These Kettles Are Tanks

We’ve seen what happens at home. What were the Brits like abroad? Far more civilised than we’d imagine possible. It is Italy during the war; the soldiers out on the town having fun; and we know what that means; soft undulating landscapes, now occupied territory, to take a pounding from hard, sweaty bodies, brutally indifferent to the beauty beneath them. Unseemly gymnastics spoiling the view.… As simple as this? Alexander Baron, There’s No Home. Where women play Caesar and fight like gladiators.

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Where are we exactly? In Catania. No no, that’s not what I mean.

On holiday. At the domestic hearth. A short nap between eighteen hour acts…an interlude in a play that goes on all day and most of the night. War. The British occupation of Sicily. It is all of these things, though each enjoys its own discrete moment, its starring role. First days off the battlefield there’s the search for a woman; after a week you want a wife to do the cooking and cleaning; the fucking now an enjoyable extra. One day you wake up and have forgotten the war: God man, you could be back in Blighty. Alas, it cannot last. When a booby-trapped bomb is tripped death’s finality returns; the war never to quite leave the Via dei Martiri again. Like smoke from a factory it covers everyone with its soot. This brief romance, which for a time seemed would last forever, is over. No marriages these but short affairs. This town a mere encampment, the homes tents, soon to be rolled up and carried away.

A mix of different atmospheres, crammed together in the same space, and set within a strictly demarcated period, gives this time its strange feel. The geography - one side of the street a row of Italian families, the other the British billet - adds more complexity. Some of the Brits are family men; others are 100% barbarian. But again nothing is simple. There are days when these soldiers are both. A confusing and insecure time, made worse by the solid respectability of many of the men. And the women? Not prostitutes. Lovers for sure. And something of the wife…. Graziella feels it intensely. At first attracted to Craddock as a friend, she becomes his lover, later again his spouse; yet she knows this cannot last; that he will not return when the war ends; her final hysterical plea that he desert a futile attempt to prevent the impossible: Craddock will always choose duty over his desires. It is one of the many differences between them; the British male prepared to sacrifice themselves for the nation; this unacceptable to these women, unthinkable for an Italian.

Her bearing was listless. There was no sign of interest in her eyes. He felt that although he was standing before her she could not see him. He repeated, ‘We both knew that it had to happen, non è vero?’

Her eyes opened wide, replying in mute pain and resentment, as if he had struck her violently on the forehead. When she spoke, he could discern only a muffled irritation in her voice. ‘I heard you the first time.’ She rubbed her hands, the fingers pointing straight downwards, up and down her skirt; it was a habit of hers. She cried suddenly, ‘Why do you talk to me like that? Do you think that I am a child?’

He said helplessly, ‘Then what is there to say?’

She looked past him in silence; then she said, in a strangled, unconfident voice, ‘Stay with me.’

He held out his hand to her, and pleaded, ‘Graziella!’

She ignored his hand. She said again, this time in a clear and decisive voice, ‘Stay with me!’

‘You do not know what you are saying.’

‘I know what I am saying. It is simple. Stay with me!’

He said gently, ‘Try to be calm.’

‘Try! She spoke with fury. ‘Oh!’ She pressed her fists against her breast. ‘Here, how do you feel here? How can you breathe? How can you smile? What a beast is a man! To part is nothing to you! For you love is only a game of deceit! You feel nothing, nothing, nothing!’

He was ashamed of the feebleness of the only words he could summon, ‘That is not true.’

‘It is true! It is clear that you do not know me. You would not have spoken thus if you knew me. But I know you. I know every movement of your body and every beat of your heart. I know every look on your face and every thought in your head. Do you think you can lie to a woman? You have enjoyed yourself with me, and if you'll a little sorry to leave me, you tell yourself that there will be more women. Look at you! Your mind is not occupied with what I am saying. Already you are thinking of journeys, of battles, of adventures. It is of no use that I cry out, that I empty my heart to you! There is no love or pity in your eyes. I see nothing there but disdain, but hatred for this woman who throws herself in your path…’

Craddock interrupted her with a force that rendered him almost inarticulate. ‘That is not true! What - what do you want me to do? How can I show what I feel? Do you want me to cry like a baby? Will that make you more happy?’

