A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

  And what music. Alessandro had never heard such sounds. He recognized neither the instruments nor the irresistible scales that seemed to have come from the vast and languid plains of a different world. He thought he was dreaming.

  As he approached the sound, he was so tired that he struggled to remember his own name, and could not, as if he had only half awakened from a winter nap. Forbidden to look at his superiors, much less walk into a room unannounced, he turned the latch and stepped in quietly, protected only by recourse to questions and statements such as, "You sent for me to collect the dishes?" or "The chef recommends the salmon pâté."

  As soon as he was in the reception room he smelled a peculiar kind of smoke that started all his senses fighting against it for control. He won this fight as he proceeded to the main salon, whence came the music, now loud, all-encompassing, and unbearably hypnotic.

  Underneath a cloud of blue haze that remained even though the windows had been thrown open to the extent that wind and snow periodically invaded the room, three musicians sat cross-legged on a Persian rug. They might have been Indians, Turks, or Gypsies, and their instruments had the strange proportions and bulbous shapes that Western instruments had lost long before. The fret board on the stringed apparatus was as tall as the man who was playing it, and its base looked like a gourd. It was a gourd. The drums were clipped and curt. They were like neither thunder nor gunfire, but the quick hoofbeats of goats. Alessandro wondered for whom the musicians were playing. For themselves? For a notable? For a satyr who busied himself behind a screen with a box of Egyptian sexual utensils? As Alessandro cast his eyes around the room, he saw nothing but a huge platform covered by what looked like one of the piles of clothes that had been stripped from the dead after a big battle. He wondered what this would be doing in a suite of guest rooms in the Hofburg, in the custody of Indian musicians who played under a cloud of opium smoke. Perhaps, he thought, it was a religious object, a shrine, such as the Ka'aba in Mecca. Or perhaps it was a tent in which a dissolute Austrian noble lay puffing a hookah or molesting a cousin.

  Then it moved, shifting from left to right and back again, rising in the center before it settled. Alessandro realized that the point to which it came was the back of someone's head. Thinking that a man or a woman was sitting in a chair within a tent of some sort, he walked around to face the occupant. As he did, a column of bluish white smoke rose from the nostrils.

  When he came face to face with the person who had exhaled the smoke, his mouth dropped open. It was a being—the whole thing—seated on a chair that it completely subsumed. The mounds of cloth were merely a few capes that had been thrown over a woman who held the end of a water-pipe in her right hand. Her left hand twitched slightly as it hung in the air, cantilevered by foothills of rolled fat.

  In one of his essays on painting, Alessandro had expressed the opinion that a face cannot adequately be described in words, or even in sculpture, that it was a province exclusively of the painters, that the recognition of a face was wholly dependent upon the ineffably expressed variations of light and color for which language had few words and sculpture no shapes. Of the infinite variety of angles and intersections that make a smile, language has no inkling: not only no words, but not even numbers. Alessandro had speculated for ten printed pages on the helplessness of photographs and many paintings, the terrible inadequacy of statuary and death masks, even the inadequacy, in death, of a face itself. Only the great visual artists could describe a face, he had said, and poets would be wise not to try.

  In an instant, however, standing before this sirenian creature, he knew that he hadn't gotten it quite right. He now realized, almost in shock, that a face may be described in words, or photographs, or a death mask, with perfect adequacy—if only it is sufficiently hideous. The chin was nonexistent. Her jaw, however, was enormous. The lower part looked like a balcony at the opera and was covered with loose mottled skin and moles from which emerged tufts of coarse black hair. Her whitened gums bled, for her teeth were at war with themselves, lying like crossed swords or splayed bodies, leaning either out of her mouth or in, and trying to bridge by horizontal leaps the enormous gaps between them. They were not admirable even individually, like piano keys or mah-jong blocks, but black or brown and shaped like stumps that had been blown apart by dynamite.

