大象传媒

There was no quiet place in No. 8 Command Pay Office where I could write home. In Rome the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) had commandeered a department store about the size of London's Selfridges. It was now the Alexander Club, named after our successful general. Its many floors were centred around an internal, roofed, open space on the floor of which was a pool with goldfish and a fountain. Here were quiet writing rooms, a library, showers, recreation rooms and a bar-cum-restaurant where tea, coffee, cakes and sandwiches could be bought. This was on the ground floor and had big picture windows with a view of the street.

As I sat munching, making up for the deficiencies of No. 8 Command Pay Office I realised that I was being watched. Outside, two or three little Italian boys had their noses pressed against the glass, staring with hungry eyes. I bought a few extra cakes and prepared to take them outside. I was stopped. 'It is against Army regulations to supply food to civilians.' During the following days I learned much about the state of the city.

One of the Italians we employed at the Command Pay Office had good English and the picture he painted left me shocked and humble: 'Most food is very scarce here - apart from vegetables and fruit. We are rationed, yes, but often the shopkeeper will tell you "Nothing this week."

I protested: 'I've seen the shops packed with food - things we haven't seen in Britain since the war began.' He smiled: 'Yes. You are right. But that is all black market stuff at prices only the rich can pay. After we surrendered you got rid of many of our civil servants and magistrates because they were fascisti... Fascist. Now criminals have taken their place and they are too clever for your military people. Some are very powerful - the mafiosi. The police should stop the black market but many are bribed - with food for their families. And, of course, we Italians are not civic- minded. With us it is "My family first - everyone else to the devil!"

I thought of Britain where the rations might be meagre but they were always honoured and where people queued patiently for scarce goods to be carefully shared.

He continued: 'You have seen what the Forum and Palatine have become - places where our women pleasure your soldiers. Many of course are puttani who have always sold themselves. But I tell you that many others have lost their husbands. Their men are prisoners or have been sent to die in Russia by the German s. The women have hungry children at home. What would you have them do? The soldiers give them cigarettes, cosmetics, silk stockings - worth much on the black market - better than money - no-one wants lire. Can you blame them? And when all you soldiers go back to England or America, what then? The Communists will take over or the mafiosi. But if one of your officers hears me talking like this I will be dismissed and my wife and children will go hungry.'

It was soon after this that I saw two men on a street corner. One passed a newspaper wrapped bundle to the other. From it protruded the tail of a cat.

The corruption of power. I had seen Tosca at Sadlers' Wells and had dismissed it as an overblown melodrama with three good tunes. I had been in Rome for only a week or two when I realised that I was living within Tosca's world. I walked into Sant' Andrea della Valle and into Act One. The church was empty but I peopled it with Cavaradossi, jealous Floria Tosca and the scheming Scarpia who used his political power to satisfy his lusts.. if Tosca will submit to him he will release her lover. I walked past the Farnese Palace and wondered if Mussolini's secret police had used the same torture chamber as Scarpia's agents in Act Two. And there across the Tiber, black against the sky, was Castel St. Angelo: Act Three and Tosca's death-leap.

Under Il Duce there had been many a tormented Cavaradossi, many a Tosca. What was ludicrous in a London opera house was totally believable in Rome - and Puccini had epitomised it. I had seen the photographs of bullet-riddled Mussolini hanging head-down in a Milan garage and I thought of the lines from Act Two where Tosca looks at Scarpia's corpse after she has stabbed him. She hisses: 'And it was before this that all Rome trembled!' What seemed melodrama in London was reality in Rome.

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