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IF THE GESTURE BE BEAUTIFUL

 by Frank Wu

PART THREE

A hush had fallen over the trench, and smoke slowly rolled toward them.  The Austrian guns, for the moment, were frighteningly silent.  Then a cloud slowly appeared a hundred meters away.

"Is that fog?" Paolo asked.  “Or poison gas?” 

Paolo looked up and glanced around at the other Futurists.  No one said a word.

Fog would give them cover.  But poison gas?  They knew their gas masks were no better than moistened gauze.

"Must be smoke and fog," Carlo said. "No one is screaming."

Then, with a simultaneous yelp, they were attacking.

Men were leaping up and over the wall of sandbags. 

As Matteo and Gino started to climb out, Paolo said to Aroldo, "What if I stay in the trench?"

"They'll think you're a coward," Aroldo said, "and you'll be shot by the--"

"Calamari," Carlo said.

"Carabinieri," Aroldo said, and suddenly Aroldo and Matteo on his right and Gino and Carlo on his left charged over the sandbags and out of the trenches, and Paolo charged, and the Austrian water-cooled machine guns kakakakakuh and the rifles fired flic flak zang zang, and in a moment Paolo found himself crawling on his belly, desperate to find some shhhhhck protection somewhere akk akk akk and the smoke poured in all around him, and suddenly Paolo found himself alone, and he couldn't see Aroldo or any of the others, and the Colonel had promised them that the shelling would wipe out the enemy and seizing their territory would be as easy as picking plak plak daisies pewww on a Sunday stroll, and half a dozen men crumpled to the ground not five meters in front of him, and their blood splurrrt struck the thin metal of his helmet, and 6.5-mm rounds were flying through the air, from behind him, from in ping front of him pang, all around his feet, and Paolo thought, maybe I won’t be killed by Austrian gunfire or Austrian cannons, but I’ll be killed by a tiny shard of Italian shrapnel that falls a little too short, and then he thought, but I have to survive, I have to make it back, I have to get back and marry Giannina, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen, and the noise organ on his back sounded hehhh eeeh haaa like laughter, and the sound scared him, so now he was running, and he hoped that Aroldo, Carlo, Gino, ping paw and Matteo are still alive, and Paolo tripped over the long, thin, dead body of a noble son of Italia, whose leg was all chopped up above the knee, the skin and cloth and flesh diced up and mixed like a tossed salad, and Paolo fell zing zang facedown into a shell crater, into the mud, gathering the mud to himself, embracing the mud for what little protection flic flac it might offer, and Paolo thought, please, please, pow Lord, please let the night come soon, because the cover of darkness will let me crawl back into my trench, but the day had just begun, and as he flailed his legs, and his noise organ sounded hehh eeh haaa like laughter, and Paolo tipped the muzzle of his rifle out of the shell crater and fired plak plak plak wildly, blindly in the general direction of the Austrian hills, and the flint and clay exploded around him, and he wondered why he was there and plak plak plak screamed out, "Nina!  Nina!  Nina!"

Dear Nina,

I am so unhappy.  Everything is lost to me.  The guitar you gave me.  You.

 I have survived my first day of battle. But tomorrow we will fight again, and again the next day, until there is no one left to fight. I don’t even yet know if my friends survived today.

We are now regrouping, silently marching.  The battle is over for now.  But, unlike the stories I’ve read, there has been no feasting, no sharing of bounty, no building altars to praise God for the victory, because there has been no victory.

Even now the sound of exploding shells echoes from the hills all around us.

What are we doing here?  What's it all for?

I have had some small fortune of falling in with an officer, Lieutenant Ugo Mazzini.  Sometimes he confuses me, sometimes he frightens me, often he delights me with his wit.  But he has taken me under his wing.  He is my anchor in the madness around me. 

Oh, Nina, I am so unhappy.

Paolo scribbled the letter as he marched along in the grim mass of soldiers.

He felt his face turning into putty.

Suddenly, a commotion arose in the front of the ranks.  Someone was rushing around, distributing something.  Could it be cigarettes? 

No, it was newspapers.  Carlo!

The young Futurist smiled at Paolo and embraced him warmly.

"I'm so glad to see that you survived!" Paolo said.  "When we were separated, I feared the worst.  And the others?"

"We are Futurists and we all survived." Carlo said.  "Of course!"

"Weren't you frightened when---" Paolo began to say.

"Oh, no.  I have to go!  There’s a whole new project we’re working on.  It’s very important.  I’ve got to finish giving these away so I can get back to the Art House." Carlo said and ran off, flinging papers at soldiers.  “We can work on it together as soon as you can make your way back!”

