A Soldier of the Great War (108 page)

"Everyone seems to have forgotten that sexual love exists for two purposes," he said, "to unite a man and a woman, and, there
fore, to make babies. If you don't understand this, your pleasure will be merely superficial."

"That's what the Pope says!" Nicolò stated with the urgency of a pheasant leaping from cover. "That's
exactly
what the Pope says."

"And he's right, though how he knows is anyone's guess. "Why do you think priests are celibate? Yes, yes. To devote themselves to God, but what does that mean? It means that they don't have to choose between God and family. It means that, at the end, they're free to go to glory and beams of light and all that—because, you see, if they had a wife and children, all the ecstasy and beams of light would not be enough."

"You're really an old guy, aren't you?"

"I am. You, on the other hand, are modern. You are at the very top of the hill of history, looking back and down. You see old people like me in outlandish clothes, moving stiffly and stupidly, and you, you can do immortal cartwheels. I remember that. I remember the pleasure that came purely from the enjoyment of moving my limbs—like an electric current, a happy electric current."

"Yeah."

"But what will you look like to the generations that will supersede you? For one, they won't be able to tell the difference between you and me. We'll be the same, we, who are so modern, the culmination of all human graces, we, who wear glass crystals in frames resting in front of our eyes, whose teeth are inlaid with gold and silver, whose skin is painted with pictures of beasts and ships, who wear coats of animal skin and fleece, and walk about with our feet wrapped in the scraped hide of cows; we, who blow ourselves up with grenades and bombs, and carry lit tubes of burning leaves so that we may inhale the smoke, who imbibe with rapture the juice of rotted fruit, and then vomit on the street, and who lovingly eat live molluscs, raw meat, and old goat's milk riddled with mold."

"You're just jealous."

"Maybe."

"I never met a guy who agrees with the Pope about sex."

"Not a hundred percent."

"How many?"

"Seventy-five."

"You believe seventy-five things?"

Realizing that Nicolò had no understanding of percentages, Alessandro said, "Yes, I do."

"You expect me to believe them, too."

"I don't care. It's up to you. I have my own problems."

"But usually old guys like you want everyone else to believe what they do—and watch out if you don't."

"The dumb ones, the ones who have burnt out."

"What about priests?"

"It's their job, like making propellers, or cleaning steeples. A job always conquers your reticence. And the best ones, like Father Michele, never seem to care about how you think—although they really do, but they leave it to you."

"So you don't care what I do?"

Alessandro threw his hands up. "I hope the best for you. You'll have to make a thousand correct decisions and weather ten thousand mistakes, but I won't be there. I wasn't there even for my son."

"He was your only son?"

"Yes."

 

T
HE SUN
cleared the eastern ridges of the Apennines, having pushed a crescent of itself over the inflamed hills as if to begin its white barrage from a firing slit. Alessandro squinted at it, having saved his eyes all his life to see now that its surface was like a pocket in the waves under a high wind, swirling in contradiction and counterpoint within an arc as luminous and clear as crystal. It ascended in perfect containment, its detonations noiseless, its fires compressed, and it floated over the mountains, flooding them with light.

"I realize only now that I have been cold," Alessandro said as the sun's heat warmed him. "Have you ever wondered what the stars would be like up close?" he asked Nicolò. "They would be like this," he said, shielding his eyes, finally, with his hand. "As you reached them and you sailed by, they would flare and burn, their gases in tumult like the pool under the piston of Niagara.

"The sun is what starts Rome in the morning. The sun pushes the buses out of their garages, unfurls the sails of boats, and opens the office doors. It puts all those little cars on the highways, their engines yammering like uncontrollable bowels. I hate cars, I've always hated cars. They're ugly. They're ugly, anyway, compared to a horse, which is beautiful. They make the air wavy and dirty with their exhausts, and now the whole city rumbles when once it was silent enough for the wind to be heard in the trees."

"You sound like Orfeo," Nicolò told him.

