"It's got nothing to do with religion He was...
"It's got nothing to do with religion He was completely confusedIt would be comforting if he could believe his religion was the cause of their antipathy, but other problems issued from it, other portents of future failureHe wanted to close his arms over his head, tuck up his knees, and shut out the clamant bickering about him, the incessant hacking of the machetes, the murmur of conversation, and the necessity to keep straining and exerting himself through one pain-racked hour after anotherThe jungle was protective suddenly, a buffer against all the demands that would be madeHe longed to lose himself in it, become separate from the men"I don't know," he saidIt seemed important to stop arguing
They fell silent, lay again on their packs, relapsing into their private thoughtsMinetta's weariness colored his reverie, made him sadHe thought of Italy, which he had visited with his parents when he was a childVery few memories chanel j12 remained; he could recall the town in which his father was born and a little of the city of Naples, but the rest had become clouded
In his father's village the houses tumbled down a hillside in a network of tiny alleyways and dusty courtyardsAt the foot of the hill a little mountain stream lashed over the rocks and raced along vigorously into the valley belowThe women would carry their laundry down in baskets in the morning, and wash the family clothing on the flat rocks of the bank, kneading and slapping and scrubbing with the ancient absorbed motions of peasant women at workThe boys in the town would fetch water every afternoon from the same stream and carry it up the hill, moving slowly, their small brown legs cording with labor as they toiled up the footpath to the town
Those were about the only details he could remember, but they stirred himHe seldom thought of the town, and he had forgotten almost all the chanel costume jewelry Italian he once knew how to speak, but when he was moody or reflective he would remember things like the heat of the sun between the walls of the alleyways, or the acrid fermy odors of the dung on the fields
Now, for the first time in many months, he brooded about the war in Italy and wondered if the town had been destroyed in bombardmentsIt seemed almost impossible to him; the little houses of rock and plaster must remain foreverHe was very depressedHe had seldom thought of returning to that village, but now, transiently, it was what he wanted most to doJesus, that place all ruined, he thoughtFor a few seconds his mind held in montage all the wrecked towns, the corpses on the road, the perpetual muted thunder of artillery over the horizon; it even contained a place for this patrol on an island in another oceanEverything's being smashed all over the worldThe magnitude of the idea was too great; his mind veered away, bay bag chloe careened back giddily to the rock on which he was sitting, absorbed itself once more in the wretchedness and fatigue of his bodyAaah, it's all so big you get lost in itThere's always some goon on top of yaDespite himself, he pictured his village destroyed, the cold shattered walls standing like the upraised arms of dead soldiersIt shocked him, made him feel guilty as though he were imagining the death of his parents, and he tried to shut out the fantasyHe was enraged at the wasteAgain it seemed impossible that the women should not be washing laundry on the rocksAaah, that fuggin MussoliniBut he was confused; his father had always told him Mussolini had brought prosperity, and he had accepted itHe could remember the arguments between his uncles and his fatherThey were so goddam poor they needed a guy who could run things, he told himself nowHe remembered one of his father's cousins who had been a big shot in Rome, and had 925 tiffany's necklace marched with Mussolini's army in 1922All through his childhood, Minetta had heard tales of those days"All a the young men, the patriotists, they fight with Mussolini in 'twenty-two," his father had told him, and he had dreamed of marching with them too, of being a hero
Everything was mixed upHis mind could see no farther than his eyesHe was hemmed by the dense palpable mesh of the jungle"Aaah, that fuggin Mussolini," he said again, as if to relieve himself
Goldstein was stirring beside him"Come on, it's our turn again
Minetta lurched to his feet"Why the hell don't they give us a decent break? Jesus Christ, we just sat down He glared at Ridges, who was shouldering his way along the narrow ragged swath of the trail; nothing was left of his reverie but the resentment and fatigue that had initiated it
"C'mon, M'netta," Ridges called back Without waiting for an answer, he plowed ahead to relieve the crew that had been tiffany replica laborin