Paolo watched him go, disappointed that he did not stay longer.  Then he looked down at the paper in his hand.  The headline read, FUTURIST EVENING TRIUMPHANT!  In one bottom corner of the page was a reproduction of Mazzini's painting of the horse with the hundred feet and the rider with the shattered face.  In the opposite corner was a photograph of the Colonel with the caption COLONEL DE PISIS, MAN OF THE HOUR.

Instant documentation of their own achievements!

He read the text:

During a Futurist evening held yesterday over one thousand soldiers were held in rapt attention as Lieutenant Mazzini displayed the compenetrating energy of Futurist art...

Rapt attention? Paolo thought.  Doubtful.  A thousand?  A bit of exaggeration.  I'll bet Mazzini wrote this himself!

Lies, all lies. 

There was no mention of the riot, no mention of the demise of Nina's guitar.

Paolo scanned through the article.  Perhaps Mazzini had been generous enough to mention Paolo in passing.  Probably not, though.  He hadn't done anything remarkable. 

But there it was!

His name: Paolo Pascoli!

In the third paragraph, no less!

A highlight of the Futurist event last night was a stylized re-enactment of the ascent of enlisted man Paolo Pascoli from Passeist to Futurist.  Pascoli, age eighteen, opened the evening by demonstrating the monotonous works by Passeists Bach, Pucchini, and Giordano.  The audience politely covering their yawning mouths. 

The crowd's hands voiced their appreciation for the end of this torment, as Pascoli began playing more modern music by Strauss, Wagner and Mussorgsky. 

Finally, the throng exploded in delight when Pascoli assisted Aroldo Baracca in operating noise organs for a performance of works by Futurists Luigi Russolo and Francesco Pratella.  The evening concluded with a triumphant rendition of Baracca's acclaimed Futurist masterpiece, "Awakening Dynamism of the Bellicose City."

Although he has not long been a participant in this noble war, Pascoli has distinguished himself not only musically, but also on the battlefield.  Pascoli has received numerous commendations for dangerous missions as both scout and courier.

Where was Mazzini getting these lies? 

Mazzini!  Paolo thought.  I came to war only so that I could return home and tell Nina's father, “I was not a coward.”  Now I can go home a hero!

This was what he should send to Nina, not the pathetic, whiny little letter!

Paolo ripped up what he had written and quickly scribbled:

Dearest Giannina,

I think of you every day. You are the reason I am here fighting, to humbly lay on your doorstep honor and glory.  Already I have distinguished myself!  Show this article to your father.  He will be proud his daughter is associated with such a valiant warrior as I.  I fight on, because I love you.  I cannot wait to come home to you.  That is all I want in this world.

I am alone, utterly alone without you.

Yours forever,

Paolo

He underlined his name everywhere it appeared in the Futurist article, and with each stroke of the pen, he thought, I have Ugo Mazzini to magnify a hundred times my most trivial achievement! 

Then he posted the letter and article to Nina and ran off to the Art House to see what new magnificent gesture was being launched from atop Mazzini's head.

From this moment on, Paolo thought, my fate is inexorably linked to that of the Futurists.

Now he was running, jumping over sandbags, leaping over neat pyramids of mortar shells, rushing as quickly as he could, until he rounded the corner by the Art House and tried to stop running.

His feet slipped and he landed in the dirt. 

He picked himself up, only to realize that the Art House was a chaos of activity.

"Paolo!  What took you so long!" Mazzini shouted.  He had been crouching in front of Carlo, but how he stood up and carelessly waved the knife in his hand. Carlo, who sat on a chair with a wad of bandaging in his lap, nervously eyed the sharp blade.

Mazzini turned from Carlo and said to Paolo, “I hope you like your present.  I hope it makes up for what I did to your guitar.”

“Well, sir...” Paolo thought about lying that he loved the noise organ, but decided against it.  

Mazzini dropped his eyes in disappointment and said, “I will try again to make it up to you.”  Suddenly, he perked up in agitation and said, “I will have to add that to my list.  There is so much to be done!"

Carlo looked up at Mazzini and the knife in the Lieutenant’s hand and said, “Finish what you’re doing!”

"It is good to see you," Aroldo said.  "Carlo told me you survived the battle."

"If you help us, Paolo, we may be able to complete the next project tonight!"  Mazzini said.

"I could still use some help cutting pipe," Matteo said. 

“What are you all talking about?” Paolo asked. 

"We're not going to finish tonight," Carlo said.

Mazzini said, "If Paolo helps and we work together, we will!"

