Refiner's Fire

by Mark Helprin

  Breathless, he passed the wire perimeter. Coming upon their white room, he threw open the door. She was not there. A letter tablet was on the table, and a coffee cup rested on a chair. In his absence, she had begun to drink coffee.

  A man he didn’t even know looked in. “You must be Marshall.” Marshall nodded. “Lydia is in the cemetery, gardening. After work she gardens it. We think its a little strange.”

  “You think. Who the hell are you?” He dropped his things and shot out the door like a horse leaving a starting gate. He ran down the road to the cemetery so fast that it frightened the birds. It was as if he had been in training all that time just to run down that road.

  He didn’t see her, but he knew that she was there because he felt her presence. Suddenly, she popped up with her back to him—she had been bending over. There she stood like an Englishwoman in her garden, with the sun lighting her hair as she pulled weeds off a rake. He saw the sweet, solid, beautiful shape of her back. She was wearing her dark blue cardigan. He knew it well: it was as soft as the underbelly of a lamb.

  She stood calmly, framed by the high royal palms and the tendrils of a winding iron fence. His last steps were long astounding leaps. He choked on her name. She turned and it was an opening, time-lapse flowers, the slow crown of droplets, as they laughed amidst the shock and wonder and flight. Marshall cleared the vine-wrapped fence by many feet. He spread his arms wide and baffled the flow of air as he flew in deep, still, smooth slow motion. They watched one another’s faces as they came together. They rolled on the ground. They touched, and it was like breathing again. It almost burst his heart.

  14

  THEY HAD very little time, and decided upon a night picnic in a hayfield. That evening they went to the kitchen and filled infirmary containers with freshly baked rolls, cold beef, salad, steaming hot tea, and what the cooks called Italian Chocolate Slice. Lydia pinched a carafe of wine from the religious stores, and they walked into the darkness, carrying what looked like aluminum models of Chinese silos.

  Had they stayed inside they would have fought like hell, because the tensions were remarkable. Lydia had become good friends with new people that Marshall didn’t even know. It drove him crazy. And when he mentioned Lenny, Hannah, Baruch, Ashkenazi, Maloof the sneak thief, and the rest, she too felt abandoned and as if he had jumped connections with insulting ease. Having been a woman waiting for her husband to return from the Army, Lydia was changed. Needless to say, Marshall was also changed. Like mating in the dark with a stranger, things just didn’t slide so easily. She had little comprehension of where Marshall had been, and he wanted least of all to convey the full sense of the Fourth Daughter; but she was curious and kept asking questions. He was bound to leave at noon the next day, to travel via Nablus to an ammunition dump he had yet to see. The limited hours pressed on them like the lid of a tomb.

  But the tension dispersed over the fields into a sky of whitened star-roads. The wind brushing the trees by the Jordan, the faint flow of the Jordan itself, the dewless cool grass, and the great and compassionate silence healed divisions as they appeared.

  This was due in large part to Lydia’s character and imagination. Dreading a catfight in their tiny room, she had pulsed with ideas to avert it. Her understanding of their natures had led her to bring him into a quiet field far outside the perimeter, the security lights, and the guard towers.

  Slowly finding one another’s speed, slowly joining together again, they could hardly speak. The time limit almost sickened them. When the moon came up it cleared the Jordan escarpment painfully fast, sending Marshall into a panic, but after he had finished his Italian Chocolate Slice and two thirds of hers (as was the custom in the case of things chocolate), she had him deep in her arms and she was deep in his. The distance disappeared; he told of how frightening it had been; she told of how lonely; and as a warm wind spilled over the mountains—a late autumn gift from Saudi Arabia—they fell back on the dry hay and slept under the traveling blond light of a bright flame-curled moon, unconscious in the rich protective din of crickets and tree frogs.

