The Passing Bells (58 page)

Jacob snapped his fingers for the waiter. The two men sat in silence until the drinks came.

“All right,” Lenard said. “I have found a printer for you, willing, for a price, you understand, to undertake what you want. It is not only money. . . . He lost three sons at Verdun and is understandably bitter about it. The man can be trusted, but the price will be high.”

“Money is not a factor. I want a quality paper.”

“He is capable of it. A master printer.”

Jacob removed a thick envelope from the inner pocket of his coat and placed it in front of Lenard.

“This should show my faith. Take whatever you need for yourself out of it.”

Lenard tapped the envelope with his blunt fingers. “I hope you understand the risks in this, Golden. It is a bad climate for this sort of undertaking. They are sensitive about Verdun. They wish to keep the full truth of that abattoir buried with the corpses. The English, too, with their debacle on the Somme. Any criticism of the war is looked on as treason.”

“I know it.”

“However, there are writers here in Paris who worked for me in the old days. Impassioned, fearless men willing to go to prison for their beliefs.”

“I don't want impassioned writing, Claude. This is not going to be a tract for the Second International.”

“Not spoken as a good Socialist.”

“I'm not a Socialist,” Jacob drawled, “good or otherwise. Politics of all kinds bore me. No, Claude, I am just Jacob Golden, swimming against the tide.”

Lugging a portmanteau from his apartment on the rue Pigalle, Jacob took the Métro as far as Pont de Neuilly and then hired a taxi to take him to St. Germain en Laye. The driver, grumbling because it was a long drive and gasoline was scarce, said he could make more money and use less fuel with short runs. Jacob dipped into his coat again and gave the man double the fare in advance. Money was not a problem—yet. It would be once the paper went into production, but he would contrive some way of getting money out of England. There was no point in worrying about it now, and so he leaned back in the taxi and watched the gaunt winter woods flash by. The third winter of the war. The very trees looked tired.

The house that Martin Rilke had rented was set in the middle of a well-cultivated garden surrounded by dense groves of beech and pine. It was a small two-story house of weathered limestone, built at the turn of the century for the mistress of a Parisian banker. It had stood empty since the Germans threatened Paris in the first weeks of the war.

A tall, forbidding-looking woman with iron-gray hair opened the door. She wore a slate-gray uniform with a tiny red cross stitched above her ample bosom.

“It is not a good idea for Monsieur Rilke to have visitors,” she said with a strong Breton accent. “I hope you will not stay long.”

“Oh,” Jacob replied airily, removing his hat and tossing it neatly onto a hatrack peg, “no more than a week or two.”

Martin sat in a small, comfortably furnished room at the rear of the house, propped up on a couch, his canes resting beside him. He was both surprised and delighted to see Jacob stroll into the room, and tossed aside the book he was reading and fumbled for his canes.

“Jacob! I don't believe it.”

“Ah, how fickle is memory. I sat by your bedside after your second—or was it your third operation? No matter. I was there in your moment of pain and suffering and I wager you can't recall it.”

“That's right. I can't.” He struggled to get to his feet, but Jacob made a gesture of restraint.

“Don't get up for me, for God's sake. Where do you keep the champagne?”

“In the pantry.”

“Well, we shall crack a bottle or two later.” He removed his coat and pulled a chair closer to the couch. “Damn fine little house. You own it?”

“No . . . but I might buy it. The price is cheap enough. The owner still expects hordes of uhlans to come crashing through the woods any day.”

“Come into money, old lad?”

“Back pay and bonuses by the bucketful . . . and my Uncle Paul was so upset I was hurt, he cabled his import agency in Paris to put forty thousand francs in my account. It pays to get hit by a trench mortar.”

“How do you feel?”

“Strong as an ox—until I stand up. But having Madame Lucille nursing me is an incentive to recovery, as rapid as possible.”

“Yes, I met the lady. Pleasant as a prison warder.”

Martin leaned back against the pillows and looked Jacob up and down.

“How come you're not in uniform?”

