Marson, Mario and America's Pastime

    In Richarch Bausch's "Peace" the character of Corporal Marson befriends an inquisitive and bright Italian teenager in the town of Palermo while waiting for a mission which has been delayed. The boy, Mario, brings Marson and his fellow soldiers the higher quality wine, which has been stashed away so it may not be wasted on American GI's. Through the course of days and weeks Marson spends with Mario, he discovers that Mario had once spent a summer in New York City and is a fan of the New York Yankees. While in New York, Mario learned to speak English and thus can communicate with Marson, a former pitcher for the Washington Senators. Mario tells Marson that Babe Ruth literally built Yankee stadium, which of course is figurative, a word Marson explains the meaning of to Mario (53-54). In this sense, myth has become a story that, in his youthful and foreign naivety, Mario believes as fact. If storytelling, as Benjamin explains in his essay, is meant to convey and spread information, it also spreads legend. The stories of Ruth's superhuman abilities have spread to a remote Italian village and helped create a connection between a young man and an American soldier, who happens to have formerly been a pitcher, the most important position, in America's (not Italy's) pastime. The relationship between Marson and Mario represents the futility of war's "us vs. them" mentality. Mario and Marson have much in common, and if Mario were a few years older Marson would possibly be obligated to kill him in battle. Instead they drink wine together and talk baseball. An even more significant connection between the two is that they are both left-handed (55). As being left-handed is much rarer than the opposite, this connects the two even further. "I love left-handed people and I feel myself to be a brother to them all," Mario states (55). Marson is unable to tell Mario that he too is left-handed because it would force him to think of his life in Washington, one that he does not allow himself to consider returning to because of the probability of his death in battle. The storytelling of the great players of the Yankees provides a comfort to Marson, a reminder of home and a world outside of war torn Europe, yet when the story drifts to more personal aspects of his own former life, storytelling provides the opposite: a reminder of the very real chance he may never return home. Storytelling connects these two humans from opposite countries and backgrounds, provides a common ground and needed distraction from the horrors Marson is facing, yet is also discomforting for its reminder of the dire truth of Marson's current, tentative situation.