  With the dawn came several combines moving parallel in the distance. They were green; they hummed; and they had come on a last foray into the hay. When the sun took fire on the lip of the escarpment, Marshall cursed the speed of astronomical processes. He discovered that, on leave, heavenly bodies rushed about the sky in madness, plotting against the slow drift of time. This reminded him of Major Pike and the great machinery hall of the Eagle Bay School. In illustration of an eclipse, the Major had cranked the orrery too far. Since the universe refused to back up, he had to bring it around again. “It’s going to take five minutes,” he said to his cigar, knowing that the children would go wild. “The only thing to do is dance. Dance. When Holly and I found that time passed slowly in the Philippines or in Nicaragua, we just danced. The British danced too, all over the world.” He looked up at the children, who, because he was a wizard, would have done anything he said. “You kids do some dancing while I crank up the universe. Harlan Holmes, turn on the Victrola and put in cylinder sixteen—that’s ‘Camp Town Races, Doo Dah.’ ” Marshall danced with Francie Alden, a delicate little girl who was growing her long golden hair to drop out of a tower window. Around and around they went in a sort of waltz. “Can’t you foxtrot?” asked Major Pike. “You’re in the third grade.” They tried to foxtrot, but failed, and returned to the waltz. Under the biplane, the battle flags, and other stuff hung from the ceiling, they heard “Camp Town Races, Doo Dah,” five times before they drifted over to see how the universe was coming. Cigar ashes littered its green felt floor. The room was full of Havana smoke. The Major worked furiously. His glasses were in themselves moonlike and frosted on their rimless edges. Every now and then he would bend down and pat Franks snow-white fur.

  “Who was Frank?” asked Lydia, stuffing the last of the rolls into her mouth.

  “He was the Major’s dog, a strange-looking thing (looked just like a horseradish). Frank was a genius—the only dog in the world who could work a drill press. On military holidays, of which we had about forty in Eagle Bay, the Major would take him hiking. Frank wore a knapsack and a little green hat with a feather in it. It looked entirely appropriate. In first grade, we believed that he had been a student who had misbehaved. You should have seen how the little girls talked to him, and kissed him on his broad white forehead, hoping to change him back.”

  Suddenly dozens of jet fighters came roaring over the hills. They flew at 100 feet, far beneath the Syrian radars, to spring suddenly on the Golan. Their thunderous engines came wickedly close, each trailing a pyramidal torch of superheated fire. The noise shook the earth as, one after another, the Skyhawks and Phantoms from Ramat David passed above, quicker than silver and blue in the belly. The air smelled of kerosene, and the combines suddenly veered and began to paddle toward Marshall and Lydia.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Lydia, rising.

  “You have beautiful legs,” replied Marshall, still on the ground. “Quick, back to the room.” They jumped on a trailer towed by an enormous tractor.

  “Is your Hebrew good enough for you to talk to a general?” Marshall asked.

  “My Hebrew is good enough for me to talk to God.”

  “Good. I want you to speak to the Commander of the Second Mountain Brigade. He seemed to be intelligent and nice. The idea is to get me back to my rightful place—a fresh start.”

  “Are you sure you want that?”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It might be risky.”

  “Look. That way I might be stationed within half an hours bus ride.”

  “You might also be stationed on the Syrian line.”

  “They can’t do that. I’m an only-son.”

  15

  LYDIA COULD work wonders. When Marshall passed again through Nablus on the way to Camp Nashqiya, it seemed like a city of gardens, and its inhabitants were as friendly and talkative as the citizens of a Hudson town before a major
thunderstorm. They appeared to understand completely Marshall’s lot as a soldier. He returned to the cafe, where the waiter greeted him with a warm smile. The architecture was beautiful. The light struck the stone softly and sweetly, and the Arab girls were dignified and royal.

  How amazing, thought Marshall, that everything works so precisely well. The streets are clean and dry. Lamb is cooking on the spits for tonight’s dinner. Bread rises. Oranges sit in fragrant piles, and the orange vendor is clean, honest, and punctual. Everyone feels as comfortable and as good as if he had just finished a hard day’s work. The flags and banners are washed and pressed. This is paradise.