“What are you doing?” Paolo asked the lieutenant. 

“Memorializing the Austrian passeists I killed today,” Carlo said.  Mazzini turned Carlo’s face to expose the three parallel scars on the left cheek.  The marks were the same length and evenly spaced.  Mazzini measured the spacing, and then placed the knifetip against Carlo’s skin.  The cheek indented a little, but did not bleed.   Then, sure of his placement, Mazzini gave a little pressure, and a bead of blood formed.  Then he flicked his wrist, and Carlo winced but did not move.  Once Mazzini’s knife was clear, Carlo smeared ash into the cut and brought the bandage to his face.  And smiled a tiny smile.

Paolo was mesmerized by the sight of this ritual.  In his short time at war he had been faces smudged with mud and grease, scalps ripped open with barbed wire, cheeks swollen from blows from a rifle butt.  But he had never seen mutilation so purposeful and calculated.  He had seen tattoos, of course, but this was a different thing altogether.  He stood fascinated. 

“Don’t just stand there, soldier!” Mazzini shouted at Paolo.  “Everyone!  Everyone!  We have so much to do!  The war isn’t going to last forever!  And tonight, we have a lot of work to do if we are to present this masterpiece to the Colonel in the morning!” 

“But, sir, what are we doing?”

“Look at that beautiful thing!” Mazzini gestured at a truck parked by the Art House door.  It had been an ambulance, and over the red cross were painted black letters proclaiming: “War is the only hygiene of the world!”  The truck was raised up on blocks, its hood open and its engine removed.  Next to the truck were pipes of graduated size lined up on an oily bedsheet. 

The truck did not seem beautiful to Paolo.  Perhaps Mazzini perceived it as if it were already finished, not in bits and pieces.

“Can you not put two and two together?  Don’t you know what we’re doing?” Mazzini said.

“No, sir,” Paolo said.  “But I will do whatever you---”

“Look at this!”  Mazzini shouted.  He held up a set of piano keys.  Then he put them down and held up some foot pedals.  “Does this help?  No?”

Paolo shook his head. 

“This world, this world will soon be filled with trucks!  Should they be designed by engineers, they will be huge, awkward, honking, lumbering, ugly things.  But they don’t have to be!  If they are designed by artists, they can elegant, musical!  The very farting of the truck exhaust will pass through a series of pipes, like a piper organ, modulated by bellows, controlled by a keyboard.  The lurching, jarring experience of driving in an old truck will be transformed into harmonies, arpeggios, and glissandos.”

Paolo stared at the old ambulance, nodding appreciatively. 

“Later incarnations of the musical truck will make music by themselves, like a Player piano.  The same principle could be applied to automobiles, buses, motorcycles, factory smokestacks, even household chimneys!  Everywhere the modern man walks through the modern city, the very machines that sustain life will create music all around him!  Part of our mission is to change the way people perceives the world.  You should perceive that a spoon scraping against a tin is the falsetto singing of metal against metal!  Part of what we do is to actually transform the world, for those too dull to perceive correctly without assistance.  What we are doing is no less than the transformation of the aural landscape.  Nothing less than the first of many battles in the Futurist conquest of the world.  Starting with nothing more than an old ambulance!”

They worked through the long, cold night on the musical truck.  As soon as Matteo measured and cut a pipe, he would lay it on a bedsheet spread on the ground.  Then Carlo, moving a little stiffly, would cut a rectangular hole near one end.  Next, Gino would polish the metal to an ideal and uniform thickness.  It fell to Paolo to fit the pipes with conical brass ends and internal baffles.  All the time, Mazzini yelled at them to hurry. 

On the sheet now were almost two dozen pipes of graduated length.

"How many are finished?" Aroldo asked. 

"Almost enough for one octave," Gino said.

"Carlo's right.  We're not going to make it tonight," Aroldo said.  "What time is it?"

"Nearly eleven," Matteo said.

"We haven't even put it together, let alone tuned--"

"Nonsense!"  Mazzini said.  "The bellows assembly is complete.  There are still many hours before the next attack."

"Is this war nothing but an inconvenience to you?" Aroldo said.  "We have to get some sleep."

"You sleep, then," Mazzini said.  "Pedantry doesn't sleep.  Stupidity doesn't sleep."

The Futurists worked on through the night. 

At midnight, Paolo slipped off to sleep in his tent.

Paolo was awoken by a loud discussion.  He sat up and opened the door flap, holding it open just a crack.  In the distance, he could see a great white horse, with Colonel De Pisis mounted on it. 

