Half an
hour was as much as I could endure. Issuing forth despite the heat, I
captured a young fellow and bade him carry my bags whithersoever he
pleased. He took me to the Albergo della - -
The Albergo della - - is a shy and retiring hostelry, invisible as such
to the naked eye, since it bears no sign of being a place of public
entertainment at all. Here was individuality, and to spare. Mine host is
an improvement even upon him of the Pergola at Valmontone; a man after
my own heart, with merry eyes, drooping white moustache and a lordly
nose - a nose of the right kind, a flame-tinted structure which must have
cost years of patient labour to bring to its present state of
blossoming. That nose! I felt as though I could dwell for ever beneath
its shadow. The fare, however, is not up to the standard of the
"Garibaldi" inn at Frosinone which I have just left.
Now Frosinone is no tourist resort. It is rather a dull little place; I
am never likely to go there again, and have therefore no reason for
keeping to myself its "Garibaldi" hotel which leaves little to be
desired, even under these distressful war-conditions. It set me
thinking - thinking that there are not many townlets of this size in
rural England which can boast of inns comparable to the "Garibaldi" in
point of cleanliness, polite attention, varied and good food, reasonable
prices. Not many; perhaps very few. One remembers a fair number of the
other kind, however; that kind where the fare is monotonous and badly
cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient, and where you have
to walk across a cold room at night - refinement of torture - in order to
turn out the electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone
enough to condemn these establishments, one and all.
Yes! And the beds; those frowsy, creaky, prehistoric wooden concerns,
always six or eight inches too short, whose mattresses have not been
turned round since they were made. What happens? You clamber into such a
receptacle and straightway roll downhill, down into its centre, into a
kind of river-bed where you remain fixed fast, while that monstrous
feather-abomination called a pillow, yielding to pressure, rises up on
either side of your head and engulfs eyes and nose and everything else
into its folds. No escape! You are strangled, smothered; you might as
well have gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid contrivance you
lie for eight long hours, clapped down like a corpse in its coffin.
Every single bed in rural England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is
fit for a Christian to sleep in....
The days are growing hot.
A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls and attached to the
convent on the neighbouring hill is a pleasant spot to while away the
afternoon hours. You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to
myself; a state of affairs which is not without its disadvantages, for,
being the only foreigner here, one is naturally watched and regarded
with suspicion. And it would be even worse in less civilised places,
where one could count for certain on trouble with some conscientious
official. So one remains on the beaten track, although my reputation
here as non-Austrian (nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well
established since that memorable debate, in the local cafe, with a
bootmaker who, having spent three years in America, testified publicly
that I spoke English almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the
place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his father, a
lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for forgery - he brings me
every day with the morning's paper the latest gossip concerning myself.
"Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer malice."
"I know. Did you tell him he might - - ?"
"I did. He was very angry. I also told him the remark you made about his
mother."
"Tell him again, to-morrow."
It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude.
In October - and we are now at midsummer - there occurred a little
adventure which shows the risks one may run at a time like this.
I was in Rome, walking homewards at about eleven at night along the
still crowded Corso and thinking, as I went along, of my impending
journey northwards for which the passport was already vised, when there
met me a florid individual accompanied by two military officers. We
stared at one another. His face was familiar to me, though I knew not
where I had seen it. Then he introduced himself. He was a director of
the Banca d'ltalia. And was I not the gentleman who had recently been to
Orvinio? I remembered.
"The last time I was there," I said, "was about a month ago. I fancy we
had some conversation in the motor up from Mandela."
"That is so. And now, however disagreeable it may be, I feel myself
obliged to perform a patriotic duty. This is war-time. I would ask you
to be so good as to accompany us to the nearest police-station."
"Which is not far off," I replied. "There is one up the next street on
our right."
We walked there, all four of us, without saying another word. "What have
I been doing?" I wondered. Then we climbed upstairs.
Here, at a well-lighted table in a rather stuffy room, sat a delegato or
commissario - I forget which - surrounded, despite the lateness of the
hour, by one or two subordinates. He was of middle age, and not
prepossessing.