‘Contenta?’ she echoed derisively. ‘Listen to the man! What a word he flings at me! When he is gone I shall be a woman ruined and empty. But no! There is not a thought in his head about what will become of me!’

‘And me?’ Craddock burst forth. ‘Have you thought of what is going to become of me?’

‘No!’ she taunted, the tears streaming down her face. ‘Of course not! I have not lain awake at nights, while you slept, and let the hot tears fall on your body, thinking of the wounds that might torture it! I have not felt dread in my heart every time I saw a crippled soldier crawling on his stumps up the church steps! I have not looked at your face and remembered the face of the mad man who once stared at us in the street!’

Craddock muttered, ‘Oh, my poor Graziella!’ he went toward her and reached out for her, but she backed away from him, and sat huddled on the bed, sobbing furiously. She gasped, between sobs, ‘Why do think I want to keep you? Only to bring me food? Only to buy me gifts? Only to make love with me?’

‘Graziella,’ he said, ‘I did not think that. I do not want to hurt you.’

She sat up, wild and trembling. ‘Then stay with me!’

‘He shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. ‘What use is it for me to talk? Again and again you say the same thing. You tell me that you are not a child, but you refuse to think, you say the same thing, again and again, like a child.’

‘Why like a child? Other men have done it.’

‘Deserters!’ he said with loathing.

‘Deserters, yes! Whom are you going to desert, your comrades or me? If you knew what love meant, there would not be any doubt!’

Craddock could bear no longer to be hounded both by her and by his own unhappiness. ‘For the love of God!’ he said violently. ‘You talk like a crazy woman! Doubt? There is no doubt! I am a soldier. You have known that all the time.’

‘I know one thing now,’ she jeered, ‘that I did not know before, you are afraid! You are afraid to be hunted! You are afraid to be shot! You are afraid of your comrades! You are afraid of love! You are a coward!’

He strode across to the bed and seized her roughly by the shoulders. She threw her head back and glared up at him in defiance. He shouted, ‘Mad one! Listen! I am not afraid. It is not out of fear that I fight. You! - You pretend to understand! You do not even begin to understand a man! He threw her back on the bed. ‘I am a man. You cannot expect me to be otherwise.’

‘Rosario is a man. He did it.’

‘Rosario! That - thing - a man!’

‘And the German?’ she shrilled, utterly beside herself now. ‘He is not a man? He is not a soldier? They are soldiers, they are better soldiers than all the others, they are better soldiers than the English!’

‘What German?’

‘Francesca’s German’ She was showing her teeth like a cat, crouching on the bed, spitting the words up at him. ‘Ha! The big man knows everything! The woman knows nothing! Well, there is something you did not know. Even a German solider will desert for the woman he loves, he deserts because he is a man, a real man!’

It is not possible for Craddock to be like Graziella’s neighbour, Rosario. An entire culture prevents such an act. Betray one’s country for a woman! Could a British woman ask so much…. 

But life is changing in Sicily, the British exerting their influence. When he first returned Rosario was admired by the street’s women - here was a man who preferred them to war. Today, in the presence of these soldiers, with their magnetic masculinity, he rightly feels his desertion a weakness; for now he must measure himself against a different standard; one where duty is held more honourable than one’s own life; courage the ability to suppress our instincts not give into them. Even the women look down on him. No match for such men. It makes Rosario a bitter man. His sense of inadequacy transformed into nationalist braggadocio. But he is confused. He hates the British; also admires them, believing their organisation and discipline an invincible force, always to defeat the undisciplined and ill-organised Italians. An Italian is weak because he won’t surrender to the idea, here embodied in the army. How it burns into him! Crazy with jealousy, he listens to Craddock and Graziella making love. Time to prove himself a man. Instead, he shows himself a weakling: he walks across the street and kills a fellow deserter, that German artist. 

Perhaps Craddock is right, these Italians will never understand us Brits.