“Colonel, good morning!” Mazzini said, warmly.  “I was hoping to discuss purchasing a rank for one of my soldiers.”

"Mazzini, just because your parents bought yours does not mean that everything in this army is for sale.”  The Colonel dismounted and walked around, surveying the metal pipes piled in front of the Art House.  “You told me it would be ready this morning.”

"Sir!  The morning is not yet over." Mazzini said.

De Pisis said, "You know I like to survey the troops before an attack.  I had wanted to do that in your newest creation.  You knew that." 

"Sir!  The task proved more difficult than initially anticipated."

"Not good enough!" the Colonel said.  "It should be done by now.  I am getting tired of your delays."

"Sir, I respectfully request additional time."

De Pisis asked, "Finish it tomorrow then, by first light."

After the Colonel rode away, Mazzini grabbed a tin cup and started banging on it with a stick.  “Wake up! Wake up!  There’s so much to do!”

As the Colonel rode away, Mazzini squinted his eyes and imagined De Pisis and his horse fragmented into a hundred shards the color of blood.

An hour later, Paolo sat in the trench, mud soaking through his knees.  He thought, This time I will stay close to the others.  They know how to survive.  No hiding in a shell hole this time.

The muzzle of his rifle jiggled as a shell fell nearby.  He looked around at Aroldo, Carlo, Gino, and Matteo.  None of their rifles jiggled.  Next time a shell falls, Paolo told himself, neither will mine.  I will embrace the noise.

Paolo considered making small conversation with them, but decided against it.  They looked very sleepy. 

They would have a chance to talk after the battle.  When the opening bombardment began, Paolo did not plug his ears.  Instead, he eagerly anticipated the arias of siege cannons, and held his rifle tightly, as round after round exploded, and short-range mortar trench shells flew high in the sky as if to blow up clouds, and then fell sharply on them.  They fell close, close enough to shower dirt and rock on him.  He could taste the gunpowder on his lips.

Then it was silent.

Very silent.

Paolo squirmed a little, and his noise organ sounded heh heh haa.   He thought, I wish I still had my guitar.

Carlo frowned at Paolo’s noise organ and said, "Quiet."  His speech was just slightly hindered by the bandages on his cheek.

At that moment Paolo realized that Carlo was the only Futurist who did not wear a noise organ.

When Paolo asked about this, Carlo said, "Actually, I don't aspire to music, I aspire to chaos."  Carlo put his finger to his lips and looked up into the sky. 

In the momentary silence Paolo could make out some thin wisps of sound.  It was not grenades or machine guns in the distance.  It was a bird chirping.  Not a squawking or a cawing, but a pretty, delicate twittering.  The earth had been churned over and over by blasts, beaten like batter.  Yet, through all that, this island of cheerfulness had survived.  Smiling, Paolo closed his eyes to listen to the bird, and then suddenly he heard plak plak plak.  He opened his eyes to see Carlo with a mischievous grin on his face, smoke rising from the barrel of his rifle. 

There was no more birdsong.

Before Paolo could reprimand Carlo, a great yell arose among the men, and as a single mass they surged over the sandbags, Paolo making sure to stay as close as possible to the other Futurists, and when a stench like grilled beef filled his nostrils, Paolo forgot all about his anger at Carlo, and through the crossfire of bullets, the band of Futurists made their way up and down and over shell holes, until a sharp little bit of something, zipped straight through the air like a mosquito and bit Paolo in the calf, and he yelped and stumbled, and his noise organ sounded heh heh haa and Matteo helped him up, and because it was too early to go back to the trenches without being called a coward and shot, and because he did not want to be left alone, he said, "It's not that bad," though it stung terribly, and although one foot became very warm, and his toes felt wet, he followed the others on, and the bullets swarmed around Paolo's head like gnats, swirling around his boots like nettles, and they kept marching until they reached the barbed wire.

There they stopped.

Their noise organs went silent.