  And of her ugliness this was only the beginning. Her lips were so big and fleshy that they looked like the spongy bumpers on harbor tugs, and their slick intestinal pink was relieved only by bleeding cracks and aging scabs. The sides of her porcine nose oscillated with her labored breathing, and her eyes bulged so that Alessandro, horrified, was ready to catch them were they to pop out at him like champagne corks.

  And then he shuddered in awe. "I know you," he said, thinking that perhaps he was dreaming.

  She replied in a froggy voice from deep in a trance of opium or hashish. "I hide, but many people know me."

  "Ich träumte, ich tanzte mit einem Schwan," Alessandro said. "I dreamed I was dancing with a swan. Er hatte der wunderbarsten flauschigen Polster an den Füssen. He had the most wonderful fluffy pillows on his feet. Und er war auf einem Mondstrahl in mein Zimmer gekommen. And he came into my room on a moonbeam."

  She stirred. She seemed to be struggling with her memories, but perhaps because of the drugs or because she was too moved by the recollection of days when she had been—relatively at least—a sylph, she made no response.

  Not knowing what to say, Alessandro tried to make conversation, but he was so stunned that he could only manage, "So, how much do you weigh now?"

  A dark cloud passed over her. "Five hundred and sixty kilos."

  "But, the spiral stairs..."

  "Outside the window," she said, "are a beam, a hook, and a pulley," and then she bent her head, although it was not able to bend very far, in shame. "That was you?" she asked.

  He nodded.

  "I remember," she told him. "And now you're a prisoner, even though the war is over?"

  "I think so, yes."

  "Not many prisoners end up in the Hofburg."

  "Strassnitzky brought me. He had no need for me in the Belvedere."

  "Blasius Strassnitzky?"

  "Yes."

  "Poor Blasius. He would have had no need for you in any case."

  "Why?"

  "He was killed."

  Alessandro briefly closed his eyes. "You must be mistaken."

  "No," Lorna said. "The Italians had too many prisoners. The emperor needed more to trade, and to hold the throne he had to show that even though he had delivered the empire into the hands of the enemy he had made a final gesture, done a deed of valor. His final gesture was Strassnitzky. He and nearly all his men were killed in a cavalry charge against a fortified line and machine guns. They took no prisoners, they only sacrificed themselves.

  "Blasius was always very funny," she continued. "We played together as children. He seemed so alive, so full of stories and tricks and funny ways to say things. I'm sorry for him, I'm sorry that he perished.

  "For him it must have been hard to die. In that respect, we, who began life together, will have ended very differently. For me the world is hardly a pleasure. I smoke opium and hashish so that I may spend my life in dreams—it will be easy to die."

  "Of what do you dream?" Alessandro asked, having opened his eyes.

  Her face grew almost sunny.

  "I dream of when I was a baby. My father and my mother loved me. They carried me in their arms, and they kissed me. They could hardly stop kissing me. Even when I was three and four, they embraced me all the time. If I could have a child, I would love her beyond anything that anyone would be capable of imagining. I would live for her. I have so much love in me, so much. It goes nowhere but to dreams."

  "Why haven't you had a child?" Alessandro asked.

  "The child would be too ugly," she answered, "and would suffer as I have. Besides, no man has ever held me, much less made love to me. In my dreams, I dream of that, too."

  "W
ould he have to be tender?" Alessandro asked.

  "No."

  "Would he have to know, as you know, what it is to love and be loved?"

  "No," she said. "I could pretend."

  Not quite able to believe what he was doing, Alessandro spoke in a voice that startled her. "I know a man who lusts for you."

  She wept.

  "But I have needs," he shouted. "I have needs!"

  "What needs?" she asked from amidst her tears.

  "You are of the royal house. You can get things done."

  "What things?" she asked. "What things?"

  "You can have someone look into a file, to find out about a war hero."

  "Yes yes. I am sure. I am of the royal house."

  "Then, Lorna," Alessandro said, "make a pact with your swan."

