by Jerry Sacher
“It’s six miles that way, possibly more.” The man pointed north.
Sergei heard another shout, and he had to act fast. There could be no more train. He had to get on a ship. Sergei kept alert and pushed the barrel of the gun further into the man’s stomach. He hated to do it, but he had come up with an instant idea, so he went with it.
Le Havre, France
November 1917
NEWS OF the attack on the Pendennis and the sinking had reached land before the rescue ship lowered its gangplank. No reporters were on the dock, but an Army clerk was on hand to complete the task of making a list of survivors for the War Office.
“I’m only happy to be standing on dry ground,” Benjamin told the clerk after he gave his name and waited off to the side for John Mason.
Benjamin was still sure it had been Sergei who had pulled him into the lifeboat, even though John had told him that it might well have been the stress of the situation that made him see Sergei. On the rescue ship, he had shared the story with John, since John had told him about his own experience with a soldier in France who had declared his love and then broken his heart by marrying. Now they were on land and walked in silence toward the hotel provided for them, both wondering what they were going to do next. Finally John spoke up.
“Listen, Benjamin, I was thinking about what you told me on the ship. I don’t want you to think I was making light of what you were saying. Sergei pulled you out of the water—well, the doctor in me told you that it was stress related to the sinking, but now I’m speaking to you as a friend. Granted that I haven’t known you very long, but I think I can say that I believe you when you tell me it was Sergei who pulled you into the lifeboat.”
“Thank you, John, I appreciate you saying that you believe me. And thank you for sharing your soldier with me. I find myself wondering at times where Sergei is… the war, the revolution in Russia, so many things are uncertain right now that maybe you were right. I willed myself to see him rescue me, but somehow I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.”
Benjamin lowered his head and sighed, and John remained silent.
While they ate dinner and sipped coffee afterward, there was no further conversation. The innkeeper had only one bed available, if they didn’t mind sharing, he said almost apologetically. Neither John nor Benjamin said they’d mind.
In the room, they happily stripped out of the damp uniforms and fell on top on the bed, side by side. Together they lay awake in the dark, staring up at the water stains and peeling plaster on the ceiling. The sounds from the street outside the window filtered into the room, until finally John shattered the silence.
“God, Ben, I really want to hold you tonight.”
“What’s stopping you?” Benjamin stifled the nervous laugh that escaped from somewhere deep within him. Maybe he already knew what was holding them back without asking; he just wanted to hear John say it.
The silence was followed by a flash of light from a striking match, the intake of breath on a cigarette, a few seconds of more silence, and then John took the cigarette away, and said, “If I may use the expression, you and I are both in love with the ghosts from our past. That’s exactly what’s stopping us.”
“What can we do to exorcise the ghosts?” Benjamin observed thoughtfully. He heard John whisper softly in the dark.
“I don’t know, Ben, I just don’t know.”
Benjamin felt the warmth of John’s bare arm next to his on the bed. He inclined his head toward the window, and thought of Sergei.
WHEN BENJAMIN woke up early the next morning, the blanket on John’s side of the bed had been thrown back and he was gone.
Benjamin sat up in bed and reached for a cigarette, staring out the window at the fresh troops from England marching past below the window, followed by the wounded, limping or being carried on stretchers, being taken to the hospital ships for transport across the Channel. Benjamin sighed, snuffed out the cigarette, and got out of bed.
While he stripped off his old clothing and prepared to bathe, he thought, I must have been more tired than I thought. I remember the sinking, and being rescued from the water, and arriving in Le Havre, but I don’t remember the new uniform…. I wonder if anything happened between John and me?
When Benjamin returned from the bath wearing his new uniform, he found John sitting on the bed with a tray of coffee and pastries. He smiled when he saw Benjamin dressed in the new uniform, the white Red Cross band around his right arm.
“I brought some breakfast.” John held up a small cup of coffee toward Benjamin.
“Thanks, John. When I woke up and found you gone, I thought you had run off.”