Crouching down, the band of Futurists drew from their packs the shears they had been issued--really nothing more than cheap gardening scissors--and cried out, "Hurry!  Hurry!" as they snipped and jabbed at the wire, and Aroldo was firing on the oncoming Austrian soldiers as they emerged through the smoke, and Paolo turned to see an overweight Italian soldier lying face-down in the mud with half a dozen bullet holes in his overcoat, and from his twisted posture, he could tell that the soldier's last gesture had been trying to free his cuff from the wire, and Paolo saw an Austrian emerge from the smoke, with his rifle-mounted bayonet pointed straight at him, and Paolo said, please, please, Lord, please forgive me, forgive me, and he aimed at the Austrian and squeezed the trigger, and the Austrian fell back with a twisting motion, his body and head falling one way, his nose the other way, and Paolo thought, I'm going to be punished for this, and he glanced down and saw that Carlo was clipping at the barbed wire with undue ferocity, his expression turning to such anger that fresh blood appeared on his cheek bandage, but Paolo knew it wouldn't make any difference, they were not going to make it through, and Paolo thought, Oh Nina, Nina, Nina, I am going to die here right now, and I'll be just a single line on someone's list saying "Paolo Pascoli, killed at the barbed wire during a battle of the Isonzo," and Aroldo was scanning, the barrel of his rifle sweeping back and forth, and as Aroldo fired, the sound cracked against Paolo's ear, and just over Matteo's shoulder, Paolo saw an Austrian carrying a machine gun, perhaps ten meters away, and though the Austrian was walking away, Paolo shifted the bolt to reload his rifle and aimed and said, oh, please, please, Lord, please forgive me, and he squeezed the trigger, and the cartridge jammed in his rifle.

Paolo struggled with the bolt, but it wouldn't move, even as he was pushing and shoving and slapping it with his palm, and he panicked and forgot he had a bullet extracter in his pack and a loaded sidearm dangling from his belt, and he poked at Aroldo and gestured wildly at the Austrian, and as Aroldo turned to fire, his noise organ sounded with a crackling sound, which the Austrian heard, and suddenly Paolo was looking down the barrel of the machine gun and as he was frozen in panic and fear he began thinking, oh, please, please, Lord, please let make his machine gun jam, please--that would be fair, wouldn't it, Lord, if all our guns miraculously jammed and we had to call the war off--and as he thought that, the Austrian was running toward Paolo and the bullets came at him at almost ten per second, and Paolo found himself screaming as he watched a hard-cased lead pellet glance off Gino’s unstrapped helmet, putting a one centimeter-deep dent in it and knocking the helmet spinning from his head, just before a second and a third bullet simultaneously pierced Gino’s naked forehead, the impacts against mud-caked skin and hard but thin bone fragmenting the casings and stripping them from the lead cores, the cores themselves flattening and deforming before passing through the back of Gino’s head, which split open like a calzone hot from the oven, steam rising up from the yawning crack, and Paolo screamed No No this isn’t right it’s not supposed to happen this way and then he watched in horror as pointed, boney shards of Carlo's shoulderblade flew through the air and rang against his own helmet, and he screamed I’m not seeing this we are Italians we are Futurists we are invincible no no no and when he saw a bullet hit Matteo in the neck, staggering him, toppling him from the mental shock of being hit, and Matteo grabbed his throat, but the blood splurted out from between his fingers, and then Matteo fell on Paolo, knocking him into the mud, newly decorated with rivulets of red, and then Paolo stopped screaming when hot, twisted and deformed metal fragments, emerging from an exit wound in the fleshy part of Matteo's thigh, and traveling through the air only a few centimeters, so they still formed a tight cluster, caught him in the center of his face, and as he lost consciousness, he thought, I’m not a hero, I am so sorry, Nina.

“What do you think?” Mazzini asked Azari, the young surgeon’s assistant. 

“He will live.  But the reconstructive surgery...” Azari trailed off.  “Do you have any pictures?”

Mazzini asked, taking the folded sheet from his pocket.

Azari unfolded the portrait and held it in his hand.  His fingertips were red, and the blood mixed with the red ink on the page.

“This will be difficult, but we can use skin and muscle and bone from elsewhere.”

“Can you do it?” Mazzini asked.  I’ve already arranged a special room in town for the operation.  You’ll have more privacy there.  I’ve arranged special nurses, too.  Can you do it?”

“I’ll try my best, sir.”

The sound of something semi-solid striking the floor. 

The sound of breathing, the mouth slowly filling with liquid.  The sound of gulping air, as by a goldfish in stagnant water.  The sound of a surgeon’s assistant scraping out a bedpan.  The sound of the silent sheets.

This is what Paolo woke to hear. 

When he opened his eyes, at first he thought he had been left outside the hospital, because all he saw was an enormous mound of white snow.  Left outside, with the others who were too damaged to be saved.  As his vision cleared, he realized that the whiteness was actually bandages two or three centimeters thick heaped over his nose.  He realized he was inside.  A good sign.

"How do you feel?" Mazzini asked.

Paolo's head throbbed, his arms were stiff and his calf stung.  He tasted blood on the inside of his mouth.

Mazzini looked at Paolo sadly and said, "The portable noise organ I gave you didn't make it.  It had to be destroyed.  But you can count on Lieutenant Ugo Mazzini to make it up to you."

