A Soldier of the Line Summary

Alessandro is sent to work in a marble quarry worked by other prisoners. The hammering and groaning that rise from the white quarry in the moonlight seem surreal to him. After his stint at the quarry, Alessandro is loaded along with hundreds of other Italian soldiers onto a train headed north to another base. The train stops for about 40 minutes in Rome and Alessandro, enraged at Orfeo for having sent him to the quarry, runs into the heart of the city to the Ministry of War intent on killing him. He finds the daffy scribe hiding in a toilet stall in the men's room; he shakes the locked door until its latches fall out of the marble and rushes in with a knife in his hand. In an exchange with Orfeo, Alessandro realizes he is...