Via Dolorosa

by Ronald Malfi

  “You are a scary fool,” Isabella said coldly, and slapped his shoulder. She turned and negotiated the crowd of dancers, not once looking back in his direction. He called after her, but the sound of his own voice ruptured his head. The absinthe was certainly doing the trick now. All the pretty girls. And just thinking about that bottle on the table, still half-full, made him want to pass out and never wake up.

  “Isabella!”

  He chased after her, out into the street.

  Lieuten—

  Outside was dark, cold. A few people were making their way across the avenue and down toward the water. The last of the fireworks were dying in the night, their spectacle reflected in the black surface of the sea. They were shooting from many boats now.

  She grabbed him from behind, spun him around, kissed him hard again on the mouth. Despite the ambush, this time he was better prepared: he savored the kiss and familiarized himself with it. It was like no intimacy he had ever known. The sheer wrongness of it made it all the more right. Silently, suddenly, fervently, he wished himself to die right then and there. What better way to die?

  In his ear, Isabella said, “You are tipping.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I know.”

  “Like a boat on the water.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is wrong?”

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “She is not here. She vanished like a ghost. Don’t you remember?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember things as they really are, is what I mean. Everything’s muddy.”

  “It’s the absinthe,” she assured him.

  “No, it’s not. It’s in my head. Something is wrong with everything. Something has happened and nothing is right.”

  “Funny talker,” she said.

  At one point, he found himself back inside the bistro, searching the crowd for his wife. Pulling people around, staring at faces hidden in shadows; calling her name. But he could not find her. Then, at another point, he was back out in the street, standing like a guardian angel above the old black man strumming chords on his ukulele. When the old man looked up at him, his eyes brown and wet and sloppy and like the eyes of a diseased basset hound, and asked for some spare change, Nick felt himself grimace at the man and mutter something about prayers for the dead. At his side, Isabella laughed.

  “That’s true,” she said from nowhere. “Prayers for the dead. Where are your prayers, Nicholas?”

  “I’m prayerless,” he admitted. “I am without prayer.”

  “And what else are you?”

  “Drunk.”

  “That’s true, too.”

  The absinthe was working over him pretty heavy now.

  “Nicholas,” he heard Isabella say from somewhere behind him.

  “The G.I.,” someone said. A man. “The famous G.I.”

  Looking up, he could see the three oxford-shirted men standing, smoking, beneath a streetlight. Outside in the dark, smoking under the spread of orange sodium light, they did not look as handsome or straight-laced as they had beneath the rustic lights of the bistro. Here, on the street, they had been dulled.

  “Mr. G.I.,” the man continued. It was Joseph, Pygmalion, the drunken bastard. White stick of cigarette poking from his lips, his eyes were directly on Nick. “Mr. G.I.! Private Slovak, sir!”

  “Son of a bitch,” Nick shouted. “You sons of bitches!”

  Pygmalion pushed himself off the lamppost and swaggered down the curb and halfway across the street. Wavering, unsteady, his shadow looked as drunk as he did. His twins did not budge from their perch beneath the lamppost.

  “We been standing, G.I., discussing how many little Muslim kids you must’ve killed over there,” Pygmalion was saying. In full blossom, he sported one hell of a shiner now. The sodium streetlights did it no justice. “We been talking about all sorts of things about you, Mr. G.I., Mr. Private Slovak, sir.” Pygmalion executed an awkward salute. “Ahoy. Over and out.” Sputtering, laughing. “To the shores of Tripoli!”

  Isabella started laughing. This made Pygmalion look. And, subsequently, this made him start laughing, too—stupidly, drunkenly, haughtily. The kind of angry, ignorant laughter that always ends poorly. Through Nick’s inebriated gaze, the colors of the man’s clothing and the reflected light on his face seemed to blur and bleed out from him and into the night. In that moment, nothing, it seemed, was confined to anything. It was akin to watching a dream dissipate just as wakefulness comes, and in that instant it was perhaps the saddest thing Nick had ever seen.