"Sir, am I going to die?"

“Paolo, you'll be fine,” Mazzini said.  “We’ve got the best doctors here, all patching you up."

“I don’t feel fine.”

Paolo turned his face to the hospital window.  Through it he saw only blackness, until the glare from explosions momentarily lit up the falling snowflakes.  Tum tuuumb tuuummb.

Mazzini followed Paolo's eyes out the window and said, "If it keeps on snowing, we will have to call a halt until spring."

Oh, wonderful, Paolo thought.  Then I can go home and marry Giannina.  That’s all I want to do. 

He smiled at the prospect, until he remembered those who would not return home.

"Lieutenant, sir..." Paolo said.  "What about the others?  I saw Carlo--"

Mazzini nodded like a proud father and handed Paolo a flyer.

It said:

THREE FUTURISTS MARTYRED

STRUGGLE AGAINST INSTITUTIONIZED

STUPIDITY CONTINUES

MONFALCONE, ITALY--Three Futurist artist-musicians were killed in action yesterday while attempting to cut through barbed wire in heavy fighting near the base of Austrian-held Mount Carso.  Carlo Scarlatto, age 20, Gino Crali, age 19, and Matteo Balbo, age 21, each served bravely and made the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle against bigotry and oppressiveness. 

These three fine men were admired by all, and everyone who served with them was ennobled by the experience.

This grand Futurist conflict continues the liberation of the world from the wearisome ownership of land, women and thought.  The forces of clotted brutality and heaviness, although mortally wounded--

Paolo stopped reading and put the flyer down.

"What is wrong?" Mazzini said.

"Sir," Paolo said, "there is so little here about Carlo, Gino and Matteo..."

"What else could I say?  They were martyrs for Futurism.  Honor enough for any man."

"It just seems a little disproportionate..." Paolo said.   

"Sometimes the idea is more important than the man."

Paolo stared at the flyer without reading it.  "And not a mention of Aroldo?" he said.

"Ah," Mazzini said, "an unforgivable oversight.  Aroldo was a hero."

"Did he actually do something heroic?" Paolo asked.

"He carried you to safety on his back."

Paolo said, "He must have shot that Austrian with the machine gun..."

"He should receive a medal."

"Where is he now?" Paolo asked.

"Back at the front."

"Fighting for honesty and individuality?" Paolo asked.

Mazzini nodded and said, "And you, Paolo, you must rally yourself.  We must finish the pipework.  We have much to do if the world is to be conquered."

The next day Paolo awoke to the sounds of dripping and coughing and choking and moaning.  He awoke to the terrible itching under the bandages on his face. 

He awoke to hear Austrian explosions far behind the Italian lines, and he hoped for a heavy fall of snow.

Early that morning, Aroldo came to visit. 

"Oh my dear boy!" Aroldo said.  "I wanted to save all of you...  All of you...  I tried to carry Carlo back, too, but it was too much."

"What happened to Carlo?" Paolo asked.

"He had been shot, too, but I couldn't carry both of you.  After I got you back to the trench, I went back for Carlo..."  Aroldo put down his head in shame.

"It's not your fault..." Paolo said.

"I was lost," Aroldo said.  "There were so many new shell craters..."

"It seems like such a waste," Paolo said.  "No good-byes, no chance for last words..."

"Actually, Carlo had a chance for a last word, in a way."

"Really? What did he say?" Paolo asked.

"When I was wandering through the battlefield, looking for Carlo, I couldn't see him, but I could hear him.  He was singing."

"Singing?"

"Through all the sound of bursting flint, Carlo was singing.

No I'm not scared

By explosions at night.

They light up the air

So I can see the spike.

"I don’t know what this meant, but he was singing it over and over.  Despite all the shouting and machine gun noise, I could hear him singing.  But when I finally found him at the wire, he was dead."

"A Futurist to the end," Paolo said with a small laugh.

For a moment, Paolo thought he saw a tear forming in Aroldo's eye.  Before it could drop, Aroldo excused himself to return to the front.

When Mazzini came to visit later that day, young Azari dropped his mop and ran toward him.  The lieutenant handed him a thin bundle of papers and a small envelope.  Azari studied the papers for a moment and frowned, shaking his head.  Mazzini offered him another envelope.  Azari seized the envelope from Mazzini's hand, mumbled, "War is the only hygiene of the world," and then stomped off to complete his chores.

Then Mazzini came to sit at Paolo's feet and said, "Do you feel well enough to finish recuperating at the Art House?"

"I don't think so, sir."

