by Mark Helprin
The Austrian nodded.
"Are you going to die?"
"Nein," was the answer, the abruptness of which Alessandro associated not with rudeness but with vigor.
Alessandro looked around the room. Three bodies were beginning to stiffen where they lay, and the floor was covered in sheets of frozen blood. As always, the dead were sprawled in positions of shock and regret.
Everything that Alessandro had arranged on tables and shelves was now rubble. Beans and rice littered the floor like hail and gravel, stuck in the congealed blood and piled up in drifts in the corners. Bandoliers of bullets had blown apart, the shelves were splintered, cans of fish had been compacted until some of them leaked oil. Everything was everywhere—the pages of the Vita Nuova scattered like leaflets dropped from an airplane, instruments and metal pieces embedded in wood and strangely bent, half the messages on the wall blackened by fire. Alessandro had no idea how he had survived, but he noticed that rounded things—bullets, grenades, round cans, anything with a roll to it—had fared better than objects with corners and flat surfaces. The telephone looked mortally wounded; one of its coils had unsprung and popped out to the side like a horizontal jack-in-the-box. "I'll have to take you back," he said to the survivor.
The Austrian grimaced as if to question Alessandro's ability to do it.
"Don't worry," Alessandro assured him. "A line of heavy bolts goes all the way down. You'll be safe. If you stay here you're sure to die."
Alessandro holstered the pistol, strapped down the hammer, and got the first-aid kit. The bullet had not exited, but appeared to have smashed a rib and come to rest. After cutting bandages for making a splint, and laying them out in front of him, Alessandro cleaned the wound, put a gauze pad over it, and had the Austrian hold it as tightly as he could. He then went looking for a piece of wood.
He found some boards, unwound another roll of gauze, and reached for the scissors. They weren't there. He looked near his right hand, where he thought he had left them. He looked to the left. Giving up, he would tear the gauze, and had lifted his elbows in the symmetrical gesture common to those about to rip bandages or tape. Then he hesitated, but it was already too late.
With all his remaining strength, the wounded soldier brought his right arm up from the ground in a powerful arc and drove the scissors into Alessandro's chest. Alessandro fell back, clutching at the blades embedded in the muscle over his heart and crying out with pain. He was so shocked that he hardly understood as the soldier desperately tried to pull the pistol from its tight holster. Alessandro rolled across the bodies on the floor. He ended up on his side, resting on top of a corpse. The pain in his chest was unbearable, and when he pulled out the scissors he nearly fainted again. His shirt and sweater were covered with blood.
The Austrian soldier was trying to reach him, gasping as he crawled over the bodies of his friends, but he stopped short when he saw the pistol that one of them was holding. It was still loaded. Alessandro shook his head, as if to give him one more chance, but the Austrian didn't believe him, and rushed for the pistol.
Alessandro unstrapped his revolver and jerked it from the holster. This was a race in which he could afford to be careful. He raised the gun and aimed it, and as the other soldier pulled the semi-automatic from the dead man's grip, Alessandro cocked the hammer with his thumb.
Realizing that he was too late, the Austrian laughed, and turned to Alessandro. "I'm thirsty," he said, smiling coyly, as if he were going to live.
WITH THE sound of the last shot still ringing in his ears, Alessandro went to the shutter and pushed it open. The world outside was bright blue, the air cold and clean. "Still alive," he said to himself as he looked out on the great mountain ramps, and then the real Work began.
Because he couldn't bind the wound, he had to press against it with his hand. He might have weighted a thick wad of alcohol-soaked gauze, placed it over the cut, and taken to bed, but he had too much to do.
First he threw out the bodies, which in some ways was more difficult than killing the men in the first place. They made no protest as he dragged them to the window, and as he struggled to hoist them to the sill their arms and legs hung like loose brush and their eyes focused on inappropriate targets at inappropriate distances. He tossed them into the air, and they fell like cannon shells. He knew that eventually he would see them on the glacier below, half covered with snow, their limbs broken and skulls smashed, their skin parchment-colored and blue. The last was still warm.