  The bus ride through cool autumn air had been a collage of beauty and quiet. The ride in a military truck had had the same effect. They traveled across enclosed plains and past ancient walled cities to a mountaintop on which a small camp was perched amid pine trees and rocky turrets. It was an ammunition storage dump protected by twenty-five soldiers and two armored halftracks. Besides sentry duty, they each served in the kitchen twice a year for a week of dishwashing and food preparation in aid to the Yemeni cook; they maintained the halftracks, heavy machine guns, mortars, small weapons, mine fields, and communications equipment; they (rarely) received and stowed shipments, or sent them out; and they gardened. The only plants in the Fourth Daughter had been highly armed roses. At Nashqiya, lawns were in abundance, beds of flowers climbed the hillside, and vegetable patches were placed between concrete bunkers. There were benches, badminton, chess, checkers, darts, and croquet. The officers were graduate students who spoke perfect English and were interested in Beowulf, Philip the Second, the economy of Japan, and bacterial chemotaxis. The beds had sheets and pillows; five soldiers shared a large, quiet, airy room; the food was fresh and nutritious; there was a radio; passes were arranged according to a rational system; and those who were married had supplementary leave. The wonders never ceased.

  Marshall’s job was to go on clear nights to a sandbagged redoubt overlooking the fragrant valley. Down a run of pine needles the camp reposed in dark blue. For eight hours, he sat next to a .50-caliber machine gun, staring past the wire as he inhaled fine resinous air. Roving patrols brought fruit, cakes, and tea, and stayed for conversation. When he was alone, he taught himself the names of stars and constellations in English, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic. Far away, a medieval minareted city sparkled with tiny electric lights. In the mornings he returned to his quiet barracks and slept on clean sheets; before he fell asleep he would look appreciatively at the sunlit white curtains blowing inward.

  He went to the Camp Commandant and explained that he had tried to contact Lydia to tell her not to work on the transfer, but the phones had been knocked out in a lightning storm.

  “Yes. You know, to reach Bet Shan, it has to go through Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. It’s silly, but perhaps it means that we’re going to pull out some day. Wouldn’t that be nice? We’ll send a telegram. But I wouldn’t worry. For better or worse, in this Army it takes a hundred years to obtain a transfer.”

  Marshall had only ten days until forty-eight hours’ leave. What a delightful restoration. The bitter taste of the Fourth Daughter had fled. Falls and restorations taught the truth of the world, and provided dizzying rides. Ten months at Nashqiya would be perfect. Every night was starry and warm. The constellations blazed. Their names in Arabic were dazzling and mysterious.

  16

  THOUGH BORN and bred in Norfolk, Lydia had been sent to a boarding school in Grosse Pointe. Her parents were rather old, and, foreseeing the eventuality of their own deaths, wanted to make her as independent as they could without making her bitter. It was begun during summers in Columbine, on sailing ships, in the Swiss mountains. And it continued in autumn, when she was sent lonely and beautiful up to Michigan, where the leaves died in early October and the cold was nearly unbelievable.

  Her speech was a perfect combination of the considered Eastern seaward Virginia drawl, and the less sophisticated, slightly flat, rapid and charming upper Michigan trot. She threw out the middle of many words. For example, she did not say “animals,” but “annils.” Of all her characteristics, the most extraordinary was her smile.

  Those with the misfortune of seeing her but briefly remembered her smile for the rest of their lives. God knows where and how it followed and haunted them. The best of gentleness and the best of strength were combined in the beauty of the ravishing lines of her mouth—her lips, the corners, the juncture between upper lip and cheek, the faint parallel lines along her lower jaw—and in the pure white of her teeth, which were as white as chiclets, and which looked as if she had just come out of a freezing mountain river. They were slightly uneven in the front, so that in kissing, there was character. Even when she wore sunglasses in obfuscation of her gentle eyes, or if her dress were sequined and low-cut, her smile opened up all that was gentle and fair and warm and kind.