  AS DINNER was ending and the prisoners leaving their benches, the giant still sat under the kerosene lamp at the midpoint of one of the tables. Someone was singing the "Libiamo..." from La Traviata, and singing it so beautifully that the flames in the lamps seemed to dance in joy. Alessandro circled the table. Because he kept his eyes on the giants huge head, the room appeared to spin around it.

  He watched the great Neapolitan face, twice the size of a normal face, and as the background in motion, bathed in golden light, blended with the aria, he thought of the difference between the music of his country and the music of the country in which he was captive. Italian music was bound at all times by the limitations of the human heart, never more exuberant or elated than a heart could be without breaking, or sadder than a heart could be without taking hope. In the music of the North, sadness prolonged joy far less, and in dejection no light appeared against the dark. The extremes were magnificent, but it had not the most human of all attributes, balance.

  It appeared that even the giant Neapolitan, a violator of draft animals, was moved by the aria, so Alessandro opened the conversation on a relatively high plane.

  "So beautiful, like a sunset over the roofs of Naples."

  "What sunset?" the giant asked.

  "The one in the west."

  "Which one is that?"

  "The one that takes place in the evening. In the Bay of Naples, ships flee to all parts of the Mediterranean, disappearing into the darkness, moving slowly and steadily under fading and bobbing lights."

  The giant stopped eating and turned to Alessandro, looking him over very carefully. "You're not a priest," he said.

  "No, I'm not."

  "You don't dress like one."

  "That's right."

  "So what are you talking about?"

  "Music."

  "What music?"

  "Indian music. Do you like Indian music?"

  "I don't know what it is."

  "It's music from India."

  "India?"

  "Yes, a country that has many rhinoceroses."

  The giant was skeptical. "How many?"

  "As many as you want."

  "Who owns them?"

  "The Bank of India. All citizens, however, and all visitors, are free to ride them and take care of them, feed them hay, feed them oats ... bed them down."

  "Where is this country?"

  "It's far, but not that far. You can get there on a ship. Wouldn't you like to listen to the music? The music comes from the places where rhinos wander in vast numbers. I can arrange for you to hear it. Shall I?"

  "I don't know," the giant said. "Am I allowed to?"

  "Sometimes," Alessandro said, "we do things that we're not supposed to do, don't we?"

  "Yes, we do."

  "Good. I'll set everything up. For one night, you'll take my job, and I'll take yours."

  "A whole night? I don't want to listen to Indian music for a whole night."

  "You will find much more than music where I send you," Alessandro said.

  "I will?"

  "Yes."

  As the giant's eyes sparkled in belief and disbelief, Alessandro thought, never mind her sadness, for she must turn directly to God, who cannot but answer her.

  LORNA WAS acquainted with an official of the Ministry of War who might have been her twin. Even though they had beheld one another merely once or twice, two prisoners tortured on the same rack could not have had more mutual empathy or trust. To break the rules for the sake of someone for whom all the rules had been shattered at birth was both pleasurable revenge and the cause of great satisfaction: the pilot's dossier had been copied and compiled, sub rosa and without a trace, in a dozen different departments, and it was carefully bound between gray covers with embossed silver lettering. Alessandro guessed that a high official who requested a report would get something similar, on rag-paper pages that had been through a typewriter that could print red, green, and black.

  The formation over Gruensee had been Kampfstaffel D3, flying Hansa-Brandenburg D3 aircraft. A neatly typed list matched the pilots with their planes, and in 5X, a number that had settled in Alessandro's memory forever, had been a Major Hans Alfred Andri, whose operational report was appended. He had thoroughly strafed and bombed an enemy mounted column and destroyed several buildings in the village of Gruensee, but had not been thorough enough to mention in his account that every building in Gruensee had had a red cross on a white background clearly visible on the roof. Perhaps in five or ten years inquiries would arrive in the Austrian Foreign Ministry and this might be discussed.

