by Bryan Young
“It’s true. I’m a coward. I would’ve never agreed to marry if I thought you’d have to go back to the war. Not because I didn’t want to, but out of cowardice. You’re brave enough to love even with the threat of losing. I’d lost that nerve.”
“It’s simple to love someone when they’re as caring as you.” I said. “It’s like holding up a mirror to reflect the best of people.”
“You’re kind enough on your own, in your way.” She grinned. “Even if you don’t realize it. You’re making strides at the hospital, I’ve been so proud.”
“Then it’s your beauty. It’s easy enough to love a woman who looks as perfect as you do all the time.”
“Oh, please. You say that because of lust. There are many better reasons for you to love me than the fact that I’m beautiful.”
“Would you like me to list them all?”
The later the hour drew, the more hushed our conversation became. By the time we were ready to fall asleep that night, we were speaking in hushed and urgent whispers.
“Fine then. I’ll play your game. Why else do you love me?”
“I love the way your brow furrows when you’re trying to be serious. I love the way your nose wrinkles when you laugh. The sound of your voice is a tonic to my nerves and it chases the nightmares away. I love how careful you are, and how caring you are. You’re the brave one, and I love you for it.”
“Caring’s my job. That’s all.” She pulled the sheet up over her body and nestled in closer to me.
I loved the feel of her skin against mine. “I couldn’t take such small slivers of my heart and stretch them out like blankets to comfort the dying and the wounded. I’d think I’d rather take a bullet than learn how to do something like that. You’re simply amazing.”
“You’re idealizing me again.”
“It’s an easy mistake to make.”
“I worry about it. Truly.” Her lips turned down, almost into a pout.
I couldn’t understand the danger. But the way she said it assured me, somehow, that it was as dangerous as an air raid and her words were a siren. Instead of seeking shelter and hoping the danger passed, I kept strolling along and opened my mouth. “Why?”
“I want you to be in love with me, not your imaginary version of me. The same way I’d want you to be angry with me for what I’ve actually done rather than a conclusion you’ve come to.”
“I couldn’t be angry with you.”
“Of course you can be. You’ll find a reason sooner or later. We’re people just like everyone else and people get angry. And that’s my point.”
“I don’t see it happening.”
“You didn’t see yourself being a war hero either. Or meeting me. Or ever finding happiness again. Not anymore than I expected to. And that’s what I love. That you forced me to be brave again. And love. And heal.”
“But that’s what you’ve done for me. I wanted to die in that zeppelin crash. And thought I would.”
“So that’s all, then?”
“No. There’s so much more to it. It’s almost impossible to explain.”
“Try me, Aeronaut.”
“Firstly, I think you understand me in a way no one else could. You’ve suffered as much as I have and it makes commiserating easy. When I’m with you, I feel safe. Like you have my back. It’s the same feeling I got knowing my fellow Aeronauts were beside me, willing to destroy anything they could to protect me, but instead of physical pain, you shield me from the emotional. I used to feel alone, even when I was surrounded with people, but you’ve managed to destroy the loneliness in me. When I’m apart from you, I grow cold and bitter, wanting only to come back inside to the fire you keep burning.”
After a moment of considering, she let out a breath through a smile, pulled my gaze down toward her, kissed me delicately, then said, “I love you, Ulysses Preston. With all of my heart, I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I remember telling her.
We spent so much time in that moment, touching each other’s faces and tracing our fingers across every line of our bodies. We had so much lost time to make up for, learning every inch and reading it as though it were a map. My fingers brushed the side of her face and took a turn south, down her neck. Then they traveled west along the peak of her collarbone and curved gracefully around her shoulder.
It must have tickled a bit, because she smiled. But then she spoke, her voice hushed. “I was in school the first time I’d ever fallen in love. I must have been twelve.”
The soft love in her voice forced to the background all of the jealousy I felt at hearing she’d been in love with someone else.
“His name was Paolo. A young Italian boy with dark, curly hair. I thought he had the prettiest eyes, so blue they seemed white against the olive of his skin. I was sick whenever I found myself around him. Butterflies in my breadbasket all the time. I almost fainted every time he spoke to me.”
“How do you know it was love?”
“Because of how pure it was. And how warm it felt. It was as though I could go outside in the winter without a coat, and the heat of my heart would keep me warm. And I wanted nothing back from him. I just wanted to be near him and make him happy how I could.” She smiled and her eyes cast themselves downward, lost in the thought. “He was my first kiss. I remember he wore knee-high socks and it was in the summer during a school retreat. It was our secret, else a scandal would have broken out. He was the son of the ambassador.”
The thought of her as a young girl in pig-tails less than a decade prior brought a smile to my face. I was sure she was beautiful even then. So often women had to grow into their beauty, but I was sure Sara was born with it.
“He made me feel as though all the problems of my world would disappear.” Sara’s breath was hot on my cheek as she spoke closer to my ear, pausing to kiss it and nibble on the lobe. “I haven’t felt that way in a long time. But that’s how you make me feel. That’s how I know it’s love. I’m that twelve-year old girl, smitten and wanting nothing back. I just want to make you happy and you to make me happy.”