Benjamin pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down. He took the cup and sipped the strong, hot coffee. John watched him over the rim of his own cup, and then he set it down.
“To be honest, I thought about leaving and never coming back, but then I thought, we’ve been through a hell of a lot in the past couple of days, and we’ve shared our secrets together. That makes us friends—pals, I should say.”
John stopped speaking to tear apart a cinnamon roll and then popped it in his mouth. Benjamin ate his own roll and watched him in silence.
“I know it may sound like a sentiment from a Victorian novel, but I appreciate that, John, and I will value our friendship always, even after—”
John interrupted Benjamin with a finger to his own lips cautioning him.
“Ben, don’t say ‘even after the war is over.’ Don’t jinx it.”
Benjamin nodded and continued sipping his coffee then helped himself to another cinnamon roll. Benjamin noticed that John was looking at him with a smile on his face.
“This is heaven. I haven’t tasted food this delicious in a long time. We usually only have stale biscuits and watery eggs for breakfast,” Benjamin said between bites of roll and sips of coffee with real milk.
AFTER BREAKFAST, Benjamin and John returned to the Army hospital down near the docks to report for duty. Wounded British soldiers from the battle of Passchendaele were still coming in on ambulances and trucks. Benjamin saw nothing of John the rest of that day or the next. It was the next day, when he was finally able to take a breath, that he saw a familiar figure walking toward him across the dock.
Benjamin was busy processing the men who were being taken aboard a hospital ship when he stopped for a second and looked up from his clipboard. Colonel Dyson was standing between him and a young man in a wheelchair whose legs were bound in bandages. The colonel grinned at Benjamin, who came to attention.
“Well, Carter, are you surprised to see me?”
Benjamin resumed his ease and found an opportunity to speak as soon as an orderly pushed the patient in the chair aboard the ship.
“It’s good to see you again, Colonel,” Benjamin replied with polite formality. Another patient passed between them. He was aware that Colonel Dyson was looking at him, and he tried to ignore it for as long as he could, until finally he handed over his duty to a soldier standing nearby.
Benjamin walked across the dock area toward a canteen that had been set up for the soldiers and doctors. He took a mug of tea and seated himself at a table. A moment later the colonel joined him.
“Damn, I’ve had my fill of tea in tin mugs.” Dyson scowled and set the cup down. “You don’t have to be so formal, Carter. We are friends.”
“This is the third time I’ve met you, Colonel. I don’t know if we’re friends or not.”
“Ah, yes, Major Carter, and I do so recall the circumstances of our first meeting. I was looking forward to sharing that time with you again.”
For a second Benjamin sat there, speechless, rage bubbling up inside him, which the colonel must have sensed. He grinned at Benjamin from across the table.
“You would love to hit me, wouldn’t you, Carter? I would caution you that doing so would land you in the brig, no matter who your father is—” The rest of his threat was lost when the door swung open, admitting a boisterous group of Australia
n soldiers and John Mason. He waved when he saw Benjamin and came over to the table. He saluted the colonel and pulled up a chair.
“Ben, they told me you were in here. Is everything all right?” Doctor Mason noticed the tension between Benjamin and the colonel right away. Benjamin took a swig of the metallic-tasting tea and replied to John’s question.
“The colonel and I were having a discussion about hospital procedures. Isn’t that right, Colonel Dyson?” Benjamin lied.
The colonel looked flustered but affirmed Benjamin’s statement. Colonel Dyson wiped his brow nervously, then pushed his cup aside, and rose up from the table.
“Doctor Mason, it was a pleasure. Major Carter, I urge you to think over what I said, and I’ll speak to you at another time.”
Salutes were exchanged, and the colonel left the canteen. As soon as the door closed behind him, John moved his chair to Benjamin’s side of the table.
“What is it, Ben? What did he really want?”
Benjamin bent his head down, staring at the table, and then he lifted it up to John. He wanted to be honest with his new friend. “We weren’t discussing procedures. We were talking about repeating the past.”