"No. I've adjusted to the way things are, but I've never forgotten the way they were. He, the little maniac, never adjusted to the way things were, but he forgot entirely the way they had been. He was foolish not to have fallen in love with the typewriter. Someday, the typewriter will be obsolete, antique. He should have known that.

"When I was a boy, most of the country around Rome was good for hunting. You could ride to the sea through forests and fields, and never see a road. The fields were deep green, and, where ditches cut through them, or a riverbank was exposed, the red was very rich.

"Two months ago, in June, I took an afternoon walk and continued on into the night."

"Oh! You do that?"

Alessandro smiled. "I guess I do. At four in the morning I crossed the new ring road they're cutting around Rome. Men were working under banks of electric lights. As their machines roared, they seemed possessed, like squadrons of infantry pressed beyond
endurance, running on will and fear. They clenched their teeth as they attacked a hill. They blasted and cut, and before they got down to the chalk that filled the air with dust and smoke they had to cross-section a clay bank. There, as the machines whined, I saw the same color red that I had known when the land now a highway was a long alley of pheasants in golden brush.

"If you cut into a limb of the modern world, the blood is the same. I had seen that on the Isonzo, but the lesson was late in coming."

"But what about your son?"

"When I was in training, before I knew what it was going to be like, even though I had read of the carnage in France—you simply cannot understand until you face it yourself—they marched us to a theater in Lucca, half a day from camp...."

"Signore..."

"We thought the march was a field exercise or part of our physical training. They never tell you anything. They're like God. You learn to live in mystery and anger.

"We carried half packs and bayoneted rifles. I don't recall the organization of the training cadres, but we were about two thousand men. Rain threatened all morning, and now and then a huge dusty drop would smack you in the face, but the sky didn't break until after we got to the theater.

"Half of us marched in, and the other half was drawn up into ranks out front. The theater had just been remodeled, and the architects wanted to test the acoustics. For this they needed bodies, and the military analogy must have struck them, as indeed it should have.

"As soon as we had taken our seats we had our first view of war—an argument of epic proportion between the stage manager and architects on one side, and our major on the other. The civilians were unhappy that their test, for which they had positioned all kinds of meters and cones to measure and absorb the sound, would be biased by the forest of bayonets that shot upward from the seats.

"Two acoustics idiots made the mistake of attacking and insulting the major in front of half his men. He could not possibly back down. 'Unsheathe bayonets!' he screamed out to us. The sheaths came off, truly, in a flash. The noise was chilling, and the smell of gun oil immediately filled the air.

"I remember the expression of the two idiots. They, like everyone else in the world, hadn't realized what they were up against, and they also didn't know that our major was having fun. 'First and Second Battalions,
Fanteria,
stand.' We stood, in unison. In unison, the seats sprang back. 'Ready!' he barked. Our rifles were raised to our shoulders. 'Aim!' he shouted.

"We aimed at the two acoustics idiots. We hadn't loaded, but they didn't know anything. The major looked at them and said, 'Please be so kind as to present the full body of your concessions and apologies,' and when they had, the major ordered us to remove the bayonets.

"With peace restored, they began to test. The theater grew dark, the curtain lifted, and though the stage was empty, the lights, in all their marvelous and exciting colors, rose into an expectant glow, and into the circle they made came a young woman. A murmur arose among the thousand recruits. Most audiences at the opera are not armed, and they have not been deprived of femininity for months on end. She was as nervous as a candle in hell, but then the orchestra began to play, and she sang.

"A huge
Ah!
came from the soldiers—I myself said it—when we realized that she was singing the
'Addio del passato'
from
La Traviata,
a song about a woman who looks back upon a past that has vanished, and begs God for His mercy.

"She sang beautifully, or perhaps she didn't, but it was the most beautiful singing I had ever heard. She looked out upon us, and I think that she, too, was moved. Then it began to rain. We could hear the wind and the rain on the roof high above, and occasional thunder, like artillery, echoing among the hills of Lucca.

