The Verdun Affair

by Nick Dybek

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t at all. She’s wrong.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Your friendship comes in a very strange form,” I said. “I already told you I didn’t.”

  “I know,” he said. “I needed to ask. Now, what do you need to ask me?”

  “What has she said?”

  “She wondered where you went.”

  “I’m sure she understood.”

  “What else?”

  He poured more Fernet. I wished I could make the ceiling, the whole world swirl, the way I did the glass.

  “Is it possible?” I asked.

  “We both know there are many false identifications.”

  “I mean is it possible? Do you understand?”

  He sipped the drink. “Perhaps I say it is possible only because I would like to believe it.”

  “Out of friendship again?”

  “I must admit, I find her perseverance moving.”

  “What perseverance? She said she loved me this morning. This morning.” I was speaking much louder than was at all dignified, but I’d left dignity behind the minute my lips had touched hers a year before. Love brings wonderful things, but seldom dignity.

  He smiled again—a tired smile he’d probably practiced, a smile meant to express sympathy without revealing what he actually thought. Whatever the truth, couldn’t I understand his sympathy for her, hadn’t I felt some version of it? And didn’t he likely have somewhere to be, someone to be with, aside from me? I decided it might be more pleasant to feel bad for him instead of myself for a few minutes.

  “Are you worried about your brother tonight?”

  “Every night.”

  “But particularly tonight? Is he in danger?”

  “Yes. I fear for his life. I would like to convince him to leave the country, but how can I? I have never left the country myself.”

  “Perhaps there is something I can do to help,” I said. There was nothing I could do to help that I knew of, just words. “Does he speak any French?”

  Bianchi laughed loudly. “He hardly speaks Italian. He is very intelligent, but not a man of letters, so to speak. If I am to convince him to leave I must find a new life for us in some other country. He’s a true believer, if you want. I must find something else for him to believe in to save his life, I think. He’s only eighteen, did you realize?”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

  “Because of the iodine he applies. Someone told him the Bolsheviks used it as a disguise.”

  “You’ve never said—do you share his politics?”

  “I can’t say yes, exactly. Perhaps I’ve studied the psyche too long, but I have no confidence that man will ever do the right thing, no matter the belief. What’s the use of a political party?”

  “If that’s the case, what’s the use of anything?”

  “A question worth asking. You look tired,” he said. “Have you slept?”

  “I can’t even imagine sleeping.”

  “Lie down at least.” He walked around the room, tidying up. “It’s a cruel situation. If you want, I could help you. I promised to tell you how I came to this hospital, didn’t I? You may find it instructive. Amusing, at least.”

  “Tell me anything. As long as you refill the glasses.”

  * * *

  The patient’s name was Giuseppe Anglani, and, like Bianchi, he came from the south. From Calabria or Basilicata, no one quite knew. He was in the Thirty-Fourth Infantry or the Twenty-Third. No one quite knew. He’d been a field hand or a fisherman. No one quite knew, but it was known that he could neither read nor write. He survived the third battle of the Isonzo without much distinction; then the fifth and the sixth; then in 1917 he appeared at the flap of a field hospital near Tarcento with a blistering fever.

  “You must be tired,” Bianchi said to me. “Lie back on the bed. I don’t mind.” There was warmth in his voice like light through a shade.

  Anglani’s ambulance made many stops in Vicenza. He was the last man in the back; when they finally dropped him off, they lay the stretcher on the floor of a black room. There, he waited for a nurse to assign him a bed, but no nurse ever came, and when a slab of light slid under the door—daylight—he was able to make out the blue faces of the corpses stacked around him like firewood.

  “I nearly put living men among the dead myself,” I said. “Pure exhaustion made it hard to tell.”

  “Nobody slept,” Bianchi said. “For five years nobody in Europe slept. The consequences are obvious. How do you feel now, tired?”

  By the time Anglani was brought up to the ward his fever had reached nearly 40 degrees. For the second time in as many nights he was left to die, and for the second time in as many mornings he woke up alive. The doctors found him sitting up in bed, his skin cool to the touch, counting quietly on his fingers.

  What are you counting, they asked.

  All the men who have died, he answered.

  That’s nothing to think about now. How do you feel?

  Better, he answered, but afraid.

  The worst is over, they said.

  I’m afraid, he said, because it is my responsibility to stop the war. I’m afraid I might fail.

  “That’s quite an idea,” I said. “What could he possibly do?”

  “Nothing but get himself shot. Which is why the doctor in Vicenza, Dr. Ursi, took pity and sent him to the mental hospital in Bologna, to the famous doctor there, Consiglio.”

  “Your predecessor.”

  “Yes. How do you feel? The story might be better without the lamplight. Do you mind if I shut it?”

  I was too tired to object. The walls of the room rose up in green blurs.

  “Was he a friend of yours?”

  “Consiglio? We never met in person, but under no circumstances would we have been friends. When I arrived I had years of his notes to read. He treated illness like a priest would treat a devil. Often, his only recommendation for treatment was a return to the most dangerous parts of the front. He called this approach, in English, something like ‘a fatally beneficial solution.’ ”

  His prescription for Anglani, however, was faradization. Three sessions a day: electrodes to Anglani’s throat in the morning, his groin in the afternoon, and his temples before dinner. It was all in Consiglio’s notes.

