The Girl on the Via Flaminia Read Online Free PDF

he’s nice, he’s nice, sight unseen.” She looked at the girl again. There was a sound of the wind in the garden. Wine lay in the bottom of the glass on the table. “Listen to me, cara,” Nina said. She put her ringed hands on the girl’s shoulders. She could feel the strong bones under the raincoat and under the sweater. “Roberto’s a good boy. He’s intelligent, he’s not bad looking, he’s not an animal like some of the others. For three weeks he’s bothered me to introduce him to a nice girl. Have you eaten today?”
    â€œIt’s not important,” Lisa said.
    â€œHave you paid your rent?”
    The girl was silent.
    â€œSo. At least with Roberto you’ll eat, and you’ll have somewhere to live. I’ve told Adele you are married to him. I’ve explained to Roberto how it will be—that you’re not a street girl, and that the arrangement will be a permanent one. He’s anxious, too. The army’s a cold place, and you’re pretty.”
    â€œBut I can’t,” the girl said, twisting away.
    â€œYou can’t what?”
    â€œI can’t make love to a stranger.”
    Nina looked at her. The light lay softly on the blonde hair, and she thought how soft the hair looked, how soft the skin was. “One learns,” she said.
    â€œOh, Nina . . .”
    â€œWhat do you want me to say? One learns. One learns everything. Wars are all the same. The men become thieves, and the women—” She shrugged her narrow expressive shoulders. “And it’s the same everywhere.”
    â€œNot in America,” the girl said.
    â€œIn America, too, if they had gone through what we’ve gone through. No,” she said, “one doesn’t live as one likes to, but as one must. Go through the city. On the Corso, on the Via Veneto, on all the bridges—it’s the same. Everywhere the soldiers and the women. Why? Because there is nothing else, cara mia, except to drink and to make love and to survive. And our men? Poof! Their guts are gone. Let them whimper and shout-the cigarettes they smoke, and the coffee they drink, we buy them.”
    â€œI’m not one of the women who stand on the bridges,” the girl said.
    â€œDid I say you were?” Nina said. “We are all unlucky in the same way. We were born, and born women, and in Europe, during the wars. Ah, Lisa, it’s all the same I tell you—for you or the contessa, in her elegant apartment, sleeping with some English colonel or some American brigadier! What do you think the contessa calls it? It’s an arrangement—it’s love . . . but she, too, needs sugar and coffee when she wakes up in a cold room. Everything now is such an arrangement. Besides, who will it harm? Adele will have her rent—and if you won’t be happier, at least you won’t be hungrier . . .”
    â€œBut what will I say to him?” the girl said.
    â€œMadonna!” Nina said.
    â€œI’ve never gone with a soldier,” the girl said.
    â€œAsk him how’s his old tomato,” Nina said. “Dio, you’ve talked to a man before.”
    â€œNot one of the Americans.”
    â€œThey speak exactly the same language.”
    â€œYes,” Lisa said. “The liberators.”
    Nina gestured. “We lost the war, my dear.”
    â€œOnly the war?” the girl said.
    â€œOh, you make me sick!”
    â€œYes,” the girl said, staring at the wine glass on the table, “he’ll feed me because he’s won the war, and that’s part of the arrangement, and then after he’s fed me we’ll go to bed, because that’s part of the arrangement, too.” She turned her head slowly, as though she were trapped in the room. “But why should I be better or different than the others standing on the bridges waiting for their soldiers? I’ll have my American. Everybody has one