A Soldier of the Great War (107 page)

"I still don't understand."

"What if, after having come into the presence of God, in voiceless perfection, in the perpetual stillness that is yoked to perpetual movement, you asked nonetheless to be released, to go back, to descend, to go down, to revert. What if you chose, rather than silver and gold, and white that is too bright to comprehend, the lively pulse of red?

"I have felt that perfection. I have had a glimpse of the light. I have a notion, perhaps more than a notion, of eternity in its flawless and unwanting balance. Compared to it, the brightest moments are but darkness; and singing, like silence. What great sin do I commit, therefore, if I hold that it is insufficient?

"For when I put my arms around her, Ariane was red. Her cheeks and the top of her chest blazed like a burn, or rouge, and the color spread to her breasts and her shoulders and was only dilute once it had cooled by running, like a viscous waterfall, down the length of her back.

"The baby followed his mother in this flash of her coloring like a chameleon following the light. She averted her eyes. She would not look up. Her lips trembled as if in prayer or concentration.

"What if that moment had lasted? What metaphysical rapture could equal it for its substance, its frailty, and its beauty? Haven't we been taught that it's better to live in a simple house overlooking a garden or the sea than to reside in a palace of great proportion?"

"What are you
saying,
Signore?" Nicolò asked.

"I'm saying that now I know exactly what I want, and that though I doubt it fits the scheme of things, I'll chance it nevertheless."

"What happened when you had a baby without being married?" Nicolò asked, returning, as always, to the practical, and pulling Alessandro with him.

"
She
had the baby. I wasn't there."

"You know what I mean."

"Did I mention the priest in the Bell Tower?"

"No."

"In the Bell Tower, on the Isonzo, he would come to say mass, only it wasn't always on a Sunday, it was whenever he wasn't someplace else and the incoming artillery fire was light enough for him to hop through the communications trench.

"The priest was named Father Michele. He was my age. He had an unusual way of speaking, and everything he said seemed to have been questioned and examined just before it left him, as if he had a little inspection box in his head and each sentence underwent a merciless examination there in respect to its truth and its effect.

"His expressions matched his manner of speaking. He had a big nose, deeply set eyes, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a mouth that was almost crooked and had gotten that way, I imagine, as he carefully pronounced each of his carefully chosen words.

"A lot of soldiers interpreted his hesitancy as weakness. At first, I did, too, but, then, watching him, I realized that it was not weakness that made him think carefully and speak haltingly, but integrity. The need to assert puts us in the habit of assertion: he refused that habit, and spoke as if everything were new and untried.

"One day—I don't even remember in what season or what the
weather was like, for in the Bell Tower you sometimes saw nothing but a round circle of sky above the courtyard, and blue does not always tell you very much—he had come to say mass, and was pinned down because the Austrians had concentrated their guns on our sector and we had incoming fire around the clock.

"No one was hurt until the following dawn. A soldier from Otranto ... I didn't really know him. He was seventeen or eighteen." Alessandro stopped, and turned directly to Nicolò. "He looked like
you.
He was young, and he had little to say, and when he spoke he always talked about his parents. His father was a stone mason, and the son revered him as if he were the Pope. Other soldiers made fun of him for it, which hurt him deeply. And his mother, well, you can imagine what he felt about his mother. And he still needed her.

"I hardly knew him. At dawn he went into the courtyard to hang out his socks. Everyone would dash out for a moment or two for that kind of thing. It was a chance you took.

"A forty-five-millimeter shell came in from nowhere. They were so small you didn't hear them until you couldn't do anything about it. It hit the ground at his feet and blew him against the wall, tearing off his right leg and opening a scoop-shaped tunnel into his body. There was blood all over him, organs hanging out.... We had seen it too many times not to know that he was gone.

"He stayed alive for ten minutes. He was conscious, and felt no pain, because he was too far along to feel pain, but he knew he was dying and he felt the holy terror as he slipped away.

