The Illusion of Separateness (10 page)

JOHN

FRANCE,

1944

I.

W
HEN
J
OHN WAS
about seven years old, he killed a bird.

There was a park near the diner on Long Island, and he used to go there with the other boys to run, shout, and play games. One day someone had a slingshot, and they all took turns firing. When it was John’s turn to try, he found a small round stone, then placed it in the slingshot the way the others had shown him. He closed one eye and took aim at some distant birds in a tree. Nobody could believe it when, from high up in the branches of an old elm, a small body fell to earth.

The other boys patted John on the back and crowded around the lump.

Over dinner that night, John threw up on his plate. As his mother cleaned him off in the bathroom, she noticed his eyes were red from crying. They sat on the couch. John could hardly get the words out.

His father stood quietly and fetched their coats.

He held his hand on the way to the park but they didn’t speak. It was cold. People walked their dogs and smoked cigarettes. An old couple out strolling said
good evening
with a smile. The ease of their lives stung sharply.

When they arrived at the park, it was still on the concrete with its legs in the air. They dug at the base of the tree with stones, then John placed the animal in with both hands, and filled the hole.

After several hours, John removed the gun from the enemy soldier’s mouth, and rolled off him.

They both had some food, which they shared into a small meal.

Then, without a single word, they stood up and walked away in opposite directions.

John wandered the countryside in a haze for several hours.

Night came again, and the fields around were soon flooded with Allied soldiers. Summer came that night too, and the sky was empty and cool. The stars were crisp, and the planets spun on threads.

It had all been imagined somehow. Harriet, the diner, his sketchbooks, Sunday—not only in name but in feeling. John knew his life had value, because he would die with someone to live for.

He reached for the photograph of Harriet, the one he took at Coney Island. He searched every pocket of his wet, torn clothes, with his eyes barely open, and his body burning hot. But then he remembered taking off from RAF Harrington, and the impact he thought was death, and the smoke, and the freezing descent. Paul and the sticky dolls, the smallest cross, the silent barber and his journey through fields in darkness. His best friend, Leo Arlin, from Brooklyn, the Glen Miller Orchestra, his parents’ faces, Lord & Taylor, Harriet proposing to him in Montauk, snowfall, the sound of cars passing his bedroom window at night. Bare feet. Coney Island in summer.

He could see his wife so clearly now—hear her laugh, even. It was really a fine afternoon. The subway cars were full of soldiers. Harriet had to sit on his lap. The weight of her body on his legs was like paradise, and he promised her, in that last great surge of youth, that he would not die unless they were together—even if a picture was the best he could do.

She said that one day they would be very old, that the world would be a different place, but it would always be
their
world, and that the time apart now would be a nightmare from which they would recover—desperation buried under years of happiness.

He groped again for the photograph of his wife, because without it, he could not go on.

AMELIA

EAST SUSSEX, ENGLAN
D,

2010

I.

G
RANDPA’S NURSE SAID
he had been acting strangely for a few days, giving her things, asking if she was happy. She said he made her promise to water his plants and feed the hedgehogs that come to the back door at night if anything happened to him.

Mom thinks he knew.

The night before the service I couldn’t sleep. Philip tried to stay up with me but fell asleep in his clothes.

In the morning, we went downstairs and made coffee. I didn’t say anything, so Philip took me outside for a walk. It was cold and the grass was wet. He led me into a field. The ground was soft, but I could hear something coming toward us and sensed danger. When I asked Philip what it was, he said cows were following at a distance.

When we got back to the house, I felt empty and couldn’t stop crying. In the end I didn’t know who I was crying for, but it was something my body wanted to do, as though trying to digest grief.

A
week later on the flight home, there was severe turbulence. A few people screamed, so the pilot came out to reassure us—which Philip thought was funny.

I thought of Grandpa John parachuting into enemy territory from the fireball of his burning plane. And then all that time in France and then in hospital, not knowing if he was even going to live, not knowing if he would see my grandmother again. Philip said that if he hadn’t survived, I wouldn’t have been born.

