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

164 The Road to Hell
called in. ‘‘Due to his age and loss of personality resilience, prolonged
exposure in the present environment may precipitate a mental breakdown,’’
was his report. Pound was moved to the medical compound and
given a standard-issue army tent. July came and went, but there were still
no orders to return the prisoner to the United States.
Olga remained at Casa 60, not knowing where Ezra was—in Italy or
America—trying desperately to get news of him. In the cage at Pisa,
Pound was thinking of her when he wrote:
O white-chested martin, God damn it
as no one else will carry a message,
say to La Cara: amo. (Canto 76)
Olga asked Ezra’s young friend John Drummond, then a lance corporal
in the British Army stationed at Allied Commission Headquarters in
Rome, to make inquiries. When Drummond hunted down Major Amprim,
he was somewhat reassured: ‘‘He [Amprim] appreciates EP’s sincerity,
integrity, and genius, but [will allow] no communication between Pound
and his loved ones,’’ he reported. Amprim was not permitted to tell where
the prisoner was being held. Shortly after Olga received the May 24 note
from Ezra, Dorothy, as next of kin, received her first letter. Remembering
their wartime hardships, he had added a postscript: ‘‘Please see that Olga
has enough money.’’ It must have been di≈cult for Dorothy, but she took
the initiative in writing: ‘‘I am enclosing one of the thousand lire notes that
I found in his room soon after he was taken away. This, as you may
remember, was his money, not mine. We never had a joint account at the
Chiavari Bank. Mine [in London] is blocked.’’
Throughout that long summer, the two women exchanged polite notes
at the Café Yolanda, a central meeting place in Rapallo. When Olga went
to Genoa to send messages to Ezra from both of them, Dorothy protested.
‘‘That trip to Genoa was not a joy ride,’’ Olga reminded Dorothy, angered
by her pettiness; ‘‘I went 20 hours without food. . . . It is of vital importance
to safeguard E’s reputation in every way . . . that cannot be done by
bickering among ourselves or showing anything but a united front to
strangers.’’