A British soldier, even when living a quasi-domestic life with an Italian lover, remains a soldier; to steal supplies for their woman, to break a few minor rules, to prefer a soft yielding body to the abrasive commands of officers: none affects their loyalty to the army, which represents the British nation, their permanent home, a fixed identity. These men as much idea as flesh and blood. Love causes a problem. It wrecks the collective spirit, replaces the idea with desire, pushes Britain off the map - Craddock’s wife vanishes from his horizon. But still they are committed to the army; these men loyal to the institution, whose rights are not be denied. The role of a British soldier as strong as their own being; no one to separate them out. 

Graziella loves absolutely. Craddock’s love has no such monopoly. Though intense it is conflicted, duty always in battle against it. This part of his self-understanding as a man. To be a man is to sacrifice one’s self for something higher than one’s person. A tradition demands it; Britain a country where public spirit overrides private feeling. Desert for love? This is not thinkable to a Brit. Family and public life are two different worlds, each with their own values and vocabulary. Parliament. The army. The state. The British nation. A language in itself. Desert for love? That’s an oxymoron dear…. This language has its own compelling power; it is a spiritual claim, transcending all personal emotion. And it rises us up, making us kings, gods…. The mind is superior to the body; an idea must trump feeling. To surrender to the senses is to lose our dignity, to lose one’s identity as a man; that angel touching the heavens. Graziella has no such attachment to her country’s institutions. While her religion is other-worldly; which is useful, for it can be used to support this one; God her servant not her master, she goes to confession so as to live with Craddock with a good conscience. Desert for love! Sounds odd to a Brit. Yet Graziella is surely right: there is a conflict between public and private life, and why shouldn’t the latter take pre-eminence? In choosing the army Craddock is deserting his private commitments. It is to commit an injury to a woman who has come to depend on him. A moral crime. Yet for him morality is only for the collective. Graziella’s pain but an emotional shipwreck, one of nature’s accidents; those dangerous rocks one is apt to hit when seeking shelter from enemy submarines. A private affair. It is dismiss an entire way of life. Poor Graziella! We don’t have to shoot someone to kill them. Just tear out their soul… Graziella knows this. Her body feels it. Only the individual is important.… Such concepts are alien to a man like Craddock, a perfect product of the British Isles, whose culture has separated the private from the public, and given the public the higher claim. Educated too well. Public service branded into the public servant’s mind. To give up one’s duty is to sacrifice the self for animal pleasures. Not done dear boy.

She would never let him do a thing for himself. She washed his clothes, helped him on with his jacket when he was dressing, cleaned his boots for him; she had even wanted to scrub his webbing equipment and polish the brass, so that he might be the smartest-looking solider in the street, but his pride had revolted at this. She had been brought up to believe that it was the duty of a wife to wait on her man in this way, and she would not listen to his protests.

…

The women attacked their food with the boundless appetite of those who know hunger. Graziella was bending low over her plate, grinning up at Craddock like a greedy child. Her chin was smeared with tomato sauce. He could not get used to some of her habits; the way she ate, the physical franknesses in which she indulged in his presence, her bawling at his side at the cinema, her lack of concern when the baby was dirty. When he tried to discuss these things with her she would look at him with big eyes of incomprehension, or would make a scornful reply, or dismiss his suggestion with a shrill, hostile laugh.

…

Graziella lay beside him, supine and slack like a gorged animal, staring up at the ceiling with unseeing, triumphant eyes. Her hand was moist and soft in his. Her breast rose and fell, slow and powerful as the sea. A distant clamour came to him from the street, shouts, screams, running footsteps, sounds without meaning that were lost in the shadowed room. He felt drugged.

To whom does a hotel belong: the guests or the staff who serve them? 

Graziella is the home, the place where women rule. Their servitude a disguise, for it is those served who must submit; the husband, giving up his independence, losing his vitality, accepting the wife’s management, is a docile beast. Inside the home the man becomes passive, feeble, a child needing care. This woman is a giant! She physically dominates her place. It is why she resents Craddock’s attempts to help. He is taking away her power.1 Graziella goes wild when Craddock, buying a gift at the market, refuses her wise advise to barter for a lower price. In her own sphere she is omniscient. And she wants her man to project this power. Out in the city he must be as strong as she. His duty to impress the neighbourhood; any failure here felt as a terrible slight on herself, for always she is competing with the other women for honour and reputation, a man vital to that fight. Conned by a market trader? What a slur! Outside the home he should be a hero. Inside he shrinks to a midget; dominated by Graziella’s massive physical and emotional presence, which is intensified by the tiny space she occupies: her world hardly extends beyond her neighbours, the church and the marketplace. Squeezed into such a tight area her life is charged with feeling; home, street and church resonate with deep emotional associations, which constantly vibrate her being; they belong to her as her body. Home. Husband. Child. These are not analysed, considered, calculated…. No! They are felt. It gives her immense strength, for when these threatened she does not think, only acts; pure reflex. She is afraid of no-one. The smallest scrap of her life is her life in its entirety. Fight for it to the death.