  Andri had flown sixty-three missions, and when the war ended he had returned to 87/1/4 Schellingstrasse, in Munich. Schellingstrasse was not far from the Alte Pinakothek, where Alessandro had first heard the guns.

  WHEN ALESSANDRO was awakened at dawn, the day was charged with the energy of a lightning storm in the snow. He could hardly keep his limbs still as he followed the roiling black and gray clouds that tumbled over the city, riding on their first light after having been born on the steppes of Russia. Vast thunderheads accumulated in the east, piling up and growing high. The currents, tumblings, and precipitous falls within gave the staid black and gray masses a sense of movement. The crows that in winter fled Russia for the Austrian plains were circling on high by the thousands, black confetti against the light. Falling and rising at remarkable speed, they stiffened their wings as they sought to stay still in the powerful waves of air.

  When Alessandro, and the giants two companions, reached the stables, they idled until they had idled too long, and then began to work. Everyone had a cart and a grinder, and each took a row of stalls. When they didn't see Alessandro emerge from his row with the grindings, they thought that he was working slowly. Then they saw him staggering down the aisle, a saddle and bridle in his arms.

  "What are you doing?" one of them asked. In four years, he had never seen such a thing.

  "What does it look like I'm doing?" Alessandro answered.

  They followed him into the stall of a Lippizaner and watched him saddle and bridle the horse. "You're not supposed to do that!" they said.

  "I know."

  "So why are you doing it?"

  "Why am I in this place?" Alessandro asked them, turning briefly away from his work. "Why are you? Were you born here? The war is over."

  "The sentry will shoot as you exit," one of them said, smiling almost in satisfaction. "You won't get twenty meters."

  Finished with the horse, Alessandro took off his shirt, pants, and boots, until he stood before them totally naked. They thought he was crazy, until he unrolled the uniform, and then they said, "Ah!"

  After dressing quickly, he faced the two open-mouthed manure grinders. "Stop looking at me as if I were Zeus," he commanded.

  "You'll be shot," they cautioned.

  "No. I won't be shot. I'm going to shoot them, and then I'll go home. I'll be perfectly safe. I can see the future, and the clouds are lifting."

  "You can see the future? How can you see the future?"

  "I know enough now about the patterns of the past to see the darkness of the future unraveling before the golden light of time. Behind the clouds is the dawn. How can I
possibly know such things? The fact is, I do. So watch out."

  They protested that if he escaped they would be shot, so he had to hit them on the back of their heads with a manure shovel. Because they were terrified of combat, something they had never seen, he was forced to chase them around the stall. They thought that being hit by a manure shovel would kill them, as it might have, but Alessandro managed to put them gently to sleep in the hay.

  He unhitched the Lippizaner. With the reins and bridle in his left hand and the manure shovel hanging from his right, he walked to the guard booth at the ramp.

  The guard came out because he was curious about what he had already perceived to have been an irregularity. "Hold the reins," Alessandro told him. He did so obediently.

  "You are German, sir?" he asked as Alessandro walked behind him.

  "No," Alessandro said, "Italian," and then whacked him on the head with the shovel. He took the guard's pistol and a wallet stuffed with money, then dragged him into the sentry booth and covered him with a blanket.

  The horse was skittish. His limbs were twitching, his strength begging for an outlet.

  THROUGH THE open door of the freight car in which Alessandro rode toward Linz and Munich, the moon shone brightly over fields and mountains and seemed to jump from place to place as the train changed its heading. The illusion that the moon was bathed in the glow of the snow-covered ground preceded from the fact that the moon does not generate its own light, and is lit from elsewhere. The soldiers on the train were not able to see the sun, now rising in the Western Hemisphere, but they could see the brilliantly lit snow, and perhaps because their world had been turned upside down they suffered the illusion without protest.

  The moon was so close and full that it resembled the Roman moon in August, stunningly light and perfectly round as it rides above the horizon like a float on the waves, bathing the palms of the Tiber, the broken monuments, and the ash-colored fields in the warm light of its youth before it silvers in the cold.