“Oh, I severed my relationship before coming to France. I've been here for six weeks, by the way. Rented some digs in Montmartre, but there are far too many distractions there. Haven't lost my penchant for chorus girls of low repute, I'm afraid to say. They take far too much of my money, not to mention creating a severe drain on my energies.”

“Wait a second, Jacob . . . go back a bit in the narrative. What did you mean by ‘severed' your relationship?”

“Just that, old fellow . . . I resigned my commission in the Royal Corps of Signals.”

“You can do that in the middle of a war?”

“They're beginning to close the loopholes now that conscription is some sort of reality, but, oh, my, yes, one serves king and country on a strictly volunteer basis. Ranks might enlist for the duration, but officers, being gentlemen, are under no such obligation. Men of breeding simply do not resign, do they? But I did. I then fulfilled the requirements of the new law and registered with the conscription board. I informed them that I was a conscientious objector and skipped over here before I could be rounded up and put to hard, if worthwhile, labor on some sugar-beet farm in Suffolk.”

“You sound awfully damn breezy about it. I never knew you to have strong religious beliefs.”

“I don't, but I do have strong conscientious objections to this war. I consider it to be a foul joke played on mankind. A monstrous deceit. I used to read the battle reports sent in code from Haig's HQ. It amused me to see how the newspapers elevated the capture of a trench into a major victory. It did not amuse me to read how many lives were squandered for possession of the muddy ditch. I've decided to try and do something about it by publishing a newspaper which will print the unvarnished, unglamorized truth.”

Martin whistled softly between his teeth and groped in the pocket of his robe for a cigar.

“You won't get away with it. They close down pacifist newspapers all the time . . . here and in England.”

“I know that, but this won't be a shrill broadside crudely printed on a hand press and tossed around in the streets by young anarchists. This paper will be as sober as the
London Gazette
and as well written as the
Times.
No one who reads it will be able to either dismiss or ignore it. It will contain articles of such documented authenticity that readers will demand inquiries from Parliament or the Chamber of Deputies. It will be published in English and French, by the way. And as for being closed down, once the paper has reached a wide readership, doing so might cause more of a furor than permitting its existence.” He scowled slightly and tugged at one ear. “Of course, reaching that readership might be difficult. The initial distribution will be a problem that I have to solve.”

“You might solve yourself right into big trouble. . . . For sedition in France, for which you could be shot, and for violations of the Defense of the Realm Act in England. Which could land you in the pokey for the rest of the war . . . fifty years, the way things are going. I'd think twice about this if I were you, Jacob.”

“I've thought a thousand times about it. My mind is made up . . . calm, cool, aware of all dangers, but also aware of the rewards. If I can cause just one person to stop singing ‘Rule Britannia!' or the ‘Marseillaise' every time they read an official communiqué from the front, and to begin thinking about this war—to truly ponder the cost of this insanity—then going to jail would be a pleasure.”

“And you want some articles from me—is that what brought you here, Jacob?”

“Yes and no. Yes, I want some articles, unsigned of course, and, no, I didn't come just to mine your experiences. I need a quiet place to stay for a while and I value your company.”

“I value yours, Jacob . . . and your friendship. I wouldn't be much of a friend if I encouraged you in this idea. You know, the cost of the Somme offensive has been pretty much tallied up. England lost four hundred thousand men there in four and a half months—nearly half a million dead, wounded, or missing for six miles of ground. People want something for that price, Jacob. That's why they believe the official reports that tell them it was worth it . . . that something great was accomplished there . . . that the sacrifice had meaning. They'll only reject the truth because it's too damn painful to swallow. No one can stop this war . . . certainly public opinion won't. It has a life of its own now, like some runaway locomotive. Only one side or the other caving in will stop it. Only victory with a fat capital V will stop it. You're just crying in the wind with this newspaper of yours.”

Jacob stood up with a sigh and stretched his arms above his head.

“I surrender to your logic, Martin. I know you're right, but I enjoy crying in the wind on the off-chance that I might just be heard. No, I'll put out a paper and it'll be a damn good one.”