Craddock introduces a new worldview; it is of the wider city, of the course of the war, of alien ways of living, where women go out to work, and men do the shopping; a world, Craddock argues, where wives are free. In one sense only is he right: she has no way of keeping him when the war-call sounds: she cannot out-shout the trumpet-blasts of public duty. It is why women hate war….. With us Brits it’s worse. We seem to enjoy doing our duties. So indifferent to personal pain…. When Craddock leaves he destroys Graziella: he has taken all her power. In Britain a woman with a job, participating in public life, with its rituals and demands and collegiate conversations, both distances herself from the home and alienates her own self, so keeping the feelings under control. Upset for sure when husband goes to war, but not left lying helpless on the bed, a wreck of tears. But this is only one scene. For the rest of the time Graziella is an intensely physical woman who is warm and strong and mostly joyful. Mistress of her own queendom. These Italian woman - the occupied, the defeated, the sexual canaille, the domestic slaves - actually overpower the Brits, who have never encountered this much confidence, so much strength.

Honeycombe walked across the street, with a slight roll of his gait. The women looked at him appreciatively, and at Paloma, expectantly. Their conversation became subdued. He sauntered past them and stopped close to Paloma. ‘Buongiorno, girls.’

There was a chorus of buongiornos, a pause, and an explosive giggle from Nella.

‘Hot today, a’n’t it?’ he spoke in English. The initial greeting had exhausted his Italian, and besides, as he often pointed out in the billet, a bloke could get on with dames in any language.

There was an interrogative twitter from among the women. 

He leaned against the wall with one hand, at arm’s length, and looked down at Paloma: the masterful pose. At length he said, ‘Hallo, ducks.’ A simple opening, but one which as a ladies’ man he could certify to be effective. It had worked on a hundred street corners in Blighty.

Paloma raised herself from the wall on one elbow and looked him up and down. She took her time. She said to the women, ‘What do you think of this one?’

The women clamoured advice like a farmyard let loose. ‘Va ben’, said Paloma, ‘we shall play.’

Honeycombe was not deterred. He knew all about the coy ones, who liked a tussle, and the sly ones, who made it a battle of wits. ‘What you doing this afternoon, honey?’ To underline his meaning, he gave a doggish twitch of his eyebrows towards the door of the house. She answered in a man’s strong voice - he could not understand what she was saying - and with a man’s hearty chuckle. He seemed to be making progress. He asked, ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in, sweetheart? The great thing was to get away from this crowd of sniggering, cackling women. Paloma’s only response was to feel his biceps and to prod experimentally about his body. Her lips were compressed and she was frowning studiously. She began to speak, over her shoulder, to the other women, in the tone of a pathologist reporting on a post-mortem. The women were clapping their hands, screaming with mirth, pushing each other ecstatically in the ribs and uttering shrill comments.

For once, Honeycombe began to feel uneasy in the presence of a woman. This was no giggling little imitation film star who would listen admiringly to his blandishments, hang confidingly on his arm and afterwards write him adoring letters. What was the use, when she could not understand him, of uttering those time-proven and magical incantations, ‘Where have you been all my life?’ or ‘I could go for you in a big way, kid,’ or ‘Don’t tell me, I bet you name’s Gloria’; or of those accustomed references to beautiful, big, brown eyes, and going places and doing things. This woman was looking him over and poking at him as if he were a good meal on a plate.

The grin on his face became frozen and ghastly. He sweated, and was dizzy in the sunlight. He would have sweated more if he had understood what was being said about him.