"Father Michele went to him, for this was the job, after all, that Father Michele had chosen. He had a bunch of memorized things that he could say, things that had been tested over centuries, and that worked, and that were expected. He was supposed to administer last rites so that he could save the boy's soul.

"I've told you, though, that he took everything for what it was, and judged everything anew. He didn't do what he was supposed to have done. We watched from the doorway, with the door ajar.

"He had gathered the boy in his arms, and he was bathed in his blood, but he held him the way you would hold a baby, and he cried, and he talked to him until he died.

'"I can't see,' the boy said. 'I can't see.' That was the only time that Father Michele quoted the Bible to him. He said, 'Like ... a swallow ... mine eyes fail with looking upward.' The soldier was dying quickly. His soul was halfway to another place.

"The priest said, 'Where you are going there is no fear and there is no dying. Your mother and your father will be there. They'll hold you like a baby. They'll stroke your head, and you'll sleep in their arms, in bliss.'

"'I wish it would be so,' the boy said.

"'It will be so,' Father Michele answered, and he repeated it again and again, 'It will be so, it will be so,' until the boy died.

"Afterward, when he was clean, I approached Father Michele and asked if he believed what he had said. 'No,' he told me, 'but I was praying to God to make it that way.'

"'Aren't you supposed to shut up and expect certain things—blackness if you're an atheist; overwhelming light if you believe?'

"'I suppose one is,' he answered, 'but I took the risk of telling God to His face that He had faltered in the design, that the boy who died today was not in need of splendor, but only of his mother and father. Perhaps I'm a heretic, but I'll deal with that after the war.'

"I found him. It was easy. The Church always seems to know where its priests are, even when they're traveling. He remembered me. His hair had turned almost all gray, but he still had his kindly, hesitant manner.

"I told him the truth, exactly what had happened.

"'The child was conceived out of wedlock,' he said, 'but the child's father was supposed to have been killed in the war. If you marry the mother now, you can adopt him. Then we will "discover" that he is not merely your adopted son, but your natural
born son. So, he
was
your son, he
is
your son, he
will be
your son, you will have married his mother, you will have returned from the dead,' he said, counting on his fingers. 'What more can you want? Five out of six. I have no more fingers on this hand.'

"'I don't want him to suffer illegitimacy,' I said.

"'He won't'.

"'Why?'

"'I'll take care of it.'

"'How?'

"'I don't know, but I will.'

"And he did."

"How?" Nicolò asked.

"He argued for a dispensation, and he got it. The Church made many an exception during the war, and after. The whole world was shattered and I suppose the Pope was trying to put it back together."

"So you married her."

"Of course I married her. Remember what I told you about red on the bride's cheek? I was speaking from experience. She wore a very simple wedding dress; we could afford nothing more. The ring was so thin that it looked like wire. She had no other jewelry, but her hair crowned her face, and through the front of the dress you could see the top of her chest, which was always so beautiful, especially when she blushed. Underneath the satin lace, it looked like a bed of roses.

"Just to think about her makes me happy. When I die, no one will think about her ever again, which is why I've been holding on. On the other hand, if they've all gone somewhere, should I not be delighted to join them, even if it means nothing except to be extinguished? At least I'll have the knowledge, as I slip into the dark, that I'm following, and that I have been loyal in my affections."

"Did you sleep with her?" Nicolò asked.

Alessandro looked at him in disbelief. "Of course I slept with her! She was my wife! I was married to her for thirty-three years!"

"What was it like?"

"You must really be desperate," Alessandro said.

"No," Nicolò protested unconvincingly.

"I should shoot you for asking such a question."

"You have a gun?"

"No, I don't have a gun, but surely you don't expect me to tell you about a private matter like that."

"Why not? You loved her. You said she was beautiful. You talked all around it. Why not?"

Alessandro thought. "All right," he said. "Why not? It's all upwelling to the surface anyway, and if I don't tell you it will vanish with me, into the air, like smoke, whereas, if I tell you, it won't. Perhaps she would be pleased.