  Sometimes she forgot her disputational skill and fell into jargon, but the result was an illumination of the commonplace, which, held up for Marshall’s consideration, deferred his impulse to shake it to pieces and elicited from him instead profound respect and understanding. Even when partisan for nonsense, she changed it, as if all things were possible, and she often had the effect of making irrelevant his best-protected principles and beliefs, of soothing anger, taming flared passion, etc. Though her external characteristics were splendid and admirable (those fools who think that beauty is nothing are the same as those who think that it is everything), they were best because of their saturation in the light of her spirit. Marshall did not need the golden light of an olive-wood fire in an oil drum underneath the autumn sky at Nashqiya. He needed only Lydias smile. Therein the seasons were made obsolescent, and he understood the deeply felt warmth which had come to her and remained when, at boarding school by a dark lake shore succumbing to the advance of Canadian winter, she had felt rising within her certain conceptions and realizations which (by the greatest of luck) had combined into a sort of tender and happy perpetual motion.

  She had no way of knowing what Marshall had found at Nashqiya. She knew only of the Fourth Daughter, of Marshall’s fervent request. Thus, she rode on a bus full of Bengalis from Bet Shan to Haifa. It was the year for Bengalis—they were everywhere, and they were enthusiastic. The driver called out his stops, and they responded in spirited unison. “Afoola,” he said.

  “Afoola!” they cried.

  “Ramat David.”

  “Ramat! David!” And so it went at every stop.

  Lydia went to the great hotel on top of the mountain. High above the bay she watched from blue translucent shade as sunny little ships moved toward Cyprus and Crete, and she listened to the pines rustling cold to the touch because it was winter and the heights were deliciously cool. A girl came around with steaming white pots of tea on a pastry cart.

  “Thee and pastry?” she asked.

  “Thank you!” said Lydia, choosing a tiny strawberry tart on a dish with a golden rim. The fork was heavy and solid, as in all good hotels. The tea was magnificent. Its steam rose past the high windows through which the wide bay was always visible.

  “Are you a guest, Mister?”

  “Certainly,” said Lydia, as graciously as she could.

  “Without money, Mister,” said the girl.

  “Thank you very much.”

  Lydia sat in the elegant room high above the quiet city, taking in a sense of position and elevation which she hoped would help her with the general. It was so beautiful there. Because she was in love, the background and climate of the land seemed magical, and all the more so because she was in love with her husband. Marshall was somewhat strange and had not grown up in all the ways in which he might have. But she burned with love for him, for all the imperfections, all the roughness, and all the misunderstandings. She trusted him, and they had the same dreams, and they were for one another in many ways.

  Staring out the high windows, she unleashed her transfixing smile, because she was lost in a pl
an that she had been developing since Marshall had left for the Army.

  They had discovered that they loved life in agriculture. Perhaps they would stay on at Kfar Yona, but they missed America and Marshall never stopped complaining about how irrationally Kfar Yona was run. If he had a farm, he would do this and that, and the things he said were surprisingly true. On several occasions he had said that, after the Army, it might be nice to go back to America and buy a wheat farm somewhere in the West. This had moved both of them in that it was reaccess to a stirring memory. Enraptured by the idea, she had closed her eyes and envisioned a productive rational acreage; a big airy farmhouse full of books; and many lovely children growing up strong and happy; she had even gone so far as to envision a pied-a—terre in San Francisco.

  “Wait a minute,” said Marshall. “It’s going to be a struggle. Maybe we can get going on a small farm, but you’ll have to hold off awhile on a place in San Francisco.” She neglected to tell Marshall, however, why she had allowed her dreams to be so explicit.

  She had some money. She had never mentioned it, for it seldom occurred to her. The Levys had become wealthy when, after a vision, Levy had bought real estate and sold his ship provisioning business to a great corporation in exchange for a bloc of its stock. The corporation had then grown out of all proportion. Her parents willed most of what they had to Lydia, since she was the baby and the other children were well established.

  Lydia had not been aware of the size of her inheritance until summoned to an elegant office in a new glass building near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. Her first impulse had been to give all the money away, but the trustee had informed her that she was not allowed to do that. In fact, she could not (without good reason) invade her principal, which Paul Levy would control until his death. The whole business was so unpleasant that she went back to Berkeley and forgot it, instructing the bank to pay her living expenses and re-invest the remainder. She associated the money with the death of her parents. Thus she had never mentioned it to Marshall, and seldom gave it a thought.