Craddock, coming closer, heard Paloma say, throatily, ‘Well armed, this soldier!’

There was more shrieking from the women, more spluttering laugher. Lucrezia Chiulemi wiped her streaming eyes and pointed at Honeycombe, who had backed up against the wall looking nonplussed and defensive. She howled, ‘How fierce he is! How bold! How ardent! How aggressive!’

‘A devil!’ gasped Nella, choking and thumping her chest.

‘An impetuous one!’ screeched Tina di Spirito.

Paloma clasped her hands to her bosom and muttered humbly, ‘And he loves me!’ She looked up at Honeycombe in a transport of ardour and humility. ‘Ah, my love, my pigeon, my dear one! She stroked his arm and caressed him; she pouted her rich lips at him; she overwhelmed hm, amid shrieks of appreciative laughter, with such outrageous endearments that his nerve suddenly broke and he tried to sidle away, mumbling excuses in English and keeping his crimson face averted from Sergeant Craddock’s interested gaze.

But Paloma flung her arms about this neck, sank upon his breast and bore him back to the wall, moaning, ‘No, no, do not desert me, my darling, my hero!’ Her audience was growing. Windows and doorways were crowded all along the street. Soldiers were swarming out of the billet. Paloma release her victim for a moment and drew back, admiringly. ‘See!’ she cried. ‘See how impatient is my lover!’ - as he tried to bolt and she clasped him again.

She pushed her street door open with her right foot and, with a sudden violent thrust, sent Honeycombe reeling into the house. ‘I cannot keep him waiting,’ she explained, as she blocked the doorway with her strapping body just in time to prevent his escape. She held out her hands toward the women. ‘See,’ she said modestly. ‘See how I am trembling, like a bride!’

Honeycombe’s terrified face appeared behind her shoulder.

‘Don’t break the bed,’ shrieked Lucrezia Chiulemi, who was doubled up with her hands clasped across her waist.

‘We shall tell the soldiers,’ called Fat Lina, ‘to wait here with a stretcher!’

Paloma favoured her audience with a conspiratorial wink. ‘Kurroo, kurroo!’ she cooed wickedly, and slammed the door in their faces.

These women have a freedom, denied to the men; it is the liberty of the emotions. Overflowing with life, there is little thought of the consequences. Craddock does not understand this. He can only see Graziella - as she cooks, prepares the table, shops - as the victim of a male culture; a free woman turned into a domestic servant. If he had reflected more deeply, he’d see that in this street of women only the man - Rosario - is feeble, and it is because he lacks a public, masculine role. Rosario, spending all his time amongst women, is emasculated by them. Men only strong in a man’s world. At home they must be weak. Work is liberty for a man; it separates him from his wife, who relies on her body and her words to subdue opposition. Craddock thinks too highly of work, the money that it brings; this is only one type of independence; while he overlooks the compromises an employee has to make, the terrible servitude a job can require. There are different kinds of liberty, and Graziella’s may actually be the most powerful; not diluted by calculation and analysis she can act without worry of the results. Sometimes (most times?) this can be a good. Craddock is too British, too educated in public service, to question his own values.2 Craddock simply a fact of the modern world. It is why Graziella loses her lover in the end. In the twentieth century public life must defeat private commitment. The idea - of nation, of duty, of loyalty - tramples over feeling. The institution strong-arms the family.

On first meeting the battle is equal.

He moved awkwardly about the room while she arranged the tins on a shelf. He knew what she expected, what all these women expected. Several of his men were already ‘fixed up’. He was not wild for it, but it seemed unmanly not make the next move. He feared, particularly, that she would think him cowardly; and he felt, obscurely, that with her he could rid himself of the strain and depression he had experienced throughout the day. They were looking at each other, and avoiding each other’s look. The silence shamed him. He advanced upon her and drove her back to the wall. She looked up at him with fear. He took her by the shoulders and sought her mouth with his. She turned her head away and her full soft cheek was against his lips. He was not sure yet whether this was play or an insult. As soon as he had come within a foot of her he had felt the heat that she radiated, a heat that he had known with no other woman. He could see a palpitation beneath her dress. He tried, with one hand, to force her mouth up to his. She resisted, and repulsed him with a sudden push of her knees. She put her hand up to protect her mouth, and said, ‘No! My kisses are for my husband.’