Alessandro closed the hatch and one of the shutters so that the freezing air would cease to blow violently through his shattered quarters. After he went through the rubble, throwing out everything that had been irreparably spoiled, he began to arrange what was left.
Because half the kerosene containers had burst and he would have to make fires, he piled all the splintered and broken wood in a corner. Weapons, ammunition, climbing equipment, tools, clothing, and cooking utensils were sorted, with items needing repair set apart.
He remounted the table upon its trestle, fixed his bed, and reordered the books, most of which had been blown apart at the spine. The Vita Nuova took the longest to collect, and some of its pages remained glued to the floor with blood and lymph.
He put the pieces of the telephone back on the table. The wooden box was shattered and much of the metal and green wire inside bent or severed. He thought that he might fix it if he could determine the purpose of each part. He had never seen the inside of a telephone. He would, in effect, have to re-invent it, a test not only of his physics instructors, and of him, but of the design of the telephone itself. He looked forward to the task, though he knew he would have to wait until his strength returned. Meanwhile, he put the pieces in order and arranged his tools in rows nearby.
Then came the matter of food. For ten hours he picked grains of rice off the floor and collected pasta, sugar, and individual tea leaves. He would not eat anything that had been tainted with blood, and was left with less than a third of his rations. Some things—powdered cocoa, for example—were uncollectible, or had risen on the wind. He had kerosene enough for one pot of boiling water and one hour of lamplight each day. Some of his blankets had bullet holes.
He cut slits in his sweaters and shirts so that he could bathe his wound without having to strip in the cold, and he folded blankets and coverings so as to maximize their warmth. With three layers of wool underneath, and six above, he would be warm enough, he hoped, not to shiver or go into shock.
He arranged the elements of a meal, including water in a pot on the stove, a match next to its striking surface, and five teaspoons of sugar in a cup with the tea and a spoon. He had only a dozen squares of chocolate, but he put two next to the tea cup. He ate what was left of a compressed can of sardines, tossed out the remnants, and licked the oil from his fingers. Then he cut himself a piece of cheese, and drank a liter of water. He wasn't thirsty, but he knew he needed the fluid.
Waiting for the water to pass through his system, so that he would not have to get up from a warm bed later on, he dressed in many layers of socks and sweaters and put on a wool hat. Then he went to the window and peed into space, after which he felt temporarily warmer.
When the shutter was closed, thin rays of light pierced the darkness, illuminating enormous amounts of crazed silver dust. Alessandro sat on the bed and doused the wound with alcohol. The bandage scissors had penetrated to the length of a thumbnail. Had he not had a hard sheath of muscle over that part of his chest, the point probably would have reached his heart.
HE SLEPT for three days, and thought it was much longer. When he awoke he could hardly move, and he had become a furnace. The blankets were hot and comfortable, his face cool, and his nose frigid. He fell into dreams and reawakened, his breathing shallow and hot. When he lifted the blankets he got dizzy. He laced his boots with great effort and pain, and before he put on his coat he looked at the wound. Though the entry had closed, and it had been small, the risk of infection remained.
; As he was drinking tea he remembered that his sleep had been rich with dreams, but he could recall nothing about them except that it had been as if he were traveling through a gallery in which the colors of the paintings enveloped the onlookers.
He set about repairs, starting with the telephone. The observation post was valuable in the conduct of the war below, and because the enemy knew that the attempt to dislodge him had failed, they had to assume that his messages were getting through. It seemed so from the pattern of their deployments, which had remained static and defensive. He thought he owed them what they expected.
Before he tried to reassemble the telephone he had to deduce its workings and obtain anything extra that he might need to supplement them. First, he manufactured glue. For two days he went without anything hot to eat or drink, and used his fuel to melt bookbindings, which he cooked into a viscous fluid by adding sugar, pasta, and kerosene. In theory, the kerosene would evaporate after the mixture was removed from its airtight container, and the glue would set.