“What happened to him?”
She offered a sad smile just like the one LeBeau gave when he spoke of the dead. “He moved with his family. Back to Italy. That was also the first time I suffered heartbreak. He studied to become an artist. I’d receive letters from him now and again with the most beautiful sketches in them. But they stopped.”
Of course it was the war that ended letters, too. It had cost her everything that made her happy, and she feared I was one more thing that she’d inevitably lose.
In the silence of the moment, I could see her eyes fixated on nothing in particular, out of focus, lost in memory.
My voice was low, lower than a whisper. “Is there anything the war hasn’t cost you?”
I didn’t even realize I was speaking out loud until she responded. “My father. Life took him. Not the war.”
“How?”
“His heart stopped one day. I found him at his desk one morning, slumped over. And that was that.”
Where I expected tears in her eyes, I saw none. Only love. Her memories had taken her to a happy place despite the darkness of the conversation.
“We all live on a finite timeline, Robert. Everything is taken from us sooner or later. We’re mortal. Death is just something that happens. I’ve tried insulating myself from it, but that doesn’t work. I just have to find my happiness in the present and remember my happiness from the past. Andre told me that.”
Hearing LeBeau’s name from her lips confused me. Especially with so much affection.
When would they have grown acquainted enough to get on a first name basis? And what sort of conversation could have brought about so serious a topic as mortality and happiness?
She smiled, shrugging off all of the metaphysical confusion inside her.
Smacked with a tinge of jealous awe, I had to suppress my worry and catalogue it for later. With her smile right in front of me, beaming right into me, all I co
uld do was beam back. “I don’t know how you can do it...”
“Do what?”
“Be happy. Life has taken so much from you so consistently, and yet you can remain so positive and cheerful. And caring. There’s no bitterness to you, and you have every right to be bitter.”
“What good would bitterness do? It won’t bring them back.”
So many mornings were spent talking in this way. Every time we spoke, I learned something new about Sara and it made every moment thrilling. She said she felt the same way. That we were connected in a way she’d never felt with anyone before.
But she insisted that something important was about to happen.
She had a premonition of a turning point. Or maybe not a premonition, just the knowledge and fear that things could change as all things do.
Change came soon enough: I was going back to work for the army whether I liked it or not.
The night previous, I’d been informed of a meeting that required my attendance. It was a meeting of utmost secrecy and importance to the war and I couldn’t care less about it. In fact, the more I got to know Sara, the more I actively despised the idea of going back to the war. I no longer wanted to die there because I wanted so badly to keep from disappointing her, and because we’d both come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a waste.
What did lines on a map matter?
She kissed my forehead and leapt spryly from the bed, quickly wrapping her perfect frame in her terry robe. “Do you still have time for tea?”
Pulling my watch from the nightstand and realizing the time, I knew that I didn’t and said so, “I really have to get back to report, my love.”
“But it’s my day off from hospital, do you really have to go so soon?”
“It pains me, too, but what if it’s truly important? Or what if my orders are in, and I have to report for duty somewhere?” I thought back to the Preston of a year prior who would have gladly signed up and quickly, but not because he could help, but because he was so heartbroken he wanted to die. I despised that earlier iteration of myself.
“Damn this stupid war.” Sara pouted, tying the front of her gown together, obscuring her pert breasts fully from my view. “If it were up to me it would be over by now. Why do we have to try so hard to kill each other in the name of King and country? No one will be better for this after.”
“You don’t have to convince me, my darling. Convince the Kaiser.”
“I would if I could.”
I laughed. “I know. And you would do it, too. You’re too kind and obstinate, he’d certainly have met his match. If only you spoke German.”
“Wer sagt, dass ich nicht?” she said, walking from the bed to her dressing table, combing her beautiful auburn hair back into its natural wavy state.
“You speak German, too?”
“Ja.” She turned back to me and arched an eyebrow between brushstrokes.
“I had no idea.”
She turned back to the mirror and untangled a knot at the back of her head with the brush. “There are plenty of things you don’t know about me, soldier.”
Her warmth touched me again then. I loved discovering new things about her and I’d worried that I’d exhausted all of the discovery. But hearing her speak in German almost assured me that my map of her would never be completely charted.
But to her, the fact that she spoke German was nothing, and my potential reassignment was. “It would be a lot easier to cope if you had some idea what this was all about and why they’d call you over so mysteriously.”
“You know that I have no idea. I’d tell you if I did.”
“That doesn’t make it any less maddening.”
I didn’t argue with her.
Now that I’d had the easy life and could spend my days worshipping at the altar of Mrs. Preston, I didn’t want to go back to the war any more than she wanted me to. Why in the world should I? Hadn’t I done my part?
For the first time in my life, things were perfect, and somehow something as destructive as the Great War is what brought me there.
It’s like anything, I suppose. You’re eager to roll your sleeves up for a job, you do it for a while and it wears on you, then you don’t feel so much like giving everything you’ve got. Then, if you haven’t done it for a while, you stand to do it and find your bones creak and your muscles ache and it doesn’t hold the same attraction. You’re tired and you’ll go at it if you’re forced, but maybe you realize you like just sitting in your favorite chair and reading a paper.