I went to sleep thinking about it. I wondered who would live in our house now if I hadn’t been born? I wondered who would have my seat on the bus every day into the city, who would sit next to Philip in his truck on long drives?

One day Philip and I will be old—and this flight home to New York will be a silent flickering, something half imagined. Grandpa John will have been dead for many years.

After Philip and I die, there will be no one left to remember Grandpa John and then no one left to remember us. None of this will have happened, except that it’s happening right now.

There will be no Amelia, yet here I am.

I wonder how our bodies will change as we get old. I wonder how we’ll feel about things that haven’t happened to us yet.

When we get back to our cottage in Sag Harbor, I’m going to invite all our friends to a summer party, and I’m going to laugh, and put my arms around them. And then I’m going to lead Philip up to bed by the hand, finding the candles by heat, and blowing them out one by one, as we, one day, will be vanquished with a last puff and then nothing at all—nothing but the fragrance of our lives in the world, as on a hand that once held flowers.

MR. HUGO

FRANCE,

1944

I.

W
H
EN A HEAVY WEIGHT
suddenly rolled on top of A, panic tore through his body, separating muscle from thought. Then a gun rammed into his mouth. The top of his throat is bleeding. The attacker has clenched teeth. His eyes are wild and bloodshot. Gasping with fear, A is unable to breathe. The barrel digs into his flesh. The taste of blood like old keys.

The other soldiers in his unit had been dead since yesterday afternoon, spread out across the field, dismembered by strafing. They had marched all day with nothing to eat. Then the steady drone of aircraft. A was the only one not running. He anticipated a quick but painful end with brief awareness of shredding. But as the Spitfire pilot dived upon them and they scattered like a flock of clumsy, wingless pigeons, irony tripped A backward into a tank track, where he remained unconscious long enough for exhaustion to swallow his trembling young frame.

After a period of searing pain, the gun in A’s mouth stopped pushing, but remained beyond his teeth. A touched the barrel with his tongue. He wondered if there were any bullets left in the chamber or if his attacker was too injured to fire.

Eventually, A’s thoughts drifted to more remote regions. His mother seemed close, even though he had no memory of her face or her voice, or of ever being touched by her hands.

He remembered something from one of her books. He had found a box of them in the attic.

If it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come.

He was thinking of his mother and her books, and the feel of their pages on his small fingers when the man finally removed the gun from his mouth. A did not move his body. His trousers were soaked with urine, and his lips and mouth cracked with dried blood.

When the man rolled off and slumped down beside him, A reached slowly for his own gun, which he set in the mud beside the other weapon.

He wondered if his attacker was dead. His eyes had closed and he was not moving. He must have been some local Résistant, for he was not in any uniform. Perhaps a farmer driven by the rage of loss.

A touched the man’s cheek with the back of his hand. Then he foraged in his pocket and unwrapped a caramel he had been saving. He pushed it through the man’s lips. The eyes did not open, but the jaw turned slowly. His face and neck were like wet sand.

After a few painful chews, the man sat up, but didn’t seem to know where he was. A watched as he reached into his pocket and pulled out some dried meat and a bread roll. He dipped the roll in a puddle and broke it in two pieces.

When they finished eating, both men stood up and walked away in opposite directions.

D
espite the state of his lips and gums, A stopped from time to time, to pick a blade of grass and balance it in his mouth, the way he used to as a boy.

When he first joined the Hitler Youth, he was presented with a dagger. His father kept taking it down off the mantelpiece to look. He participated in all the programs because it’s what the other boys were doing, and it was nice being in the woods, away from his father, and away from the house. He got through heavy days of training, because the nights were long and full of luxury. Sometimes he lit a candle and read a book.

During one of these weekends, a cabin monitor found a volume of poetry in his pillowcase and reported it. A explained to the chief that his mother had died when he was very young, and in the attic while searching for a compass, he discovered a chest of her things. The book was returned to him, but the other boys turned against him after that. One told him that young men should lift weights and wrestle.

One afternoon when his father was out, A found another book. It was a slim volume with sentences that flowed from his mouth like warm water.

