He has brought his Puccini records with him, and he likes to sit on his verandah and drink uzo and smoke cigars and daydream about Rome and what he will do when he returns. He is happy. Then World War II begins. He is taken prisoner. Every day is the same, though.
Every meal is the same.
Nobody knows when the war is going to end. People are fighting and dying all over Europe, but he is stuck in a P.O.W. camp, doomed to eat three bland meals a day and sun himself in the equatorial sun and write in his journal. A year passes, and Benuzzi feels himself going mad. He cannot sleep. He cannot eat.