“You don’t feel funny, Tenente? You haven’t got strange feelings in the head?”
“Don’t be funny, Bonello.”
“What about a drink?” Piani asked. “If we’re cut off we might as well have a drink.” He unhooked his canteen and uncorked it.
“Look! Look!” Aymo said and pointed toward the road. Along the top of the stone bridge we could see German helmets moving. They were bent forward and moved smoothly, almost supernaturally, along. As they came off the bridge we saw them. They were bicycle troops. I saw the faces of the first two. They were ruddy and healthy-looking. Their helmets came low down over their foreheads and the side of their faces. Their carbines were clipped to the frame of the bicycles. Stick bombs hung handle down from their belts. Their helmets and their gray uniforms were wet and they rode easily, looking ahead and to both sides. There were two—then four in line, then two, then almost a dozen; then another dozen—then one alone. They did not talk but we could not have heard them because of the noise from the river. They were gone out of sight up the road.
“Holy Mary,” Aymo said.
“They were Germans,” Piani said. “Those weren’t Austrians.”
“Why isn’t there somebody here to stop them?” I said. “Why haven’t they blown the bridge up? Why aren’t there machine-guns along this embankment?”
“You tell us, Tenente,” Bonello said.
I was very angry.
“The whole bloody thing is crazy. Down below they blow up a little bridge. Here they leave a bridge on the main road. Where is everybody? Don’t they try and stop them at all?”
