Free The Girl on the Via Flaminia by Hayes Alfred Page A

musicians, or was about to sell cigarettes to the proprietor, and all the music, of both languages, was concerned only with the price of the cigarettes. Then she watched the Negro with the musical speech take from inside his thick hooded parka a carton of cigarettes, and the proprietor went to his cash register and rang up a no-sale and took his money out of the register and gave it to the Negro who, flashing those splendid teeth, smiled and finished his cognac and went out of the café, and right after that there was the incident. The incident consisted of the proprietor tearing off the wax-paper covering of the carton of cigarettes, and tearing open the cardboard, and then tearing open a package of cigarettes, and there were no cigarettes at all in the package, there was straw or dung or whatever the Negro soldier had been able to find and roll cigarettes of that would feel enough like cigarettes in the carton, and the proprietor, swearing and calling down maledictions upon the heads of all the armies, especially the Ethiopian one, ran out of the café into the cold, wildly looking about for the musical voice, and Robert had laughed, and they left the café soon afterward.
    Then they were back again in the room, for everything that happened between them of any importance revolved about the room. In the newspaper there was a funny cartoon, and lying on the bed she laughed at the cartoon. The newspaper was spread out on the red cover of the bed. The cartoon was a political one and showed Romulus and Remus and they had just completed cutting that long furrow within which Rome was to be built according to the legend. They were lying under a tree, resting, and the plowshare was still deep in the earth beside them. Then Romulus said to Remus: Now that we have completed building a city where the Alleati can have a good time, let us build one for ourselves.
    She laughed because it was so true and so funny, and they had just come from the café.
    â€œIt’s not that funny,” Robert said.
    â€œNo?” she said. “You laughed at the cigarettes.”
    â€œWell, that was pretty funny. When he opened up the carton.”
    â€œBut the man paid for them.”
    â€œWell, the jig paid for his cognac, and that wasn’t real either.”
    â€œJig?”
    â€œThe Negro.”
    â€œIt is not funny to pay two thousand lire for cigarettes and then find only straw.”
    He had brought now, the second night, an alarm clock with him, and he had taken the alarm clock out of his musette bag, and as he did so she thought of him coming like this every night with that bag as a miner might come home after work with a pickax or a lawyer with a briefcase. He was winding the alarm clock.
    â€œI brought the clock so that Adele won’t have to knock on the door in the morning,” he said.
    He put the clock on the end table near the bed.
    â€œThat looks very domestic,” he said, looking at the clock.
    She did not answer.
    â€œIt’s almost like I had to go to work in the morning. Would you mind if I left my raincoat here? Just in case it rains.”
    â€œIf you wish.”
    â€œI’ll hang it in the closet.”
    He opened the door of the wardrobe closet. Only her raincoat was hanging in the closet on a hanger, and below the raincoat there was a valise, with all the valise straps buckled. He hung his raincoat in the closet, beside hers, and he knew then because of the valise that nothing was really settled yet. Despite the alarm clock.
    â€œDo you know,” he said, “I was afraid when I came tonight that you might not be here.”
    â€œWere you?”
    â€œYes,” Robert said. “I thought the room might be empty. I thought I’d come and there would be nobody here but the Pulcinis and some excuse.”
    â€œWhat would you have done?”
    She was pretending to read the newspaper.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou would have found another one,” Lisa