A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

  They were so excited by the prospect of peace that they spurred their horses all the way to the Danube.

  THE GUARDS of the Hofburg took Alessandro to a whitewashed underground room with a vaulted ceiling. Standing meekly at attention were about a hundred Italian prisoners dressed in pajama-like uniforms that Alessandro associated with the men who walk obsequiously through hotel corridors, obsequiously sweeping crumbs into a brass box that hangs obsequiously from a stick.

  The Italians, who were soft, pudgy, and pale, looked as if they had been out of battle since the beginning of time. In contrast, in boots, riding pants, and a leather jacket, Alessandro was like a knight. That he was lean, strong, and deeply sunburnt, added to the differentiation.

  "You! You!" a servant in a powdered wig said to him abusively. "You are Italian?"

  Alessandro nodded, realizing only then that music was drifting down from above, with the rhythmic patter of feet ceaselessly circling around the top of the vault. The prisoners were massed underneath a ballroom. As Alessandro looked up, he imagined all that was there.

  "You don't look Italian," the bewigged servant said, in a mocking tone.

  Alessandro knew from long experience as a subordinate that he was supposed to smile in a cowardly fashion and attempt to say something demeaning about himself. Instead, he stared through his interrogator all the way to the Italians, who already had taken note of his attitude. They looked anxiously at Alessandro and then at a score of lesser servants standing against the walls, each carrying a knobbed cane that came up to his sternum.

  "I am Klodwig," Alessandro was told in hysterical, hyperventilated speech. "I am your director. These," he said, gesturing toward the other bewigged, powdered, golden-jacketed lackeys in white knee socks and patent leather pumps with Dutch buckles, "are my assistants. You will call your superiors Hoheit. Do you know German? It means highness, but you will also memorize their names, for reference."

  "For reference?"

  "For reference, Hoheit!"

  "For reference, Hoheit!"

  "Should one, for example, tell you to carry soap to another, or report to him in the candle closet."

  "I see."

  "I see, Hoheit!"

  "I see, Hoheit!" Alessandro said, screaming Hoheit at the top of his lungs, so that even in the ballroom it could be heard over the music, and some of the dancers looked down at the floor.

  "You needn't exaggerate."

  "Nor you."

  Klodwig did not hear Alessandro's comment, but the Italians did, and were terrified. They knew his tone exactly, whereas Klodwig was still unaware, and they thought that Alessandro was either a hopeless idiot or a phenomenon.

  Klodwig turned to his assistants and made the kind of microscopic bow that someone of royal blood might have made to an ant. "Remember well. If you forget, ask the others." And then he said their names: "Liborius, Mamertus, Markwart, Nepomunk, Nabor, Odo, Onno, Ratbod, Ratward, Pankratius, Hilarius, Knud, Polypark, Gangolf, Kiian, Cacilia, Saturnin, and Cornelts."

  At the end of this list, Alessandro said, "You're not serious."

  "I beg your pardon?" Klodwig asked, half in shock.

  "You must be joking."

  "About what?"

  "Those are not names."

  Every one of the assistants had stepped forward, gripping his cane in anticipation.

  "Don't!" one of the Italians said to Alessandro, but as soon as he closed his mouth a white wig jerked, a cane flew through the air, and he slumped to the floor, grasping his stomach.

  Klodwig narrowed his eyes and approached Alessandro, a thumb away from his face. "I was going to put you up there!" he shouted, pointing to the ceiling, "because you're so handsome. But not now!" He smiled with what Alessandro took to be unapproachable insanity.

  "One way or another," Klodwig said, "you must be obsequious. We require it."

  Alessandro blinked.

  "Well? Can you be obsequious?"

  The Italians had stopped breathing.

  "Yes, I can be obsequious," Alessandro said, disappointing his countrymen. "I'm a master of obsequiousness—in the Italian style. Surely, being in charge of so many Italians, you know it, Hoheit."

  "No, I don't," Klodwig replied, genuinely curious.

  "Would you like to see it?"

  Klodwig nodded.

  "It goes like this," Alessandro said. He narrowed his eyes as he drew back, and, rocking forward from one foot to the other, he delivered to Klodwig's jaw the hardest, fiercest, most brutal punch he had ever thrown in his life.

  AS ALESSANDRO hung from manacles chained to a heavy beam and Klodwig whipped him with a leather strap, the orchestra above them played "An der Schönen, Blauen Donau." Alessandro had known it since his youth. He had listened to it in mountain huts, and danced to it in embassies.

  In the Winter Palace, with the doomed Emperor of Austria-Hungary right over his head, he dangled from chains as he was beaten by a psychotic servant in a powdered wig. Apart from his sister, almost everyone in his life whom he had loved or for whom he had felt affection had died, some before his eyes, consumed in flame, executed, butchered, exploded. As the hundred Italians clad in pajamas would undoubtedly have affirmed, the world had simply come to an end. The strains of "An der Schönen, Blauen Donau," though extremely beautiful, now seemed cruel and funny. Had he been a revolutionary or some other type of cynic he might have hated the officers in white pants and gold braid, and the exquisitely dressed women who were gliding above him, but he felt no hatred for them; he was in a world of his own making.