  Question: Do you plan to return to the front and fight for the redemption of Trieste and Trentino, for the unity of Italian peoples in Europe?

  Answer: No, I do not. I plan to stop the war in any way I can, save further violence.

  Somehow, despite the thousands of volts he faced day in and day out, despite the welts from the electrodes and the infection in his tongue where he had bitten it, Anglani stayed both lucid and resolute.

  Quite the feat, Bianchi explained. A body can be trained to withstand such therapy, and a mind can be trained as well, but each course of training takes its own lifetime. The body will often let down the most resolute mind, and vice versa. After a month, Consiglio was forced to concede. He abandoned the electrodes, and cordially invited Anglani into his office.

  “For hypnotism?” I asked.

  “Doubtful. Talking, in Consiglio’s opinion, was for Jews, not Italians. To be honest, I do not know what they did in that office. But it seems that the faradization must have been effective in some way, because, shortly after Consiglio conceded, the miracles began.”

  “Miracles? Please, I’ve had enough of those.”

  It is all in the notes, Bianchi said. There was a man in the next bed who felt lice crawling through his hair and over his skin. He could only sleep for thirty minutes at a time. He would snap awake and scratch, picking the invisible nits from the hair on his arms and at his groin.

  “One day,” Bianchi said, “Anglani said to him—and there were many witnesses—‘Why don’t you stop scratching, friend? I’ve combed all the lice away.’ And immediately the man did stop scratching. He slept for a full day, and when he awoke he went for a peaceful walk in the cour
tyard.”

  The bed seemed to liquefy below me.

  The notes reported that even Anglani was surprised at what he’d done. He spent the evenings by the fountain with his face in his hands, hiding tears. But a week later a patient who had not spoken in a year began to sing passages from La Traviata. A patient who had been absolutely terrified of the moon asked for a telescope. Another patient who had arrived at the hospital with every strand of his hair standing on end was found with his head in Anglani’s lap, brush in hand.

  Are you him, the other patients began to ask.

  “Are you who?” I asked.

  “You know. Gesu. How do you feel, Tom? Relaxed? You can close your eyes if you want.” I did close my eyes, and felt Bianchi lift the glass from my chest. I heard him pacing as he spoke, the floor creaking, almost a music.

  Are you Jesus? He never claimed to be. Nevertheless, the patients asked for blessings, for relics. Then the orderlies asked, then the nurses. They stole clippings of his hair, his nails. And one day Dr. Consiglio was found eating from Anglani’s bowl and ripping pieces from his sheets.

  I tried to raise my head. I found I could no longer move.

  “He believed?”

  “You must understand that, until recently, the most hard-hearted Italians were also the most devout Catholics. Consiglio was so convinced that he wrote to the military board suggesting he had stumbled upon a man who would change the course of the war. He suggested they see for themselves the incredible things of which this man was capable.”

  “What did they see?” It took most of my strength to ask the question.

  “Naturally, they saw nothing. They transferred or fired the nurses, the doctors, even the kitchen maids. They transferred Consiglio to a tiny hospital in Sardinia and replaced him with a man from the south who could not have been more of a stranger to Bologna, to the patients.”

  “And Anglani?”

  “By the time I arrived the armistice had been signed. And I was told that I could do with him what I wanted. Naturally, I had already heard all about him. But he was not at all what I expected. I asked him: Did you really think you could stop the war? Of course not, he replied, but what was the harm in trying? What was the harm in telling his suffering bedmate he was clean? Nothing, I thought.

  “And I asked him: What of the claims that you are Gesu? ‘Oh, not you too,’ he said. I ordered his release. To me, he simply seemed like a man who had a small compulsion to do good in the world, nothing more. The next month he died in a fire in a brothel outside Naples.”

  “That isn’t very cheerful.” I heard my voice, but was not conscious of deciding to speak. My eyes felt too sticky to open.

  “It is a very sad story, in fact.” Bianchi spoke from far away—perhaps the door, perhaps the hallway. “But I only promised it might be instructive.”

  “And what does it instruct?”

  “He deserted. This is how he got to the field hospital in the first place. He walked right off the mountain. And I asked him, how did you manage to survive? If you were thinking like a rational man who wants to live, why would you do such a thing? He was delighted by my question. He said that he had come to a conclusion during the sixth battle of the Isonzo. His battalion had been ordered to advance up the side of a mountain, into a slaughter so pointless and thorough that eventually even the Austrian machine gunners began to shout from their trenches that they’d killed enough men already, begging the Italians to retreat. The only way to survive under such circumstances, to find peace of any kind, Anglani realized, was to give oneself fully over to the irrational, even the impossible.”

  “Everyone says that.”

  “Yes, but how many of us can actually do it?”

  * * *

  The following morning I left early enough to see the fishmonger on Via Cartoleria pulling up the iron grate of his storefront. He spun at my footsteps, a clutch of eels hanging from his fist.