  “Hit him,” Isabella said. “Hit him good and hard, Nicholas.”

  “Out of my mouth,” Pygmalion was saying. Stork-like, he had his head hinged forward on his thin neck, his lower lip protruding to exaggeration. The cigarette, its ember slowly dying in the night, thrust up and out and right at him: a lighted beacon. “Out of my mouth,” Pygmalion continued through half-closed lips. “Come on, Private Slovak—knock it out of my mouth.”

  “Go to hell,” he said back. Yet he could feel his fists clench.

  “Where’s your wife, anyway, Private Slovak, sir? Hansen over there, he really took to her.” The slob chuckled. “In, you know, the spiritual sense. Grace…beauty…men taking the women of men. I think that if he happened to see—”

  A blur—of white fist, white arm. It was a tight, close-to-the-body throw. It left trails of light behind it in the air. And when it struck the man’s face, Pygmalion’s face, there was a sense of eruption, of expulsion, and Nick could not tell if the sensation was purely in his arm or purely in the man’s face—or, perhaps, both at once. But it was a strong throw and there was nothing drunk about it. He felt his entire weight behind it and carried it through, followed it through. Strong. But there wasn’t any reason to follow anything through. None at all. The hit angled Pygmalion’s head awkward on his shoulders. His neck seemed to stretch two feet. It happened in slow motion and Nick could see each individual bristle of beard stubble sprouting from the man’s neck and chin: he could see the non-uniform way it grew in wild, erratic directions, like scrub-grass, and the way there seemed to be very little of it covering the smooth red knoll of Pygmalion’s Adam’s apple.

  The man spun halfway around before collapsing to the street. He arched his back when he struck and gathered his hands up under his head as he lay, face down. Insanely, the only thought rushing through Nick’s mind at that moment was what had happened to the man’s cigarette—he hadn’t seen it come loose from his lips yet he hadn’t seen it leave his mouth during that slow motion, fifteen-hour, double-feature, end-of-the-world plummet to the cobblestone street. He hadn’t—

  Had—

  Something whizzed past his head. Instinct yanked him out of the way. A second later he heard what sounded like someone dropping a crate of eggs. And he remained, trying to assimilate that sound and piece it into the reality of the world around him, even though he was watching it all unfold right in front of him, and he could see it all with his own eyes: Isabella directly above the Pygmalion crumble, swatting at the back of the man’s head and the quivering hump of his spine with the old man’s ukulele. The victimized instrument, after only a single blow, surrendered into a gangling ensemble of clapboard and frets, held together by the sinews of copper-plated strings that twanged with each strike administered to the nearly unconscious drunkard between Isabella Rosales’s feet.

  Time caught up. Nick jerked forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, dragged her backward. Several feet away now, she was still swinging the ukulele. And screaming profanity in Spanish. Kicking at him, too—although it did not appear that any kicks actually connected. Hysterical, her swinging arm continued to work at nothing. Nick grabbed her around the wrist (and pain exploded and raced up his own arm, although he was drunk on enough adrenaline to hardly notice at the moment) and guided her under control. He had to pry her fingers off the ukulele. As he held her against his chest, afraid to release her, he could feel how fast her heart was beating and
how deep her breaths were. The ukulele crumbled to the pavement like a skeleton. She would hyperventilate for sure if he didn’t calm her, didn’t get her under control…

  “Come on,” he said. His voice had no tone, no description: it was neither a yell nor a whisper. “Come on, come on, come on, come on…”

  They staggered away from the scene, just as the other two men, Leslie Hansen and Ben, overcame their initial shock and wandered over to their fallen friend. A casual crowd of bar-hoppers was now gathering around. It was a crime scene.

  “Calm down,” he said to her, and pulled her back down a dark, narrow alleyway. There was hardly any room to stand and face her, the buildings on either side were so close. But it was the only place of refuge. He looked at her and realized how much taller he was. “Are you crying?” he said. “Don’t cry.”

