Cioffi stepped back to avoid the spray. He waved a fist at the last truck as it moved off. The soldier standing in the open tailgate grinned and showed him a middle finger. The water soaked through Cioffi’s broken shoes. He looked around him. He had come as far as the university. Across the road from him was the darkened facade of the main building. Seeing it, he thought of another day when soldiers in trucks had crowded the boulevard, though then it had been Germans, not Americans. On that day the trucks had not driven past. Instead, they had stopped and the soldiers had climbed down and begun to herd the people together. They pushed everyone into the roadway and set up barricades to pen them in as if they were so much livestock brought to market. After that another truck, with a flatbed, arrived; on the back of it was a newsreel camera. A German officer came forward and climbed the steps of the university. He wore a smart grey uniform, freshly brushed and with polished buttons that gleamed in the late summer sun.