John thought about that for a moment and then understood. “You were lovers?” he asked quietly.
“Only once, but the colonel wants to meet again. I wonder how he became a colonel so fast?” Benjamin said sarcastically.
“You’re not going to give in to him, are you? Please say you won’t.”
“He’s going to be very forceful.”
“Fear not, Ben, I’ll help you think of something.”
“Just don’t get us in any trouble, all right?”
Chapter 23
SERGEI STOOD at the stern rail of the rusty old freighter, watching the propellers foam the waters of the Gulf of Riga. Russia, his homeland, was a misty shadow fading behind them. He’d had a narrow escape from the train yard, taking the guard’s pistol and scrambling along railroad tracks, a ditch, and some high grass before he got to the boundary fence. He reached the top of the fence just in time. The soldiers and others summoned by the man who’d caught him arrived and began firing at him. Battle experience taught Sergei to dodge the bullets that whizzed past him, missing him by inches before he dropped to the other side of the fence. He took off at a run in the direction of the docks the guard had pointed out to him. He prayed that he had been pointed in the right direction. Another loud bang sounded, and Sergei looked over his shoulder; they were still firing at him, but he was moving beyond their range.
Sergei was out of breath by the time he jumped another fence, ran down a short alley, and into the streets of Riga. He made sure he wasn’t being pursued, and then he went in search of the docks.
Until that moment, Sergei had no idea how he was going to pay for a passage across the Gulf of Riga to France or England or to anywhere, especially in wartime. He paused to stand for a moment in front of an old cargo ship that looked to Sergei as if the whole vessel was being held together by rust and might fall apart—even the name on the stern was illegible. He watched men loading bundles and crates on board, and he didn’t notice a man walking toward him. It was the heavy smell of cigar smoke that Sergei noticed first. Then he saw the man—over six feet tall with gray hair poking out from under a cap, and a lean frame in a heavy wool khaki overcoat. The man kept the cigar between his teeth and spoke to Sergei.
“Good afternoon, Comrade.”
Sergei greeted him in return, and the man informed him that he was the captain of the ship Pavel Nakhimov.
“I’m sorry, sir, I was just watching your men load cargo. I’ll move on….” Sergei turned away, but the captain touched his arm.
“Would you be in need of a job? We’re short of crew because of the war and all the upheavals here in Russia. I can’t guarantee a return trip from Dunkirk, but at least a place on this outbound voyage.”
Sergei couldn’t believe his good luck. It meant he would be that much closer to reaching Benjamin. “A job, Captain? Why, I wouldn’t mind shoveling coal into the furnaces. May I ask why you’re going all the way to Dunkirk?”
The captain laughed heartily at Sergei’s enthusiasm for stoking.
“Nothing that glamorous, I’m afraid. Can you cook?”
Sergei noticed the captain didn’t reply to his question about sailing all the way to Dunkirk, and he didn’t put the question to him again. He would ask one of the crew later.
“I can indeed.” Sergei stretched the truth a little. The only thing he knew how to cook was something that he called barely soup, but looking over the rough-looking men he observed on deck, they wouldn’t be too picky about what they ate.
The captain got him some fresh work clothes and use of a bath, and Sergei was on board just in time for departure.
It was evening, the men had been fed, the pots and dishes cleared away and cleaned, and Sergei had a chance to rest at last. His homeland was just a tiny strip of land on the horizon as he kept watching. He wondered if he would ever see it again, or if he would ever find Benjamin. Benjamin’s face was the only thing he could recollect in prison and across Russia.
After making tea for the crew on night duty, Sergei went to his small cabin to lie down. He stared at himself in the mirror before he turned out the lamp. The unkempt hair was combed, the beard he had grown, as well as the mustache he had taken such pride in, was gone, and he looked even younger than his twenty-five years. After turning the light off, Sergei stretched out on the narrow bunk that comprised one wall of the little space under the porthole. He lay awake listening to the crewmen working outside. Someone off duty was playing an old folk song on the balalaika and another man was singing. Sergei found himself humming along; it was a pleasant accompaniment to the throb of the engines, the water being pushed away from the ship’s side, and the creaks and groans of the old boat.