  I’d slept so well that it was almost possible to imagine the day before had not happened. But then the image—the tremor in his face, the beaming look on hers—would return, relentless. I’d never seen that face on her, so I knew I could not have made it up. All the same, I decided to go to her. It was simple, in the end. I had one choice: whether or not to be a coward. And I could always be a coward later.

  I met her at the restaurant in her hotel, just as I had in Verdun. Polished marble pillars; stained glass and frescoed ceilings. A love affair so dependent on hotels is probably not meant to last. Still, my chest fluttered at the sight of a place set for me at her table.

  “I was happy to get your note,” she said.

  “I should have waited yesterday.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have.”

  “I see.”

  “I mean that anyone would have left. I hope it’s all right that I ordered for you.”

  We ate pastries. Drank off-white foam from white cups. It took a long time before she pushed away her plate.

  “I keep wanting to say, ‘Let me explain,’ but there is nothing to explain, is there?”

  “I understand that.”

  “And if I apologized that would only demean things between us.”

  “I understand that too.”

  “But there is one thing I do want to say: I imagined yesterday so many times. And of course I thought I’d feel unconditional happiness if I ever found him. But I didn’t. I think, perhaps, that’s the price I have to pay to get him back. You are the price, and it is a great price. Truly.”

  Her face was absolutely open, her voice absolutely sincere. She met and held my eyes. But I’d seen her face the day before also, and I knew she was lying.

  “Also, I wanted to tell you that I would have gone to the hospital to see him eventually. Even if it hadn’t been yesterday with you. I know I said I wouldn’t, but I would have. I assume you already know that too.”

  The thought hadn’t actually occurred to me, but, yes, I did know it.

  “It’s truly him?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s truly him. It’s him.”

  I tried to think, tried to come up with some argument. But there was simply nothing to say. Sometimes the right word at the right moment makes all the difference. Sometimes not.

  “Have you cabled his parents?”

  “Dr. Bianchi has asked me to wait.”

  “Just a precaution, I’m sure.”

  “I understand why he’s skeptical. Obviously, I understand why you are.” She tried to sip her coffee, but the cup was empty. “That’s why I need to ask you a favor. Would you look at him again? Would you tell Dr. Bianchi if you recognize him?”

  She must have known what she was asking, but she didn’t hesitate; her eyes were so clear, so unembarrassed. There was only a subtle shift in them—it was frightening just how subtle—as love gave way to utility.

  * * *

  I suppose as I left the hotel and drifted toward the hospital that I thought I was doing something noble. I could have told her I’d been lying the first day, lying all along, that I’d never seen her husband in my life, but I didn’t. Why not? I still wanted to have some use. Self-sacrifice, after all, is the only consolation of the sacrificed.

  I had to wait for Bianchi a long time, with nothing to do but attempt a few headlines in the Italian papers. The socialist mayor of Prato had been hung by his feet from a tree while police officers assaulted his wife. Blackshirts laid an ambush in the hills above Florence, and set fire to Fiesole. Bianchi burst into his office, apologizing, shaking my hand, asking me how I slept.

  “You asked me yesterday if I recognized him. For what it’s worth, I don’t.”

  “You already told me that, Tom.”

  “And now I’m telling you again. It’s not him.”

  * * *

  I spent the rest of the day looking for the old canals. Something to do.

  * * *

  From the street I could see Paul smoking at his hotel window, the yellow lamplight at war with the sunset on the p
ink buildings.

  “Do you still have my wineglasses?” he called down.

  He answered the door in his undershirt. His bedclothes were twisted, and empty wine bottles—my Donatis included—lined the dresser. I handed him the glasses, but had no intention of going in.

  “I hope you’ve made good use of these with your lovely Mrs. Hagen. I apologize. I bought other glasses, but they’ve broken. Join me? It would be a favor.”

  The armoire was open, six or seven stiff suits hanging on the rod. The little mirror inside was cracked, and Paul’s razor rested on a shaving bowl brimming with white water. He poured wine that I drank but didn’t taste. The glow outside had turned a thin, blood-in-the-water red. It was easy to imagine hurling myself through the window in such a light. I decided I had better sit down.

  “Have you been to the hospital today?” I asked.

  “Not in several days, actually. What’s become of it?”

  So he didn’t know about Sarah. I wasn’t sure if this was a relief.

  “I couldn’t face it either,” I said.

  “Oh?” There was something bordering on bitterness in his expression, but then it passed. “What can you face?”

  “What can you?”

  “Just what you see.” He lit a cigarette. “I know you deserve better company. If you drink faster I might not seem so bad.” He let his head fall back against the window frame and crooked a leg on the sill. There were white scars weaving between the braces of his sock.

  “You might be better company if you told me what’s wrong with you,” I said. “What happened while I was gone?”

  “It occurred before you left. It’s just that I’m still coming to terms, if you like.”

  “If you want,” I said in Bianchi’s singsong.

  Paul snorted. “Yes, if you want.”

  He began to answer my question, but I wasn’t listening. I was trying to convince myself there was a future: I would live a long life after I left Bologna. There would be Rose, perhaps. There would be work. There would be America someday. And yet all of this was impossible to want. I wanted nothing more than to sit with Paul because once we had both sat with Sarah.