I had an inkling, that vague suspicion, they were going to send me right back out to the front. It was as though they were going to tap me on the shoulder and say, “This was all a massive oversight and you’ll need to report to command where you’ll be tried by a military tribunal and sentenced for your crimes.”
I put myself back together, retied my tie, brushed off my uniform, and straightened my Aeronaut’s jacket before I left for the briefing across town.
“I’ll see you tonight then. Perhaps I’ll pay Andre a visit and see if he can chat,” she told me. “I do so love his conversations.”
“Just make sure you’re home before I am,” I told her, trying not to read too deeply into the idea. LeBeau was our friend. I shouldn’t have had anything to worry about.
I left a tender kiss on Sara’s cheek on my way out, not realizing how much things would change once I walked out that door.
18
My secret meeting was being held at a small office above a café in the village. It was a secret operation and secret operations needed secret places to conduct secret business.
I didn’t quite understand it all. Not then, anyway.
Today, I say to hell with secrecy.
I felt sheepish being so tight lipped about my work from that point forward. Not being able to say anything to Sara made me believe she felt unloved, like an orphan, absent of affection simply because I had to keep secrets from her. Sharing is love of a kind and with Sara I wanted to share everything until the end of our days.
So there I was, walking down the cobblestone lane and looking for the secret entrance to the office for my secret briefing. Since the Brits were involved, so too was there a secret passcode. I was to meet a man in front of a predetermined café, relay to him the agreed upon code, and he was going to lead me to their office.
It all seemed so silly, the work of spies. I suppose the French intelligence service was just as bad as the Brits when it came to their codes and knocks, but the Brits had this extra layer of theatricality to really put it over the top.
With no trouble whatsoever, I found the man I was to meet in front of the café. He wore a rumpled gray suit and a rabbit-felt trilby, and sipped espresso while reading a French newspaper. It was apparent he was on the lookout for something; there was a nervous suspicion to him. One could wonder if he spoke French, let alone read it, by the way he used the paper as little more than a prop.
Once he spotted me, he folded the paper neatly and set it beside his tiny china cup. Then, as prescribed by the code, he reached into his suit-jacket pocket, and withdrew a silver cigarette case. He pulled out a long, white stick of tobacco and tapped it on the cover of his case. Then, he put it in his mouth, eyeing me nervously as he pat his pockets, looking for a light.
As I walked by, he pulled the cigarette from his lips and said in a British accent, “Pardon me, but do you have a match?”
Feeling silly for participating in so awkward a dance, I reached into my pocket. “I use a lighter.”
“Better still,” he said to me, standing and coming closer for a light.
Playing my part, I made a half-hearted effort to flick the flint wheel, causing sparks but no flame. “Better until they go wrong,” I said as I pulled allegedly malfunctioning lighter back to my side and dropped it into my pocket.
“Exactly,” the man said, his voice gaining confidence now that the dance was done.
“Is that all?” I asked.
“This way,” he
said, leading me into the café.
The smell of coffee beans, chocolate, and steamed milk was intoxicating. The only thing that enhanced the pleasing aroma further was the handiwork of the nearby bakery. There was no one in the café save the girl manning the counter and the massive steam machine atop it. It was a wonder to me that the harnessed power of boiled water could give us coffee as easily as tanks and siege engines. She averted her gaze, pretending we hadn’t walked past her, and we entered a backdoor that led to a narrow flight of stairs.
At the top of the stairs, we came to a long hallway full of doors. At the end of the corridor was a window the color of honey, pouring strips of light in across the carpet that reminded me of my first sunset with Sara.
My contact seemed to choose a door at random, then knocked lightly in a three-two-three pattern just above the door knob. We stood there in the hall, waiting while he counted to ten under his breath, then he knocked once more in the same pattern.
The door cracked just an inch at the jam and we were stared at by a new set of beady eyes and a quiet, thin-mustached scowl.
My contact spoke first. “He’s brought a lighter.”
“Hmmm.” The sour man peered at me from the sliver of doorway and narrowed his eyes. “All right.”
The door swung open just wide enough to allow us to step through. Inside was unremarkable: a tidy office and conference table none of us were invited to sit at. Instead, we were asked to sit opposite the desk by the window.
I was told this was Lorick’s office, and Lorick’s office was as drab his personality: bare walls and a nondescript desk with a framed photograph of someone whom I assumed was his wife, though thinking back it could have been his mother. The only bit of contemporary personality was a small communications radio on the table to the side.
Behind the desk was a tall, bitter man who introduced himself as Lorick. The name didn’t sound particularly French to me, but his accent did, so I supposed it must have been a name the British had given him. He wore a dingy brown suit with an untidy gray shirt that seemed to match the tufts of hair growing on either side of his head. His jowls and mouth were pulled tight in a way that made me think he was constantly sucking on a lemon drop. I caught onions and whiskey on his breath when he clasped my hand and told me his name.