by Mark Helprin
Ahead and coming ever closer, the ridge at the top of the hill was dotted with clusters of buildings and old fortifications. Beyond, a crescent of beach connected the two parts of the town, and at sea out of range of enemy gunfire was the allied fleet.
The higher on the hill he landed the less walking he would have to do in the dark. But over the top of the ridge, falling away to the beach, were cliffs, and were he to overshoot, not only would he fail to gain his objective, he might be blown over the beach and drowned in the Adriatic. But the wind was just right, and as he calculated and recalculated, working the parachute toggles, the vector of his descent promised impact in a dark patch, probably a ravine, beneath a small saddle at the top.
Ravines were not good cover throughout, as patrols tended to follow the crease while moving up or down them, but the sides of a ravine, if thickly overgrown, were paradise for anyone who might hide. No one walked along the sides: it was unnatural. This place toward which he was heading seemed to him to be perfect, though he knew that all he was doing was moving toward a dark spot on the correct side of a hill.
Cautious by nature, he braced too early for the landing, and then had to relax, brace again, and relax, but he was so close that he could see the outline of the buildings in the saddle, and the shadows of the curbs on the road. He was coming in high, but would still land a hundred and fifty feet or so below the houses. Then he would have to descend to make sure of concealment. At least it was better than going up. Seconds remained. He was coming in higher than he had thought. He emptied as much air out of his chute as he could, which made him go so much faster that he dreaded the impact against the side of the hill.
Then he felt a puff of air. A gentle breeze ordinarily was a lovely thing as it traveled softly through the night, but not only did this push him forward faster, it rolled up the side of the hill like water overflowing the bank of a stream and lifted him like a balloonist, giddily, until he was higher than the ridge, higher even than the tops of the buildings, and then, momentarily still, like a roller coaster at the peak of its run.
“Oh no,” he said as he began to descend rapidly to the east. Far ahead was the always alluring sea, where his mission would fail and he might be lost. The beach was too narrow, and the part of the town between the base of the cliffs and the strand was heavily garrisoned with Germans.
He pulled vehemently on the toggles to let air out of the chute so that he might land in a safe place, and in the seconds as he descended he realized that he was headed for a building. He would just overshoot it, and its blocking of the wind would then, perhaps, allow him to float straight down onto the road that ran along the top of the cliffs. All he had to do, given his track, was nothing, and it would happen.
But then, instantly, he decided to recast his bad luck and land on the flat roof, surrounded by a low parapet, just ahead of him. From there he would be able to see clearly in every direction, and spot not only for the artillery west of the river but for the naval guns that he could direct onto troop concentrations in the town. He could observe military traffic on all the roads. He could, like an observation plane, but invisibly, relay the exact details of each enemy action.
In a split second he had realized that the inhabitants of this building had to have sought shelter from the bombing, and that therefore no one would hear him land. Perhaps he could last up there for the whole battle, or at least for enough time to serve as intended. He pulled the toggles as if to collapse the chute, so as to be sure he wouldn’t glide beyond the roof. The capture of such an observation post would be a triumph, but as with all things potentially triumphant, there was no way to be sure which way it would go, if his path would slam him against the side of the building or land him neatly on its roof. There was not enough wind in the game any longer to take him beyond. All he could do was wait, and he didn’t have to wait long.
Until the very impact he could not tell which it was going to be, the roof, or the wall. Had it been the wall he would be out of the battle. Had it been the roof, the battle would perhaps be his. It was neither, but rather where the border of the one met the border of the other. Flying at great speed toward the edge of the parapet, he put out his arms to seize it so that upon impact he would not fall straight down the side of the building.
His momentum and the weight he carried pushed him hard into the masonry. Before he felt anything he heard a sound like that of breaking reeds as his ribs on the right side snapped like bread sticks. All the air was knocked out of him, and as he hung on to the edge of the parapet he realized he couldn’t breathe. He thought he would never breathe again.
In shock and pain, against his own weight and that of a hundred pounds of equipment, with a poor hold, a parachute that dangled toward the ground in a long trail behind him, and no air, no breath, he tried to pull himself up and over. He couldn’t. The more he pulled, the greater the agony. He dared not try again without lightening himself. To get out of his pack, hanging first with one arm crooked over the parapet, and then the other, was so painful that somehow the pain itself created the strength he needed to do it.
The pack dropped. He was lighter but weakened from having shed it. He thought about what was at stake and what he had to do. If he fell back he would probably die, and so would a great many others who, were he to get to the roof, might otherwise live. But he might die anyway, and he was in such pain that falling back would be a relief. Still, because the roof was right there, only inches away, he would concentrate all his strength on the one chance of lifting himself over the parapet.
He had never known how to do such a thing. As an athlete, he had never been able to pour all he had into whatever action he had tried to make the object of his will. This time, however, he had to know, and it came to him at the last.