  She drummed a hand on his chest. She wasn’t crying—she was laughing.

  “I think…I knocked it out…of his mouth, all right,” she managed between great, whooping breaths. “I think I knocked it out…like a goddamn…a goddamn…” But she couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. He could feel laughter building in him, too, although admittedly he could find nothing funny about what had just happened. There was no source to the laughter, nothing he could familiarize himself with; yet it hastened to come. “Yes, you knocked it out all right.”

  “Yes,” she said, and kissed him.

  “I think he swallowed the damn thing,” he said, kissing her back.

  “You sized him up pretty good, too.” Kissing.

  “Thank you.”

  “You can certainly size people up, my Nicholas,” she nearly cajoled.

  “You can certainly size them up and you can certainly bring them down.”

  “You brought him down,” he said.

  Still kissing.

  This is drunken adrenaline talk with Isabella Rosales from Spain, his stupid, wasted mind spoke up. Hearts beating, racing.

  He kissed down her neck. She pushed herself harder against him. Her hair smelled strongly of sweat and it was wet and matted to the nape of her neck, the sides of her face. There was sweat everywhere: it sprung from the both of them and bled into their clothes. Spanish words, whispered, filtered into his ear. Drunk. He understood none of it and it was spectacular. The words seemed to flow. They did not collide like English words. Spanish was different—more enigmatic. He could not tell where one word ended and another began. It was the beauty of the mystery. Then she said something else—something in English, definite English and he felt something cold explode within him. He pulled away from her with such force that he slammed his back against the brick alley wall.

  Her face, still very close to his, with sudden eyes, asked, “What is it?”

  “What you said,” he stammered.

  “What did I say, darling?”

  He was aware of her hand still at the base of his neck. He shook her off him.

  “What did I say?” she repeated.

  “You know,” he said. “You know what you said.”

  “Tell me,” she pleaded. “I said nothing. What did I say?” Those eyes would not leave him. “What did I say?”

  “You said…you said, ‘Have baby. In stomach.’ You said it.”

  She just stared at him.

  “You said it,” he repeated. “I heard you. You said it in my ear. Clear as day.”

  “Nicholas,” she said, and her dark head began to shake very subtly from side to side, “I said no such thing.”

  “I heard you.”

  “You are mistaken.”

  “‘Have baby. In stomach.’”

  “You—”

  “Where did you hear that?” he demanded.

  “I don’t—”

  “How do you know about that?”

  And now she laughed a little bit. There were many teeth involved. “No, no, no. There is no baby here, my Nicholas. What is the matter with you? There is no baby here. I would never say such a thing.”

  He could only look at her.

  “You are raving,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Raving and paranoid.” Placed a hand to his sweaty cheek. “And drunk.”

  “I…don’t…”

  “Nicholas,” she whispered, drawing him close again. “My poor Nicholas.”

  Again, he pushed her away. “No,” he said. “No. I—no, no.”

  “All right.”

  “No.”

  “All right.”

  “My car,” he said. Then he shook his head. Again, he felt obscene laughter boiling up from the very bottom of his throat. “I’m drunk,” he managed.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “That, at least, is quite obvious.”

  Owing everything to luck, they found the spot where he had parked the Impala earlier that evening, but the Impala was no longer there.

  “It’s stolen,” he said.

  “Maybe your wife took it.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “Maybe Emma had the keys,” Isabella suggested.

  Furiously, he beat down his pockets with the palms of his hands. “No keys,” he said. “I lost them.”

  “Emma must have had them and taken the car.”

  “I lost them,” he said, “and my car’s stolen.”

  “All right,” she said, and felt for his hand. “Come with.”

  Then they were in Isabella’s car—a sleek, topless thing that reflected the moon as they took the turns up through Sea Pines toward the north shore of the island—and they drove fast. A light drizzle bullied the night, but it felt good as they drove. The wind helped sober him up a bit.