A
slept under a tree the first night. It was humid and the sky was overcast. In the morning he opened his eyes and lay without moving. There were birds everywhere. He need only be killed and it would be over.

He might even see his mother. But how would he explain the things he had let himself do?

He bent back thorny branches to find berries growing in the hedgerows.

He measured distance by his position to the sun.

For two days he walked in circles, then hunger compelled him east, where he imagined other Nazi divisions were digging in. He would be fed and looked after. There would have to be a report. At first he would not be without blame, not without suspicion. Then a fresh uniform and a place to sleep.

Imagining all this, A longed for another chance to be cut down by some low-flying Englishman in a fast plane. He should have given up earlier. He should have buried his dagger in the garden to go blunt. He had heard about the others, those in his village who disagreed, or thought Hitler was mad, or sympathized with the condemned. They quickly disappeared, leaving their families to continue on without them in disgrace and longing.

And when the war started, there was gossip it would end early with concessions and treaties and brass bands. But it did not, and he was soon part of a convoy headed for France. The older troops who fought in the first war told them it would be a battle with the French to the death. But then the vicious army they imagined did not appear, or they were in the wrong place, and it would come later.

T
here
were
attacks, but they were isolated and unorganized. A’s first kill was a figure shooting at him from across a river. And then a boy his own age at close range whose throat opened like a pair of wings.

He did what they told him to do. He would have done anything they told him to do. He hid inside the pronoun
we
.

I
n the afternoon, a squadron of bombers flew over at low altitude and dropped their load several kilometers ahead. Distant thunder. Silent plumes of crow-black smoke.

A continued over the fields, his muddied jacket under one arm as though out for a country stroll.

One kilometer or so later, A came upon a barn on fire. The earth was dug out in places and there was splintered wood.

On the ground were the charred remains of a woman still holding a bucket. The flames crackled and tore at the afternoon. A sat where he could feel the heat of the burning wood.

When the wind changed, an edge of the farmhouse roof caught fire. A had been thinking how he might stay there for a few days, but the whole house would soon be engulfed. At the last minute A realized that there might be food inside, and hurried toward the kitchen door.

It was cool and shady. There were stone floors and heavy plates in a line on a shelf. The plates were light brown with thin cracks that made them seem old, like faces with nothing to say and nothing to see. One smaller plate had rabbits painted on it. The rabbits were in top hats. An inscription on the plate said:

Le Lièvre: Il y a souvent plus de courage à fuir qu’à combattre.

A once had a pet rabbit. It was called Felix and used to follow him around in the fields beyond the cottage. A used to lie on his back and Felix would sniff him and A would giggle. One night over dinner, A’s father couldn’t stop laughing. After watching his son eat a second helping of stew, he told him to go check on Felix.

S
unlight reached in through the farmhouse window with arms of smoke. On the table was a knife and squares of fabric cut into rectangles. There were also large safety pins, which glinted in the sunlight.

After a quick search, A found three onions in a basket and a few sticks of old celery. There was also a pitcher of milk with an inch of cream at the top. A cradled everything into his arms and was about to leave when he glanced at the rabbit plate and considered how it would feel to have a book, any book, even one in French that he would not fully understand. He dumped everything outside and ran upstairs.

The landing was thick with smoke and A had to hold his breath. In the first room was a pair of narrow beds with two white blankets, frayed but pulled neatly over pillows. There were two bedside tables of dark wood, a square clock, and a wooden closet with mirrors set in the doors.

A rushed to the window and flung it open. He filled his lungs with clean air, as smoke poured out over his shoulders. From the second floor he could see the body of the woman more clearly. The heat from the burning roof was intense.

A went back into the room and scooped out an armful of men’s clothes that were hanging in the closet. He tossed them through the open window and watched them flutter to the ground.

In the second room was a chest of drawers and, to A’s utter delight, a small stack of books. There was little time to choose, so A grabbed the thickest volume, which he then dropped in his excitement. As he bent down to pick it up, he noticed at the far end of the room a mess of blankets and a makeshift crib from which a round face was blinking furiously.

II.