He had to override his natural limitations, extend his initial burst of motion, and stay in the battle. He could not even think of falling back. He pulled up in the first surge, rising until his solar plexus was resting on the flat of the parapet, and here, where all logic said he had to fall back, he pushed further, his face impossibly contorted, with no air remaining, and got to the point where he could lean forward and throw all the weight that he could over and onto the roof. In this pivoting, his broken ribs were crushed further and moved to positions most unnatural. He landed with a clatter that was the strangest sound he had ever heard, and then, not having breathed in a while and frightened that he was going to die, he blacked out. At that moment nothing was left to him, neither judgment, nor movement, nor plan, nor pain, nor even a ray of light.
HE AWOKE NOT KNOWING where he was. First, he understood that he was lying on his back. Then he understood that straps and buckles were pressed between the hard surface and his flesh. And then he remembered where he was and why, and what had happened. Still, he felt that if he were pulled again into the irresistible traction of sleep he would wake differently, somewhere else, perhaps in a hospital, or at home, so he closed his eyes and slept, but only for a moment before he was awakened by what seemed to be a war raging in the midsection of his body.
Was it he who was breathing? At times it was less breathing than flailing. Some apparatus within him that he could hardly feel had taken over and was moving his chest independently in quick shallow breaths that brought blood upwelling from his mouth as thinly as soap bubbles. His right side felt as if swords had been run through it. He moved his right arm below the elbow, and slowly ran his fingers over his rib cage. His tunic was wet with blood, and one of the ribs was protruding half an inch from his body. He could feel, through blood-soaked khaki, that the rib had splintered.
He regretted deeply the many times he had broken wishbones and held the shattered ends in his hands. The poor chickens, he thought, but at least they were dead. He felt genuine remorse about having eaten chickens and other animals without thought of their sacredness to God, who created them, and underneath this thought he thought that he was thinking this probably because he was going to die, and that when one thinks one is abo
ut to die, thoughts come of such delicacy that they can be offered only to God, and that though to those left behind they may seem disconnected, illusory, and unsupportable, they are the thoughts that, despite their weakness and unsupportability, may be the keys to heaven.
Each time he had been in such a state, he had, of course, not died: when he was thrown, by the explosion of an artillery shell, through a closed glass door, and, arteries severed, had nearly exsanguinated; and when in Norway he had been shot in the shoulder and left to die on a snowbank that had turned red with his blood. He was embarrassed to think that he might die, in case that he might not, and nervous that were his life to end, so would his mission. But perhaps he might do something before he died, if he could pull himself up, if he could still see, if he could speak, if he could gather his wits, and if he could last into the morning. Though he was in too much pain to think clearly, he tried to take stock.
He wanted to proceed in a military way, to make a plan that he might yet execute by holding through, but found that even before he could begin he was interrupted by contemplation. He was surprised that he felt a profound sense of relief in the knowledge, or the presumption, that he was going to die. He had one more job left, in this battle, on this high platform, and upon this he would concentrate, and if he were able to do the job at all he would be doing it heroically. Certainly that was a lot better than half a century of failure, doubt, and declining health in the shadow of Raphael and Dürer, if only because, modest by nature, English painters are as unassuming as English light. Nor did he want to make a spectacle of himself to mine attention from eccentricity as a trick for selling paintings.
He spit out some blood, and said in garbled words that no one would ever have understood, “Get on with it, then.”
HIS POSITION COULD BE IDEAL. Unobserved upon the roof of the highest building on the ridge, he would be able to see a distant horizon on the water, almost everything in the town, and west to the Apennines. Were the other observers killed or captured, he could fill in for them. He could direct fire to all areas, find the German guns, shatter them with salvos from the sea, discover the tank emplacements facing the river, and strike them, too. To win a battle with such perfectly controlled strokes would be worth dying.
Though not a spot of red was to be seen, dawn was obvious in the lesser sparkling of the stars and the change above from black to almost royal blue. In attempting to look at his watch to see the time and calculate the hours ahead, he discovered that moving his arm to where he would have a good view of the illuminated dial was something his broken ribs found too painful to allow. He would have to ration all movement. Only the essential could justify the seeming electrification of his already taxing pain and its elevation into heights that, as he dropped away from them, were the only things that afforded him moments of relief.
He was still strapped into his parachute harness and lying on his rifle, but so great was the pain in his chest that he hadn’t noticed. It would be better if he could get out of the tight harness and roll off the rifle. Not only would he be more comfortable, he would have a weapon. With immense effort he was able to unbuckle the buckles, but until he could get off his back he would have to stay in the harness. He lifted his knees. It hurt, but he could do it. By raising his thighs and pushing, he could move alligatorlike a few inches at a time in any direction. Now he was off the rifle and with it he could defend or even, at some inconceivable later stage, attack. The scope was intact, a bullet was in the chamber, the rifle was beside him. And nothing can cheer a soldier like a loaded rifle easily at hand.