He pulled all the brads from the small ammunition boxes, took apart the wood to use as splints, and hunted for wire small enough in diameter to use in binding components or splicing. This he found, long after giving up, wrapped around the cylindrical objective lens of the telescope, which he had removed in search of glue.
While assembling tools and materials he began to solve the mechanical problems, working his way logically toward the innards from the wire and from the parts that were used in operating the instrument: the mouth and ear pieces, the crank, and the bells. He talked to himself to make sure that he remembered his reasoning, to try to avoid too easy a rationale, and for encouragement. In the end, it was easy. The mouthpiece, now empty, must have been filled with the carbon granules he had painstakingly collected in a cup after the explosions. As a little copper diaphragm moved with the pressure of his voice, they would compress and decompress, carrying more or less current. The current, which must have been very slight, apparently went into a coil—like repeater to be boosted before its trip down the mountain.
His first step was to glue together the vessel that held the granules, and replace them. Then he restored the connections to the repeater, rewound it, and remounted it, using brads, wire, and splints. He followed the same procedure for the earpiece, which was a magnet close to a metal diaphragm, and he rewound the magnetic coils.
This took several days, because the pieces had to be straightened, re-formed, matched, organized, or replaced. When everything was done, the telephone sat on the desk, looking fragile and pathetic. He had neither the time, the materials, nor the strength to pull it apart and try another tack. It had taken almost a week to finish, and he had less than a week before his tour was over. Either it would work or it wouldn't.
He stared at it, afraid to touch it. Then, sure that he had failed, he picked up the handset and turned the crank.
"Hello?" someone said, clearly amazed.
"Can you hear me?" Alessandro asked, more amazed.
"Who is it?"
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes, I can hear you. Who is this?"
"It's me," Alessandro said.
"And who are you?"
"Alessandro. Alessandro Giuliani. I fixed the telephone."
After a long pause, the soldier at the other end said, "We were sure you were dead."
At this instant, Alessandro was electrified, as if lightning had struck the telephone wire or Saint Elmo's fire had filled the room, for part of the dream that he could not recall had come back to him with full force.
Because he had never ridden in an airplane or a balloon, he could not have seen Venice from above, for, unlike so many other Italian cities, Venice has no mountains or hills near enough to afford a view. In his dream, however, he flew over Venice in a wide circle, and was pressed down by the centrifugal force of the turn.
From above, the city was orange, its canals sparkling in the sunshine, in blue, blue-green, and even in white behind motor launches vaulting forward like hounds. Alessandro could see every detail of the city, every color, and the vertiginous blue above it in which he moved.
The streets were shadowy canyons with floors illuminated now and then by the sunlight that flooded across piazzas, or as they made widening turns in the direction of the sun. The rose-and-orange-colored roofs were hot, bathed in a warm sheen of sunlight. Never had Alessandro seen anything like this scarab-shaped city sitting on water, redolent of beauty and the passage of time. It seemed to be the source of all vitality.
THOUGH A detail of soldiers had to carry wood and build an enormous fire, Alessandro was allowed to take a hot shower that lasted almost an hour. Water from a glacial stream was heated over huge fir logs that crackled like rifle shots. The steam from the shower mixed with the fog and with the resinous smoke from the fire and wafted over trenches and dugouts.
Alessandro shaved and put on a new tunic. Because they had had nothing else to give him, he was now wearing the uniform of the Alpini—nailed boots, white puttees, green wool pants and jacket with scarlet piping and a scarlet collar, and a hat with a feather. These were more splendid, warmer, and far less comfortable than his army clothes. After a dinner of broth and grilled perch, he stepped out into the evening air. The stars were pulsing in lakes in the heavy clouds that sailed below the needles and spires of the cirque.