A
SET T
HE
screaming child down by the cow fence and covered the body of the woman with his jacket. He changed out of his ruined uniform and dressed in the shirt, trousers, and jacket from upstairs. Then the baby stopped crying and watched A roll his old clothes into a ball and toss them into the fire.

There was a cattle trough by the fence, brimming with rainwater. Insects skimmed along the top. Dead slugs had turned white and rolled at the bottom. A splashed the mud and smoke off his face, then brushed back his hair with both hands.

When the baby started crying again, A fetched the pitcher of milk and put some cream on his finger. The child took it eagerly then reached for more. A tried many positions, but not one of them seemed appropriate for feeding. He had never witnessed a child fed by a mother before, nor felt the warmth of another human body against his. The child, being turned sideways, and spun, and held upside down by A, thought it was a game, and his crying turned to laughter.

In the end, A poured milk into the palm of his hand and the child licked it out. After a dozen palmfuls, the child looked up and made a noise that sounded like
meow
.

They sat there for a long time deciding what to do.

The child kept looking around. A knew why, and it filled him with despair.

At the edge of the farm was a gate. A few birds had perched to watch the flames. A imagined another child waiting at another gate for his father, and recalled vividly the forms and faces of those men he had cut down.

And through all this, the child clung to him, and A clung to the child.

They had a long way to go.

This would be the first day.

III.

H
IS FATHER WOULD
think he had been killed. He could read books again, sit in fields, fall asleep outside, and go back to the secret rural life he so enjoyed. He could raise the child as his own son, teach him to read and write. They would take all their meals together, make each other laugh, grow things in a small garden, and go swimming in summer, when the rivers were shallow.

His mother seemed to him now more alive than she ever had—as though he were taking over from her somehow and the child in his arms was himself.

He knew that people would be suspicious of a young man who didn’t speak—but he had a baby. He was carrying a person too young to know about war.

Slow convoys of German soldiers eyed A and the child with indifference. French peasantry who, on getting little response to their questions, threw their hands in the air or hurled insults that A did not understand. After a few days, they were both desperately hungry, and the child wouldn’t stop crying. If not for an old woman who noticed a man and baby stumbling along the road—it might have ended for both of them quite soon.

H
er first task was to feed the child, but just enough to begin the process of eating again.

The woman had a skeletal face with deep-set, serious eyes that gave the appearance of chronic disapproval. She arranged her gray hair meticulously, in the style of a bourgeois. A thought that at one time she had probably been quite beautiful. He wondered if she had any children, and where they were. A dry mop stood upside down in the corner of her sitting room like someone watching, and beside the fire there were two wooden armchairs, one of which appeared unused. There were sheets of newspaper on the floor, and from time to time, a cat wandered past with its tail up.

A’s silence did not seem to bother the woman. She had lived alone for a long time and was not used to speaking. Her initial fear was that the man would beat her. But after a few hours, her fear was that they would leave.

A sipped hot broth before a crackling fire, and watched the old woman lay the baby on a towel, then unpin the soiled cloth around its bottom. She wiped gently with a warm rag and the child screamed. She rinsed out the rag and continued wiping. The flesh on the child’s genitals and upper legs was raw. The child was screaming with such force that his face had turned blue. A put down the bowl of broth and went to him.

When the child saw A, he calmed a little and his screaming turned to crying. After several shallow breaths, he fell silent and reached out his hands. A touched them. The woman smiled and applied a white paste to the baby’s raw skin with her fingers.

The next day she cut up one of her old dresses and showed A how to pin a piece of fabric safely onto the child.

After they had eaten supper that night, she demonstrated how to hold the baby against his shoulder, and pat the middle of his back.

In a trunk upstairs, the woman found A a pair of shoes, which were too big, but cushioned his ruined feet as they foraged each night in the dusk for potatoes, turnips, carrots, or anything remotely edible. Whatever they unearthed was first offered to the child.

One day a man knocked on the door. When the woman opened it and spoke to him, he said he was lost, but couldn’t stop looking at A, who stood behind with the baby. The next day, two men kept walking past the house and trying to look in. When gunshots were heard in a nearby field that evening, A decided they would leave at dawn.