  With each stroke of Klodwig's whip, the room was filled with red and yellow lightning, and when each stroke ended, Alessandro was still the same. Even Klodwig, who had intended to beat him until he was limp, was horrified that in the course of the hour Alessandro had not cried out.

  Once, in the middle, Klodwig walked around to see if Alessandro were alive. Alessandro followed him with his eyes, and smiled to himself because he knew that at that moment he was totally in control—in control not of Klodwig, not of the Hofburg, not of the war, and not of the world, but of himself.

  For each and every stroke, and for each of the lovely thunderclaps in the delirious music above, Alessandro heard ever-so-faintly another music that underlay it all, beyond which was no other, and that was perfectly appropriate both to the elated dancing in the ballroom and his torment in the cellar, because it tied them together and made them equally inconsequential. He shuddered, his hair stood on end, and electricity shot through his body.

  "What?" Klodwig asked, amazed that, despite the blood steaming in the gutters, Alessandro had begun to sing to himself.

  CIVILIANS SELDOM understand that soldiers, once impressed into war, will forever take it for the ordinary state of the world, with all else illusion. The former soldier assumes that when time weakens the dream of civilian life and its supports pull away, he will revert to the one state that will always hold his heart. He dreams of war and remembers it in quiet times when he might otherwise devote himself to different things, and he is ruined for the peace. What he has seen is as powerful and mysterious as death itself, and yet he has not died, and he wonders why.

  When Alessandro was well enough to work, Klodwig came to him and cried. Klodwig, it seemed, had never beaten anyone who had not screamed, and this, along with the impending close of the war and the great changes afoot in the Winter Palace, had filled him with trembling, powdered-wig-style remorse.

  "Tell me what I can do to help you," Klodwig said as he sat down on Alessandro's bed.

  "First, sit a little way back."

  Klodwig was distraught. "What can I do?" he pleaded.

  Alessandro put his hands over his mouth and opened them as if to form a megaphone. "Information," he whispered.

  "Information?"

  "The name of the pilot of a particular plane that flew in the mountains last winter, and where he is."

  "A pilot?"

  "I admired his flying. Even though he was the enemy, we ch
eered him, and I want to tell him so myself. Now that the war is almost over, I want to extend my hand to him."

  "Was he handsome?"

  "Yes," Alessandro answered, "very."

  "Then I won't do it!" Klodwig yelled, writhing inside.

  "Not that handsome."

  "No?"

  "No."

  "What did he look like?"

  "He looked like a Byzantine jug, an amphora."

  Klodwig was entranced.

  "His ears," Alessandro said, "looked like clay handles, and his face was pockmarked with little red and gold ceramic squares. I never saw his body, just his head, but his eyes were red. The airplane pivoted around his head when he turned or flew upside down—because he was so courageous."

  "I won't do it," Klodwig said. "Everything you say about him makes me unhappy."

  Alessandro accepted Klodwig's refusal.

  "But I came to tell you that, because you are still recuperating, I won't make you lug garbage, scrub pots, or grind manure. Instead, you may bird trays in the hallways."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Hundreds of the nobility, guests, and staff are in residence. When they ask for something, no matter what the time of day or night, it is served to them on elaborate trays. Sometimes they ring for a footman to take the tray away, but more often than not they exercise their noblesse and leave the trays outside their door. We don't need uniformed footmen to bird the trays. Italian prisoners have done it before. You have to be very quiet, and should you meet your betters you bow slightly, if you are carrying a tray, and cast your eyes to the floor. If you don't have a tray, bow deeply and cast your eyes to the floor. You see, they all fuck each other all the time, and we're supposed to be invisible and not see."

  "What is the alternative?"

  "Have you ever ground manure?"

  "Let's say that at four in the morning one of these people awakens and asks for artichokes and caviar, or a salmon soufflé. The cooks arise and light the fires?"

  "The cooks are waiting and the fires lit. All is ready. All is instant. The kitchens are as big as Palermo."

  "Remarkable," Alessandro said.

  "I have the impression," Klodwig stated, "that the King of Italy may be rather ordinary, or even deprived. He doesn't have these things, does he."

  "No," Alessandro said, "but he has a special rubber throne with electric balls, and hats that can resurrect dead ostriches."

  "Electric balls?" Klodwig asked, inching closer.

  "Hoheit, do you know why crows are black?"

  "No, I never thought of it."

  "They taste lousy, and they're black as a sure sign to predators that they're crows, who will taste lousy."

  "Why aren't they yellow?"

  "They live in cold climates, and black absorbs heat. They don't need camouflage, so they can take advantage of the way their color soaks up the sunlight."

  "Why do you ask me these questions?" Klodwig demanded.

  "To remind you, Hoheit, not to argue with nature."

  The next evening, Alessandro went to work. Winter winds made the city sufficiently icy and gray for the stoves to be lit in the huge salons and immense corridors of the palace. For several hours one of Klodwig's assistants showed him through the halls. He noticed that everyone they passed looked shocked and dejected.