Mazzini nodded and said, "So much to do...  So much to do...  Of all the Futurists, Aroldo alone must go to the front, and I alone must plan the Futurization of the world."

"Sir, as soon as..." Paolo began to say, and then stopped.  His face ached terribly.

"I had a meeting with the Colonel this morning," Mazzini said.  "He was displeased with the constant lack of progress made by our artillery.  I volunteered to confer with the battery commander to help redesign the firing pattern of the heavy guns.”

“How did you re-design it, sir?” Paolo asked.

“A very astute question!”  Mazzini said.  “Actually, Aroldo helped, in a way.  It was kind of a tribute to his genius, actually.  You may have noticed that Aroldo’s musical composition had several movements in it---”

Ah, Paolo thought.  So Mazzini was not as ignorant about music as he seemed.

“---and some parts had more... well, notes, than others.” Mazzini stopped talking for a moment, as if distracted.  Then he resumed: “Where was I? Ah, yes.  I’m sorry.  I lose my train of thought easily these days.  Parts, yes.  Some parts were faster, others slower, more quiet.  And, best of all, some had more explosions than others.  What I have done is re-orchestrated the firing pattern of our main batteries to repeat the general motives and movements of Aroldo's musical composition. The artillery fire booms and crashes like drums and cymbals... I call my technique 'cymballistics.'"

“What did you do, sir?” Paolo said.  “Did Aroldo have this in mind when he wrote the piece?”

“Oh, no, translating it from noise organs to artillery was my idea.  And there had to be some adjustments of course...”

"The Colonel approved this?"

Mazzini smiled mischievously and whispered, "He approved the plan, but I do not believe he fully grasped the Futurist underpinnings.  When we present him with this, the first major victory of the war, only then will I tell him that this is what Futurism has accomplished.  This is how I generally get his approval."

"Sir, I'm not sure that--"

"Don't you see?" Mazzini said.  "War itself is music, beautiful music."

"Sir--"

"Listen!" Mazzini said and opened the window.  Then he closed his eyes and waved his hand back and forth.

Paolo watched Mazzini without speaking.  All Paolo heard was gurgling and moaning and coughing.  Only when he had tuned those sounds out did Paolo hear the howitzers and trench mortars blasting men into bite-size pieces.

But he heard no music.

Mazzini was standing by Paolo's bedside when the next influx of wounded entered.  Paolo was worried about Mazzini.  His face was flushed, and there was a smell of alcohol on his breath.  He had never seen Mazzini drunk before. 

As a pair of stretcher bearers went by the window, Paolo heard a cry: "Lieutenant!"

"It's Aroldo!" Mazzini said, and climbed out the window.

Paolo sat up in his bed to watch the two stretcher bearers lay Aroldo on a dirt path outside.

"I saw you in the light..." Aroldo said, and began to cough.

"This man is a Futurist!" Mazzini said to the stretcher bearers.  "Why are you leaving him here?"

"There's no more room inside," a stretcher bearer said.  "The doctor said that this one belongs here."  They pulled the stretcher from under Aroldo.  "Along with the others who cannot be saved."

Mazzini carefully removed the portable noise organ from Aroldo's back and clutched it tightly in his fat fingers.

"We were pinned down at the base of the cliffs," Aroldo said, gasping.  "We thought we had protection behind sandbags...  But every time they fired at us, they hit the rocks behind us, and fragments flew everywhere..."

"Aroldo, be still, you'll be all right," Mazzini said.  Aroldo's chest was chopped up like a mixed salad.

"They didn't even have to be able to see us to hit us..." Aroldo said.  "We had no cover...  No smoke screen...  No artillery..."

"You had no artillery?" Mazzini asked.  "But I could hear it!"

"It was all misdirected...  Even the rolling barrage," Aroldo said.  "It wasn't heavy and hard enough.  It was supposed to clear the area just ahead of us, and as we moved forward, the barrage was supposed to, too.  But it moved on too quickly and was too light.  The infantry couldn't keep up.  And the Austrians just waited until the barrage passed them, and then came out of their holes and slaughtered us.  Whoever planned the firing was an idiot."

"An idiot?" Mazzini shouted.

"Yes!  An idiot!"

Mazzini said, "I planned that barrage.  Along with Colonel De Pisis.  Do you still think the attack was idiotic?"

Aroldo was silent for a time and then said, "Yes."

"What?"  Mazzini was turning red with anger.

"Don't you see what you've done, Lieutenant?" Aroldo said.   "Carlo...  Gino...  Matteo..." Aroldo convulsed slightly and said, "Why did you bring us here?"

