‘There are no facilities here. No water, no power. Must have been rough.’
‘It was.’
‘I was on a carrier back then. We had a great sanatorium for the injured.’
‘You were lucky. Here the men lay where the stretcher-bearers placed them. Americans, Algerians, Moroccans, British, Frenchmen and the hundred worst-injured Germans. They were really placed here to die. At the end there were two hundred and twenty of them.’
‘And the young surgeon?’
The faded man shrugged.
‘Well, he went to work. He did what he could. He had three orderlies assigned to him by the Surgeon-General. They raided local houses for mattresses, palliasses, anything to lie on. They stole sheets and blankets from all around. The sheets were just for bandages. There is no river running through Siena but centuries ago the Sienese built an intricate grid of underground aquifers to bring fresh water from mountain streams right under the streets. That provides access wells into the flowing water. The orderlies ran a bucket chain from the nearest right into the courtyard.
‘A big kitchen table was taken from a nearby house and set up right there, in the centre, between the rose bushes, for operating. Drugs were scarce, hygiene shot to hell. He operated as best he could through the afternoon and into the dusk. When night fell he ran to the local military hospital and begged for some Petromax lanterns. By the light of these, he went on. But it was hopeless. He knew the men would die.
‘Many of the wounds were terrible. The men were all in trauma. He was out of painkillers. Some patients had been torn by mines exploding under a comrade a few yards away. Others had shell or grenade fragments deep inside them. There were limbs shattered by bullets. Soon after dark the girl came.’
‘What girl?’
‘Just a girl. Local, an Italian girl, he presumed. A young woman, early twenties maybe. Strange-looking. He saw her staring at him. He nodded, she smiled, and he went on operating.’
‘Why strange-looking?’
‘Pale, oval face. Very serene. Short hair, not bobbed as in the fashion of those days, but sort of pageboy cut. Neat, not flirtatious hair. And she wore a kind of cotton shift of pale grey.’
‘She helped out?’
‘No, she moved away. She walked quietly among the men. He saw her take a cloth, dip it in one of the buckets of water and wipe their brows. He went on working as each new case was brought to the operating table. He went on even though he knew he was wasting his time. He was just twenty-four, hardly more than a boy himself, trying to do a man’s job. Dog-tired, trying not to make mistakes, amputating with a bone-saw sterilized in grappa, suturing with domestic thread greased with beeswax, morphine running out, had to ration it. And they screamed, oh, how they screamed . . .’
The American stared at him hard.
‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘You were that surgeon. You’re not Italian. You were the German surgeon.’
The faded man nodded slowly.
‘Yes, I was that surgeon.’
‘Honey, I think the ankle’s a bit better. Maybe we could still see the end of the show.’
‘Quiet, hon. Just a few minutes more. What happened?’
In the Piazza del Campo the parade had left the arena and its participants had taken their places in the allotted stands fronting the palazzos. On the sand track only one drummer and one flag-bearer from each Contrada remained. Their task was to show their skill with the banner and staff, weaving intricate patterns in the air to the rhythm of the tambours, a final salute to the crowd before the race and a last chance to win the silver chalice for their own heraldic guild.
THE SURGEON’S STORY
‘I operated through the night and into the dawn. The orderlies were as tired as I, but they brought the men to the table one by one and I did what I could. Before dawn she was gone. The girl was gone. I did not see her come and I did not see her go.
‘There was a lull as the sun rose. The stream of stretchers coming in through that arch let up and finally ceased. I was able to wash my hands and walk among the wounded to count those who had died in the night and ask that they be removed.’
‘How many were there?’
‘None.’
‘None?’
‘No man died. Not that night, nor as the sun rose on the morning of the first of July. In that corner over there were three Algerians. Chest and stomach wounds, one with shattered legs. I had operated on them all in the small hours. They were very stoical. They lay in silence, staring upwards, thinking perhaps of the dry hills of the Maghreb whence they had come to fight and die for France. They knew they were dying, waiting for Allah to come and call them to Him. But they did not die.
‘Just there where your wife is sitting lay a boy from Austin, Texas. When he came in his hands were across his belly. I pulled them apart. He was trying to hold his own entrails inside himself through the torn stomach wall. All I could do was push the intestines back inside where they should have been, clamp and suture. He had lost a lot of blood. I had no plasma.