"In the storm, her singing grew more and more beautiful. At
every second repetition, a company would leave, and another would come in from the outside. Those who had been standing in the rain were so cold that they trembled. The ones who left had an air of hopelessness. It touched her. It must have.

"And then she had to rest, and they brought out a tenor, who sang the
'Parigi.'
That was inimitably beautiful, and we, who were as hard as rock and inured to simulations of despair, sat in the darkness and cried. The two singers knew that many of us would soon be killed, and their singing came from the heart. I still hear it. I can summon it. I still hear the rain on the roof. Oh, at times you could hardly hear the rain, but it was there."

"Signore," Nicolò said. "Before I go, if I go..."

"In a great aria," Alessandro went on, as if he had not heard Nicolò, and perhaps he had not, "purity and perfection of form are joined to the commanding frailty of a human soul, and when those elements are knit, an arresting battle follows. Once, on the Cima Rossa, I saw an eagle dive at great speed into a group of birds that had been circling around the mountain. The eagle was in command of the forces that can put you in thrall enough for you to forget and relinquish life; the birds were the life that, despite its weakness and vulnerability, or perhaps because of it, rose above the perfections arrayed against it. Watching the eagle destroy the pack of birds, I hardly breathed. To one who lived with violence and death, it was especially poignant to see them assailed, but I had the sense that the meaning of it did not stop there, that of this battle something would come other than suffering. I still suspect it, I still sense it, I still want it, and still I have not seen it. But, think, if darkness did not exist, how would you know light? You wouldn't."

"Your son," Nicolò interrupted.

Alessandro drew himself up and tilted his head back so as to see a sky that was now too full of early morning light to be blue. Then he dropped his head upon his bent fingers and bent wrist, and pressed his forehead so hard that it whitened. His slow and deliberate breathing sounded like the contented breathing of deep sleep.

He opened his left eye, just his left eye, and looked at Nicolò askance. He lifted his head. The white mark began to redden to the color of the red ring around it. For the first time that Nicolò could remember, Alessandro looked bitter, twisted, and angry.

"My son was killed in Libya in nineteen forty-two," Alessandro said, "when he was twenty-three years of age."

"How was he killed?"

"I don't know. He was a machine-gunner, and at first he was listed as missing. In view of my own experiences and the conduct of the war, I knew that he might have been captured.

"The British tore our divisions to pieces. Had it not been for the Afrika Korps it would have been over very quickly, but with the Germans stiffening us we had the opportunity to lose many more men. The Germans kill and die for principles of order. To them, these have more force and appeal than life itself. Such frenzies completely puzzle us, and we don't know what to do when faced with them. It was in the desert, in nineteen forty-two, and I don't know how he was killed.

"We didn't admit that he was dead, until several years after the war, when all the prisoners had come home: even those, the ones with the whitened lips, from Russia. We didn't admit it until we went to the battlefield itself. A British officer took us through the mines. He said that no one was recognizable, and that we would find only bones that had been picked clean and scattered in fights between vultures and dogs. We said we wanted to go anyway. We wanted to see. He had been our only child.

"Anyone who might have seen what had happened to Paolo had most likely been killed himself, and the men in his company—they moved across the sand in companies—who were left to tell the tale of the battle in which he was killed, hadn't been anywhere near him.

"The battlefield was what you would expect: sand, metal, and bones. They brought the bones home, eventually, and buried them all together. We had touched some, in looking for identification
tags. Ariane held her fingers to her breast for days thereafter, thinking that she might have touched our son. On the way in, the half-track in which we were riding drove over something that a few years before had been a man. The officer was kind: he apologized again and again, and we passed across the rocky ground without even blinking. All the time, I was unable to rid myself of the thought that this was the last place my son had ever seen, and, because the battle had been at night, the passionless landscape, with nothing soft, and nothing green, had been lit only by flashes and reflections in the smoke. I was familiar with the sounds and patterns of light that he had seen, and so was Ariane, even if only from a distance.