fascinated Errante. He had recently spent one entire day sitting on a knoll near the beach about five miles west of Adano watching these fat creatures waddle out across the sand, let themselves gingerly down into the water and then churn off to the cargo ships lying offshore; and then churn back again, and climb up out of the sea, like any amphibious animal looking heavier and clumsier on land than in the water. Errante loved them and called them Swimming War. “Here comes Swimming War,” he thought to himself when he saw the amphibious trucks crossing the bridge.

After the trucks, his mind focused for a few moments on the figure of Gargano, Chief of the Carabinieri, who was directing traffic about half way down the Via Umberto the First. Errante said to himself: “Even if Gargano can talk three times as fast as anyone else - once with his mouth, once with his left hand, and once with his right - I do not like him.”

Errante’s mind did not dwell on the distasteful subject of Gargano for long, because Errante’s ear transmitted to Errante’s mind the sound of many children shouting: “Caramelle! Caramelle!” Errante liked children even more than he liked Swimming War.

Errante’s slow mind swung his eyes around to the direction of the sound. He saw the children on the sidewalk, and his mind concentrated on the pleasing sight.

His mind noted that there were approximately fifty children running up and down the sidewalk, that about six or seven leaders, somewhat older and taller than the average, were always out in front, that the others tagged willingly behind, and that all of them, from the rich little great-grandson of old Cacopardo all bright in blue, to the numerous beggar children in brown tatters - all of them laughed with a tinkling laughter and shouted for caramels as if they really expected to be rolling them on their tongues in no time at all.

What the mind of Errante did not note was that his new mule, either following an accidental whim or fascinated, like its master, by the children, had turned at right angles to the street and had stopped walking.

Swimming War was coming up the street. Gargano the Two-Hands had a vigilant eye out for traffic on the street. The new mule of Errante stood stock-still right across the road. And Errante stared at the children, thinking only of them and not noticing that anything was wrong.

“How nice it would be to be a child!” Errante’s onetrack mind thought. “Look at the fat little son of the fat Craxi! Look at the thin son of stupid Erba! See how Erba’s ragged child holds the hand of the rich little sulphur boy in blue! Noisy old Afronti was shouting to me the other day about democracy. He said my mind was slow. He said I would never understand. I wish he were here now. Here are the true democrats of the world. Childhood is the real democracy!”

It gave Errante a great sense of importance to be thinking thoughts like these.

All of a sudden a terrible confusion burst in on his thoughts.

Errante’s slow eyes saw only a flash of uniform. The uniform hurled itself at the head of his mule, wrenching the head to one side. The mule reared and screamed.

That scream did something to Errante’s mind. He saw a vision of his other, beloved mule dead beside the road. That awful thing would not happen again while Errante survived to prevent it.

He leaped from his cart. He saw the blur of a uniform running at his mule’s head again. He charged at the uniform. Where a head should be at the top of the blur he struck with the heel of his hand. He hit something and heard an angry roar.

The roar, he realized in a few moments, came from Gargano the Two-Hands. It said: “Imbecile! Pile of turdl Get out of the road, can’t you see the trucks coming? Don’t you know that blocking traffic is sabotage? Don’t you know that you can be shot for blocking traffic?”

Errante’s one-track mind played him a funny trick now. It stopped in the middle of its fury to think: “Look at Two-Hands! Trying to talk and catch my mule at the same time. He has to use his hands to catch my mule, and he has to use his hands to talk. He cannot do either.”

But when Gargano gave off trying to talk and concentrated on the mule, Errante’s mind went back to its business. He threw himself at Gargano again. He struck another blow with the heel of his hand that was to decorate Two-Hands with a purple spot under the left eye for several days.

Two-Hands roared again with pain and anger. But he did not try to argue now. He grabbed the mule’s reins near the bit and tried to pull him to one side. The mule, however, had decided not to move until this hullabaloo was over. Two-Hands could not budge it, so he kicked the flank of the mule.

Errante decided to retaliate in kind. He kicked the flank of Two-Hands.

Gargano roared again, and beat the mule in the head.

Errante beat Gargano the Two-Hands in the head.

Gargano was roaring continuously now. He grabbed the mule by the ears and tried to pull him that way.

Errante grabbed Two-Hands by the ears, even though Two-Hands’ ears were not as handy to grab as the mule’s, and he pulled.

Gargano the Two-Hands would have lost this battle, for he was fighting against two beasts, but at this moment some American soldiers from the amphibious trucks came running up.

One of the soldiers pulled Gargano the Two-Hands aside. Three of the soldiers went to work on the mule, and succeeded in making it get off to one side of the street. It took four soldiers to put Errante off the street.

When these things were accomplished, the American soldiers went back to their amphibious trucks. All they wanted was to pass.

Since a large crowd had gathered, it remained for Gargano the Two-Hands to assert his authority. He whispered to someone in the crowd to run up to the Palazzo and get a force of about six carabinieri. Then he engaged Errante in argument until the reinforcements should arrive.

“Saboteurl” he shouted, pounding one fist on the other, “Murderer!” shouted Errante. “All authorities are murderers.”

“You are the murderer,” Gargano said, drawing a fin. ger across his throat. “How do you know how many innocent American boys you may have killed by holding up this military traffic?”

“Murderer,” shouted Errante Gaetano of the one-track mind. “Killer of mules.”

“Whose mule was killed?” Gargano asked, spreading his hands, palm upwards, in the attitude of a question. “Do you see a dead mule around here?”

Errante could see that his mule was alive. He went over to it, and inspected it from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail. He was determined that if he found a single wound, he would inflict an exactly similar wound on Two-Hands.

Gargano followed Errante in his inspection, just to make sure that he did not try to run away. “Does a dead mule breathe? Does a dead mule stand up in its shafts? Show me a dead mule that snuffles its nostrils that way.” In time the six carabinieri came. Gargano said: “Stupid cartman, you are under arrest,” and he clapped his right hand around his own left wrist.

The six carabinieri surrounded Errante. To Gargano’s surprise he did not resist at all. He just asked to be allowed to speak to his mule. He went over and patted the side of the mule’s jaw, and said to it: “Be patient, Mister Major. The man for whom you are named is just, they tell me. You will see your master again before long.”