He was about to fall upon her again when he saw the despair in her face. He hesitated, the violence drained out of him, and he moved away, uttering a little grunt of derision at his own defeat.

Violence is an aspect of sexual relations, which can be difficult to control; there is a threshold over which a man must cross - there are few Palomas who take the initiative - and that requires the removal of one’s self-restraint; that reluctance to surrender to sex, to lose one’s self to its force, its passion. Breaking down the barriers of friendship, the self-consciousness at odds with desire…our mind becomes mechanical, our feelings overflow; and we are apt to be clumsy; that first sexual step - getting the balance right without the aid of drink or festive fervour - being so difficult, can be too aggressive. Here the woman is strong enough to resist. These women not so easy to overcome. Along with strong feelings there are also fixed ideas about respectability; sex outside marriage giving you a bad reputation in a society where women place huge importance on their honour. Paloma is a character. Graziella they will call a whore, after the soldiers leave. Nobody wants to lose their whole identity because of sex. Graziella is a respectable woman. Craddock is a good man. Aggression and resistance is part of the ritual of a first sexual contact - Paloma, reversing the roles, parodies this - but one has to feel when the resistance is more than just ritual, when the woman really doesn't want to play. Craddock, because he is a good man, that is, sensitive to others, does feel this, so stops his advances. Graziella, alive with feeling, attuned to the emotions of others, recognises Craddock’s assault as both normal - their friendship has crossed the usual bounds of male-female relations - and as having stayed (just) at the limits of civilised action. Not that there has been no transgression. He has gone too far. It is why she attacks him with words (never underestimate the power of words to hurt and wound). Now they are equal. Both suffering the pain of a failed sexual rite. The relationship to return to its old footing; and Craddock to try again only when he is absolutely sure that Graziella, whose feelings are changing, softening, melting - she is falling in love - will succumb to her desire.

In Catania a new war has started; it is between the sexes, and where for a short time, on the Via dei Martiri, the women win; turning these British soldiers into husbands, subservient to their sex, their words, their domestic government. But this is the twentieth century. They cannot triumph for long. A new world is calling - already some of these women are dreaming of American money, American shopping, American independence - and it is calling these men away. In the modern world a woman cannot keep her man; his feelings strong but transient, they are annulled by the call of duty, the honour of war. The novel ends on a train. This is appropriate. Itself a symbol of modernity, its separate carriages embody the modern dilemma: the feelings, will and intellect look out at the world from their own compartments. So easily detached. In Catania Craddock leaves his love in a siding. 

The pull of the place so powerful….

Harry Jobling, seeing his brother die, because of the stupidity of a fellow soldier, goes mad; first he tries to kill Broom, later he goes into hiding, waiting for a second chance at revenge. He’s become a Sicilian! It is not done. In the British army such behaviour is considered insanity: no man is allowed to let grief destroy his commitment to the institution. Never must our emotions run too wild. This cannot be allowed. He has to be caught and…saved. And he is, in a rather too easy manner: the problems of plot, the weakness of character analysis? No. The novel prefers the truth of life. Unlike the Italians - Jobling is no Rosario - these Brits do not go all the way. Somehow, at the limit, they always give in to right reason. Craddock, despite the power of Graziella, that overwhelming pull of love, which depresses him, so that he can hardly function, nevertheless accepts his duty and rides away. The Italians will, after all, lose this war.

Review: There’s No Home

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1. This is brilliantly explained by Marcel Mauss in The Gift. The wife’s service is an immensely powerful gift that forces strong bonds of obligation onto the husband. By turning these ‘free’ gifts into cash transactions we weaken a woman’s power.

2. Martha Quest, in Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City, describes what happens when they do: 

‘There is a certain kind of Englishman who, on learning that his country (like every other) employs spies; or (like every other) taps telephones, opens letters and keeps dossiers on its citizens; or (like every other) employs policemen who take bribes, beat up suspects, plant information, etc. - has a nervous breakdown. In extreme cases, such a man goes into a monastery, or suffers a sudden conversion to whatever is available.’