In a wide depression where several long trenches converged, two dozen infantrymen and a few officers had gathered around a bonfire. They turned slow circles to warm themselves on all sides, and their faces were caught in flickering light that danced with tongues of blackness drawn in from the dark.
Many of them had bristly mustaches and the sunken sparkling eyes of infantrymen of the line. Their coats were crossed by leather straps and bandoliers, their rifles slung on their shoulders with the bayonet pointed up at an angle like the one remaining wing of a wounded angel.
Alessandro moved to the fire and spread his hands. His face glowed in the firelight and his new tunic soon took on the sweet smell of the smoke. The other soldiers glanced at him when he wasn't looking, for the story of what had happened to him had been exaggerated as it passed through the ranks.
The wind whistled as it drove before it wet banks of mist so thick that sometimes the bonfire was hidden, and the ceiling of cloud was just low enough to catch the firelight. When the soldiers were not lost among tattered skeins of fog, they could see far out into the cirque, as if it were a bay of black water.
They had gathered around the fire to get warm before retreating to cold beds. Some slept on wooden shelves in damp bunkers, and those in the front trench slept in the mud, curled up in their blankets, shivering.
At the rear of the cirque a flare rose from the Austrian trenches into a glittering arc, and when its parachute opened, the sparkling became a sun. It pendulated in the wind as it sank, slowly gliding left, away from the rock face against which it cast its light.
The undersides of the clouds reflected its glare as if the sun were about to rise in the dark, and then another flare made a grace-ful ballistic arc until its parachute opened and rocked it to and fro, and then another. The three sailed gracefully under their reflections in the clouds, burning like altar lamps and casting spectral shadows on the high cliffs until the wind took them around a spire.
Another series of flares was launched, but these were harder to see from the Italian lines, because patches of cloud dulled their light. Two officers stepped into the darkness beyond the fire, raised binoculars, and scanned the rock face. The Austrians had begun to fire upon the mountains themselves. Though rock slides and avalanches followed the concussions, the face of the Schattenhorn, their target, remained smooth and strong.
The Austrians were lighting and attacking a cliff that Alessandro and Rafi had climbed twice. A huge arching fissure went almost all the way up. It had wide ledges, and pockets covered by overhangs, and it was the perfect peak to climb in questionable weather, for it offered shelter from the storms that would tumble o
ver the northeast side. Once, Alessandro and Rafi had watched from within a hollow of the rock as lightning and thunder attacked in blinding flares and deafening concussions and to no avail.
"What is their purpose?" Alessandro asked an officer, who seemed not to mind the lack of etiquette, and answered without lowering his field glasses.
"They're trying to bring rock or ice down on one of our men. We can see him, but because they have to look up at a steeper angle, they can't. They're off by fifty meters. He's going to die anyway."
"Why?" Alessandro asked.
"They hit him in the daylight, killed his companion. He crawled into a hollow on a ledge, and they forgot where he was. Last night he signaled. They saw it, and now they're trying to pick him off. He was up there to establish a position behind them."
"What did he signal?"
"When he pulled back on the ledge to where the Austrians couldn't see his candle, he told us his whole life story. He's wounded, and the other man is dead, still hanging off a belay twenty-five meters below him. He himself was shot in the thigh, and he told us not to come for him, because he would be dead before we got there.
"He knows, anyway, that it's impossible. He's on the fissure where it bends left. The traverse that leads to him is the hardest section of the route. By the time we got to him it would be too late. But it wouldn't matter anyway, because even were he alive he would have to be lowered off route, and even if he made it down he'd be right over the Austrian trenches. He says that he knows exactly where he is, and that no bolts or natural belay points are below him."
"He's lying," Alessandro said. "If he knows where he is, then he's got to know that there's a good line of bolts going all the way down. I know the face of the Schattenhorn. He's right on the line of retreat."
"Why would he lie?"
"Because he thinks that anyone who would come after him would be killed."
"He's right, and the major has forbidden it."