  “You seem angry,” she said as she drove, not looking at him.

  He did not answer her.

  “Too many things to think about,” she said, answering for him.

  Recalled a bank of elevators—recalled the illuminated floor numbers—recalled the slant of the carpeted hallway, rust-brown and dim in the poor lighting—recalled the turn of the lock in Isabella’s door—click—

  “You’re very beautiful,” he said as she pushed him into the open black maw of her hotel room.

  “I know,” she said.

  —Chapter XVIII—

  It was like watching themselves from above, and in a dream. They crossed from one tiny village to the next. Along the white roads, desert palms stood silent in the breezeless afternoon, coming up to the sides of the roads to greet them. The squalid little huts along this leg of the journey had been previously evacuated, the streets desolate and empty and silent as a crypt. When night fell, they camped. In the darkness, it was not difficult to see the green, glowing smoke beyond some phantom horizon. It was always too difficult to tell just how far off the fighting was. It was misdirected and rarely matched up with the sounds. All of it was difficult to see. In fact, the only evidence, beyond the occasional flicker of bombs and the lightning flash of mortars, was the way the ground shook at night, and you could truly be anywhere—be anywhere at all—with your head down close to the ground, and feel and hear the vibration rushing along the earth and tunneling up through your brain. You became used to it surprisingly quick, and after so many nights with it and lulled to sleep by it, it was soon impossible for you to sleep without it.

  At night, setting up camp, the sounds and voices of the men could be heard drifting up into the too quiet blackness. Most often they maintained their spirits by singing old war songs—possibly songs their fathers had sung—like “Fortunate Son” and “Run Through the Jungle” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain?” and there was always one raucous soul—usually Karuptka—bent on crooning just a little bit louder and throatier than the others, caught if only temporarily in the belief that he was John Fogerty’s fatigues-clad counterpart.

  The next morning, before it was fully and truly morning, Nick and the others awoke and packed. Some of them ate quickly and just as silently as they had packed. Nighttime was always the time when the men seemed most human. It was in the daylight, perhaps too visible to one an
other beneath the harsh and unforgiving desert sun, that they had a difficult time pretending to be human. It was an act, a pantomime. In the daylight, strapped to rifles and grenades, anyone would have a tough time finding humanity.

  Beside Nick, Joseph Bowerman was rubbing his beard stubble, and he looked like he’d spent an evening with the devil’s prostitute. Hungry for furlough (and too keen to know none was coming), tired of the desert, all the men now looked hauntingly like one another.

  “The second I get home, I’m gonna drink me a whole gallon of Mountain Dew,” Bowerman said as he packed his gear. They were like pregnant women, all of them, with their absurd cravings and daydream fantasies.

  Hidenfelter, lacing his boots, voiced, “I’m going to drink whatever booze I can get my filthy little hands on. I’m gonna drink it till my eyeballs are floating.”

  “Cheesecake,” said Myles Granger.

  “I’m gonna get laid,” Karuptka volunteered. “I’m gonna get laid like a dog who’s been chained for a month to a post. Then,” he went on, “I’ll hit some of that booze with you, Oris, man. Get my eyeballs floating, too.”

  Some of them laughed.

  They departed for recon, which amputated them from the 44-man platoon. Their objective rally point established them just outside the city of Fallujah. There were six of them in the team, and Nick had requested Oris Hidenfelter, their seasoned sergeant, commit to the recon. Nick had personally selected all of them in his head some time ago. When the time came, he had summoned each of them individually. War, it seemed, was nothing more than an alternating succession of collectivity and individualism.

  They crossed into the city in the midst of daylight. It already reeked of gunpowder. Marines had preceded them by two full days to this point of the city…but that did not mean the city was safe and clean. The cities were never truly safe and clean, no matter how many men soldiered through them. There were always nests. You could never pause and breathe deep because nothing was ever safe and clean.