  Alessandro attributed the grim mood to the state of the empire and the arrival of winter, but even if it would be gray until spring he could not fathom why some of the women cried as they passed, and some of the men staggered and could hardly walk. He could see their hearts beating against their expertly tailored shirts and vests.

  "Why are these people so subdued?" Alessandro asked his guide.

  "Don't you know?"

  "No."

  "Today Austria capitulated. The war is over."

  Alessandro stopped. He thought of Guariglia's children. "What a waste," he said. "When will I be free?"

  "The Italians have taken hundreds of thousands of prisoners. The exchange will be part of the treaty, and who knows when that will be? Eventually," the assistant said, "perhaps in the spring. Don't worry, you'll go home."

  "To what?"

  ALESSANDRO BEGAN his work at ten at night and finished at eight in the morning. In theory, he was supposed to be an unseen night porter padding about the halls in felt-soled shoes, encountering only the after-images of aristocrats darting into each other's rooms, but in starting when he did he trafficked with the inhabitants of the palace when they were most lively and most hopeful. They moved as if they were prancing ahead of a prairie fire, because at ten they were both drunk on brandy and champagne, and elated after half a dozen cups of coffee and chocolate.

  This concoction of drugs, and the waltzes that drifted through the courtyards and interiors, were the sources of a delirium appropriate to waiting for the termination of one way of life and the forced beginning of another.

  Though Alessandro was supposed to avert his eyes, he did not. He sought the eyes, and, through them, the souls, of everyone he passed. Half the people lurched through the spacious corridors, glancing off the gilded walls after repeated muffled impacts.

  They sailed past Alessandro, talking to themselves desperately, or they plodded past, almost in tears, looking down at the floor exactly as he was supposed to have done. The singing, even in the halls, of famous sopranos and baritones, the armies of orchestras and chamber ensembles playing music that had been composed when the empire was vital and ascendant, the fires and candle light, the speaking of French and English among people of purple blood, and the strong sense of a ship that was going down, kept Alessandro on edge throughout the nights.

  Though these people spoke in the stilted self-conscious idiom of the court, with each word intended to be a pearl for the jeweler- emperor, at one or two in the morning, when the music had stopped and the gatherings had broken up, Alessandro heard the real concert of empire—men who spoke like women and women who spoke like men, the click of latches, sighs, grunts, farts, shrieks, sobbing, the sound of small whips, arguments so fierce that they might have been between black jaguars in emerald jungles, and the sound, always, of people talking to themselves, alone, for even among the aristocrats, or perhaps especially among them, the war had shattered many families.

  They needed the songs of Gypsies and Jews, Sicilian ballads, Moravian laments, music of the heart rising from defeat, but all they had was the music of delirium and ascendancy, which, as soon as it took to the air, dived to the ground and shattered like glass. The prisoners lived in a barracks underground, and the little light that came to them did so through basement windows. Rows of wooden bunk beds covered with thin gray blankets lined the walls and marched down the center of the floor. Two gas lamps illuminated everything under the whitewashed ceiling.

  They were overworked, malnourished (part of being Italian is the inability to thrive on potatoes and salt), and mentally ill. Most had been captured in early battles and cut off from news of the war. When they had heard that the war was over and they were the victors, they despaired, for their situation had failed to change, and they thought that they would be dressed in pajamas, and beaten and kissed by the sadistic footmen, for eternity. When Alessandro told them that their release would come in a month or two, they refused to believe him.

  Because of the way he spoke, and because his defiance had marked him as a leader, he was sought by socialists and anarchists, who were interested primarily in giving directions and commands, and punishing anyone not sufficiently possessed of their vision—with reluctance, of course (punishment, they thought, was something the world could do without were the world only properly uniform), but with enthusiasm.

  They were thwarted primarily by the strong sense of religion among the soldiers in the underground barracks, who believed mystically and prayed openly, and whose memories of home and peace were intertwined with the Church and its sacraments. Propagandizing among the troops, the socialists and anarchists had made the barracks into a war of religion,
and among the exhausted prisoners theological debates raged at a languorous pace.

  Alessandro was lying on his bed, at eight in the morning, waiting for the day workers to leave so he could sleep, when three prisoners, pleasant but ready for ideological combat, approached him in a deputation. During the discussion that followed, he remained prone, like a hospital patient surrounded by medical students. He was watching a tiny red mite that had been caught in a smooth thumb-sized depression in the side rail of his bed. The mite busied itself in trying to escape, and was constantly assessing its predicament, drawing back to look at the rim of the depression, dashing forward to mount the walls, circling in discouragement. It seemed to be full of conviction, disappointment, and schemes.

  "You are educated and brave," the leader of the deputation said to Alessandro.

  "I am?" Alessandro asked.

  "We are in the midst of an important struggle here," they said, quite unable to make small talk, "and we would like to know if you believe in God."

  "Oh Christ," Alessandro said.

  "Does that mean you do?"

  "Yes," Alessandro answered.

  "Can you prove His existence?"

  "Not by reason."

  "And why not?"

  "Reason excludes faith," Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. "It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can't do it absolutely. That's because you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don't think God is interested in the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that."