The Secret Price of History. Gayle Ridinger
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The din of the cannons batters his hearing. But the blue lines of French soldiers are starting to move backwards. "Stand your ground," an officer shouts. "It's not over as long as we can look them in the face!"
I have to see their backsides.
The frenzied Frenchmen are unable to reload and defend themselves.
See how the army in rags fights?
The bluecoats are kicking up dust faster and faster.
Finally, Goffredo's realization: I don't see any more faces.
They were winning; the French were running away.
During their disorderly but jubilant march back into the city, they hear that Mazzini, as head of the civilian government, has ordered Garibaldi to let the enemy escape back to their ships.
"How can Mazzini say that peace is still possible? This only helps the French!" Sandor is so adamant in his gesticulating that some the grey gun powder covering his hair raises.
"Mazzini is a fool," Swissman interjects—then before Goffredo can join in with his own word of agreement, he exclaims, "Dear God--it's Laffranchi!"
There is a cart stacked with stretchers stopped on the right side of the road. Around the cart there are wounded men doubled over in some sort of contorted position, and a few more who are simply standing in a quiet daze. Swissman takes hold one of these men by the hand. It is Laffranchi. His left leg is smashed and in its place there is an oozing cylindrical paste of bone, blood and black cloth. And though his belt is fastened tight as a tourniquet around the top of what was his thigh, there is blood collecting in a pool under his boot.
"My glasses!" he gasps at the three of them.
His glasses, dangling by the rim from his breast pocket, are smashed.
"My glasses," Laffranchi insists.
Wordlessly Sandor places them on his nose for him. Swissman wraps Laffranchi's arm around his shoulder, so that he doesn't have to put weight on his butchered leg. Sandor and Goffredo negotiate with the medic in charge for a stretcher, and ease Laffranchi down on it.
Numerous hours later, Sandor and Goffredo lean, exhausted, against the railing of the bridge flanking the hospital on Tiber Island. It is dark, and the bells in the adjacent church tower have already struck ten. Eleonora comes out the main door towards them, shaking the rinse water off her hands. Her long white pinafore is splotched with red and dusted with sawed bone.
"They had to cut your friend's leg off. But if no infection sets in, he will make it," she says.
Seeing that Sandor seems to be under a spell and doesn't even give a tired nod the way Goffredo does, she adds, "I mean he'll survive. He'll live."
Sandor's eyes shut in thankfulness. "Good."
"What can we do for you?" Goffredo asks.
"For me?"
"For you," he repeats meaningfully.
"Not a thing. The night's far from finished for me, my friends. But you go and get some sleep."
Her gaze rests on Goffredo. His heart accelerates. Sleep? How can he sleep when she is—for the first time—making such a long visual search to discover what there is to be found in him?
"You be careful," she admonishes gently. "There are roaming bands of troublemakers out there. They're just criminals taking advantage of the situation. They have nothing to do with the Republic. Alongside the good, there's always some bad. Stay on your guard."
She looks at Sandor now, but never mind; Goffredo, taking in her loveliness, is elated. She cares. She is truly concerned about…about them. The question of who she will care about most is suspended in the night. Once their goodnights have been said, he and Sandor wander aimlessly through the Trastevere. Somewhere, an accordion starts up. Not all of Rome has retreated indoors by any means. There are still candles burning in windows and women standing in doorways talking.
"She said to go to get some sleep, but where?"
"I just saw an empty fountain. At least no rocks or dirt under our backs."
Backtracking, they find a big white basin at the feet of a Neptune whom the French have deprived of his liquid life source.
They stretch out in the basin.
"But what would you be doing tonight if you were their General Oudinot?" Goffredo asks as they gaze upwards at the stars.
"I'd call for fresh troops from France and study ways of stalling for time until they arrive."
"Maybe we won't let them stall for time. Maybe—" and here he makes a huge yawn, which ends things.
It has to be going on midnight, and these are the last snatches of consciousness. Goffredo's are spent in self dialogue. He knows very well that Sandor is right, that it was a big mistake not to pursue the French…but that is not a proper last thought when a man is about to fall to sleep. He requires a comforting notion…and Goffredo's comforting notion is that he has defended Rome today, and so even, one might say, defended Eleonora and this gives him a blissful, possessive feeling, which in turn gives him gives him Eleonora coming with him to Bassignana after the war and helping him to make cheese so many small cheese rounds…counting them.giving him sleep.
Though hard to believe, Oudinot keeps his word the next morning and maintains his army outside town, docilely waiting for reinforcements. A few days later, French President Louis Napoleon's representative, DeLesseps, hastily arrives from Paris to negotiate a cease-fire with the patriotic institutions of the Roman Republic.
"The French are shameful," says Sandor in soaring spirits. "They have been using thirty- year-old maps in battle, I hear, and yesterday forgot their scaling ladders for the Janiculum walls. Idiots!"
Goffredo laughs with him, a greased gun part in his hands. As soon as it was clear the truce was going to hold, Sandor and he moved from the fountain to 'sleeping quarters' in the ancient market ruins, where peasants have their shacks, kitchen gardens, and covered lean-tos for livestock. They wake up with the sheep, and then Goffredo 'sets up shop,' sometimes in return for food. He is spending eight or nine hours today fixing rifles and machinery, getting one firing mechanism to work again and then going on to another. Gun after gun until finally the hour comes when he and Sandor can go and meet Eleonora by her hospital at the island end of the Fabricio Bridge.
It is inebriating for Eleonora to feel her friends' interest and curiosity trained upon her during this unforeseeable truce. In this dusk of bird calls and moving river water, all cannons silent and friends and enemies at rest, it is impossible to entertain the thought that Goffredo might feel seriously jealous of the looks that Sandro and she exchange; idealists like themselves have different emotions—more complicated, more sublime—than jealousy. Her two magnificent friends don't know what pettiness or close-mindedness is; their souls can't fabricate an atom of that, unlike her family or the aristocratic scions she was raised with. Granted all that, she still thanks God for doing something to these French generals to make them tired of war, and protect her friends for bullets, for a while.
When the truce ends suddenly on May 31st it happens with preposterous trick of fate. In the morning, there is reason to celebrate: DeLesseps pledges French protection for Rome against Austria as well as the hostile Kingdom of Naples, in return for quarters outside the city. In the afternoon, however, bands of young boys in the know begin making the rounds of churches and squares, tearing down the freshly-posted proclamation. It has been rescinded! DeLesseps has been stripped of his powers. Word of this farce spreads like wildfire. The Romans react violently. Riots start all over the city and word comes of bands of citizens and volunteer soldiers capturing French pickets, who then in turn join the cause. Sandor, Goffredo, and the other garibaldini, however, are disoriented. What are they to do? Where are their orders? The General isn't even in Rome at the moment but off fighting the Bourbon army in Palestrina. Anguished, they collect in squares, the simple soldiers with the officers, waiting for word to come. Even the most undisciplined and head-strong show at this time their common creed: one is here to obey; one