“So Jacob the iconoclast has finally found a cause to believe in.”

Jacob clenched his hands behind his back and walked over to one of the windows. He looked at the neatly trimmed hedges in the garden, which were white with frost.

“Only partially, Martin. There's a side of me that just enjoys running the wrong way in crowds . . . another side that wants passionately to do something in life that has lasting value. Perhaps I was born to lead an army of pacifists. Perhaps not. I shall soon find out. Now then, to more immediate concerns. Where is this pantry of yours and how good's the champagne?”

Madame Lucille of the Croix Rouge was a woman of many objections, and she was not afraid to voice any of them. She objected to visitors, let alone guests, and she objected to the consumption of spirits, the smoking of cigars and cigarettes, and the letting in of fresh air. She also objected to Martin's objections to the food that was served him. Martin had hired a cook-housekeeper who had been recommended by the mayor of St. Germain for her gastronomic skills, but he had yet to see any of her cooking; all he got was gruel, a watery barley soup, and plain boiled chicken. When he demanded that a couple of ducks be roasted, along with potatoes, to celebrate his guest's arrival, Madame Lucille declared that she could no longer be responsible for the health of her patient.

“Good,” Martin said, “that's fine with me. Goodbye.” And that was that.

“What are you going to do for nursing care?” Jacob asked as he carved the ducks.

“Hell, I don't really need nursing care. I get around okay, and the wound on my hip may look ugly as sin, but it's healed. What I need is strength—roast duck . . . roast lamb . . . mutton chops . . . pork chops . . . ham and eggs . . . a liter or two of Burgundy and ten good cigars a day. Anyway, I've got a nurse coming to see me in about a week when she gets her leave. Army nurse. . . . You remember her—Ivy Thaxton. You met her at the flat in London a couple of times.”

“Slender dark-haired girl with violet eyes?”

“That's the one.”

“Not my type. Too fresh and virginal.”

“That's because she is virginal . . . not like the flappers you race after.”

Jacob raised an eyebrow and carved the breast. “Flappers? Right up to date with your slang, aren't you?”

“I keep up with the language. It's my job.”

“Is she going to spend her leave here?”

“I'm going to do my best to talk her into it.”

“Ah.”

“What the hell does ‘ah' mean?”

“Ah means ah. In this case, it means I'll move into that inn down the road while she's here. Three, old boy, is a crowd—although not always to the French.”

She arrived four days before Christmas, on the morning train from Rouen to Paris, and walked the three kilometers from the station to the house, her leather carrying bag slung over one shoulder. Martin, watching for her through the drawing room windows, came out to meet her on the path, walking stiffly with two canes, concealing the pain in his hip with a gritted-teeth grimace. Jacob stood a step behind him, ready to catch his friend should he stumble.

“Why didn't you take a taxi?” Martin called out. “You shouldn't have walked.”

“I love to walk!” Ivy shouted as she came down the long gravel path from the tree-lined road. “And it was only a mile or two.” She stopped in front of him, smiling, brushing a strand of black hair from her forehead. “Oh, my, look at you, the wounded warrior.”

“Just a shell-scratched scribe,” Martin said. He looked her up and down, forgetting the pain in his hip at the sight of her. “Gosh, but you're a tonic, Ivy. Do you remember Jacob?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, holding out her hand. “How are you, Mr. Golden?”

“Jacob,” he corrected. “Only my enemies call me Mr. Golden. Let me take your bag while you help this Boswell of the Somme back to his sofa.”

Ivy wandered about the house while the cook prepared lunch. She looked at everything in silent wonder and then sat in a chair next to the couch where Martin half-reclined, his legs propped up on a pillow.

“It's a beautiful house, Martin.”

“I've never seen the upstairs. Not worth the pain of climbing up there.”

“Don't tell me you sleep on the couch?”

“There's a small room off the hall with a bed in it and a kind of trapeze bar above it so I can lift myself in and out without any trouble.”