"When I was young, I was a good rower, I rode horses, I climbed, I fenced, I was as fit as a leopard. Once, in Bologna, I had an affair with a woman who worked in the library. We lived in the same building, so I would nod to her when I passed the acquisitions desk, or when I met her at the door in the hallway. I won't tell you her name."

"She must be seventy years old!"

"That's not the end of the world. She's probably closer to eighty. She has a memory, don't you think? Anyway, I never associated her with sex or physical desire, although she was pretty enough, and I suppose no one else did, either. I never saw her with another person, and she was always very busy, and always modestly dressed, even in summer. You could hardly tell she was a woman.

"One night in July I was coming down from the roof, where I had gone to sleep because it was so hot in my rooms. At about four in the morning, ash and cinders had begun to rain down on me, probably from a blacksmith's shop where they were trying to get their work done and fires out before midday.

"As I lurched down the stairs, dressed only in rowing shorts, carrying a cotton blanket and a sheet, her door opened about a
finger-length. I stopped to peer into the darkness, and as I did, the door swung open fully, revealing this woman, with her hair down, her glasses off, her face flushed, and her eyes narrowed."

Nicolò's eyes were dancing like glowworms.

"Maybe I shouldn't tell you this," Alessandro said.

"Oh come on!" Nicolò almost screamed.

"It's just by way of illustration. I'm not going to be lewd, not on the day I die."

"Illustrate! Illustrate!" the boy said.

"She was wearing a cotton thing—I never know what to call women's clothing—that had no sleeves, and came up only to just under her arms and down to the top of her thighs. It was supposed to be held up with a string, but the string was untied and its two ends were between her breasts. The only thing that kept the garment from sliding to the floor was the fact that her nipples were stiff and erect."

"What did you do?" Nicolò asked, hardly able to breathe.

"What did I do?" Alessandro echoed contemptuously. "That's the stupidest question I ever heard in my life. I threw myself upon her and she devoured me with every part of her body that could move or be moved. Though it was extraordinarily pleasurable, I felt like a downed wildebeest set upon by a pride of lions. She was everywhere at once. Every touch, at first only
for
her, and then for me, put out ten aggravating fires but started fifteen more. She may have worked in the library but she loosed everything upon me in pitchers-full, with moaning, hyperventilation, finger sucking, and all that.

"Every night for a month. Then I went to the mountains, and when I returned she was gone. I never saw her again.

"I tell you this only by way of illustration."

"Of course. Was it like that with Ariane?"

"No. The library woman, whom I have always remembered as a
succubus...
"

"What the hell is that?" Nicolò asked.

"It's Latin. Look it up. She had me stand on her bed one evening, naked. Then she walked around the bed, with her eyes riveted on me, and she exploded again.

"I could be regarded that way only by a woman slightly akilter in the heat of July, but her adoration opened channels in me, and in her, that were—how shall I say it—quite wide and quite deep.

"I adored Ariane with the same excitement, but with much greater conviction. Of course, we lived in special circumstances. We thought we had lost one another, and when we found that we had not, we were able to be entirely free. I think it takes some terrible or great event to fuse two people together without inhibition. Without heat or shock, it can't be done. I believe that's why sexual love, which needn't be, is so intensely intertwined with sin.

"When Ariane—the woman whom I have loved nearly all my life—and I made love, we reversed the common expectation. Usually, you see, there's a lot of motion over a very short time, but we hardly moved at all, and it went on for hours. We held together, amazed, locked like cats. And though we would hardly move, we would sweat, flesh to flesh, and our engagement was so tight, stiff, and exhausting that it was hallucinatory.

"She had beautiful, perfectly shaped, glacially white teeth, and when they were wet with saliva they glistened, and I thought of them as the gate to her soul. I kissed them, and I kissed them, and I kissed them. I loved her."

"I've never touched a woman," Nicolò said, in deep despair.

"You will. It'll take you years to learn what to do—not because it's a matter of technique, but precisely because it isn't. It's a matter of deep understanding, and of love. Nowadays, people have a problem with sex, I think. Popular culture is obsessed with it. It has become almost a sickness. It never was when I was a boy, and when I was in my prime.