BENJAMIN DIDN’T see much of John over the next several days, but Colonel Dyson hovered near him like a shadow. Sometimes Benjamin would look up from a patient to find the colonel looking in his direction and licking his lips. One afternoon, when he was preparing a soldier for transport to the hospital ship, he found Colonel Dyson sitting on the bed behind him. Benjamin’s first reaction was to be rude, but Dyson outranked him, so he gave him a brief smile.
“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?”
“Yes, for one thing you can drop the ‘Colonel.’ We are on intimate terms, aren’t we?”
“That was once, back in London, a whole other world away. Which hardly seems real, when you think about it.” Benjamin sighed, secretly wishing Dyson would go away and leave him to his work.
“You’re a philosopher as well as being handsome.”
“I wasn’t trying to be philosophical. I was trying to tell you that we’re all quite busy. There’s a war on, sir.” Benjamin fought to keep his composure.
“You’re right, but what’s the harm in having a little affair between us?”
Benjamin could hardly believe what he was hearing. “No harm, sir? But there would be a great deal of harm. If we were caught, we would lose our rank and face prison… or worse.”
Benjamin noticed this seemed to put off Dyson for a moment. He continued sitting and staring up at Benjamin. As Benjamin opened his mouth to speak the door opened and someone came in.
A soldier came up to the table, stood at attention, and saluted the colonel, then handed him a long cream-colored envelope. Dyson tore it open and threw the pieces on the floor. He read the paper he removed and then stood up. “Is there a car waiting?”
“Yes, sir, outside the door,” the soldier replied.
Colonel Dyson nodded, curtly bid Benjamin good-bye, and walked out, the door slamming shut after him.
Benjamin sat there for a minute or two. He found himself shaking and wanting a glass of whisky. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of that soldier, Dyson might have pressed until he found a weakness, and Benjamin might have given in to his demands.
T
he rest of the day Benjamin moved mechanically through his duties. He received a letter from his parents. Having been informed about the sinking of the Pendennis, they were happy to have received news that Benjamin had survived. Another page from his mother told him that she had no news concerning Sergei. The letter ended by telling him not to worry, he would hear from him soon.
Benjamin wanted to believe her, but he was beginning to lose faith that he would ever see Sergei again. Even after the Pendennis sank, he had been so certain it had been Sergei who pulled him from the water.
It was only a sailor after all.
Chapter 24
THE PAVEL Nakhimov bumped into the dock a little too heavily, almost throwing Sergei off his feet while he was washing pots in the galley. He looked out past the small porthole. No, they hadn’t been torpedoed or struck an iceberg—they had arrived at last in Dunkirk.
Sergei remained aboard to finish cleaning the galley, and then he stepped up to help his fellow crewmen unload the cargo. He was surprised to see crates of machine parts and munitions and other equipment, sent to assist the war effort on the Western Front.
“When so many of our Russian soldiers are fighting without supplies and bullets, they’re being sent to the Western Front,” Sergei remarked to the captain as they guided a large crate from the cargo hold and onto the wharf. The old captain shrugged and walked away without responding.
The same old captain barely looked up at Sergei when he handed him the pay he was owed across the desk in his cabin and dismissed Sergei with a wave and a curt sentence. “We won’t need your service again, you’re free to leave. Good-bye.” He then ignored Sergei and moved on to pay the next person in line behind him.
Sergei was free to leave, but when he stepped down the gangplank and stood on the shore, he didn’t know what he was going to do next.
He had picked up what little clothing he had from his cabin, and he was prepared to leave the ship. Halfway down the gangplank, he heard one of the ship’s officers call his name. He stopped, and the first officer, a stout man with a white beard, walked down the plank to Sergei.