Very few of these ladies had the stamina to sign a renewal of the
contract and none of them found it necessary.
Possessed of a substantial dowry, they returned home to find a
husband.
The casino had a silver roof of galvanized corrugated iron Hill and its
eaves and balconies were decorated with intricate cast-iron work. The
windows of the girls" rooms opened on to the street.
The young hostesses, who usually rose in the mid afternoon, had been
prematurely awakened by the bellowing of orders and the clash of
weapons. They had traipsed out on to the long second-floor veranda,
clad in brightly coloured but flimsy nightwear, and now entered into
the spirit of the occasion, giggling and blowing kisses to the
officers. One of them had a bottle of iced Lacrima Cristi, which she
knew from experience was the Colonel's favourite beverage, and she
beckoned with the cold de wed bottle.
The Colonel realized suddenly that the singing and excitement had made
him thirsty and peckish.
"A cup for the stirrup, as the English say," he suggested jocularly,
and slapped one of the captains on the shoulder.
Most of his staff followed him with alacrity into the casino.
A little after five o'clock, one of the junior subalterns emerged,
slightly inebriated, from the casino with a message from the Colonel to
the Major.
"At dawn tomorrow, we advance without fail." The battalion rumbled out
of Asmara the following morning at ten o'clock. The Colonel was
feeling liverish and disgruntled. The previous night's excitement had
got out of hand, he had sung until his throat was hoarse and had drunk
great quantities of Lacrima Cristi, before going upstairs with two of
the young hostesses.
Gino knelt on the seat of the Rolls beside him, holding an umbrella
over his head, and the driver tried to avoid potholes and
irregularities in the road. But the Count was pale and his brow
sparkled with the sweat of nausea.
Sergeant Gino wished to cheer him. He hated to see his
Count in misery and so he attempted to rekindle the warlike spirit of
yesterday.
"Think on it, my Count. We of the entire army of Italy will be the
very first to confront the enemy. The first to meet the blood-thirsty
barbarian with his cruel heart and red hands." The Count thought on it
as he was bidden. He thought on it with great concentration and
increasing nausea.
Suddenly he became aware that of all the 360,000 men that comprised the
expeditionary forces of Italy, he, Aldo Belli, was the very first, the
veritable point of the spear aimed at Ethiopia. He remembered suddenly
the horror stories he had heard from the disaster of Adowa. One of the
atrocity stories outweighed all others the
Ethiopians castrated their prisoners. He felt the contents of that
noble sac between his thighs retracting forcibly and a fresh sweat
broke out upon his brow.
Stop!" he shrieked at the driver. "Stop, this instant."
A bare two miles from the centre of the town, the column was plunged
into confusion by the abrupt halt of the lead vehicle, and,
answering the loud and urgent shouts of the commanding officer, the
Major hurried forward to learn that the order of march had been
altered. The command car would take up station in the exact centre of
the column with six motorcycle outriders brought back to ride as flank
guards.
It was another hour before the new arrangement could be put into effect
and once more the column headed south and west into the great empty
land with its distant smoky horizons and its vast vaulted blue dome of
the burning heavens.
Count Aldo Belli rode easier on the luxurious leather of the
Rolls, cheered by the knowledge that preceding him were three hundred
and forty-five fine rubbery sets of peasant testicles upon which the
barbarian could blunt his blade.
The column went into bivouac that evening fifty-three kilometres from
Asmara. Not even the Count could pretend that this was a forced march
for motorized infantry but the advantage was that a pair of
motorcyclists could send back with a despatch for General De Bono
reassuring him of the patriotism, the loyalty and the fighting ardour
of the Third Battalion and, of course, on their return the cyclists
could carry blocks of ice from the casino packed in salt and straw and
stowed in the sidecars.
The following morning, the Count had recovered much of his good cheer.
He rose early at nine " O clock and took a hearty alfresco breakfast
with his officers under the shade of a spread tarpaulin and then, from
the rear seat of the Rolls, he gave a clenched fist cavalry order to
advance.
Still in the centre of the column, pennants fluttering and battle
standard glittering, the Rolls glided forward and it looked, even to
the disillusioned Major, as if they might make good going of the day's
march.
The undulating grassland fell away almost imperceptibly beneath the
speeding wheels, and the blue loom of the mountains on their right hand
merged gradually with the lighter fiercer blue of the sky. The
transition to desert country was so gradual as to lull the unobservant
traveller.
