Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."

12
The Road to Hell
1945
‘‘Four days . . . the happiest of my life’’
In the spring of 1945, the Rapallese were beginning to hear rumors—the
Americans are coming! On April 25, the Italian partisans rose up against
the Germans, and orders went out from the High Command not to resist.
On Friday, April 27, Olga—as was her custom every weekday morning
—went down to Rapallo to meet her students at the Technical School, but
there would be no classes that day. The students were being let out to
celebrate the liberation. When someone told her the U.S. Army Command
was headquartered at the Hotel Europa on the waterfront, she went there
to show her passport and to speak to the o≈cer in charge. But the o≈cers
were too busy to deal with expatriate Americans, so she climbed back up
the hill.
The next morning, April 28, Ezra decided to go himself to explain to
someone in authority his reasons for the Rome Radio broadcasts—‘‘not in
a spirit of surrender,’’ he later explained to Mary. But the U.S. Army had
moved on, and the o≈cers that had occupied the Hotel Europa were on
their way to Genoa, recently evacuated by the Germans. Ezra climbed back
up the hill, and the two women with one man shared another strained,
silent evening.
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