He could get to the pistol, too, posted on his thigh, with its ammunition. He was very thirsty, and he managed to bring his belt canteen to his mouth and lighten it by half, thinking that water, most of which was in the pack, was bound to be a problem, but that with his loss of blood he had to drink. There were two days’ rations in pouches and pockets, a first-aid kit, maps and compass, a mirror, and a telescope. Everything else was in the pack or had been strapped on to it: the rest of the food and water, magazines of ammunition, the submachine gun, and, most importantly, the radio. Though he could signal with the mirror, not only might the imprecision of his wrist, especially now, bend the light to alert the Germans, but to signal a group of coordinates in Morse would take forever, and anyway the ships were over the horizon.
The radio was essential. Assuming that he could stay alive and raise himself to look over the wall, a number of possibilities immediately occurred to him, though even if he did manage to retrieve the radio, after its fall of several stories it might no longer work. His first task was to determine if he could move, and if he could keep himself alive. He would have to wait for the light. He put his fingers on the protruding rib to see if the blood still flowed. It had stopped and was thickening as it dried. Falling in and out of sleep, he could not tell fact from dream. But underlying even this was an alertness to the approach of the enemy.
THE SUN STRUCK the eastern parapet and infused its whitewashed rim with an almost electric glow. As the section nearest him turned rose-colored the light descended until it struck him, too, warming as it moved from color to clarity. Before the light, German reveilles had echoed through the town. They sounded, at a mournful distance, like gramophone music, and this had transported him momentarily to London. He believed that the greatness of a city is a condition of mood, its first prerequisite that one is able to lose oneself in a seemingly infinite vastness that protects it from the flow of time. He believed that time dashes off a great city like rain from a glass dome.
The last time he was in London, in the spring, the light stood still, the mist that rose from the Thames seemed animate, and even the most profane music, wretchedly reproduced on a Victrola, was able to join past and present with unwitting fidelity. In London there were so many garden gates and so many girls standing behind or passing through them that the one you picked might stay with you forever, quite content to be lost with you in a row of houses in a mews hidden behind a little-known square. You could walk in the evening with someone you loved, and no one would recognize you and no one would care, which is, perhaps, one definition of peace.
As soon as the sun was high enough to be out of the eyes of the allied gunners they laid their fire on German posts newly established in the hours of darkness, and the sound of explosions clipped the wings of his dream. Like a geographer with deep knowledge of the complex relation of simple things, he knew that even though the ground beside him was covered in blood, he had bled no further, for he was not light-headed, and the chill he felt was only that of the October morning. His clothes were stiff with the blood that had fastened him where he lay, but with a shift and a shudder he broke loose.
He breathed with a wheeze and a soft clacking noise, and each breath reminded him that a piece of sharp bone still protruded from his side. This told him, like the hands of a strange clock in a strange dream, that if he had to go more than a few days without attention they would be his last. But if he helped to win the battle and the battle were won quickly, he might live.
He surveyed the roof. At the northern end, toward which his feet pointed, was a square water tank fashioned of concrete and terra-cotta block and elevated on a steel frame. Extending from it for watering plants in pots now plantless was a ragged hose with a brass nozzle. A small puddle from an imperfect seam told him that the tank still held water. If he could get to the hose, thirst would be no problem. A door at the south end, behind his head, led into a stairway, and as it was firmly closed he guessed that it was latched from the inside. Boards and terra-cotta block from the supply out of which the water tank and perhaps even the building itself had been constructed lay in the lee of the eastern parapet, and from the flat of the whitewashed roof projected four lanterned skylights, each about a foot and a half high with open louvered sides, in a square pattern that suggested they were ventilation caps for four lines of flats, or perhaps the skylights of interior bathrooms on the top floor.
Nothing else was on the roof
except him. Its emptiness was promising, in that it seemed that it was little visited and months might go by before the door opened. No one came to feed doves or tend plants. There were no sun chairs, no athletic equipment, no toys, no bench, no stand for a telescope, no place where someone came to smoke and left bits of his cigarettes. In a battle, especially, with shells and bullets whistling through the air, it was not likely that anyone would come up to get a better view, or that anyone even remained in a building so prominently exposed, though the enemy, too, sought high points from which to observe, and this was the highest.
BEFORE HE COULD GET STARTED or collect his thoughts he heard tanks moving toward him from south on the road. That is, he felt them, for the pitch of their engines was so low that they were apprehended first in his lungs, which shook, and only then in his ears. In fact, he might have sensed them first in his hands had his fingertips been resting on the timpani of the roof. It would be advantageous for the defenders to move a platoon or two of tanks to the sea side of the ridge just beyond the top, where they could add their voices to the other German artillery, shelter spotters, and wait for the inevitable assault on the ridge itself, except that in what they might think to be a sheltered position they would be vulnerable to the naval guns over the horizon if he could spot for them.