"How long have we been together?" Mazzini said.  "How many years have we been proclaiming that war is the only hygiene of the world?  When war finally came in all its glory, how could we not live our ideals and fight?"

"Perhaps then," Aroldo said, sarcastically, "it is war that has betrayed us."

"Blame this war, perhaps!  If you don't like it, there will always be another.  But do not blame war itself!"  Mazzini said.  "Or else blame me!"

"Then I blame you," Aroldo said.  "It is all a conceit, a mockery.  I never perceived who you really are, but Matteo told me.  He said you were one of those who shout and wave their hands, and pretend to be rebellious and angry, but really aren't angry about anything."

"I'm not angry?" Mazzini shouted. 

"What do you have to be angry about?" Aroldo asked.  "That you never had to hold a job?  That your father and mother left you a fortune to squander on your Futurist doodling?  When have you ever suffered at the hands of passeists and plutocrats?"

“My parents were the greatest bastions of stupidity and pedantry the world has ever known!” Mazzini shouted.  "If I squandered their money, it was to insult them.  You don’t know what I endured as a child at their hands.  I have suffered!"

"You’ve always sought out suffering," Aroldo said.  "You bring it upon yourself.  And upon us!"  Aroldo coughed up a clot of blood.  "Carlo...  Gino...  Matteo...  It is your fault that they are dead.”

“My fault?”

“We would have followed you anywhere.  Why did you bring us here?  Why did you kill us?" 

Then he looked up at Mazzini's face and died.

"Oh.  Oh!  My Aroldo!  You... you... detestable... you contemptible...  You imbecile!"  Mazzini was circling Aroldo's body, waving his fist at it.  "Have I taught you nothing?"

The nurses left their stations and stood at the windows to see who was shouting.  They saw Mazzini lift his boot, point his toe and kick Aroldo's dead body in the ribs.

A surgeon stood watching, horror on his face.

"No hero's burial for you!  I loved you, but now I’ll compose no lines for you, I’ll paint no canvas to honor your memory, I’ll cast no death's mask to remember your face!"  Mazzini kicked Aroldo in the eyeballs.

Three large orderlies were sent to subdue the lieutenant.

"You say I am not angry!" Mazzini shouted.  "Now I have something to be angry about!  You’re no martyr!  I’ll drag you around the camp.  I’ll leave you to putrefy in a shell hole.  Even the rats from the trenches won’t want to eat your flesh!" 

Mazzini grasped Aroldo by the ankles, but finding the body too heavy, Mazzini stumbled and fell. 

Then he shouted, "You will be mocked and then forgotten!"

The orderlies were now struggling with Mazzini.  As he flailed in the mud, Mazzini shouted, "I am a Futurist!  Take your hands off me!"

The orderlies held him down firmly, until, panting, Mazzini said, "All right, all right, I will... go... quietly..."

As the two orderlies led Mazzini past the hospital door, a doctor stopped them and said, "Let him go.  I don't believe there will be any more disturbances tonight." 

"I go only if Paolo comes with me," Mazzini said.

"Very well!" the doctor said. 

"Shouldn't Paolo stay a bit longer..?" Azari mumbled to the doctor.

"Don't either of you come back into my hospital again."

Mazzini and Paolo walked somberly across the camp toward the Art House.  As he carried Aroldo's portable noise organ, the only one to return intact from battle, Paolo tried to sort out what had happened. 

"Sir, what do we do now that there are only two of us left?"

The Austrians had been shelling the entire camp very heavily that night, and each time a shell exploded, Paolo flinched and the noise organ jiggled in his hands.

"Don't be afraid," Mazzini said.  "We are Futurists."

"What do we do?" Paolo repeated.

“What do we do?”  Mazzini shouted.  "What do we do?  The traitor has been vanquished, the heroes mourned.  They are all so selfish.  My plans...  My plans...  They have left us so much work to do."

The shells were falling very closely now.

"We'd better get into the Art House," Paolo said, "there's more protection there, sir."

"Yes!" Mazzini said.  "We can work on the pipes in there.  The beautiful, musical truck...  All I wanted was beauty...  To show the world beauty...  Yes, the truck.  Only a few small pieces are yet to be polished, and then the assembly can be--"

At that moment a shell came down on them.

Paolo knew it would be close.  He was standing perhaps three meters from Mazzini, and there wasn't any cover nearby, so he dove at the ground, and as he landed, he hit his knee at stone very hard, and pushed his right kneecap far to one side, and as he screamed in pain, the shell exploded not more than five or six meters away.

IF THE GESTURE BE BEAUTIFUL

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4

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